"Ye Are the Salt of the Earth"

Swaddling Clothes
 
This week I was reading a translation of Hesiod’s Theogony, an ancient Greek poem describing the genealogy of the gods.
 
Something curious about the birth of Zeus: his father Kronos was prone to eat his children.  This put Zeus’ mother Rhea in a pickle.  She had to concoct a plan to trick Kronos so Zeus would be spared the fate of his brothers and sisters.
 
Rhea’s scheme was simple and clever: she took a stone from the navel of the earth (the stone was called the Omphalos, and was later placed in the temple at Delphi) and ― (here's the interesting part) ― she wrapped the stone in swaddling clothes. 
 
The perfect disguise, right?  Then Rhea presented the swaddled-stone to Kronos, pretending it was their baby Zeus.
 
As was his nature, Kronos ("Time") swallowed the stone, thinking it was his son.  Zeus was saved! 

Later, when Zeus was grown-up, he returned to battle his father and forced Kronos to regurgitate his siblings.
 
The Theogony states:
 
"But to the great prince (Kronos), the son of Sky, former sovereign of the gods, she gave a huge stone, having wrapped it in swaddling clothes: which he then took in his hands, and stowed away into his belly, wretch as he was."
 
Now, remember, the Theogony was written around 700 B.C.  By the time Christ was born, the legends of Hesiod and Homer had taken full root in the Greco-Roman world.  Everybody knew the myth of Zeus’ birth.
 
Was it a coincidence that the angel told the shepherds THIS was the sign by which the Messiah would be known: swaddling clothes?
  
   And this shall be
   a sign unto you;
   Ye shall find the babe
   wrapped in swaddling clothes,
   lying in a manger.
 
(Luke 2:12)

Like Zeus, the king of heaven would enter this world through a bit of spiritual sleight-of-hand.

But unlike Zeus, Jesus' true nature was not concealed by the swaddling clothes, but was in them revealed.

The Nativity
​
The plot thickens: about a century and half after the Theogony was penned, we encounter this interesting verse in Ezekiel (which was written in the 500s B.C.) ― long before anyone was thinking of the Christmas story ― in which the prophet Ezekiel compares Jerusalem to a babe:

   And as for thy nativity,
   in the day thou wast born
   thy navel was not cut,
   neither wast thou washed
   in water to supple thee;
   thou wast not salted at all,
   nor swaddled at all.

(Ezek. 16:4)

Here we find a baby no one wants; none can be bothered to cut the cord, or wash the child, or swaddle it.

Or salt it?  What's that all about?  Well, in the Jewish tradition, when a baby was born, after the midwife cut the umbilical cord, then (this is something we don't do anymore) the child was rubbed all over with salt and oil.

They placed the salted little newborn in strips of cloth (like a mummy) to keep the child warm in similitude of the womb it had just left.

Every loving mother took pains to swaddle her baby.  How scandalous, then, for Ezekiel to compare Israel to an unswaddled child ― implying its priesthood leaders were derelict in their parental duties to care for their people (he would later use the metaphor of shepherds eating their flock instead of feeding them).

Ironically, instead of the Omphalos being mistaken for a child, we have a child being treated as a worthless stone, tossed out with the trash.

Here, Ezekiel's Jerusalem was the orphaned child, left to rot by parents of ill-repute ("of the land of Canaan thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite").

A child of harlotry, the babe was "cast out in the open field . . . in the day that thou was born."

Quite shocking!  Ezekiel's baby was abandoned in an open field, left to die.

​But then something miraculous happens: a wander-by, passing through the field, sees the poor newborn lying in its own blood, at the point of death, and takes pity:

   And when I passed by thee,
   and saw thee polluted 
   in thine own blood, I said,
   Live!

(Ezek. 16:6)

Imagine how you would feel if you were strolling through the parking lot at Costco, returning your cart, and saw a lump of flesh aside the garbage canister and realized it was a tiny baby someone had discarded.

Without a moment's hesitation, rushing to their aid, Ezekiel's good Samaritan scooped up the baby in her arms as a mother would, resuscitating the child, draping over its near-lifeless form her own garment:

   Now when I passed by thee,
   and looked upon thee, behold,
   I spread my skirt over thee,
   and covered thy nakedness.

(Ezek. 16:8)

Cradling the baby in her arms, the woman's breast swelling with compassion ("thy time was a time of love"), she took the child home and raised it as her own:

   I sware unto thee,
   and entered into a covenant
   with thee, saith the Lord God,
   and thou becamest mine.

(Ezek. 16:8)

The adopted child was raised in a good home, and was spoiled with the finest things: clothed in the best dresses of "broidered work," and covered "with silk," with plentiful "bracelets" and finery. 

Finally (here's Ezekiel's big twist), it turns out the woman who found the child in the field was, in fact, a queen!  And so the biological child of a sordid tryst becomes, in the end, royalty:

   And I put a jewel
   on thy forehead,
   and a beautiful crown
   upon thine head:

   And thou was exceedingly
   beautiful,
   and thou didst prosper
   into a kingdom.

(Ezek. 16:12-13)

"Into a kingdom."  How incredible, that the young child doesn't just inherit a kingdom . . . she BECOMES a kingdom!

   Just like Christ. 

You see, the kingdoms of God are not so much places to inhabit, but describe His being-ness.

