The Way of All the Earth: Practicing Resurrection

Thank you, Joe. That was so generous. And thanks to the Maxwell Institute for inviting me to do this. I’m a little bit hesitant. I’m especially hesitant to have Joe introduce me and sit there as one of the most amazing scholars of the Book of Mormon. I’m going to try to talk a little bit about the Book of Mormon today, so my apologies up front about that. Anyway.

Preparing to teach the young men of our ward recently, I was struck by a phrase previously unremarkable to me in the first verse of the first chapter of Alma: “Now it came to pass in the first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, from this time forward, King Mosiah having gone the way of all the earth.” (Alma 1:1) Something stopped me short with that phrase.

And I found it difficult to continue. Perhaps “the way of all the earth” is meant to be read as merely a euphemism for death. From dust to dust, all living things are born and die. The same phrase is used five times in the Book of Mormon to report the death of revered leaders and prophets. And yet, I couldn’t help feeling something more was afoot. Such an evocative phrase. What if there is more to “the way of all the earth”

than our squeamishness to say forthrightly what we all know but would rather ignore? That nothing earthly lasts, that death is one of the few certainties that we have in this life?

What is “the way of all the earth”? Is it merely death and corruption? Or is there something redemptive hidden deep in the earth? If so, could the Book of Mormon help us plumb those depths?

I’m a biologist, which means I have spent most of my adult life contemplating the corruptible flesh in its various guises, these very mortal tabernacles of an eternal soul. Physical, fleshy life is marvelous, full of desire, pleasure, beauty, and deep mysteries. It is, in short, a worthy subject of deep affection and a life of devoted study. Our flesh enables so much joy and promise, and simultaneously so much pain and disappointment.

Embodied Theology

Life emerges, cells divide and differentiate, organisms form, nurtured and protected until a being capable of self-regulation arrives, finding food and modifying its environment. It is a marvel and a miracle. We also witness that marvel fade, the joys and anticipations subside, as rosy cheeks grow pale, verdant, lush fields wither and dry, and in the sun and the summer winds, “all flesh is grass” (Isaiah 40:6, KJV)

“And all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth.” The world-weary can be forgiven for wishing it were otherwise. Forgiven for longing to transcend this earthly probation for spiritual realms on high. Forgiven for abiding patiently until the day when “this corruptible must put on incorruption,” when mortality at long last puts on immortality. “In a moment,” Paul said, “in the twinkling of an eye.” (1 Corinthians 15:52–53, KJV)

Deeply influenced by Greek philosophy, earthly transcendence has been the explicit focus of most Christian theology. It’s not just abstract theology; it seeps deep into the expectations we have of ourselves and of others. We chide ourselves for failing to maintain an eternal perspective, for overindexing on this transitory mortal life. Yet I wonder if we have been too quick to prefer the eternal and the transcendent to the embodied and mortal.

In our religious discourse, I wonder if this bias is consistent with the radically embodied theology revealed by Joseph Smith. The Restoration hints at a different way. Rather than looking away from our fleshy tabernacle in disgust, Joseph Smith invites us to consider a God of flesh and bone. What might it mean for God to be simultaneously eternal and flesh? I cannot fathom.

And perhaps I am not meant to. But I, like you, have an intimate knowledge of a living body, a mortal body. This embodied life is the only one we know. It was given to us. Perhaps our theology of embodiment is meant to orient us away from a fantasy of eternal transcendence toward a version of salvation only available to bodies of flesh. Joseph Smith invited us to consider our destination after this earthly life.

He revealed kingdoms of glory where we are bound, the highest and most glorious of these being the celestial kingdom. That doctrine might appear to validate the transcendent impulse of traditional Christian theology. It might appear to confirm that our end is not this unfortunate earthly sphere, but a distant plane of eternal perfection, clean, clear, floating somewhere above this corruption, a final resting place for our perfected bodies.

