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Faith Matters
13. A New Story of Creation - A Conversation with Scholars George Handley and Jani Radebaugh
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, this is Sarah Perkins Sabie, one of the authors of the Bible Storybook. We're so excited to have partnered with Faith Matters to bring you beautifully told Scripture stories as a podcast that you can listen to with your kids and share with your friends and family. We're making half of the stories available completely free, is a podcast called Scripture Stories for Little Saints, and the other half are available to donors and friends of Faith Matters as a thank you for your financial support that makes this collaboration possible. If you have trouble accessing them, you can email faith matters@infoaithmatters.org and they'll be happy to help. Thank you so much for your generous and ongoing support. We're so excited to share these stories with you and can't wait for you to hear them. Now onto the podcast. Hey, everybody. Before we get started, I just wanted to tell you about a new book from Faith Matters Publishing. It's called Restoration by Patrick Mason. When we started the Faith Matters Publishing project, one of our goals was to explore what restoration really means as the church moves into its third century. And that's exactly what Patrick does. If you're like me and you've ever wondered how restoring Israel can be relevant to you, you've got to read this book. Patrick shows how as members of the church, it's our mission to truly lead out in bringing wholeness and healing to the marginalized and the vulnerable. This book absolutely lit a fire for me, and it has totally changed the way I view my own engagement with the church and with the world. I really can't recommend this book strongly enough. It's the kind of book you want everyone you know to be reading to so that you can talk about it, so you can pick up a copy for yourself or for your friends and family at Deseret Book, Amazon, Audible, and Apple Books. Okay, that's it on the book for now, but we'll be sharing a lot more in the near future. Thanks as always. And here's the episode.
- [01:42]
B
Hi friends. Welcome to the Faith Matters podcast. The Faith Matters foundation is dedicated to exploring a thoughtful and expansive view of the restored gospel. For more podcasts, articles and community, go to faithmatters.org hi everyone. I'm Kate Hargardon from Faith Matters, and I've got Bill Turnbull with me. He's one of the founders of Faith Matters, and we're doing a really cool series called the Big Questions Project. And the name kind of speaks for itself, but essentially we're exploring some of the really big burning questions relating to our faith that I think A lot of us have in various forms. And so today we are lucky to have with us two pretty legendary professors, Janie Radebaugh. Did I say that right?
- [02:34]
C
Yes, you did.
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B
Janie Radebaugh and George Hanley. Thank you guys for being with us today.
- [02:41]
C
Thanks for having us.
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B
So, Bill, do you want to introduce Janie to us?
- [02:46]
C
Oh, sure.
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B
Yeah.
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D
Janie's like this most interesting woman in the world figure. She's always found in these really remote, stark, but fascinating corners of the Earth, if she's not studying, like, moons of Saturn or something like that. But she's professor of geological sciences at BYU and a really kind of a renowned planetary scientist working on a really cool project to explore Titan, right?
- [03:18]
C
Yes, yes.
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D
Give us, like. Give us, like, 30 seconds on that.
- [03:23]
C
Yeah. We've just submitted the Dragonfly mission concept, and it's a proposal to send basically kind of like a quadcopter to the surface of Titan, a really distant moon of Saturn. And it's got a thick atmosphere like Earth's, and the landscape a lot like Earth's, but everything is utterly different. And there are lots of really strange but very interesting materials on the surface, and, in fact, materials that could lead to the start of life. And so we're very interested to go put something there and actually taste the material on the surface. And so we'll see what happens. It's under review for the next six months.
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B
By put something there, we mean Janie's trying to move to Titan, so we don't know when we'll see her next.
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C
It's an easy place to explore as a human, it turns out, because the atmosphere is like Earth's, but it's just very, very cold and you can't breathe it.
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D
So, I don't know. Don't do well with methane.
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C
Yeah. And there's lots of methane.
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D
Yeah. But it's about Earth size. Right.
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C
It's. The atmosphere is about the same pressure as Earth's at the surface, so you don't need a pressure suit, which is very cool.
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D
Okay.
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C
The body's a little smaller than Earth, but lots of really cool landscapes to explore. Yeah.
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D
And your dad. I took international business from your dad.
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C
Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny because people are always like, gosh, you travel so much. I honestly do not travel as much as my dad did in the middle of when he was a dean or something, you know, I mean.
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B
So.
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C
Yeah, and I guess that's part of the field is that they need to travel if it's international business. But between me and my mom, who did this curtain time, sort of like Young Ambassadors world Tour when she was at byu, I think got a big love for travel.
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D
Yeah, Good. Thanks.
- [05:07]
B
Well, I'll introduce George a little bit. George happens to be one of my favorite human beings. I went to his office one time, and I just felt like my mind was utterly blown. So I think George brings a really unique perspective with his writing, weaving together environmentalism and religion and literature, which is really cool. Some of George's more LinkedIn facts, I guess. Born and raised in Connecticut. You can correct me if any of this is wrong, but Born and raised in Connecticut, got a bachelor's degree at Stanford and then master's and PhD at Berkeley. And I think you worked at a. You were a professor at a university in Arizona, if I'm correct. And then. Yeah, and then now teach at byu, a professor of humanities. And I think some of your work that I find really fascinating and unique is this kind of. This work on environmental stewardship within the scope of Mormonism, which, at least from what I know, seems to be a big focus for you. And so I think you bring. George brings a unique voice to that. Not on a personal note, I think, as a former student at BYU and then one who knows a lot of your students, George, I think your thoughtful curiosity and informed faith and who you are as a mentor to a lot of students is really powerful. I think your relational approach, at least from what I know from a lot of your students, you're a really influential mentor. So we're really excited to have you here to talk to us about all of this.
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D
Thank you, Kate.
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E
I don't live a life nearly as.
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D
Interesting as Janie, but.
