Approaching Zion: The Hidden Manna

Where's the Manna?

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out

   ― Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

When I was younger I would follow spiritual spoor like a hunter (Jer. 16:16), seeking truth across valleys and hills, climes and crags.

The exploration was exhilarating.  There was something magical about stalking heavenly prey in the early morning mists.

But as I increase in age and arthritis (if not wisdom), I often find it better to wait and watch, allowing the frightened animal to approach of its own accord in the quietude and calmness of eventide.

How surprised I was to learn that the truth I always sought was also seeking me.

But I am impatient with my impatience.  It's hard to "be still" (Psalm 46:10) and at the same time to "be anxiously engaged" (D&C 58:27).

I wish my walk with God were more wu-wei.  Funny, isn't it, how we have so much living to do, if only life didn't get in the way!

When I feel like I am not doing enough, the thing that helps the most is remembering the most precious treasure we have is each other, and the greatest gift is our time together.

So let us set aside the cares of the day for just a moment as we enjoy each other's company.  I would like us to open our hearts to the mystery of the Sacrament.

Jesus taught the Nephites that partaking of His body and blood indicated we were "built upon [His] rock" (3 Nephi 18:12).

Since we know "the rock" refers to Christ and His Doctrine (the sure foundation, the Stone of Israel), the Sacrament must somehow be integral to the Father's plan for His children.

The Doctrine is the most central tenet of Christianity, beautifully expressed through the ordinance of the Lord's Supper:

   That I may be in them
   as thou, Father, art in me,
   that we may be one.

(3 Nephi 19:23)

Sometimes I struggle to feel this "oneness" at Church on Sundays.  You may have sensed a subtle change in the wind.  The season is turning; something momentous is stirring, and it isn't all good.

When I take the spiritual temperature of the world right now, things are getting chilly out there (Matt. 24:12).  It is spiritual cold/flu season and people are calling in sick by droves.  This is impacting the Church.

I cannot be the only one who has noticed how the spiritual landscape is changing.  People are growing weary.  Our worship is becoming anemic.  There's a lethargy creeping into our creativity (a sign the Spirit is ceasing to strive with us as a people, as a society).  It is all quite alarming, witnessing in real-time what Mormon experienced in his day (Mormon 5:16).

All around us people are pulling the plug, communities dwindling, folks stepping away from the action, withdrawing, retreating (even as A.I. content and spiritual infotainment proliferate).

Meanwhile, this week I received in my email inbox the Church's newsletter, which proffered a solution:

"If you've been feeling spiritually distant or overwhelmed, or are simply in need of renewal, the house of the Lord offers a path back to clarity and connection ― with God, with your purpose, and with your eternal family."

Headquarters senses the same thing we do: there's a growing malaise among the membership.  Its answer is to spend more time in the temple.

I can't criticize that; we all need to recharge ― and the temple is a lovely, air conditioned place to do it (as I've written about in "Sifting").

​But after we spend a couple hours in the temple . . . then what?

Poor Wheat

For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known
I am a part of all that I have met

  ― Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

​​Imagine yourself as a stalk of wheat.  Think of all the things the wheat must endure before it becomes bread to be offered at the Lord's table.

The wheat must be planted, it must grow tall beneath the sun, and then be cut.  Ouch, that's gotta hurt.  Then the wheat must be gathered in sheaves, harvested in bundles for threshing.

Where heaven and hell meet is the threshing floor of God.

And then the wheat must be ground to flour under the weight of the miller's stone ― all before baking.  The wheat undergoes successive transformations as it loses its form, its body, even its recognizable identity (until it hardly recognizes itself), becoming flour.

Then the Baker takes the humbled wheat, now flour (flour that is the collection of many, many grains of wheat, combined and mixed into one), and he mixes it with salt and water.  But we're not done!  For the hot oven awaits.

The flour (now dough) must be shaped lovingly by calloused hands, and placed within a refiner's fire, baked to golden brown.

