I say this because I do not think I had the energy to abstract from my work and dedicate my time to observation and calculation tasks for which I am not very gifted. I know that recognizing this is not very elegant. I do not care, after all … who reads me? laughter
However, long before the Middle Ages, where I would dig with care in my vegetable garden. A man born in 280 BC named Eratosthenes knew a curious observation of his time. And he did spend time with him.
In the city of Sienne in Egypt on June 21, when the summer begins, the objects did not project shadow, the Sun was right on the perpendicular.
But on that same day in the city of Alexandria, about 790 km away, the objects cast a shadow of 1/50 of the circumference, that is, 7º 12 ‘. It was clear to him that this difference only obeyed the curvature of a spherical earth.
And it is that traveling teaches a lot.
The plan of salvation
THE plan of salvation, as revealed in the restoration, is like a world map or planisphere. It shows us a flat representation of something that is not flat. When I was a missionary I placed my cut out and plasticized figures of the plan of salvation on the table. They were colored the veil was elongated and in the form of a cloud, death a tomb with its cross. Everything was clear, the pre-existence, the veil, our arrival on earth … it was like a planisphere of our journey through life.
However, it concealed from our mind a fact: the outside world was not so clear, when going out, everything was more complicated and strange. Everything was curved and before me, only the earth and in this Alcobendas. I could only see our work schedule for that day and without guarantees that the appointments would not fail. Everything was lost in the curvature of a world that hid any certainty about tomorrow.
What would I have given for a one-week world map! In the salms of King David I clearly find this idea. I see a king surrounded by enemies, with a situation in his kingdom worrying. In Psalm 42. David remembers when he accompanied the ark to Jerusalem with songs and joy for all the people
«I remember these things and I spilled my soul inside of me, when I went with the crowd and led her to the house of God, with a voice of joy and gratitude, making the crowd party.» ( 4 )
Everything made sense to the king at this time, however, after a while …
«And to God, my rock, I will say: Why have you forgotten me? Why should I grieve over the oppression of the enemy? With a brokenness in my bones, my enemies affronted me, saying to me every day: Where is your God? « ( 9-10 )
Alma, where is dad?
SHE was our first-born and put new parents in new situations.I remember in our little apartment of Mother Mazarelo, the moment when she left home for work. She was crying inconsolably, she did not want me to leave. He spread his little arms towards me to prevent it.
I admit that this unfounded fear was funny to me. But now, twenty-five years later, it moves me, it makes me recognize the depth of my daughter’s affection towards a father who is light and quick in his outings. His little hands opening and closing, now from the memory, amaze me and soften me. It takes time to get to the bottom some scenes.
My daughter’s world had a strong curvature, which made me disappear from her horizon in a few steps. The uncertainty of seeing me again anguished her. She and all those little children, would want to keep track of their father and from the distance keep him present in his ward. Alma learned not to see and wait.
I kept hearing her
In my haste, he did not fully repair his outstretched arms and his crying was the usual one in children. However, a hidden mystery unfolds before me. I tried to calm her down and explain to her that I would go back to tell her a story or a treat. It was useless, as I closed the door I kept hearing her.
I tried to unfold before her the «planisphere» of the popes who leave and appear again, but my little one could only understand that her father was leaving, disappeared behind the door.
To King David, his enemies cruelly snapped at him. Where is your God? but David remembered him when he sang before him. And in his present he waited for it behind the horizon when he says «As for me, you have sustained me in my integrity, and you have made me stand before you forever. Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Israel, for ever and ever. Amen and amen. ( 12-13)
But his enemies flattened the world and only told the king «look, your father left, he is not»
A flat world
ALL of us live in a flat world. Do not be alarmed, Eratosthenes was not wrong in his calculations. However we have managed to flatten a world that in its curvature hid its mysteries and its people.A familiar example
Our son David studies on the other side of the Atlantic. Daily we talk to him, we see him frequently on Skype. Through the television screen, we accompany you as you walk around the campus or have lunch in your apartment. The feeling is that it did not go away completely. I could say that there is no definite horizon between him and us. I could almost say that the space between us is flat and that from here we can see it.