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B
Well, Janie's flying on coffee tables to other planets.
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E
She's not a good Facebook friend because she posts photos of exotic places that make you exceedingly jealous.
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D
But.
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C
You keep doing the same thing, though, too.
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D
So George is at the top of some peak here.
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C
Yeah, exactly. I'm sitting here grading papers, and he's on some snowy peak.
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D
By the way, George wrote a couple of books that I loved. Home Waters, which is kind of an environmental memoir. Life on the Provo River. Your Recompense on the Provo River, I think it was called. Right? Something like that. But I loved it. It's a little bit. He's become a little bit like Mormonism's throw. So that's. But the Provo river is your Wallace Pond, maybe.
- [07:49]
B
So I want to set this conversation a little bit by reading a challenge issued by Carl Sagan, who famous Astronomer, astrophysicist. I'm sure you're both familiar with him from several decades ago. And he says, how is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, this is better than we thought? The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. Instead they say, no, no, no, my God is a little God, and I want him to stay that way. A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. So, Janie, Carl Sagan was obviously fascinated by the cosmos, and I know you are, too. So what does he mean when he says, this is better than we thought? Give us some cosmic context. Talk to us a little bit about that.
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C
Yeah. First, I really love this quote. I think there's so much to it, and we could spend almost the whole time on it, really. So. But I think something that is really special about being a scientist is that, you know, get to see a lot of these things unfold in front of you and, you know, the numbers getting bigger or getting smaller sometimes or whatever it is. And we're required to approach that with a really open mind. And, you know, like, for example, in just the last couple of years, there's been a discovery of an object in our solar system. And our solar system is really big, and there's a vast amount of empty space. And it's hard to kind of understand this, but, for example, there's a spacecraft that's flying past another object kind of almost as we speak, way out beyond the orbit of Pluto. And Pluto itself is 30 times as far from the sun as the Earth. It took a spacecraft 10 years flying really fast to get there. And so, you know, for us to even imagine, oh, let's go explore Pluto. Well, it'll take 10 years. You know, that's 30 times as far from the sun as the Earth. But we think we've discovered another object that's the size of Neptune, and it is 800 times as far away from the sun as the Earth. And, you know, for us to even. Why didn't we know about this thing before? You know, a whole Neptune that's out there. Well, it's really far away, and we don't know exactly where it is, but everything is lining up in just the right way that everyone has agreed. Okay, yeah, this object is out there.
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D
And is it orbiting our sun?
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C
Yeah, it's part of our solar system. So we think it got ejected from its original orbit at some point in the past during the really violent stages of the early solar system. So we have to be sure to keep an open mind as those things come and rely on the evidence in front of us that those things are there. Now if we want to go outside our solar system to the next object, it's Proxima Centauri, and that's four light years away. That's the distance that light can travel in a year. That's a light year. And so it would take four of those for light alone to get there. So there's. If we can imagine going as fast as we possibly can in a spacecraft, it would take us 200 years to get to Proxima Centauri. That's four light years away. And now if we want to just go to our galaxy, which is really big, and that's basically all the stars you can see in the sky, with the exception of one or two little objects, and that is 100,000 light years across. And there are 500 billion stars in our galaxy. Now we're starting to think that every star has a planet around it or more than one planet, and that. So that's 500 billion just in our Milky Way galaxy. But then our Milky Way is part of a big galaxy cluster, and then that cluster is part of a super cluster, and that extends all the way out to the edge of the universe. And as far as we know, there are trillions of galaxies in our universe, and Our universe is 14 billion light years across. So it's really hard for us to kind of even comprehend this and to understand what's going on and understand the vastness of time and space, and then to actually come back from that and say, well, but there is an edge to space, and there's a beginning to time. Actually, it's not 14 billion light years across. Sorry about that. That's if everything were expanding at light speed, and it can't. So at any rate, the universe is 14 billion years old. And so there's a beginning. And so we have to say, well, what happened before? There's no before because that's where time started. There's no outside of because that's where space ends. So that starts feeling confining. Despite being so big. That's where we run into these problems. Well, how can you confine God to having a start at 14 billion years ago and not having it an extent outside of space? But we forget that these numbers are so big we can't even really comprehend them to begin with. And now we're worried about a constraint on them. So it's a very interesting kind of conundrum that we run into.
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D
Also true that the universe is expanding at an acceleration.
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C
It depends. Sometimes it's accelerating, sometimes it's not accelerating. It depends on how much dark energy and matter you want to put in there. And so. So either it's going to continue expanding infinitely or it's not expanding quite fast enough, and it will all collapse back on itself, back into this singularity, infinite matter into no space, which is what we started from. And we're not sure yet exactly what the ending is going to be or if there's an ending. We don't know.
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B
It's fascinating even to listen to that and to hear this, like, scope, because I'm like, oh, yeah, let's get some scope on the cut. And then I'm hearing it, and I'm like, oh, my. It's so incredibly, in some senses, overwhelming of even being able to, I think, like you said, comprehend that massive, you know, existence of our universe. And I think it begs the question for me, and not only with our Earth. So take our Earth's existence and our little planet and all that is entailed on our little planet and how, I think in the scope of that, that can feel slightly insignificant or disorienting. And also, not only that, but our personal lives and our personal thoughts and struggles and relationships. And I think, in contrast, that can be, like I said, pretty disorienting. So I guess for George and for you, Janie, what are your thoughts about that contrast that happens as a human being living on planet Earth, you know, feeling insignificant?
