Lauterbrunnen was the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien's Rivendell, and this view of it is, in my opinion, perhaps the most beautiful view on planet earth. But then, I am partial to Switzerland.
Near the Church stands a plaque containing a written prayer, composed by one Arnold Lunn. [Endnote 1]
I won’t attempt a word for word translation. But the gist, if my rusty LDS Missionary German is still any good to me at all, is essentially as follows: The author and offeror of the prayer thanks his dear Lord for the beloved mountains of his youth, the call of their peaks and the tracks in their snow; for the friends who were the companions of his youth, and for his other blessings. But most of all, he thanks the Lord for the ongoing revelation he feels he receives every time he views the beauty of the mountains around him, the timebound beauty of which strengthens his faith in the eternal beauty of God, which shall not end.
I love this little prayer. Indeed, just the word timebound (“zeitgebund”), was worth the journey to that Church, almost as much as the view. What an incredibly great word, especially when placed in juxtaposition to the word eternal (“ewig”), to describe that not bound in time: so much more evocative than “temporal” or the German “zeitlich” into which it is generally translated. But I mainly love this poem because, like Lunn, whose faith in eternal beauties was strengthened by their earthly counterparts, I see evidence of God’s design when I am confronted by natural beauty. Indeed, the Doctrine and Covenants, at Section 59:18, teaches that the purposes of God's creations include "to please the eye and to gladden the heart."
I can already hear my more scientism-oriented acquaintances raising their objections. [2] The beauty of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, of the entire Berner Oberland which surrounds it, is, after all, wholly subjective, and therefore presumably has nothing to teach us. What’s more, everything which Lunn found so strengthening to his faith in God has a non-religious, natural explanation. The valley of the Lauterbrunnen was carved by a glacier in the last ice age. The hills and the alps which rise above that valley arose through tectonic forces. The waterfalls which grace the cliffsides are the inevitable result of the water cycle in action: As the winds of Europe hit the Swiss Alps, they release the moisture evaporated from below and snow it upon their lofty peaks, where it melts into the waterfalls, as the melting water seeks the sea through the force of gravity. Every disappointed Zermatt tourist who has ever cursed the cloud blocking his view of the Matterhorn has seen this process in action. While the water cycle and its ongoing recycling of fresh water is incredibly important to human and all other forms of life, and while perpetual waterfalls are a lovely way of being reminded of this important natural phenomenon, it is, after all, a natural phenomenon, and the waterfalls are, in the end, merely places where lots of water happens to plunge over a cliff, on a journey to the sea no more or less important than that of any other water taking any other route.
And I get all of that. I understand (not well, but in its basic fundamentals) the science. I even understand the social science, political and economic, that explains why the citizens of Lauterbrunnen built a multi-story automobile garage for the tourists to utilize, and then put grass on its roof so it wouldn’t spoil those tourists’ view.
Nevertheless, I cannot look upon the Lauterbrunnen Valley without persisting in my belief that I am seeing the handiwork of God. The same is true of many other natural scenic wonders which I count among my favorite places on earth, both in Switzerland, and in the American West: Appenzellerland; Ebenalp; Seealpsee; Hoher Kasten; Oeschinensee; the waterfall in Yellowstone; Red Rock, on the Western side of the Las Vegas, Nevada valley, in the morning when the sun is shining on its red and white and vermillion colors; Zion National Park; Mount Timpanogos. Like C.S. Lewis, who defended the objectively sublime nature of waterfalls in his masterpiece, The Abolition of Man, I just can’t bring myself to look upon such beauty and see only an uncreated place, exhibiting purely natural phenomena, and of purely utilitarian interest.
Or if I can, I can’t take the next step. The bottom line, for me, is this: I could perhaps believe, if I absolutely had to, that a place like the Lauterbrunnen Valley might come to exist for purely natural reasons, which neither require nor allow for any explanation involving any metaphysical agency or intent or design. But what I can’t believe is that such a place would haphazardly come to exist in the same Universe where someone like Arnold Lunn, or myself, could also, equally haphazardly, come to exist, and, looking upon the Lauterbrunnen, would call it beautiful. Indeed, it is not so much that it is impossible to conceive of the Lauterbrunnen Valley in a Godless universe. It is, rather, more so, that it is impossible for me to conceive of a Godless universe whose inhabitants have a word which means “beauty.” The Lauterbrunnen Valley may or may not evidence the design of God, but poetry about Lauterbrunnen surely does.
Endnote 1: I assumed Lunn was a local boy, but Wikipedia advises he was the inventor of the slalom ski race, founder of the Alpine Ski Club which encouraged skiing in the Swiss Alps, a youthful agnostic who later wrote defenses of the Catholic faith, and an anti-Communist writer for National Review. No wonder I loved his written prayer, it's as though two of my favorite writers, G.K. Chesterton and William F. Buckley, were combined into someone who also loved two of my favorite things in the world: Switzerland and Snow-Skiing.
Endnote 2: For the difference between science and scientism, see The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism by Michael D. Aeschliman.
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