Creative Nonfiction - Fall 2017

CREATIVE NONFICTION 49

JAMIE ZVIRZDIN teaches in

the Master of Arts Science

Writing program at Johns

Hopkins University and is the

editor of the anthology Fresh

Courage Take: New Directions

by Mormon Women (Signature

Books, 2015). When she wrote

this essay, she was teaching

astronomy and science writing

at the Pierre and Marie Curie

School in Managua, Nicaragua.

f you take the Green Line from the Salt Lake City

International Airport to the Temple Square TRAX station

downtown, you’ll be within walking distance of the Salt Lake

Temple. If you decide to venture onto the temple grounds

and cast your eyes up its lofty spires and battlements, the

castle-like exterior will reveal a host of astronomical markings:

sunstones, moonstones, Earth stones, and even Saturn stones

adorn its granite face. Most captivating for me as a teenager—a

starry-eyed wannabe scientist and scrupulously obedient Mor-

mon—was the Big Dipper on the western face of the temple’s

central tower. The seven stone stars are positioned so Dubhe

and Merak, the two end stars of the cup, align toward Polaris,

the North Star, just as they do in the night sky—an elegant

tethering of Earth to heaven.

The architect of the temple, Truman O. Angell, said he

included the Big Dipper to remind Mormons that the lost might

find their way by the aid of the priesthood, the power of God

given to men to do his work. When I was a teen, my exclusion

If then th’ Astronomers, whereas they spie

A new-found Starre, their Opticks magnifie,

How brave are those, who with their Engine, can

Bring man to heaven, and heaven againe to man?

—John Donne

I

JAMIE ZVIRZDIN

Shuddering Before the

Beautiful”: Trains of

Thought Across the

Mormon Cosmos

“

RU N N E R U P!

Best Essay

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