PROLOGUE

I’m learning to see.

It’s not that I’m physically going blind, but in this day and age, it’s easy to lose sight of the truly good, the beautiful, and the wonderful in the world. Much of what I hear on television, online, and from others is focused on what’s wrong with _(fill in the blank)_. This has been especially true in my graduate school experience, where students have been expected to read the writings of others with an eye towards what they got wrong. Students who do so are then praised by teachers and rewarded with the respect of their peers.

I’m tired of poking holes in the arguments of others and watching them bleed. I’m tired of seeing a world in a state of constant decay. I want to see the world as I did when I was a child, filled with castles and dragons (and robots, and lightsabers, and dinosaurs, and so on).

My bewildered brother and me attempting to
tame the metal garbage-eating goat at
Spokane's Riverfront Park (circa 1983)

I want to reclaim that enchanted worldview. I want to be able to stand in awe at an idea, an image, an object, and another person – any other person – living or beyond living.

I’ve found that the more I believe that I can see the truly good, the beautiful, and the wonderful, the more I can distinguish the edges of these on my personal horizon. And, like the person in the following image, I am able to break through the world of the mundane and am dazzled by sights more amazing than I had imagined.

The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist that first appeared in Camille Flammarion’s L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888). The image depicts a man crawling under the edge of the sky, depicted as if it were a solid hemisphere, to look at the mysterious Empyrean beyond. The caption translates to “A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet...”

Such “dazzling” must happen gradually, as Emily Dickinson explained so elegantly:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind

One of the things that I love most about Mormonism is its unembarrassed reaching for the truly good, the beautiful, and the wonderful. Joseph Smith once stated: “One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth, let it come from where it may.”(1) 

As this fledgling group of truth-seekers began to establish themselves in the mid-1800s, some made attempts to summarize their religious beliefs. Parley Pratt was one of the first to do so (2), followed by his brother Orson (3). When Joseph Smith finally set down his own summary, he went beyond these previous attempts, grasping at something higher.

Joseph Smith's signature

In what became known as the “Articles of Faith,” Joseph began by outlining the doctrines most fundamental to Mormonism and then moved to brief statements of belief regarding several important religious issues of the day.(4) It’s how he ends this little document that stands out the most to me – he did not end with a declaration that Mormonism had all the answers, or even that it possessed all truth. Rather, the culminating “Article of Faith” was something much more beautiful:

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

This is what resonates most with me, and this is what I want to see – the virtuous, the lovely, and the praiseworthy in the world. But not just “the world” I’ve grown accustomed to – I expect to be surprised by the good in unexpected places and by unexpected people. I want to see it with my eyes, my mind, and my heart. And I don’t want to receive it passively. I want to “seek after these things.”

And that’s why I’m starting this. I want to counter the trend in academia, in the public square, and in everyday conversation that is quick to belittle, criticize, and dismiss almost every contribution made by individuals or groups or religions. In believing that there is good, beauty, and wonder in the world, I am seeing it more and more – not only in the present, but also in the past, where my studies often take me. And I've decided to share that with anyone who’s interested in recovering such an enchanted view of the world.

I want this to be a space where we can lead each other in our dazzled semi-blindness, so please join the conversation by leaving your comments and questions in the following posts.

I’m learning to see, but I need help. Won’t you join me?

Footnotes

1) Sermon of Joseph Smith, 9 July 1843 (Sunday Morning), in Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1980), p. 229, spelling and punctuation standardized. 

2) This appeared in “An Address by Judge Higbee and Parley P. Pratt, Ministers of the Gospel, of the Church of Jesus Christ of ‘Latter-day Saints,’ to the Citizens of Washington and to the Public in General,” Washington, D.C., 9 February 1840. Available here.

3) This appeared in “A[n] Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions and of the Late Discovery of Ancient American Records,” Edinburgh, Scotland, 1840. Available here.

4) Joseph Smith penned this as part of a longer letter in 1842 to John Wentworth, and was reprinted in the Mormon periodical Times and Seasons, March 1, 1842. Available here.