Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must commune with God.
--Joseph Smith, from The Teachings of Jospeh Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith, pg. 137
I was looking at all the pictures that Helen's mom took of the Escher prints and it reminded me of some random gospel connections in some of his work. For example, this first one, called "Circle Limit III" is how I've always envisioned God's omniscience. We are like the little fish things in the print: it looks like our universe extends infinitely in every direction--and it does!--but God is outside of it and looking down on it, so he can see everything in it all at once. And at the same time, he doesn't know everything, but he does know every possible thing going on in our universe. Just like we can see everything in the fish things' universe all at once but if we look up off the page we can't see everything at once in our universe.
This next one is what I think of as hell: always going in circles, perhaps with a false sense of getting somewhere and surrounded by people who think the same, but never progressing at all. The weird hoods that hide the climbers' faces just makes it better. I think Satan is one of the guys just sitting there beneath, watching or moping.
What do you think? Are my theological musings pointless or inspired? How do you try to comprehend the infinite? Have you ever used art or any other medium for trying to understand the eternities?
1 comment:
Here is a link to a Eugene England article that I mentioned when we were talking about this subject at dinner last night.
An excerpt: On 6 April 1844, Hyrum Smith, counselor to the prophet
Joseph Smith, speaking at the general conference of the church,
stated, "I would not serve a god that had not all wisdom and
power." Yet on 13 January 1867, speaking as president of the
Church in the tabernacle, Brigham Young stated, "According to
[some men's] theory, God can progress no further in knowledge
and power, but the God that I serve is progressing eternally, and so are his children."
He goes on to expound beautifully how both views are right, they're just talking about different spheres. At least, I think it's beautiful, me and my roommates liked to argue about whether God is still learning anything or if he has already acquired all knowledge. I fall into the former camp, and the Escher print exemplifies that: God knows everything in our sphere (analogous to us looking at the little circle full of infinite fish things) but isn't omniscient in the higher sphere that he's in (analogous to our looking up off the page away from the circle full of fish things--we can not see everything in the world around us). Does that clarify anything?
Post a Comment