“From His strength the mountains take being, and the sea, they say,
And the distant river;
And these are his body and his two arms.”

From a hymn to Prajapati, rendered “To a God Unknown” by John Steinbeck.

“It is easy to know the beauty of inhuman things, sea,
storm and mountain; it is their soul and their
meaning.

Humanity has its lesser beauty, impure and painful; we
have to harden our hearts to bear it.”

From The Wonder of Things by Robinson Jeffers.

“He has exalted those of low degree
and filled the hungry with good things…
in remembrance of his mercy.”

From the Song of Mary, St. Luke.

In the first case, divinity is strength and is incarnate in the earth. In the second case, divinity is beauty and is incarnate in the earth and to a lesser extent in humanity. In the third case, divinity is redemption or mercy and is incarnate in the Messiah.

In all three, divinity is expressed and known in this world.

Steinbeck and Jeffers lived on the Monterey Peninsula. I once lived there. It is a place so beautiful and mysterious, the landscape so dramatic, that it evokes the presence of divinity.

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