My projects just explode on me, all the freaking time

And by "explode" I mean that they get bigger, and bigger, and bigger...

So I've got this little project on the side, right?

I think "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if there were a PDF that gave writers tools and building blocks to create religions and mythological cycles out of? It could be fifty pages long. Maybe even as long as sixty pages!"

It would do things like tell you that religions with multiple death deities tend to arrange them into a bureaucracy, and when you have a set of divine twins one of them is exceptional in a way that the other is not (is magical, is the progenitor of the race, etc).

Now the only thing that's going to keep it from qualifying as a small textbook on comparative mythology is the lack of footnotes, and it'll also be able to serve as a passable introduction to Jungian psychology and certain varieties of anthropology and archaeology. I have 500 pages of notes to collate and then there's going to be the follow-up research, the collation that will be necessary after that, and then final polishing.

I plan to have this done by the end of January. Here's hoping I can manage it.

It's going to have appendices. Appendices. One of them is going to be so big that I'm going to spin it into its own (hopefully smaller) book.

Here are a couple of sample entries as they stand right now.

Occulting demons are responsible for eclipses, generally by devouring the celestial body in question. This is only temporary, unless it causes the end of the world. There are often two of them, each responsible for either solar or lunar eclipses. Examples include Apep (Egyptian) and Rahu and Ketu (Hindu). Skoll and Hati (Norse) are foretold to be examples when they eat the sun and the moon at Ragnarok. See MISSING SUN.

White horses are significant in mythology. They may be associated with solar chariots or heroes (especially end of time saviors) and/or be related to fertility (regardless of sex). Both white and grey horses may qualify as “white horses” in this context. They often have multiple heads or limbs. They may have bear warning of danger or tragedy. As the hero’s steed it has a ceremonial status and represents triumph over negative forces. It is often born from the sea or other liquid (such as blood or milk), from a lightning bolt, or in some other fantastic manner.

Patreon

Patreon is now one of my most favorite websites.

And I didn't even know about it half an hour ago (turns out that randomly surfing the internet can lead to Good Things).

In summary Patreon is a place where creators can say "Hello! This is what I'm making! Do you like it?"

And people can say in response, "Not on your life!" Or, better yet, "Yes!"

And then small donations (paid regularly, based on what we could call "triggers," like "every month" or "every two songs") can be made to support said creator. Donations as small as a dollar. Creators can offer specific content or services to individuals who give specified amounts every time that a trigger is hit or to the fanbase as a whole when the total amount donations reaches a certain level.

Shortly before I went to Utah I had been converted to the idea of 1,000 True Fans, which points out that that if you have only thousand people who can be counted on to spend $100 on you every year then that translates into $100,000 for you. Every year.

The goal isn't getting millions of readers. It is, in my situation, finding one thousand people who are each willing to buy ten $10 books. I figured that I would jury-rig Kickstarter in order to get this going and put up stories at projects to be funded like Greg Stolze does.

Patreon streamlines the process that I was going to try to build. Even better, it makes any income that I have more consistent. I don't have to worry about taking a $10,000 hit if one of my ten books doesn't fly because it's too something or another.

Even better, I can set my stories in the context of all of my creative work. This blog, the Idea Bank, any number of more gonzo ideas that are rattling in my head, and on and on forever. I look at what I have planned, and I can see forever.

And now that I've found Patreon, I can see how it's all going to come together.

Lovecraft and the Triumph Over Nothing

What Lovecraft teaches us, oddly enough, is that the universe is okay. Things are gonna be alright, if you take the broader view that embraces not only humankind but all mindkind. The Elder Things may have looked utterly monstrous but we are assured by the narrator of At the Mountains of Madness that "whatever they were, they were men." Nathaniel Peaslee's Yithian impersonator in The Shadow Out of Time did an alright job of insinuating itself into human society, encountering only the difficulties that any human time traveler would encounter in going to a completely different era, and Peaselee himself found it not impossible to similarly understand the Yithians (not to mention all the time-displaced representatives of other species that were there with him).