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E
I think a couple of things. I mean, I find there's great value in that kind of disorientation. I mean, I think it's therapeutic. I mean, there's like an early childhood version of that that's terrifying, right? I mean, a lot of kids sometimes feel terrified by the thought of eternity, or they get terrified by the thought of infinite space or something like that. And so I think it's chastening. I think it is certainly humbling when we. When we think about those numbers and we try to contemplate that kind of space. But in the scriptures, we have at least two accounts of cosmological encounters that are intended to be spiritually edifying. One is the story of Moses, right, who's given a vision of the Creation. And one of the many unique understandings that are given to us in that restored account of the Creation is the fact that there is this. There are worlds without number and that this is a much vaster and awesome universe than Moses had certainly contemplated. And his reaction is he collapses. And he says, now I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed. So he's overcome by awe and wonder. And a similar scriptural episode is in the book of Job when Job is experiencing a very self centering, going through a very self centering experience of suffering. Suffering is in many ways by definition a self centering experience. I don't mean that in a negative sense, but when we're suffering the loss of a loved one, we're not thinking about other people as readily as we might. And you know, after days and days of consultation with his friends and trying to figure out why all these terrible things have happened to him, the Lord gives him in a very long speech, as far as I can tell, the longest speech that God the Father ever gives in scripture. And it's all about, it's more of a planet Earth lecture than it is a cosmological one. Although he does talk about, you know, where were you when the foundations of the universe began? And, and he says, what do you know about all these things in the world, in the earth that I am the caretaker of? And that he's talking about whales in the sea and animals on the land and weather and climate and oceans and clouds and so on. And all of this is a kind of chastisement, but it's a loving chastisement. It's to say you are not the center of the universe and your problems are not the most important thing, and you might actually gain some spiritual value from appreciating the grandeur of my creations. And there's a wonderful book that I love to recommend by a guy named William Brown called the Seven Pillars of Creation. And he reads the Bible side by side with contemporary science. And one of his conclusions in that book is that we may have misnamed our species. We're called Homo sapiens, which means knowing man. And he says we probably should be more properly identified as Homo admirans, which means wondering man. And what his argument is is that what makes us uniquely human is our capacity for awe and wonder. So the fact that we don't have answers to some of the questions that Janie was just posing, and yet we feel a hunger for them and we keep gaining more information, and yet every time we gain more information, new questions arise. I mean, that, that's disorienting and it's decentering, but it's, it's, it's wonderful. It's full of Wonder. Right. And it is.
- [18:45]
D
It.
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E
It's glorious, and it is an experience that's uniquely human. To be able to contemplate even our. Our limited understanding of the universe, to be able to contemplate it at all is a uniquely human privilege. And so I find that very spiritually edifying. You know, in fact, I'm. I'm constantly. And I know Janie feels similarly and may want to speak to that, but I find myself drawn to those experiences and to those places that will put me completely out of place. Right. And that will completely reorient me so that I'm. I'm more aware of what I'm doing on this planet, what it means to be in a body, what a gift it is to be alive, and so on.
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B
Well, I think what I love about what you said and what you shared is this idea that. And at least for me, I think of the universe and I think of the Earth as something that however much we feel like we do mentally, we can't escape it. We can't escape that we live and exist on this Earth and that our Earth sits in a universe and that that universe is vast and massive. And I think the fact that we can't kind of escape that provides us a constant opportunity to learn from it and to have it kind of place us in some place, whether that's just a place of awe or a place of feeling disoriented, like you said, is not necessarily a bad thing. And I think in a way that wakes us up, which. Which is hard as a human being. It's hard to stay awake to your human experience. In a lot of ways. I find that as one of the biggest challenges we face. And I think the universe and the Earth provides that waking.
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E
Yeah, that's beautiful.
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D
George's comment about. I think you mentioned Moses and the experience that he had. He had this profoundly disoriented experience, and his conclusion was what? Oh, wow, man is really nothing. Which thing I'd never supposed. In other words, he felt very small. And I think in that moment, he's admitting that his story about God, his story about the world, had been inadequate because God showed him something that he just never imagined before. And so our stories do kind of matter, don't they? I was. I remember an experience I had when I came, not long after I come home off my mission. We had this very interesting. We had somewhat enlightened state president, I guess, who invited Jim Jensen. You know, dinosaur Jim Jensen? Yeah. He was at byu and he discovered more dinosaurs, I think, than anybody, maybe any American ever had one named after him, I think. And he had come to our stake, and he had. He was putting on this fireside, and he was showing us pictures of his dinosaurs and how he discovered them and how old they were. And I was experiencing all kinds of cognitive dissonance because I was like, this can't. This does. This does not fit my story. And I actually stood up in the audience with all the zeal of a returned missionary and said, now, wait, how can this be true? How can your timelines be true? How can these things exist? And I just sat there and I looked at him, and he just paused, didn't really say anything. And I looked at what was on the screen behind him, which is this skeleton of this amazing thing that he'd unearthed. And I just came to this realization right there. And I sat down, and I thought, you know, my God's too small. I've got to make room in my world for things like dinosaurs and very old Earth. And so, you know, maybe that's. Maybe that's what Moses. Maybe that was Moses. Experience is, wow, my story is inadequate. And so I think it gets back to that first thing. Kate, your quote by Carl Sagan, it does matter. Like, is there a religion that can tell a story that draws forth those reserves? How's that? Can you reread that?
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B
Yeah. A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
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D
I imagine Moses might have been. Might have yearned to have the kind of tools that Janie Radebaughs are bringing us to help him make sense of what he experienced or what God showed him, but he didn't, of course. He just had the experience, and it was enough to, you know, take his breath away. But so what is. I guess part of this discussion is how can we enrich our story of the world of creation?