As a biologist in love with the stuff of this world, I am skeptical that these fantasies of transcendence are so desirable. Furthermore, as a devoted partisan of the restored gospel, I wonder if we have fully considered our unique theological inheritance. Perhaps there is something yet to learn from this corruptible flesh and our earthly inheritance before we fix our gazes on the infinite of our imaginations.

Perhaps our earthly probation is not meant merely to provide a location to gain a body and be tested before we return to our true home. Perhaps we are also meant to reorient our longing and our desires, to learn in and through the flesh what it means to live a celestial law. That might sound blasphemous. No doubt it was a theological revolution when Joseph Smith gave us the only concrete hint

of what a celestial sphere and its law might be. He pointed us not up and away from our embodied existence to a transcendent plane, but back down to earth. In Doctrine and Covenants 88, we read: “And again, verily I say unto you, the earth abideth the law of a celestial kingdom, for it filleth the measure of its creation, and transgresseth not the law.” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:25) Note the present tense in this verse.

It does not say that the earth shall abide a celestial law someday. No. The earth is already abiding a celestial law right now, right here, all around you at all times.

The Waters of Sidon

In our pursuit of divinity, we too often imagine a pure and perfect ideal. And in pursuit of that ideal, we reject and refuse what we have been given. It seems to be a deeply human tendency. My contention today is that when we refuse what we have been given, when the unwanted conditions of our embodiment become refuse, we are abandoning and refusing the very conditions necessary for our salvation. This short-sighted rejection is a kind of sin, an unwillingness to abide the celestial law. The corrective to this pride quietly and imperceptibly awaits our return. The earth abides the celestial law, and if we allow, it has much yet to teach us. We have many resources, both secular and sacred, to explore the way of all the earth, and I recommend them all to you: physics, chemistry, geology, genetics, ecology, and evolution. But for this short presentation, I would like to center my analysis on a few things the Book of Mormon may have to teach us. Shortly after King Mosiah went the way of all the earth, the Nephites were thrown into a season of political intrigue and polarization. The cunning and charismatic Amlici drew many people away from the Church and led a faction that sought to install him as a new king. After a period of intense debate and politicking, votes were cast and Amlici came up short. Undeterred, the aggrieved losers, rejected by those faithful to the Church, organized and took upon themselves the name of their new leader. Things deteriorated quickly from there. Arms were gathered, captains and chief captains chosen as the people prepared for war. And it came to pass that the Amlicites came upon the hill Amnihu, which was east of the river Sidon, which ran by the land of Zarahemla, and there they began to make war with the Nephites. Now Alma went up with his people, yea, with the captains and chief captains, and at the head of his armies, against the Amlicites to battle. And it came to pass that the Nephites did pursue the Amlicites all that day, and did slay them with much slaughter, insomuch that there were slain of the Amlicites twelve thousand five hundred thirty and two souls. (Alma 2:15–19)

The mass of dead human flesh from this brutal encounter is hard to imagine. But the carnage was not yet done. In hot pursuit, the Nephite armies encountered the Amlicites again, now bolstered by Lamanite reinforcements, on the banks of the river Sidon. The combined forces of Amlicites and Lamanites are described simply as more numerous than the sands of the sea. The Nephites entered the fray and the slaying continued until countless bodies lay heaped on the banks of the river and the adjacent wilderness. The Nephite rout of their foe was eventually successful, and in the quiet after the battle, the dead and decaying flesh was processed by Alma. He cleared the ground, or rather the bank, which was on the west of the river Sidon, throwing the bodies of the Lamanites who had been slain into the waters of Sidon, that thereby his people might have room to cross. And it came to pass that many died in the wilderness of their wounds, and were devoured by those beasts, and also the vultures of the air, and their bones have been found, and have been heaped upon the earth. Now many women and children had been slain with the sword, and also many of their flocks and their herds. And now, as many of the Lamanites and the Amlicites who had been slain upon the bank of the river Sidon were cast into the waters of Sidon, and behold, their bones are in the depths of the sea, and they are many. The putrefying flesh of this battle was simply left heaped upon the earth or rotting in the river. I doubt that the enormity of the dead and decaying bodies could be comprehended. And yet, just a year later, we encounter this same spot: a site of carnage and death transformed and purified. In the wake of mourning and rebuilding, Alma set out to restore the Church.