Individual civilizations rise and fall as species do, but we rejoice in the overall triumphs of humanity. In the same way we are privileged to be a chapter in that story which is the flourishing of all mindkind, each segment of it given its own era. Before us were the Elder Things, Yithians, mi-go, "arachnid denizens," serpent-people of Valusia, flying polyps, and "black-snouted, winged creatures," among others. Some still survive into our day, and after us are the coleopterans, and then even later other races that will burrow close to the core as temperatures become abominably low. The myths of K'n-yan say that humans came from some other world but even if this is untrue (or if we are the only extant branch of humanity) we are guaranteed to survive into the year AD 16,000, if not beyond. And surely some might reach past even that far-off era, preserved in brain cylinders as fellowservants with the mi-go, whose own civilization is millions of years old in that year and extends into other dimensions but who were, even in their own eldritch age, preceded by yet other civilizations. 

And when or if all human life should be made extinct, there is still no cause to despair, for we are told in The Shadow Out of Time that we will not be forgotten. Our history and cultures, our most bitter failures and most glorious accomplishments, all that we ever loved, feared, and hoped for- every inch of the human experience- will survive eternally among the Great Race of Yith, whose time travel capabilities give their own civilization immortality, as every disaster is foreseen and escaped. Moreover, the Great Race do not only record but take the best of what humanity and ever other species has to offer and make it their own. What was most noble about us will surely not perish but will become the treasured inheritance of a blazing-bright culture whose domain extends through all eternity. 

Life arises everywhere. On Mercury, on Earth, on Neptune, on Pluto, and on many other planets, from their surfaces to their fiery cores, and the Great Race of Yith knows and loves it all. What Lovecraft tells us is that, despite Cthulhu, despite Azathoth and other horrors, life wins. Mind wins. 

Far from telling us that there is no hope, Lovecraft tells us to laugh in the dark and know that dawn is always right around the corner (and for the children of Yith, dawn is eternal, for what threat can night hold to those that have mastered time and skip from daylight to daylight like stones on the surface of a lake?). 

Snakes, Oh My!

Lately I've been working on writing stories, of course, but other things that I've been working on are these two blogs, sorting years of bookmarks and pictures, collecting submissions information for publishing companies and magazines, and writing the last few articles that will run on a feature at RPG.net called The Culture Column. The column provides cultures that creators, including gamers, can drop into their worlds as-is or modify to suit their purposes.

Just before I started to write this blog post I was working on the initial "research and brainstorming" step, which I'd normally just call "research" except that, when it's going how it should, the information that I'm collecting starts putting itself together in new and fascinating patterns until these patterns are so large that they look at me and ask "Can you look something up for me?" Instead of growing the patterns like corn they suddenly develop teeth, uproot themselves, and go on the hunt for new shiny things to incorporate into their structures.

The latest incident of this happening started while I was on my mission, when I started drafting a pre-outline for a story tentatively titled Sands Over the City, a Lovecraftian noir set during the time of most ancient Mesopotamia. I began with the ideas that Lovecraft and a few others presented regarding the prehuman Serpent People and began to wrack my brain for additional links until their scaly digits were everywhere.*

Then, a week ago, I started working on a Genre Splash that interpreted the stories of the Brothers Grimm through a Lovecraftian lens. I looked at the story Godfather Death and, like a good little pareidoliac, I immediately saw it as a history of man's relationship with the Serpent People and the explanation for why they mentored humankind only to turn hostile in later generations.

Anyway, I was in the "research and brainstorming" step for the Culture Column, and one of the cultures that I was working on just so happened to be the fabled city Irem of the Pillars. With access to more information I'm able to spread my sights further. Lo and behold, what do I discover? As I've found so many times before, everything seems to click just like a shoggoth's mandibles when you turn it upside down and view it through glasses of an eldritch shade.