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C
Yeah, I mean, I feel like a lot of that is happening for us because we're learning so much about the world in general, the deep corners of the Earth and. And then also just the solar system and the universe and everything. And so we almost can't avoid having that happen for us. And. And I think that that's where we can kind of say, well, we're suddenly just exploding in our understanding of what's going on, in contrast to what maybe Moses understood before, which not only was a lack of understanding of the whole Earth, probably the whole size of the Earth, and the extent of Earth. But even all the people on the earth at the time, right? I mean their story was as far as he understood, just their, their kind of little group of people. And that's probably all the people he thought there were on the earth. And because that's how scriptures are put forward to us, it's like, well, scripture's here to help you in a spiritual sense. And there will be some hints here and there about the vastness of the universe, but it's, they're just hints, right? And so you can get stuck in this very like, oh, the entire universe exists just for me and for my age. And so it's just doesn't need to be any more than 6,000 years old or any bigger than this or that or whatever to compass the story. And so I think as we, as we start bringing in the truths of the physical world, because I think often scripture will deal almost more with spiritual right. And we kind of forget that. But as we as, as we're sitting here in this physical world and we start to understand, no, there are, there are places that have never seen a human before, but they exist. And in fact a human has never even set eyes on them before, but they have been created. I mean, that's just really powerful to me. I think there's vast beauty out there that's never even been observed by human eyes.
- [25:32]
E
Well, and I think Janie's point about the human community is really important because the same problem that we've had to be able to imagine a world that's as big as this or a universe that's as big as the one that we apparently are in. It has its corollary in our inability or our struggle to understand the limits of human community. So I do think there's a, there's a, there's an ethical dimension to this that's really important. I mean, you know, I love the idea, for example in the, the Book of Mormon that Jesus as he's explaining the other sheep that are not of this fold and why the disciples in Jerusalem didn't ask about them, he actually describes it as a form of iniquity or stiff neckedness that they didn't have the imagination to contemplate the possibility that the world was much larger than, than they thought it was, the human world, let alone. I mean, and we're also talking about the planet itself, right? I mean, part of the struggle historically that we've had in understanding the human family is that we thought the earth was actually much smaller than it was, certainly less Diverse, that there weren't as many continents, there couldn't have been as many people. So the whole Western hemisphere was left out of, of the understanding of at least the European nations at the time.
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C
Even though they had the tools there to understand it.
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E
Right.
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C
The hints were there, but they refused to say that.
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E
Right. And that's one thing that's wonderful about what you're saying, Bill, about enlarging your idea of God. I mean, the William Brown book that I mentioned, he doesn't try to prove that the Bible is scientifically in harmony with science, but he is trying to say, can it withstand the interrogation of contemporary science? And he shows that it can. I mean, he just says, you know, his basic point is this really depends on how we read and what kinds of questions we ask. So to really make our world more marvelous, we have to be asking better questions and we have to be inquisitive, we have to be curious and we have to have enough self doubt. Right. I mean, belief in God is not the same thing as unshakable belief in oneself. And that's sometimes the mistake we make. We sort of think that faith in God means that I now have reason to be utterly confident in all of my opinions, when that's almost the opposite. Right. His thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways. So belief in him is, as it's explained by King Benjamin so beautifully, is to say I believe in God and I also believe that he comprehends things that I can't comprehend. So that means I operate with a certain degree of self doubt, which I.
- [28:31]
B
Think that idea of learning and growth is often preceded with a. Your foundation. And so I mean, in some ways crumbling or being kind of. Well, I guess for me, my journey of faith and my journey of growth has come when what I thought I knew was questioned deep, was questioned and was, was broken apart and was confusing. And that kind of, that sense of disorientation and confusion is what perpetuated such deep growth. And I think that idea that our earth and our universe is always more expansive than we are currently at in our understanding of it perpetuates this deep spiritual growth for us that I find really valuable.
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E
Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Well, I just wanted to add one thought to that. And I do think it's important to recognize in the story of Moses, you know, before he collapses, he is actually told, thou art my son, right? God. God identifies him as a child of heavenly parents. He says, you are spiritually begotten of heavenly parents. So you, you have a certain role Here it's not like you're. When he says, now I know that man is nothing, it's not the same thing as saying, and now I know that man is insignificant. And I think that's important for growth to happen. Just to add to what you're saying, I mean, I think. Because otherwise it can be overwhelming to the point where it's debilitating. Right. But I think we grow when we have hope. We have hope because we have some fundamental understanding that this, all of this matters and that I have a role. And I think that's really crucial.
- [30:24]
B
I think that God telling me that I am loved by him within the scope of a massive expansive universe that I don't even comprehend, and that my struggles and my day to day pain and joy and curiosity is of deep significance to God. Within that scope, I think provides a relationship with God that's much more meaningful to me than in that scope of Moses having that realization that man is nothing or job, realizing that he's not the center of the universe, but that his relationship with God exists personally. And those two truths together, I think actually elevates both of them, you know, in their own right.
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D
Maybe it was the realization of those two truths together that blew his mind.
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B
That made him fall down.
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D
You can still be involved, still be held valuable.
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B
Yeah. Well, I think a question that I have for both of you that goes along with this is how your personal relationship with God has been enriched not only by these perspectives, but by nature, by. I know, George, for you being. And for you too, Janie, being in nature and communing with our earth in whatever context, whether you're on the top of a mountain doing something, or for me, skiing, or, you know, all these different things. How has your personal relationship with God been enriched by nature?
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C
It's interesting. I mean, I always have since I was young, loved being outside and been very lucky to have a family that's gotten me outside. And I think that's probably seems like it's been true for all of us. And there's no question that, you know, you really feel something when you're outside. And I see that in students and in people who haven't spent a lot of time among nature. There is something that is very deeply spiritual about being out in nature. And I think that's by design. I think that God wants us to experience his creations and understand them and feel that connection. And for me, I find it's very interesting that the more I think about these things, about the really sort of hidden places of the earth and the universe. And the more I try to go and find them, the more I feel like that's sort of my home in many ways, or my. My calling. I don't know.
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B
I think.