Technology has flattened our world. Now the information is constant rain and perpendicular and immediate to each person. Just as Eratosthenes considered sunlight to be perpendicular at any point on earth, so today there is only one present for all of us.
The present continuous
Social networks have arched the geometry of the world and memory. They bring to the present what should be forgotten. The censorship of time, which hides the past of the universe, is now discarded in ours. The memory in tune with the geometry of a sphere, leaving behind the events of its horizon and provides us with the relief of oblivion. Now it is torn and flattened. What at first is fun in the end saturates a busy present in managing a past that returns and returns for no other purpose than being there.
A world of this nature, exalts the immediate present and relegates memory. Something that happened a week ago is a remote past, the news loses its vigor in days, nothing is retained in that constant influx.
Only justice and its procedures of human and non-electronic speeds recover the memory. That is why the legal is the only reference in the conscience of the good and the bad in our society. We see how any behavior is justified regardless of its goodness or badness, just because it is legal.
A world without curvature
IN a flat world the moral angle is 0º, because everything is reduced to the radiant, equal and homogeneous perpendicular criterion in each space. That legal and growing criterion that allows to recognize and trade as human organs and tissues those of a fetus of twenty-one weeks and nevertheless deny the condition and human rights to whom they dispossess those organs.In a flat world, the extremes of life belong to the abyss of nothingness. You do not exist before
to be born and then the abyss of darkness will come where we will all be precipitated. We return to those same myths of yesteryear, as those navigators who dared to cross the columns of Hercules and were victims of terrible monsters or bottomless abysses.
In that world, its inhabitants are guided by what they see. The answers to any question are like rays, perpendicular to the person and parallel between them. It does not matter latitude, race or origin. Therefore there are no hidden continents, because these would be visible.
The man without curvature
In that world, there is no need for faith, because things that are not seen, may exist or be true, but they do not matter. Because they talk about that beyond these columns there is another world. And that would break the dominant geometry.
The curvature of faith
THERE are times that we know in Siena some friends or relatives with a perfect Sun, and under the same we in Alexandria we find our life dark and dark and then we ask ourselves how David «Wake up; Why do you sleep, oh Lord? Awake; do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face and forget our affliction and oppression? Because our soul is overwhelmed to dust; our belly is stuck to the ground. » Psalm 44: 23-25It does not seem that we live the same world or that the rays of the Sun are the same for all.
It teaches us that spherical world that our life is also a cycle. That the dream, similar to death, brings about the awakening, that in the wheel of the seasons we know better the earth and in it also its dream and awakening. And that the same thing happens in our stations being the winter of old age the promise of another youth.
The generations
One generation succeeds another and the turn of life teaches us the others around us. But in all these we need faith in the harvest, in the awakening, the faith in seeing our grandchildren. And none of these things is guaranteed. Because they all hide in a horizon.
That is why in this geometry memory is necessary and a guide for the road.
«O God, with our ears we have heard, our fathers have told us the work that you did in his days, in ancient times.» Psalm 44: 1 .
Now, dear friend let us stop for a moment, because we have to analyze something that is very important
In 33 AD Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, died and on the third day he was raised from the dead. There is no such weight in the history of the world or the consequences that follow from this statement. We can consider it or not. Go on tiptoe for it or not. There is no one in the history of humanity as Jesus the Christ. Nobody has raised facts and teachings as transcendent as his.
α, the hidden curvature of faith
In the graph we can compare it to the shadow in Alexandria. That little shadow of something more than 7º is like Christ. It changes everything and does not depend on how many create it. It is an unopposable fact.
The result of this statement can only be true or false. It can not be right or wrong, it can not be in agreement or in disagreement, neither convenient nor inconvenient. Or is 0 or is 1. If it is 0 the world is flat. And if it is 1, we should start to rethink our relationship with the plains of Castilla La Mancha.