Between Sands Over the City, Godfather Death, and Irem of the Pillars, I am most eager to reveal to you what I've been putting together. And show you, in a handful of dust, the rise of mankind and the fall of its first great civilization.

*My work on Lovecraftian stories, and my lack of regular and full access to anything but scriptures during my missiono, has certainly contributed to the religious, Christian, and LDS focus that I have on the Mythos (not how these things are right despite the Mythos or how they modify the Mythos in a Derlethian fashion, but how they are modified and interpreted by the Mythos).

Home is

I don't remember ever having trouble moving to new places, permanently or temporarily. For as long as I can remember having an opinion on the matter, home was the place where you were resting your head. And a couch was as good as a bed was as good as the bench of a car.

Moved around a little bit, and saw some other places a little bit more. Spent the past two years moving from place to place every time that I was transferred. And it was just moving to a new place. Having a new place to set my head for a little while, up until the next time that I would have to move.

To be honest, I had grown pretty well adjusted to this mindset. So it's kind of disorienting- not unpleasant, just disorienting- to lose it. Or at least lose part of it. I should like to think that I will still move from place to place as easily as I did before but there is no battling the idea that as soon as I arrived at the house which my family moved to while I was on my mission, as soon as I arrived it felt very peculiar.

So this is what people must mean when they say that a certain place, and no other, feels like home.

It is probably no coincidence that this house is reminiscent of the one which my mother's parents have lived in for my whole life. Everyone else has moved at least once, even my father's parents, but not them. So it should come as no surprise that this familiarity and sense of stability- the one thing that hasn't changed, in a life full of shifting scenes- should combine, with the intellectual knowledge that this is where my immediate family is living, into the feeling that this is home.

All things holy

See also: Shakespeare's Beam

I was in the car the other day watching buildings pass by, when it struck me, as it had many times before, that the act of creation is something holy. Something that partakes of the divine nature and mimics, in its own small way, the myriad acts of creation performed by God.

Immediately after this realization, however, there came to me the thought of my time working at McDonald's and Jack in the Box. Making many hundreds of cheap hamburger patties of the lowest quality that the customer would tolerate was surely not a sacred act.

When I see a contradiction like this there a few possibilities. The first is that I don't have enough information at hand and that there isn't a contradiction at all. In this conflict there didn't seem to be that situation. Besides that, though, it could be that the original premise was wrong. Or, finally, that the premise is so right that it forces me to reconsider other ideas that I held.

It was the third possibility that was proven in this situation, immediately after I relinquished my hold on the original premise. Creative acts were something holy, and making cheap hamburger patties was a creative act. And any paradox that I saw here, I realized, was purely my own invention.

Perhaps it seems frivolous. Perhaps it often is. But those hamburgers fed people. They relieved hunger. They sated appetites. For some who couldn't get anything more expensive, those hamburgers were as good as ambrosia.

It's such a little thing, but it still did something. Maybe it wasn't as much of a waste of my time as I first thought.

A little off-center

Coming home after serving a full-time mission for two years, life is a little bit different from what I was used to. But I'm adapting pretty well. Most of the time I don't actually notice much of a shift. As I mentioned in an earlier post it's almost like experiencing a peculiar transfer. I was doing one thing before, and now I'm doing another. End of story. Here's your popcorn. Let's go do The Stuff That Needs Doing.

That last sentence may be another contributing factor. There is a season for everything under the sun, but it all boils down, for me, to things that need doing. Before it was one thing, and now it's another. But it all needs doing.

I feel so much better today after I started using my modified missionary daily planner. Having times and tasks set aside feels so nice.

Where the shift to civilian life is jarring it is so not because of the differences but because of the similarities. Watching a movie does nothing to me. It is far enough removed, I think, that I do not compare it to missionary life. When I went to Church today, however, it was one long train ride of feeling really weird. A few weeks ago I was one of those missionaries standing at the door. A few weeks ago I only ever went to the first hour of the church block because there were always other wards to attend. Second and third hours barely existed as a concept for me, only had a presence as That Thing Other People Do. Now I'm attending Sunday School and Elders Quorum.