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C
I think, you know, I've had a lot of people say, well, you know, you haven't been to Alaska yet. How's that possible? And yet you're going to go back to, you know, Antarctica for the fourth time. And I've been thinking about that lately, and I think, well, yeah, I would love to go to Alaska one day and I'll get there sometime, but it's really hard to go to Antarctica. And so if I'm able to do that, I feel really drawn to doing that and feel like I can set my feet on this place that's so interesting and unique and so kind of forsaken. And that's where I can go and say, hey, this is also creation and this is beauty. And maybe this is the first time someone set foot on this peak. I can go and be there and say, this is beautiful and this is a place of God. And so. And I also sort of do that virtually, but with a bigger group out in the universe. You know, we want to go to these places and to the far side of the moon and to the, you know, foot of a dune on Titan or whatever it is, and stand there and again, kind of witness that at this beauty and this. This is where life started, too, or this is if we're lucky enough, or whatever it is that we're observing. And I feel very compelled to do it, to do that and to return to those places that I understand and know and find somewhere like them on the Earth and. And go there, because I feel an ownership and I feel a love for those places and love of God through those places.
- [34:34]
E
That's why. That's why I envy Janie so much. I think if I had the training, I would. I've offered Janie to just, like, if you just need a literature person to read poems at night to your crew, I'm there. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to say about this, and I want to share a brief story, but I think for me, I didn't. I mean, I had a pretty typical, but not unusual exposure to nature growing up, and I don't. I don't think I ever considered myself a real nature boy, but. But I. And this is part of what ended up being sort of my epiphany in writing my environmental memoir. I lost a brother to suicide when I was 18 years old. And he was 22 and. And much later in my life, after 20 plus years after his death, I started. I was challenged by a writer to write about him. And I really didn't want to. I was very uncomfortable with the suggestion, but I was trying to learn how to write poetry. And I had been advised that I should write, you know, a journal, a nature journal or something so that I could quiet my voice down. I think my, you know, my tone and my poems was a little too high pitched, like I'm writing a poem. Can everyone see that I'm writing a poem? And I was advised to try to like, you know, find a voice that was more anonymous or more, more quiet. And the way I decided to do that was to write about the outdoors. It just, you know, I was, I was enjoying. I'm mostly for exercise. I was just, you know, going for hikes and snowshoe in the winter and fly fishing and so on. And I was. So I started keeping a nature journal and, and I showed this nature journal to a writer who said, there's pain in my writing. And he told me to understand what that pain was. And I said, well, I don't know what you're talking about because I was just writing about trails and trees and rocks. But when he probed more deeply, I told him, well, yeah, I did lose a brother to suicide when I was young. And he said, well, I think that pain is still there in your writing whether you recognize it or not. And in fact, fact, when you write about nature, it's even more evident even though you're not even talking about it. And so this kind of forced me into the possibility of writing about him, which I did. And I ended up writing Home Waters. But there was an epiphany at the very end of the book, at the end of the writing process. I actually wrote this early in the book. It was one of the last sentences I added to the manuscript was a moment of realization that the reason I love nature so much was because of the loss of my brother. That there was a relationship between suffering and sorrow and loss and the healing that nature provided and the kind of feeling of searching and wanting to be connected to something deeper, bigger, and something that would de center me was a real driving passion inside me that I didn't recognized was directly related to the loss that I had suffered. So I find myself very much, you know, I mean, I have the same experience I think the average person does who likes a little bit of outdoor experience. I'm not like, I don't go to extreme Places. And I don't do extreme kinds of things. I just hike, you know, and I. And I trail run or I mountain bike. And I do it with friends. And the conversations we have, always the most soulful experiences. And with my family, and my conversations with my family are always better on a trail than anywhere else. And for members of my family and extended friends who are not religious or are not associated with the church, I still see the influence of the Spirit come over them when they're in the outdoors. And that's because of what it says in DNC 88. I think Christ is in the light of the moon, in the light of the sun, the light of the stars. I think it's the light by which we comprehend all things. And I think we're connected to one another and to God in ways that we don't fully understand. And it's in the natural world where we're most able to experience that.
- [39:02]
D
Does part of that connection come from the fact that we biologically share. We're sort of cousins, biological cousins to everything that dwells on this earth? I assume that.
- [39:16]
E
I assume we're also spiritual cousins. I mean, everything has spiritual matter, Right? So we're both. Yeah.
- [39:25]
B
When I think that, considering your thoughts, both of you, thank you for sharing them. And I think. I agree. And I think many people would if they reflected on their experiences with the natural world that they have felt, you know, and whatever vocabulary they use, a deeper connection to themselves or to the people around them or to the earth. And maybe that's, for me, a question of why. Like, why is that? Is it because we're made of the same material? Or is God our heavenly parents? Are they somehow more present to us? Or is the earth? Does the earth, the patterns in the earth, teach us something? Whether or not we're cognizant, that we're learning, is the process of seeing a tree die and then, you know, wilt into the ground and then be reborn. Is there something in that process that enters us even in a way that we don't realize? I think there's a lot of questions that I have surrounding that of, well, why is it that way? Why is it that we feel this deep connection? And then I guess a secondary question of, then why aren't we better at taking care of it, which gets us into stewardship. I think that's something I would like to hear from both of you about as well.