Funny how we find the Christmas story stuck in the pages of Ezekiel like this, come full-circle when the Savior ― the Lamb whom Ezekiel's unrighteous shepherds devoured ― was left lying in His own blood, even the Omphalos, the Navel of the world, the Stone of Israel ― the uncut Umbilical of the Elohim.

   And every oblation
   of thy meat offering
   shalt thou season with salt;
   neither shalt thou suffer
   the salt of the covenant
   of thy God to be lacking
   from thy meat offering:
   
   with all thine offerings
   thou shalt offer salt.
 
(Lev. 2:13)

Salt symbolizes the physical body and its purification.  How amazing that Jesus, the Salt of the earth, was the offering the priests left unsalted ― rejecting Him ― just as Ezekiel foretold.

"Thou Was Exceedingly Beautiful"
 
Whereas Ezekiel says the child, when fully grown, became "exceedingly beautiful" (Ezek. 16:13), Isaiah says the swaddled Servant is like a "tender plant" who, when he sprouted through the ground, had "no beauty that we should desire him" (Isa. 53:2).

As you know, I am interested in the nature of beauty because the Lord said, "Zion must
increase in beauty" (D&C 82:14).

This motif was emphasized by Isaiah, who invited, "Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!" (Isa. 52:1).  What garments are these?  How does one drape oneself in beauty?

The fact that beauty "increases" shows there is an evolutionary aspect to its nature.  Real beauty is emergent: it does not exist on the exterior but must be unwrapped, revealing the mystery within, unfolding over eons of time.

In this way, beauty is the act of God's becoming.  (See, "Approaching Zion: Beauty and the Beast.") 

Why does God care about beauty?  It’s not because beauty is something pretty or perfect, for beauty is not about perfection (just look at a mannequin, without blemish yet lifeless: we shiver and say, "Why is that mannequin creepy?").

Beauty is alive.  Even as a beautiful painting, for example, is alive because it breathes and lives through us, quickening our pulse as we stare at Monet's masterpieces.

I find something terribly beautiful in the Christmas story, in Isaiah's "suffering" seedling whose roots spread "out of dry ground" (Isa. 53:2) to embrace "his generation" (Isa. 53:8).

On the outside, a seed is just a little thing, a roundish lump.  Holding a seed in my palm, it looks so unimpressive.  No one ever said, "Look, what a beautiful kernel!"

But inside?  What wonders!  Who can look at a seed and envision what it will become when fully grown?  Who can look up at the night sky and feel what the universe is becoming?

My friend Doug Scott said: "The dormant seed appears lifeless, yet contains within itself the complete pattern of life, awaiting only the conditions that will unfold what was always present.

"But remember, the seed does not receive its tree-nature from the soil — for it carries infinite becoming within apparent stillness."

(Doug Scott, "Light Enfolded by Will: The Mathematics of the Law of Strength Intensification," November 27, 2025; cosmicchrist.net.)

Had I been a shepherd that night, seeing Jesus swaddled in Mary's arms, his flesh covered in salt, his limbs scrunched beneath the linen ― beholding the mystery through the light of the new star reflected in His eyes, I think I would agree with Doug:​

"Carrying infinite becoming within apparent stillness."

A Pentecost of Love
 
Art is often considered something artificial (hence the first three letters of the word), but beauty is the antithesis of artificiality.  No one looked at plastic and thought, "What a gorgeous spatula!" ​

But look at the grain of wood, the rhythm of water, the flight of Saturn around the sun: there is wonder in what is natural, authentic, and organic.  Beauty's gift is to help us see with new eyes.

Beauty, truly, is not something we see, but something felt: it must needs produce an emotional response.  Our breath is held in the presence of beauty, and it 'hurts so good.'
 
Perhaps this is why beauty intensifies as our intelligence increases ― for beauty is the offspring of consciousness, and the more ours is attuned to God's, the more beautiful everything becomes.

A more grammatically-correct version of that comes from Harvard philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who defined beauty as "maximizing diverse contrasts harmonized within complex unity."
 
That's a mouthful!  But it is profound.  For the grand arc of creation is living; it is moving dynamically towards greater beauty ― which is to say, towards greater diversity held within a harmonized tension of unity, where a multiplicity strives towards one heart and mind.

But don't worry, we're not going to dissolve into formless goo when we reach nirvana: Whitehead explained that beauty does "not erase difference but enhances it by arrangement into a felt whole."

"Multiplicity is woven together by Spirit, and that Spirit speaks in every tongue.  Pentecost becomes, then, not a magic trick, but a symbol of the Word’s capacity to address each people in their own language.  A truly universal Christ is not threatened by plural grammars of the divine."  (Matt Segall, "The Word in Every Tongue," November 20, 2025; footnotes2plato.com).
 
I think this is why the creation marches towards integration, seeking resolution and synthesis ― because it aspires to greater wholeness.
 
The wholeness of God should not be underestimated.  His sheepfold has no fence: it stretches as wide as eternity, towards the reconciliation of all things.
 
Beauty bears a long train, and she carries a checkered past, having walked the path of becoming.  She inherits all that was, and upon her face shines all that yet can be. 
 
And the most shocking thing is when all of this beauty we're talking about, the kind that produces a "fulness of joy," is wrapped in simplicity itself: in swaddling clothes!

What a trick!  To place God in swaddling clothes; to enrobe the human brain with divine consciousness; to fashion the universe into the body of Christ.

How beautiful were the tiny fingers of a babe lying in a manger, whose hands formed the worlds, whose hands were pierced through by the world, to the making of a better.

   Utterly beautiful.