It's not the big differences that get me. It's the little things, the tiny differences just similar enough that I can't help but hold these two periods of my life beside each other and compare them.

I Watch: Ender's Game; The Croods; Iron Man 3

Several movies over the past few days.

Surprisingly, Ender's Game wasn't the best of them, IMHO. Some of this came from heightened expectations. Some people have been waiting for this movie since before I was born. So if Orson Scott Card had given the green light, then obviously something amazing was in the works. It was worth watching the once, and I'm impressed by Asa Butterfield's performance as Ender (and Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff was a wonderful thing). They changed a fair amount of the story but I was okay with that. Strangely, I find myself having to say that they should have changed more. They tried to put too much into the story and as a result too much of it felt cramped, especially the ending scenes. When the supposed wham moment of the movie takes less time to resolve than it did for the Little Doctor to recharge, I think that there's a problem.

But I'm glad that I saw it anyway, if for no other reason than having some closure. Ender's Game was filmed. It wasn't horrible. We can stop worrying and go to bed, okay, thank you, goodnight. That alone was worth the time and money.

I was surprised by The Croods too, but more pleasantly. The title alone leads one to not expect very much but, while I have to say that I don't know how much potential it has for repeated viewing, the first time was more than tolerable. I was most impressed that they didn't make Eep conventionally attractive, especially since she felt like the main driving force in the cast. Yes, she's a cavewoman, but when has that stopped Hollywood? Kudos. My only strong disappointment was that Grug didn't seem to get much respect from the writers. He grows, sure, but until then he seems to always be an impediment to the point that you wonder how, if this was how he did things, how they had survived to this point in the first place. Yes, Grug needs to get with the times and until he does they won't be as effective as they should be, but it's as if everybody forgot that Grug's way had ever worked before.

Without a doubt the best movie that I've seen since my mission ended was Iron Man 3. The series has always been my favorite set of films in the Marvel Universe since the first one came out, and the third one beats both of its predecessors with its hands tied behind its back. The film's take on the Mandarin was genius. He is such a completely Tony Stark kind of villain. But really, I can't find much to complain about at all. The fight at the end went on just a little too long, I think, but I can handle that. Maybe the next time that I see the movie, I'll decide that it was just right, or even too short.

I think that I like Iron Man the most because Tony Stark is the most human out of the heroes that I've gotten a glimpse of yet. He has flaws, and those flaws are magnified to an epic scale, but that's as far as it goes. Other heroes in the Marvel films have been bitten by radioactive spiders, or come from other worlds, or were given super-soldier serums. Tony Stark is just a man with a brain and an ego, both writ large, and when Time Magazine, Newsweek, and CNN came onto the screen his feet were firmly placed on our world. How many other superhero movies had a major plot point about the protagonist's alcoholism?

Iron Man has a heart has the other Marvel films lack. Some people have complained about Tony not needing to be in the suit anymore. "This should have been called Tony Stark 3." But of course, as he says in the conclusion of the film, the suit is just a suit. Tony Stark is Iron Man, and a movie without his suit at all could still be the best of them.

Be Still

Keep running and you don't notice anything.

You could say that my mission has given me a number of additional actions that I can take when presented with any situation. I have a stronger testimony that the answer to a problem just may be in the scriptures, and a better idea of how to find that answer. I've seen priesthood blessings work, and miracles roll out from the side of the road like tumbleweeds or Autobots. But the most unconventional action to take- at least for me- is "Do nothing."

There are times when God says "Wait." It does you no good to rush Him. He knows what He's doing. It does not good to run around in circles until something happens. That only leaves you dead from exhaustion by the time that the cavalry arrives.

Sometimes, you just have to stand there like a fool. And wait for something to happen.