- [40:40]
C
One thing I think, I feel when you finally sort of escape everything, and that's leaving your house, leaving the city, leaving Whatever is everything around you before that has been a human construct. And so we've done the best we can to make it a great house to live in or a great city for everybody to live in or whatever it is. But that's been our decision. And it's going to be imperfect. And you could maybe argue what is perfection and immediately as you walk out into nature, is that perfect. But I think that what it is is it's a place where we, I mean, we haven't made the tree and we haven't made the forest and the meadow and whatever else. And so that's been uniquely the creation of God. And so for us to have gone out into that place means that we've left behind everything that we have done. And now we're just relying on the Earth as it exists in nature. And so that is really the creation of God and makes us feel like, well, it should make us feel that we have a connection to our heavenly Father as we're out there. And actually, I think that is why I like to go and find these places that are, you know, utterly untouched, if that's possible, because they've just been sitting there doing their thing, you know, without anybody doing anything to them. And of course, you know, the minute you run into, oh, hey, here's a, some roads and a mine, everything changes. Where if you're just in that perfect, untouched nature that has just been eroding or the volcano has been erupting or whatever it is that's happening, we haven't done anything to it. And there's real, just sort of, there's a real precious existence in that and a way for us to understand natural processes and the action of God on the face of the Earth.
- [42:35]
D
You know, it strikes me that one of the things that's maybe unique to our faith is that we believe that we've always existed. We didn't just pop into existence. And when you think about how long this Earth has existed, what, some 4 billion years, part of a second generation kind of solar system. So as Janie referenced before, I think the universe itself is some 14 billion years old. But if we have existed, it probably puts us in this deep time and it makes us sort of witnesses, if not participants, at least witnesses. And I remember decades ago watching this, I don't know if you guys probably saw it too. There was this under the submarine that went to the bottom of the ocean right at the rift, where there's where these sulfuric gases were coming up out of the. It's where the Earth's crust is being formed and you have all these strange life forms that exist down there. And they've existed, just bizarre. They don't, they're not even in our biosphere, they're disconnected from our biosphere. They have their own little biosphere down there, not oxygen based, not light based, you know, photosynthesis based organisms. And they're weird and bizarre. And I think then they've been around for hundreds of millions of years. And you think, and yet I'm assuming that God and maybe we were fascinated by that as witnesses.
- [44:10]
E
Well, if I could build on that, I think that's really, really true. I think we don't know to what degree we were participants, but we do have some suggestion that we were and we are participants now in the ongoing creation of the world. For better or for worse, we're affecting everything across the globe. And even, even the reality of something like climate change means that the untouched places of the planet are touched still in some way by the fact that we're affecting the climate system in the way that we are. So we are very much involved. And so that does involve, that does imply a certain sense of responsibility and responsiveness to new information as we gain it, as we begin to understand what kind of an impact we're having. And I think the reason that we, I mean there are lots of reasons why we ignore what we're doing to the natural world, but certainly our lives are so automated and so mediated by technology today that it's, it's like this rare thing that we engage all of the senses and that we experience wonder. But that's actually how we were designed, right? We were designed with senses and we were designed to experience wonder. And if you look at the book of Moses in section 59, the doctrine and Covenants, I mean, there's an emphasis on aesthetic appreciation. God takes pleasure in our pleasure.
- [45:43]
C
He.
- [45:44]
E
He wants us to experience the glory and the wonder of the world with Him. And to the degree that we're cut off from that because of the modern lives that we lead, then we're much less likely to even be aware of the impact we're having. But I think there's also a deeper level of deeper problem that we have and that is that nature reminds us that we're mortal. I mean, they're going back to sort of the more terrifying aspects of it. It's not all pretty sunsets and you know, beautiful ski lifts. It's, it's also avalanches and hurricanes and cancer, right? It's things that kill us and that take away Things that we care about and our attempt to try to make our lives permanent and perpetual is threatened by the natural world and always has been. It's just that anciently, culture, human cultures understood that more clearly than we do. And they. And they learned reverence and they learned humility in the face of nature. They also learned how the wilyness to survive. But we've sort of given ourselves over to this idea that we've conquered nature and that it's no longer something to be afraid of. And then when it does still bite us in the end, we're surprised. You know, we act as if this isn't how it was supposed to be. We were supposed to be able to live forever. We were supposed to be able to recreate in comfort and safety for decades. Right? So I think we actually need. Again, going back to our conversation earlier, we need some of that chastening, some of that humility to help remind us that there are limitations. And that's part of what nature reminds us of. And that was kind of what I was getting at earlier about my story about my brother is that. That I didn't realize. It took me a couple of decades to recognize that the feeling I had in nature wasn't just aesthetic appreciation, it was mourning, and it was the loss of my brother. Nature reminded me that he was gone. Nature takes, you know, going back to that image of the dead tree that Kate mentioned. You know, the famous line from Walt Whitman is that maybe death is different than what anyone supposed and luckier, because there really is no. No end to anything. Everything recycles. Right?
- [48:05]
D
But.
- [48:06]
E
But we don't like that. I mean, there's. That. There's certain beauty to that, but there's also. It means we have to let go of a lot of things that we are holding on to with a lot of fear.
- [48:17]
D
You know, George, I love that idea. And I think the other piece of what. What our faith brings to this story is that since we. We look at this life as a one snapshot in a very long existence, but one very, very unique opportunity to learn. And it's. It's an opportunity in which we are embodied in the elements. We have this. A lot of things die for us to come here. Our memory of whatever happened before dies. And then we deal constantly throughout this life with the possibility, of course, of death. But in doing that, we develop new awarenesses. We develop, I think, the whole idea of the restored gospel about this life as an opportunity to develop new capabilities that we could never have imagined disconnected from a world like this. We could have not developed any other way. That in itself should connect us to this world, to the natural world. You know, is there a. Is there a thread there that seems.
- [49:33]
E
Well, even eating right is taking life right in order to nourish ourselves. So I do think you're right that, you know, there's a. There's a. There's a really profound connection to death that makes life possible. So you can't. You can't have one without the other. It's just that I think our contemporary secular life, which has infected our religious experience to a really alarming degree, makes us scared of death, and it makes us scared of our bodies, and it makes us scared of the earth. And I think that's part of the reason why we're making such ruin of things.
