One of my favorite hymns is not in the hymn book. No, it’s not “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” although that is one of my favorites as well. Rather, I am talking about the hymn “Jerusalem,” one of the great anthems of the Church of England when it gets low-churchy enough to sing hymns rather than letting the chior do all the work. The words are taken from a poem by William Blake:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jerusalem<\/strong>
\n(From Milton<\/em>)<\/p>\nby William Blake<\/p>\n
And did those feet in ancient time
\nWalk upon England’s mountains green?
\nAnd was the holy Lamb of God
\nOn England’s pleasant pastures seen?<\/p>\nAnd did the Countenance Divine
\nShine forth upon our clouded hills?
\nAnd was Jerusalem builded here
\nAmong these dark Satanic Mills?<\/p>\nBring me my bow of burning gold!
\nBring me my arrows of desire!
\nBring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
\nBring me my chariot of fire!<\/p>\nI will not cease from mental fight,
\nNor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
\nTill we have built Jerusalem
\nIn England’s green and pleasant land.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThere are any number of reasons that I love this hymn. Blake is a poet that it is difficult for a Mormon not to love, with his yearning for prophecy. The music to which this is generally set is the sort of piece that does justice to a big, powerful church organ. It appeals to my Anglo-philia. It even provided a title to a great movie on running and religion.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, however, I think that I love this hymn because it captures a tripartite sensibility that maps powerfully on to my Mormonism. First, there is the yearning for Zion, the new Jerusalem as against a fallen world — “these dark Satanic Mills.” Second, there is the call to strenuous action to build up Zion:<\/p>\n
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
\nBring me my arrows of desire!
\nBring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
\nBring me my chariot of fire!<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis is good “The world has need of willing men who wear the workers’ seal” stuff, but set within better verse. There is something about the stressed “Bring me my” that create an urgency, but in place of the “workers’ seal” — which frankly grabs at a bit of class identity that I’m not all that enthused about — we get a series of images that make the struggle seem more heroic, even Homeric.<\/p>\n
Finally, and most powerfully, these images center around a place. The divine narrative of Christ’s incarnation and the hoped for New Jerusalem are transposed onto “England’s pastures.” \u00a0My own religious geography centers on plains, sage brush, promised valleys, and the mountain of the Lord’s house in the tops of the mountains. \u00a0Still there is some part of me that just “gets” Blake’s desire to inscribe the cosmic narrative onto his native place at a deep aesthetic and spiritual level.<\/p>\n
I wonder, however, if my own spirituality of place is less about Mormonism than about the accidents of my own biography. \u00a0Growing up in Salt Lake City with Mormon history geeks for parents the images of pioneers, crickets, temple builders, and a benign and wise Brigham Young at the head of it all surface as some of the earliest images in my religious memory. \u00a0Even my wife, whose biography is very similar to mine, has a different religious sense of place, in part — I suspect — because her first imprints of Mormonism occured in the more a-historical religious enviroment of a suburban ward in southern California.<\/p>\n
While I fret about the continuing viability of a spirituality of place, I have to remind myself of the advantages of the odd position in which I find myself. \u00a0Had I been born amidst the agressive Mormon theology of place in the 19th century my attitude toward Blake’s poem would have been more defensive. \u00a0The feet in ancient times trod American not English soil, and souls will be redeemed from the “dark Satanic Mills” in Deseret not\u00a0Glastonbury! \u00a0Poised as I am between nostalgia for a geographically centered Zion building and the more universal and portable Mormonism of today, I have the luxury of both feeling the religious pull of place while maintaining enough distance from my own sacred places to enjoy “Jerusalem.”<\/p>\n
UPDATE: Enjoy!<\/p>\n