We're not in any kind of race here. Anybody that tells you otherwise is getting their information from the other team. Take each item in its time. Tackle it, thoroughly and efficiently. Go to the next item on your list. As appropriate, distribute rest times throughout your schedule. "Fuel, no tires" may have given Lightning McQueen a temporary edge but then there came the point that he was breaking down, and then when he just couldn't move anymore.

I am reminded of family scripture study this past Sunday. Each time my littlest brother, Owen, took his turn reading he easily took as much time as the rest of us did because he's still working on his reading. I was frustrated at first but remembered the injunction to "Be still," as an investigator expressed it almost two years ago, and put the incident in its proper context. We were reading from the scriptures. Why did I care about getting to the end of the chapter in half the time?

I mention this because I don't mean "Be still" to be applied to your life only when you're waiting for something to come from Heaven (Though perhaps it might be a good idea, now that I phrase it that way, to apply it to the Second Coming and stop being so frantic about it. He'll get here when He gets here, now go do your duty and it'll be well for you no matter when He arrives). It's for everything. Don't rush. For anything.

But yes, it does apply specially well to matters heavenly. Especially to the realm of communication. One of the things that I have learned most strongly since returning home is just how hard it is for God to get through to someone that is always doing something, always listening to someone (else), always going somewhere. All those things make noise, and too much noise blocks out the most important signal.

The calling- the mantle, if you will- of being a full-time missionary for the LDS Church contributed to my spiritual sensitivity, but just as much did my strong desire to take things as they came and focus on each moment in its time. Discarding that, running like a headless chicken, I lost more sensitivity in a couple of weeks than I should have.

I Read: Animorphs #1, #23

And it feels like coming home.

I think that it hit me when I read one particular passage, where Jake is wondering if his parents don’t want him to ever cut through the construction site because they’re afraid that he might run into an axe murderer. I read it and, in some way that I can’t describe, I remembered, vividly, reading that passage before, many times. I mean, I know when I’ve read something before, but it wasn’t just knowledge. It was feeling it, and remembering how I had felt when I had read it before, and, too, how I was now feeling about having read it.

It was something in the neighborhood of nostalgia. A cross between that and what you feel when you know, without anyone telling you, that what’s happening right now is a good thing and that you’re exactly where you belong.

It’s like coming to love someone again, without ever having stopped loving them before.

What struck me the hardest was just how depressing the series could be. I mean, it’s like Baby’s First Grimdark, and I don’t mean that in the pejorative sense. It really should be required entry-level reading for the stuff that makes you cry. Before your kid reads Lovecraft, give her Animorphs. And then, after she’s read Lovecraft, tell her to read Animorphs again.

I mean, in the first book Tobias gets turned into a hawk forever because he was in morph for more than two hours, and it’s implied then and throughout the series that he did that on purpose because his home life was so terrible that even life as a hawk was better. Not to mention Visser Three describing to Elfangor how the war was basically over now, just as soon as the Yeerks finished infesting Earth, and Visser Three was going to personally oversee the infestation of Elfangor’s family and looked forward to hearing their screams.

The Pretender only escalates it. Tobias has to resort to eating road kill because another hawk has moved in on his territory and he can’t kick it out. Just as it seems that Tobias has finally found a non-crappy family member who might actually care about him, it turns out that she’s Visser Three in disguise. And because he’s forced to interact with humans besides the other Animorphs a major theme of the book is how distanced he’s become from humanity. He can’t remember his birthday. He doesn't even remember to make facial expressions.

Oh. My. Heart.

What am I reading?

The rest of the series is no better. I remember when Elfangor had to leave his wife and unborn son forever to rejoin a war that he had spent years trying to forget about. I remember Alloran justifying war crimes- and I remember a war that just maybe was so terrible that he was right. I remember Dak Hamee’s guilt over making warriors out of a people so peaceful that they had never before conceived of purposely intending to kill someone.