From wheat to loaf, the wheat bears no resemblance to its former self, but has dissolved and been recreated into something fit for the Lord's table.

Only then ― after all that! ― only then will the bread be blessed . . . and then it is broken.  After all that!  All that preparation and then this, to break?  Watch: God became God to become other-than-God, so that He could return to God.

   And then the broken bread is consumed.

   *****

As I pondered this post, I went back and re-read several General Conference talks from the past few years that talk about the Sacrament.  There's actually quite a bit of material, and yet, from the pews where I sit, it seems like the quality of our Sacrament worship is only worsening.

If I were to sum up what the Brethren are teaching about the Sacrament, it is: "We take the sacrament to renew our covenants" (see, e.g., "Covenants and Responsibilities," Pres. Dallin H. Oaks, April 2024; "Accessing God's Power through Covenants," Elder Dale G. Renlund, April 2023; "The Covenant Path: The Way of Eternal Life," Elder Ojediran, April 2022).

Elder Bednar said it well, "We abide in Him by preparing earnestly to participate in the ordinance of the sacrament, reviewing and reflecting on our covenant promises, and repenting sincerely."  ("Abide in Me, and I in You," April 2023).

I like that sentiment.  But for all the talk about "covenants" by leadership (employed as a spiritual MacGuffin), for some reason, I just am not "feeling" it.

Are our covenants really so fragile they need constant renewal?  Do covenants rust so easily that they need regular new coats of paint?

Or does the Church treat covenants as part of a subscription plan that needs installment payments, and updating whenever we receive a new credit card expiration date?

A Beautiful Body

Tho’ much is taken, much abides
​
   ― Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

When Christ instructed us to take the Sacrament "in remembrance of my body" (3 Nephi 18:7), we usually think of His personal physical body, the one that was crucified and resurrected.

But what if we didn't stop there?  For isn't Christ's body the entire creation?

The broken bread represents the shattering of stars, the separation of suns and planets, the loneliness of love that stretches to the ends of the universe.

It is not just our broken hearts that need healing, but the entire embryological universe. 

Thank heavens the Sacrament promises reunification ― not just of reuniting ourselves to God, but to the entire creation, everywhere, throughout all generations of time (and that includes you <+> me, past-present-and-future).

   Christ IS all
   and IN all.

(Colossians 3:11)

   I live no longer, not I;
   but Christ lives in me.

(Galatians 2:20)

By way of analogy, in the womb a baby is fed oxygen and nutrients from the mother through the umbilical cord.

As little children, imagine a spiritual umbilical cord connecting us to God, and through Him, to all parts of the creation, as well as to the uncreated potential of the Void.

Are you familiar with fetal microchimerism?  You see, the umbilical cord flows both ways.  Fetal microchimerism is a phenomenon where the baby's cells (FMCs) enter the mother's bloodstream during pregnancy.

It's kind of like the child's 'alien' DNA persists in the mother's body for decades after childbirth, and the baby's cells become incorporated into the mother's own nature.

This produces a variety of biological effects for the mother (approximately 90% of them), including helping repair damaged tissue and protecting against cancer (and sometimes more deleterious effects).

I want to suggest that the Sacrament typifies divine fetal chimerism whereby we (as God's children) become part of His body, thereby transforming Him just as He transforms us.

"Where Two or Three Are Gathered in My Name"

  We primeval forests felling,
  We the rivers stemming,
  We the surface broad surveying,
  We the virgin soil upheaving

   ― Walt Whitman, "Pioneers, O Pioneers"

​As far as I can tell, Jesus only administered the Sacrament in group settings.  To the Twelve, for example, and to the Nephites.  This was prefigured by His feeding of the 5,000.

Why is this significant?  Why is Christ's Body best shared in communal contexts?  At no time are we more perfectly "gathered in His name" than when we circle the Lord's 'comm-union.'