And they baptized. And they began to establish the Church more fully. Yea, and many were baptized in the water of Sidon, and were joined to the Church of God. The waters of Sidon, so recently a repository of dead bodies without number, now a sacred site of purification and transformation. I think we are meant to ask how this is possible.

How can a site so degraded and putrid become the location of their most sacred ordinance and covenant? I think this transformation is precisely what is meant by the way of all the earth. The earth takes what it is given, no matter how rotten or squalid, and quietly, silently remakes it under our feet. Walt Whitman, as an army medic, during a more recent but no less horrific civil war, also witnessed and powerfully described this transformation. This is from his poem “This Compost.”¹

How can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
Are they not continually putting distempered corpses within you?
Is not every continent worked over and over with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?

Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations.
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you today.
Behold this compost. Behold it well.
Perhaps every mite has once formed a part of a sick person.
Yet behold, the grass of spring covers the prairies.
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize stalk.
The lilac blooms in the dooryards, the summer growth is innocent and disdainful.

Above all those strata of sour dead, what chemistry ensures that the winds are not infectious, that all is clean forever and ever, that the cool drink from the well tastes so good, that blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, that the fruits of the apple orchard and the orange orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums will none of them poison me, that when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease.

Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.

Now I’m terrified of the earth. It is that calm and patient. It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions. It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseased corpses, and it distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor. It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal annual, sumptuous crops. It gives such divine materials to men and accepts such leavings from them at last. In my experience, Walt Whitman is right. Compost is indeed a miracle. It deserves much more attention than we give it. What can be said scientifically about the dark powers of compost? Very little, it turns out. Rotting flesh of all sorts—animal, vegetable, fungal, it doesn’t matter—falls to the earth, where bacteria and fungal mycelial networks go to work, distilling such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor. Corruption, putting on incorruption. Anyone who declares they understand this dark alchemy is either deluding themselves, their audience, or both at the same time. The disturbing and wondrous fact is that we give our most rotten, putrid refuse to the earth and we walk away. While we are absent, the earth transforms it. That is its way.

That was the way of the waters of Sidon. What chemistry indeed.

Compost and Resurrection

Wendell Berry, another poet, iconoclast, and perhaps channeling the spirit of Walt Whitman, put it only slightly differently in his “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.”² He said:

Invest in the millennium, plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest that
you did not plant, that you were not, that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit.

Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees every thousand years.
Listen to carrion.
Put your ear close and hear the faint chatterings
of the songs that are to come.
Practice resurrection.

The way of all the earth is to grow such sweet, such sweet things out of such corruption. If we, too, desire to go the way of all the earth, I can hardly put this injunction more succinctly than when Wendell Berry did. The earth teaches us what it means to practice resurrection.

The purified and purifying waters of Sidon are not an isolated instance of the transforming powers of the earth presented in the Book of Mormon. Indeed, another evocative phrase abounds: fall to the earth. Alma fell to the earth after confronted by an angel, so did King Lamoni and his court. In these stories, falling to the earth could be passed over again as a simple description of physical, spiritual, and psychological overwhelm. The body, overcome, loses its strength, and falls to the ground.