I remember a story about six kids that were forced to fight a war on their own, and I remember the trauma that they incurred over three years and fifty-odd books of desperate guerrilla warfare against a foe that outnumbered them and could be anyone at all.

I remembered how depressing it was before I started to read the series again, but reading it again was like the difference between hearing about the Rocky Mountains and seeing them.

It’s no secret to anyone who’s read some of my stories that I like the really depressing stuff. Other stuff is good, but sometimes nothing will satisfy but something that cuts to the heart and bites down. Reading Animorphs again, I wonder how much it affected my future development; like that years-ago dance with that girl who was going to boot camp in a month. The first dance of my youth, and her last, and without even trying I can think of half a dozen qualities I find attractive in a woman that can be directly traced back to her. Same way, Animorphs is the yardstick by which I measure YA stories, both mine and others'.

I can’t wait to get my hands on the rest of the books.

Experiments

I went back to 4chan.

Maybe they'll inscribe that on my tombstone.

I had a short-lived weekly thread there a few years ago, where I'd take story requests and make something out of them. I'd write right there, which led to my stories being crappy. I'm taking it back up again and trying something different: taking the requests then but writing throughout the week and posting the stories the following week. I hope that it'll work out better than last time but I suspect that it'll take a couple of weeks to get underway. Right now I have one request, which I think that I'll be able to turn into something decent.

While I didn't plan it that way, Monday was also a day for figuring out just a little bit more about my acrophobia/fear of falling (I think that it leans more toward the second than the first). I could file it away entirely as an inexplicable phobia but I know that there's something more to it, something underlying it, and I want to get at it and find out what that something is.

Going to Pioneer Park on Monday was the first time in a long while that I felt a really visceral fear, stomach churning to the point of making me feel ill. Me-at-Moab found the experience undesirable, even if part of me was even then coldly monitoring the situation and assessing the information that I was gleaning, but present!me is grateful for having had the opportunity. Accurate conclusions can't be reliably drawn without raw data, and this is a matter for which I would appreciate drawing an accurate conclusion.

Just while we're his blog is an experiment in itself. As you can tell I'm sort of just spitting words onto the screen. I'm editing, yeah, but I'm still trying to figure out my groove, find what I'm really writing and when and why, and how to do it. Just, stuff. If I'm lucky I'll be able to figure out exactly how to roll with this blog. if I'm even luckier, I'll be able to do it sooner rather than later.

Edit Oops. Pioneer Park, not Moab.

Dead Missionary Report

I’m writing this in the car on the way between two DIs. Mom found most of the volumes of The Work and the Glory, which has sent us on a quest to find Volumes 6 and 9 to complete the series.

In missionary parlance I’ve been dead for three days now, which means that you’ve got the privilege of reading the words of a ghost. If this is the Spirit World, though, then it looks remarkably like Utah, which isn’t really what I was expecting.

Utah really is an inescapable black hole.
 
Dead Missionary Life hasn’t been as restful as I imagined. There are a lot of people to see before I go home, and yesterday we went up to tour BYU-I. I’ll be living there for most of three years, so it’s a good thing that the campus appears to be a place that I’d be content to live at. It feels a lot like the campus at Schoolcraft College, which is nice.

By far the most curious thing to me is that I don’t feel a great and pervading shock over the transition. What I’m doing now feels as normal as what I was doing before. I would wonder if this was a sign that I wasn’t going as far as I should in my mission, but the transition into my mission felt just as natural, and the same when one of my companions genuinely died (and not just in the parlance of missionaries). It seems more likely that I just adjust very quickly.

The anticipation and worry over how I would take the change were worse than the change itself. Which, honestly, I should have expected. I had had enough information on hand to anticipate that.

Still working on renovating the site. I hope to have it all finished by the end of next week but, you know, working on that in between everything else. 