For me this shows that the debate over Transubstantiation is beside the point: the bread doesn't become the literal Body of Christ when it passes our lips ― WE do.

The bread represents the outer, the material, the transmissive principle.

The blood represents the inner, the hidden, the receptive principle.

​I often reflect on the fact that Jesus, after He was resurrected and appeared to His disciples (who thought He was a ghost), proved His corporeality by eating honeycomb (Luke 24:42).

How is honey symbolic of the Sacrament?  My goodness, have we forgotten so soon that manna tasted "like wafers made with honey" (Exodus 16:31)?

Honey is the wine that flows from celestial community, the fruit of a thousand flowers gathered by bees and offered to their queen.  It represents the distilled experience, and pain, and healing, of Eden.
 
I never liked Brigham Young’s take on the honey bee; he focused on the industry of worker drones.  That 19th century industrialized, production-focused sensibility never appealed to me.
 
But the bee is associated with alchemy.  Its honey is symbolic of spiritual gold.  And to be clear, the Sacrament is, at its very heart, a work of spiritual alchemy.

Honey is gathered from the pollen of many, many flowers.  It is a gathering and synthesis of the entire Garden, distilled into a new essence.  It represents the celestial coalescing from the many.
 
Yes, just like Zion is gathered from every kindred, people, and tongue, into "one fold."

Com-passion

"The world is not a collection of objects; it is a communion of subjects."
 
     ― Thomas Berry

​The word "compassion" is derived from the Latin compati, meaning "suffer with."

The "passion of Christ" means Christ suffered.  Christ's 'com-passion' means He suffers with us.

Compassion is the mature form of love.  You see, love is not the answer ― love is the question.  "Whose burden can I lighten?  Whose suffering can I share?  Who needs my companionship today?"

Love needs wisdom desperately (see, "Wisdom in Winter"). 

When we refine our love in the temperance of divine wisdom, what is produced?  Pure love.

What does the "the pure love of Christ" mean?  What is charity?  What does it actually mean for God to "love" us?

   It means com-passion.

The fact that God suffers WITH us is why the Sacrament is shared, experienced together in family, in groups, in gatherings.

The Sacrament is meant to open our hearts in COM-munity to experience not just love, but more especially, COM-passion.

The way we "repent" in taking the Sacrament is through restoring relationships, by forgiving each other, and by repairing rifts in our community.

Jay McDaniel wrote, "[Sin is] the distortion of relational life.  It is the breaking of bonds ― between self and neighbor, self and world, self and God. It is the rejection, however subtle or overt, of the call to beauty, truth, compassion, and justice. 

"And yet, even here, in the thick of violence and violation, God is not absent.  The divine lure continues to call us ― not in blame, but in invitation: to turn, to begin again, to repair. There is no undoing what has been done, but there is always a fresh becoming, a next moment that carries with it the possibility of repentance, restitution, and reconciliation. 

"[Thus sin can be seen] as sacred wound.  God is not the author of harm but the companion to it: a transforming presence who does not erase the wound but works from within it, luring us toward beauty out of brokenness.

"What we have harmed, we may help heal. What we have lost, we may reimagine. What we have broken, we may mend—not perfectly, but with compassion."

Let us remember that the only way to express COM-passion is to become a COM-panion to those who are wounded, hurt, and broken.

"Hidden Manna"
 
Now we come to the crux the matter.  Jesus promised:

   To him that overcometh
   will I give to eat
   of the hidden manna

   and will give him
   a white stone

   and in the stone
   a new name written,
   which no man knoweth
   saving he that receiveth it.

(Rev. 2:17)

So we have a trinity of symbols: hidden manna, a white stone, and a new name.  How are they related?

In the Ark of the Covenant, the Israelites placed a pot of manna alongside Aaron’s staff and the tablets of testimony.  The manna was preserved with a promise it would never spoil (Exodus 16:32-33).
 