If you look at the graph the angle β is of the same value as the angle α . Then Christ is the center of all geometry, of all turn. And his resurrection and atonement are powerful enough to bend the horizon from our columns of Hercules. He encourages us to continue and not to falter.
Columbus faced the unknown because he knew of a spherical earth. He as my daughter learned to wait on what they did not see. And that, friends, is called faith. Faith that dad will come home.
That curvature makes the son who sees the father inert in his grave, can hope to someday reach a hidden continent. See his father again and hold him to his chest. That angle on the outskirts of Jerusalem, whose bosom begins in a new tomb dug in rock, helps a mother to have confidence in finding her son beyond those columns that imperiously we are told are the end of everything.
Faith something strange
WE read in the Book of Mormon «… Faith is not having a perfect knowledge of things; so that if you have faith, you have hope in things that are not seen, and that are true. » Alma 32:21 . He’s talking about something strange, something we can not see or understand at first glance. Hope is a projection of our soul, it is to throw it beyond what we see. Beyond what the horizon hides. He’s talking about how to behave in a curved world.
However, let’s read some statements by Korihor «You look towards the future, and you say that you see the remission of your sins. But behold, this is but the effect of a ravenous mind; and this mental disorder results from the traditions of your parents that lead you to believe in things that do not exist ….
… in this life each one played according to his ability; Therefore, every man prospered according to his genius, every man conquered according to his strength; and it was no crime for a man to do anything. » Alma 30: 16-17
It is difficult to find a more revealing statement of someone who renounces faith. That conforms to the local and flat geometry of a life defeated by fatalism.
The measure of the world
THE faith in Christ is the measure of the world and the soul, just as those 7º 12 ‘gave Eratosthenes measure the earth ‘s circumference. Faith in Christ teaches us to fully understand the curvature of this world.The people of Anti-Nefi-Lehi experienced this change
«… And they distinguished themselves by their zeal for God, and also for men; for they were completely honest and righteous in all things; and they were steadfast in the faith of Christ, even to the end. » Alma 27:27 and an Enos who went hunting, felt within himself the miracle of forgiveness and asked himself » how is this carried out? … » your faith in Christ, whom you have never heard or seen before. » Enos 1: 8
We receive in Section 1 of D & C one more reason for restoration » so that faith may also increase in the earth; « ( 21 )
At present there is much more evidence, restoration with the first vision and the Book of Mormon, are powerful facts. They are not opinions to debate, they are facts that can be true or false. But none suggests a flat world. But a world where faith is part of the α angle . Without that vector we can not face the advanced geometry of the plan of salvation.
If we look, men simplify everything. But the gospel requires an effort to attend to strange reasons. In the same way that Eratosthenes, had to deal with sticks, shadows and angles to access a different view of the world. We have to use the testimonies of prophets, scriptures and prayer. All this to understand the shape of the world.
The geometry of the plan of salvation
THE advanced geometry of the salvation plan adds to our mind an original ability to deal with the world. As a consequence, our life obeys strange uses that can only be understood by applying a more «spatial» attitude thanthat of Korihor. This one that moved on a surface of values as simple as (What interests me? X What can I do?) Giving personal interest as a result.
He considered it madness to deal with the geometry of the gods in the case of the sphere 4 / 3πR3. Archimedes, the discoverer of this formula, gave him so much courage that he put a representation in his grave.
When we read in D & C 3: 2 «For God does not walk in crooked ways, neither turn to the right nor to the left, nor turn away from what He has said; therefore, its paths are straight and its path is an eternal turn. «It is introducing us into its geography, it is talking about how the straight and the turnsmake up its work. It shows us something much more developed than the flat view of the world.
If he is the center, all geometry changes. We understand life as a sphere and not as a finite plane. We will see things with their correct dimensions and we will see the human being grow in all the dimensions of his nature. Otherwise, the resulting geometry will lack the retracted vector of faith. That hides the abodes of his father behind the veil.