Yet, as these stories proceed, the parallels with death and resurrection are too apparent to ignore. In the darkest abyss, each in their own way dropped their grievances and hurts, their imagined selves and righteous lives, and was transformed by what was given them. From that refuse pile emerged by means of a marvelous and obscure, a new being, fresh and fit for the moment. A new being they could not have imagined or even desired before they experienced it. For behold, I show you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51, KJV) The first step, if we too would practice resurrection, is falling to the earth. That phrase is not limited to the Book of Mormon. Struggling to help his devoted disciples understand the necessity of his imminent death, Jesus said, Verily, I say unto you: except the corn of wheat fall to the ground and die. It abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. A grass seed bears no resemblance to the plant it will become, nor can the seed transform on its own. It must fall to the earth. The earth provides the necessary matrix for transformation. We all hope to grow good seeds and harvest much fruit. As a gardener, I know too well this mania: plant, cultivate, harvest. Berry admonishes us to plant sequoias, an inspiring vision, putting seed in the ground and patiently anticipating the fruits of our desires. However, a close reading of Berry’s poem suggests that a fixation on seeds, trees, and their harvest is putting the cart before the horse. Seeds only germinate and grow in good soil. Perhaps you are lucky, and the earth has been patiently making soil for thousands of years before you happen to plant. If so, you may delude yourself that planting is your primary duty.

We may intend to plant sequoias, fine. But first, consider the earth, behold this compost. And then plant trees the way the earth plants trees. Take a walk in the waning days of fall. Notice how many fruits remain on the limbs, or lie scattered in varying degrees of decomposition on the ground, along with inches of decaying leaves. The tree spent precious resources producing those leaves and fruits with their precious seed cargo. Yet, most of them fall unnoticed and unappreciated. So much input for so little reward, but they are not wasted. The rotting is putrid for only a small while as the bacteria and fungi work their magic. They darken and enrich the soil with organic humus and soluble nitrogen. By next spring, they feed the young seedlings, striving and competing to produce fruits of their own. Most of those seedlings will die as well. Long before they make fruits or seeds of their own, they fall to the earth and transform. A mighty sequoia is composed of a mind-bogglingly long chain of rotting leaves and fruits from previous generations, lost and forgotten, each a link in a chain that stretches forwards and backwards and branches until it envelops and embraces the whole living earth.

If you have a backyard compost pile, you know what I’m speaking of. The growth of a whole summer is piled high, and after a year of carefully watering and turning, it reduces to a small mound, perhaps sufficient to topdress the soil around a few tomato plants next spring. And yet, I am increasingly convinced that Wendell Berry is correct. We need to put our faith not in the sequoia, but in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years.

To practice resurrection is to accept that all my best efforts are destined to fall short and rot slowly on the ground, contributing only the narrowest portion of soil from which one day a fruit-bearing tree may emerge. To practice resurrection is to return again and again to the earth. Compost builds slowly, soil first, fruits only if we are lucky. That is the way of all the earth.

Learning to Receive What Is Given

At this point, you may be feeling like this is all too metaphorical and a labored metaphor at that. What might it look like to practice resurrection? To compost our lives so that we might support fresh new growth. I grew up in a small town in Oregon. My family attended a small ward, and few members went to school with me. Most of my friends who were church members eventually abandoned the faith and its standards.

The life that they felt drawn to was not compatible with our culture’s expectations. In high school, my friends were largely not members. And while good people, they did not understand or value my religious commitments. Nor did my friends or community share my uncomfortable, nerdy interests. At ten, when my friends were all requesting the latest Transformers and proudly brandishing their collection of Garbage Pail Kids, I was petitioning my parents for a telescope.

And sharing with pride my collection of insects pinned to wax poured into a shoebox. As I matured, my interests continued to diverge from my small town. In high school, my parents, at my request, bought me tickets to the Oregon Symphony. I invited a close friend to join me, assuming naively that he, like me, would enjoy an escape to the city to experience some culture and sophistication. He was polite, but clearly this was not his choice of an evening entertainment.

I loved—and I am still deeply attached to the forests and rivers of my childhood home. But I longed for a life of the mind and culture, for friends who shared my religious values. I longed for a place where I could cultivate my true self. And so I was thrilled to learn that BYU accepted me. In my mind, BYU was the ideal place for college. I would leave my small town culture, finally live the life I imagined, surrounded by earnest disciple scholars. I would stay up late.