We are the Ark of God, carrying His hidden manna.  Our bodies are the athanor through which God manifests His face; we are the seeds carrying eternal lives into the nethermost reaches of the vineyard.

The Sacrament typifies the cosmological transformation (actually, transmutation) of our minds into the Mind of God (Rom. 12:2).
 
Jesus said He was the manna sent from heaven, and so are we.  We are the hidden manna, as Paul hinted, "hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3).

This unlocks the mystery of life (and death), even the coincidentia oppositorum, the genius of God’s Plan for us here in mortality, made bare at last.

As Heraclitus revealed, "The road up and the road down are the same thing."

Unity is achieved through wholeness, and wholeness is arrived at only through the harmonization of all things ― including opposition, as Lehi knew.

Christ is the Bread of Life, the Manna-made-man, the Son (Ah)man(na), because He represents the material incarnation of Spirit, the Logos-cum-flesh, the Father-and-Son joined as one Being-ness (3 Ne. 1:14).
 
So He said, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (John 6:56).
 
In other words, Christ was saying, "Take my body, because it’s also yours" (or more accurately, "it’s Ours").
 
Do you see?  Christ feeds Himself to Himself so He may become Himself.
 
The new name we receive "which no one knows except him who receives it" represents the unique, particular way Christ manifests through us ― through our individualization of God's nature.
 
This is why the white stone is, according to Peter, alive.  Christ is (we are) a "Living Stone" (1 Pet. 2:4), the philosopher’s stone that transmutes base material into celestial gold, even the light of the Sun.
 
This is what the manna of the Sacrament typifies ― our direct participation in the Incarnation of God through which new divine life is extended and returned, worlds without end.

​White Stone
 
There will be time,
there will be time
To prepare a face to meet
the faces that you meet

― T.S Eliot, "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
 
How fascinating that we find in Revelation Chapter 2 the celestial foodstuff beside the philosopher’s stone!  No, I am not talking about Harry Potter, but rather the Lapis Philosophorum.  The death and resurrection of Christ was indeed the Great Work.
 
Like Christ, when we attain unto the resurrection of the dead we will have power to reproduce our nature, generating our own sustenance (the hidden manna) to perpetuate our Personhood across eternal lives.
 
You see, this is what I’ve been trying to say for some time: the mystery of God is the ability to participate in one’s own Creation.
 
This is difficult to express because it involves a temporal loop, as we are drawn by a future-pull that shapes our past.  This spiritual spiral is represented by God’s "one eternal round."

​   Listen to the voice of the Lord
   your God, even Alpha
   and Omega, the beginning
   and the end, whose course
   is one eternal round,
   the same today as yesterday,
   and forever.

(D&C 35:1)
 
Once we understand the Path, we will appreciate that when we are presented to the Father it is not "me" and "you" standing there, but God, the Godhead, the One God.  You can count the feet and hands and hairs on our heads, but there will only ever be One of us.

This speaks to the paradox of God: How do you become what you already are?
 
In Christian terms, we call it being "reconciled" to God.  This is symbolized by Christ being the Bridegroom and Zion the bride in the sacred marriage of the Hieros Gamos ― King and Queen, Sol and Luna, Athanor (Manna) and Lapis (White Stone), Father and Son.
 
This is what Paul was so emphatic about when He spoke about the "Church."  It wasn’t an institution.  Christ gave His blood and body to the Church, which becomes His Body and Blood.
 
Thus we find the Hidden Manna kept in the wedding chamber.

A Sacrament of Blood

But on my death day―
for the briefest flicker of flame―
this world will unspin
all my days and all I was

   and all I wished

("This Day")
​
I have written before about the Baptism of Fire but is there a Baptism of Blood?