- [50:12]
B
Well, I think that earth and nature uniquely, kind of like we were talking about earlier, that idea of being awake to our human existence and awake to what's happening and not running from it. That idea of, you know, that suffering that you experience with your brother. And I think that sometimes response that we have as human beings to run from things that are painful or things that are really joyful out of this fear of fully engaging in our experience. And I think nature is something so. Our Earth is so unique in its. In its sense that it doesn't run from any of that. That all trees go through this process of rebirth and wildfires happen and rivers flow and the ocean has really massive, powerful, dangerous waves. And then it has times of complete stillness. And this idea that the earth doesn't run from any of those processes, that it, you know, engages fully in powerful and sometimes destructive behavior and engages fully in nourishing stillness and how. I think that what you said really made me think about this idea of how nature pushes us to not run from those, but rather to be present in it, to be present in the suffering of loss or be present in the joy of new life. And I think in a way that we disconnect from when we disconnect from nature and run away from it.
- [51:46]
E
I would add that, you know, going back to your question about stewardship, Kate, I think that happiness that we've been discussing and the spirituality that we feel that comes with a set of responsibilities. And I think it can't go without saying that the Restored Gospel has what I believe to be the most fully developed ethic of stewardship in the Judeo Christian tradition. It's really remarkably and explicitly stated in our Restored Scriptures in the Pearl of Great Price and in the Doctrine and Covenants in Particular, there are more clearly laid out principles of stewardship and mandates to be not to be wasteful, to be resourceful and to be considerate of the poor, considerate of future generations. To use natural resources with judgment, not to excess, and neither by extortion. Right. That these are. These are clearly stated principles in our scriptures that we are not paying nearly enough attention to because, you know, we're facing a global crisis. And that is a function of this indifference or this ignorance. And some of it is understandable ignorance, but some of it's willed ignorance. Kind of like what Janie was saying earlier. Like, we have the resources. You know, if you look at the speech God gives to Job, there's virtually nothing in that speech that we don't now have answers to. I mean, he talks about all of this stuff that Job doesn't understand about the planet. And you think, well, contemporary science can answer a lot of those questions. We know a lot more than even what God is saying to Job, but we don't pay any attention to it. Right. We leave it to specialists. And then specialists like Janie have the difficulty of having to translate that information into the common understanding of people. And most people either don't want to know or have too much. You know, they're too distracted to even care. And then meanwhile, our lifestyle is sort of driving things into the ground. So we're at a point where we have to, as you were putting it, really wake up.
- [54:11]
D
We're the first species that has the ability to destroy its own environment. Right? All species, until now, have just had to deal with what's given them, but we have. We're the first species that can actually destroy its own environment. And we're well on the way to doing that. Possibly.
- [54:29]
B
Well, I think that's interesting in the idea, in our faith that God has allowed us choice, deep, deep agency in our experience of what we do. And this is an example of that, of giving us that capacity, the capacity to nourish or to. Or to not the Earth that we've been given. And I think my question, maybe in conclusion, I guess, of all these thoughts in the conversation of stewardship and the conversation of. Of how we interact with the Earth. I hear that, George, what you said about leaving it to the, you know, the experts and those who understand everything about the universe. And I find myself in that trap of, okay, what do, like, fossil fuels or hairspray or, like, what's making it bad? What's, you know, how do I. What is my role in this? And so I guess my question is for both of you, what are tangible, whether it's mental shifts or behavioral changes, kind of as a takeaway for all of us to kind of recenter ourselves and how we interact with our natural world, what would you suggest?
- [55:45]
C
I think for me, I feel like you're right. It can be so overwhelming to try to understand what exactly should we be doing? Should we use our plastic straws? Should we do that? You know, whatever it is. Can I continue to drive my gas car? What is it that we do? And this is a group. And so I do rely a little bit on my groups. And what are my groups, my neighborhood, my family, my city, my country, my world, you know, and we'll continue to have those conversations to try to figure out what. What to do, what are the next steps? And of course, you can't hide behind that necessarily. You want to also be out in front and having the conversation. But. But meanwhile, if we get everybody outside and have some kind of connection in some way, and we do that in different ways, you know, I think for me, I again, love to just get really, really outside into the depths and then try to share that with everybody. Like, here's what it. Here's what it's like in these places that are way off the beaten path and show the beauty and show the. Try to instill some sort of amazement in people. And if everyone can feel that, then I think that's. That's where we start from. There's an ownership that comes from feeling that and from understanding what it is to like it. It's empowering, like, oh, I love this tiny corner of the earth. And so I want to do what it takes to try to help it in some way and approach it from that sort of positive stance. It's like, okay, we're gonna. We're gonna save it. We want to love it and love each other, and so let's figure out how to do it.
- [57:18]
B
Thank you for sharing that. I think that's so true that even being in Utah and being in the mountains and saying, oh, I love this mountain. This is my mountain. I ski on this mountain. I hike on this mountain. I, you know, I'm nourished by this mountain. I'm a part of it. It's not. It's not separate from me anymore. And I think you're right that that instills ownership and then responsibility in action. Thank you for sharing that.