Into the night discussing Plato, listening to Debussy, I would finally find a supportive community committed to learning from all the great books. Arriving in Provo, I was quickly disillusioned with this fantasy. The verdant green hills of my home were replaced by brown, dry hillsides and barren deserts to the west. Late-night discussions of philosophy and classical music were not the norm.

Returning to Provo

I hunkered down in my small, increasingly lonely dorm room on the sixth floor of V-Hall of Deseret Towers, which has now gone the way of all the earth, and studied my chemistry text, feeling cynical and distant from the people around me. I had a growing sense that the closed-minded small town culture I hoped to escape was not to be replaced by the intellectually and spiritually curious utopia that I had envisioned. Instead, a distinctly BYU version of small-mindedness surrounded me and felt increasingly oppressive and stifling. It was not all disappointing, of course. I took classes from truly inspiring professors, made dear friends, met the woman who remains the love of my life. Still, at the end of my time in Provo, I could not wait to leave the bubble, to escape this new provincial prison for graduate school in California. A new imagined ideal awaited us. We drove away from Provo, vowing never to return.

I look back on that young idealist with equal parts embarrassment and compassion. As a child in Oregon and a young adult in Provo, I was given a world that fell short of my ideal. I did not want to conform because that conformist self felt inauthentic. My authentic self longed to escape, but would have to await a new place, a new culture to materialize. If we are busy cultivating an authentic self, insisting on our ideals, and insisting on ideals that we cannot find on earth, what we are given always falls short. No community or institution is perfect or a perfect fit. When the transcendent self of our imaginations cannot abide the world we are given, we have two easy choices. We can acquiesce and conform, abandon the ideals, and perform, perhaps grumbling silently, as authenticity is abandoned for belonging. Or

We can refuse what is given, strike out on our own to build our true authentic self, abandoning belonging for authenticity. Are these the only alternatives? I believe Jesus, Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon all gesture towards an alternative. They subtly direct our attention away to the ways of the earth. They encourage us to practice resurrection. Embodied authenticity is not autonomy; neither is it conformity.

Practicing Resurrection

The authenticity we long for requires the transformation of our flesh. And that occurs when we no longer refuse what we have been given. When we turn it over, along with our disillusioned grievances, our self-righteous certainty, all of it to be transformed. That transformation only happens as we give ourselves fully to this very place, this very people, to a heritage we may feel an urge to refuse.

We say no to this life and its imperfect, low, and earthly incarnations because we fail to understand how this earth is at the center of our salvation. We don’t yet understand that this is the place we practice resurrection. It is the place we return, if we are lucky, to relinquish our ideas, our intentions, our petty orientations, and supposed inspirations, for those impulses toward transcendence only alienate us from the power sufficient to transform us. To finally accept what is given is not to agree or to condone, it is to recognize, to recognize via our flesh what we had once discarded. Like all moves of faith, it is dangerous and uncertain. If we do not feel that danger and uncertainty, if we cannot clearly envision the person we will be on the other side, it is not a transformation worthy of the name.

To practice resurrection is to stand back and witness a supple new body fit for this moment, this place, and this circumstance appear before us. Despite the vows of my youth, I returned to Provo, to BYU, coming back to Provo has been an unexpected delight, as Joe has mentioned. Perhaps it was the realization that I would be stuck here, that there would be no exit. Somehow, bit by bit, I am learning to accept what is given.

To stand back and observe a new self emerge. As I give myself over to the study of our native flora, the brown hill suddenly burgeoned with life. As I learn what it means for a professor to profess, BYU becomes the matrix of my transformation. As I embed myself like a seed in the earth in my neighborhood, I feel the awakening of a life worth living.

Closing Witness

Are there things you wish were otherwise? Are you refusing what has been given? If so, I understand. There is so much about this life that leaves us disappointed. But I would ask, as did Alma, can you hear the song of redeeming love? If not, maybe you do not know where to listen. Put your ear to the ground. Listen to carrion. Hear the faint chatterings of songs to come. Put faith in compost.

Practice resurrection.