There is an allusion to it in Moses 6:59 where Enoch (yes, the fellow who walked with God) taught:

   Inasmuch as ye were born
   into the world by:
     (1) water,
     (2) blood, and
     (3) the spirit
   and so became a living soul

Here we see the way physical childbirth prefigures our creation into the higher heavens:

   even so ye must be born again
   into the kingdom of heaven,
     (1) of water,
     (2) and of the Spirit,
     (3) and be cleansed by blood,
   even the blood of mine
   Only Begotten

So this is curious: the order changed.  Did you catch that?  Water tops both lists, but Spirit precedes the baptism of blood when we enter into the spiritual rebirth.

   For by the water
   ye keep the commandment;
   by the Spirit ye are justified,
   and by the blood
   ye are sanctified.

(Moses 6:60)

Perhaps the baptism of blood is meant to remain a mystery.  I have never heard anybody preach on it.  I guess someone could argue the Baptism of Fire is the same thing as the Baptism of Blood (both are kind of red).

We live in interesting times, when the instreaming currents from celestial realms are met with uncommon challenges, as darkness spreads even as the light intensifies.  It is a great and dreadful day.

We are entering times when "the Lord shall reveal all things ― things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew" (D&C 101:32-33).

We are experiencing spiritual birthing pangs as our spirits dilate, undergoing metaphysical contractions.  We shall not be the same afterward: Parenthood transforms us all.

We will emerge as new creatures (I am going to miss the old you).

Matt Segall said, "Authentic spiritual experiences often don’t leave us with a neat and tidy ideology. Instead, they undo our certainties, reshaping us in ways that remain hard to explain. Spirituality is a continual process of humbling oneself in the face of the unknown."

If I may hold the light steady for a moment without fumbling the forceps, capturing the bright rays of the sun through Christ's crystalline heart (which we call charity) on this sensitive subject, I will try.

Please be patient; we're breaking new ground.  This may be a fool's errand, but, being a fool, what else can I do?  If you have read this far, for this long, then you really are a glutton for punishment.  Bless you.

One year ago, on September 11, 2024, I was pondering and praying in my study at home.  It was 7:00 p.m. and I closed my books and tried to clear my head.  My mind by nature is overactive so I have to work at slowing down my thoughts and being "still" (D&C 101:16).

I found myself nursing a terrible grief, filled with a spiritual longing I cannot begin to describe, wishing to be freed from the pains that plague us here below as we grope at shadows, seeking the light.

As I sat there, processing personal and planetary pain (if such a thing is possible), the Lord offered comfort (He is, after all, the Comforter) ― but, being the consummate spiritual drama queen I am, I refused to be consoled.  It was as Jeremiah said, I was Rachel weeping for her children because they were not (Jer. 31:15), my bones aching for the loss of the daughters of Zion.

When I saw the Lord I was unmade, as wheat ground to flour, I became dust.  I wanted to hold him, to envelope every part of Him, to be enraptured by Him, and it was as though the universe had too few points of contact between us, as if fusion itself could not produce the intimacy I craved of becoming of one flesh and of one mind with Him.  I leaned into Him and felt the tide of the ocean within His breast, carried upon galrazim.

​I sank into the Living Water of His embrace and found Him unplumbable, immeasurably deep.  I shall delight forever in tracing the veins of His love throughout the fathomless expanse of time and space.  I shall never tire of following His blood into the extremities of eternity.

This was my baptism of blood, I instinctively knew at the time, as He buried me in Himself, and brought me back again.

I was dripping, not with blood, but with tears, my face wet, as He placed His hand upon my forehead and I listened to the Logos share His love in a language unique to the two of us, and yet, universal.

I returned to my physical senses and the clock showed 7:45 p.m.  

Sacrament
a poem

​The landscape scrolled by
through train windows

Passengers with ears plugged
stared blankly out

Holding phones for companionship
(the world experienced through thumbs)

The train jerked and jostled
along the rusted track

Its rail shuddering through our hips
when ― for an embarrassing moment ―

We tilted along a sharp bend
bringing shoulders briefly together

    Life is a long commute