- [57:43]
E
I would just add to that. When you focus it on the local scale like you're describing, that's really where you can start to Measure your impact. You need to. I think the word I use sometimes is reconnaissance. You sort of have to spend some time figuring out where you are, orient yourself to where you live. And that involves getting some sort of basic ecological literacy. This doesn't require. I'm not a scientist, so I can say this with authority. It's one of the few times I can say something with authority. Scientists, I mean, you can educate yourself quite a bit, right? It's not hard to learn about local native plants and animals. And it's not hard to learn about your local ecosystem and understand what its vulnerabilities are and what kind of limitations exist where you live that you have to be aware of. And then you have to take some time to measure your impact. You've got to look at your consumption of goods. You've got to look at your lifestyle and ask yourself, you know, where and how can I lessen my impact? And that gets into the nitty gritty. And we don't have the time or space to do that. But I think. And they may be very different answers for different people, but I think the important thing is to take some small steps. A lot of people might feel like, look, it doesn't. I walk to work. I live a mile and a half from campus. That's not a big deal. I'm not saving tons of fossil fuels by walking to work. But for me, it's a ritual. It's like, no, it's important that I either bike or walk to work and not drive whenever possible, because that just feels like a simple computer commitment I can make. And there are many other simple commitments that I've built into my lifestyle that help to keep reminding me that I have a responsibility. Because I think when you do little things, even if you make a decision about plastic bags or about recycling or about the heat and energy you're using in your home or how many day trips in your car you're going to take. And you start taking some efforts, making some efforts to reduce your impact. It's empowering. And the last thing is that eventually you have to start looking at politics. And this is why environmentalism is so fractious in our society, is because it's so polarized by party right now. And that's deeply unfortunate. Conservatives should be conservationists. It has the same root word, for crying out loud. So there should be a connection there, and it shouldn't be something that just one party concerns itself with. There might be different solutions to problems, but we have to agree on the problems. And I think to the degree that we start paying attention to policy, and that policy can start locally and it can move to the state and national level, but we inform ourselves. And I would say all of this is a lifelong endeavor. It's not like tomorrow afternoon you're going to suddenly have it all clear in your head. You just have to make up your mind that you're going to take seriously your responsibility and do the best you can to educate yourself, inform yourself, ask questions, talk to people, engage in debate, learn more. And you probably will make some mistakes along the way. You'll change your mind about some things. But if you're committed to say this is an obligation on my part to be as informed as I can and, and to be as ethical as I can over time, that is an extraordinarily spiritually edifying and fulfilling experience. That's been my experience. Just learning more about the Earth, learning more about where I live as a non scientist has just tripled the pleasure I have in living where I live and the sense of responsibility I have. And that. That I think going to Janie's great expression of feeling called. Right. I think feeling called to life is really, really important. And it's a different niche for each of us. But we all are called to live responsibly and deliberately. And I think that has to be something that we make as a priority.
- [62:02]
D
And Georgie, put your money where your mouth is or your time where your mouth is by entering public life. And so we also tip our cap to you for that.
- [62:11]
E
Thank you. Yeah, I'm just a city council member, but it feels good. It really does. It feels very fulfilling and satisfying.
- [62:21]
D
I want to circle back just maybe in this last couple of minutes. I think the story that we tell about our work is important. And what story are we going to tell our children about the Earth? I think we, we grew up with a story where we're just kind of passing through. You know, that's the story that I grew up with when I was a kid. We were here to. We're just kind of passing through this mortal experience. But. But then I learned that our faith actually teaches us that. No, actually we're very connected to this world and are to be eternally. This is our eternal home. So that gives us an additional reason to care for it and to get to know it better. Right. And to maybe not destroy it. And I think, I think one of the things that Janie, both you and George have done is try to help create a new story. Because the stories that we inherited did not have the benefit of the perspectives that you bring, planetary cosmic perspectives, you know, the. The kind of things that science. So. So our story has to. It has to take the best and draw on the resources of our tradition, of our faith tradition, and draw on the resources that science is bringing us. And I think those two together, if we can bring them together and create a new story of our world, I think that's our challenge as a people. And that's what. That's how we started the show. That's what Kate Read is if a religion can do that, and I think our religion is uniquely positioned to do that for some of the reasons we brought about here and more. I think we can draw on the awe, on deep resources of awe and wonder that will connect us, connect us to each other, connect us to this earth in ways that we haven't realized, maybe. So I thank you for the work that you're doing and have done in that regard.
- [64:29]
B
Yeah. Thank you for this conversation as well. I think not only creating a cultural and a societal new story, but I think what you said, both of you, Janie and George, creating personal stories, a different personal story of our connection to and responsibility for. For not only nature, but each other. We're all a part of that. We're all a part of our natural world. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I love this conversation. So if there's anything else that you guys would like to share, feel free to.
- [65:08]
C
No, I'm just. I've appreciated being here, actually.
- [65:11]
D
I.
- [65:12]
C
It always helps me to think through what I'm doing and why, why, why. I love what I'm doing, actually, and in the context of my faith, I've appreciated it very much.
- [65:23]
B
Thank you.
- [65:25]
E
I'm really grateful for this chance. I wish if I had more. More than one life to lead, I would have done something scientific in another life. So I do have great respect and admiration for what Janie does and many other scientists in our faith community who I think model this integration of faith and science and faith and rationality in a really beautiful way. The only thing I realized a long time ago, if I didn't have science in my background, maybe I could at least lend words, since I'm a literature person and I've just tried to try to write and tell different stories and tell them in as many different styles and genres as I could come up with so that we could hopefully be more aware of the tradition that we've inherited. I mean, it is a new story, but it's not. It doesn't. You know, if that idea of a new story makes anybody nervous. Like, you know, what needs to happen is we need to throw out what we've inherited as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That's not at all the point. The point is that we have inherited something that can be made more alive and more relevant and more exciting precisely because we bring new questions to it. And in that sense, it's new, but it's also, you know, renewed, I guess, or. Or made new again for us for new purposes. But thanks so much for this conversation. I'm really grateful that you guys are doing this wonderful project. And thanks for having me.
- [67:11]
B
Thank you. Well, I think we're good.
- [67:15]
C
Yeah.
- [67:17]
B
That was wonderful. Thank you, guys.
- [67:20]
C
Thanks.
- [67:22]
B
Sorry for the bird chirping. He got really excited about halfway through. I'm like, oh, my gosh, Nature. We're all connected.