Returns

Follow-up to: The Redemption of Shemesh

There are a number of things that I could point to in The Redemption of Shemesh. Shemesh is a Christ figure as easily as she is an Adam, but it is more in this latter vein that I wish to move today. The principal point of The Redemption is there in the title. It is a story of repentance.

Warning: genre shift ahead!

As my mission draws to a close I feel it important to address an upcoming change, lest it catch you all unawares and drag you off to parts unknown. For the past several months my blog has had a certain character, and this is going to change.

First of all, updates will be a little less regular until I figure out what system is best. What worked on my mission may not work so well off it, especially because I won't be dedicating it to thoughts of a more-or-less random nature. They will still pop in now and then for a quick bite, but luminosity, and my day-to-day life, will be more prominent than before.

My stories will be moved to White Marble Block. They will not all illustrate spiritual points (not even most), but they will still be stories. Follow-ups will probably be present but not every story will warrant one, and they'll touch more on the development of the story and my authorial intentions than on the moral (after all, few of them will have one).

Oh! And there should be pictures, too! I don't know how often, or how many, or for how long, but it'll happen.

So yeah. Tl;dr, this turning from a "spiritual thoughts and fiction" blog to a "daily life, fiction, and such, with some spiritual thoughts included" blog. Hope you enjoy it.

Revisiting Bedbug Haven

In the eight weeks from the middle of June 2012 to July 2012, I and seven other missionaries lived in what was referred to by the mission office as "bedbug haven." It was an apartment built for four but, as mentioned before, there was twice that number living there. Plus bedbugs.

Quarters were cramped. There were three rooms, none of them very big, and connected them was some sort of hallway that managed to have kitchen appliances, a sink, a washer, a dryer, and an ironing board stuffed into it. Common it was to need to squeeze by someone (or several someones) as they were working food or laundry in order to go from one room to another. Eventually my companion and I relocated to the third room, along with all its weight equipment and other random junk, but before that change I slept on a couch and another missionary slept in a large closet.

And there were bedbugs. Can I stress that enough?

Understandably, tensions were high, and all of us did at least one thing that we later regretted. I carried a chip on my shoulder against some of them, and so did they, until a little while later when we were able to get some fresh air and reflect. One by one we bumped into each other again and saw that we were very different from how we had remembered each other, and we apologized and moved on.

There are two missionaries from Bedbug Haven that I have yet to bump into and may not ever have the chance to (both went back home before I was able to) but I don't- I can't- hold anything against them.

What I'll always remember from this episode in my life is that people get better, and even when you live with them for eight weeks you still don't always see the best side of them. People are who they are, but when their circumstances get the worst of them don't mistake that for who they would be in a better situation.

The Redemption of Shemesh

Note: I apologize for my lateness in posting this. I was caught up in wanting perfection for this story. 

There once was a young man, or a horror shaped in the likeness of a young man, whose name was Hastur. He was the moon, or, in other words, his light was not his own. He had light, but it was only a light that had been taken from others, and he gave nothing of his own in return to she that had loved him. His true name, spoken only in the wild places and in terrified whispers, was Darkness, and the name of his dominion the same.

Suffer the trials to come

We were born into mortal bodies, subject to all manner of suffering, because we wanted to grow. We could progress no further without being subject to new trials, and every spirit that ever has been or will be embodied was eager for the opportunity.

Now, having passed through the veil, it's hard to keep that in mind. We don't remember the anticipation anymore. But the next time that a trial gets thrown your way, remember that you can't grow if you don't stretch.

And don't focus on the problem itself. Then we look at trials, we're looking behind us, not at the possibilities that God is always presenting to us. It may be hard to see those possibilities when we try to look forward- sometimes we can't see anything, even though we're told that something is there- but we have to trust in God and see as He sees, and take one step after another. Soon enough, we'll find what He's been telling us has been just a few feet out of our immediate vision.

There comes a time for each of us when we are put through fire and wonder why we have been left there. At these times we must remember that silver never was refined without purging fires, and that all these things shall prove to be for our good. It is hard, and it is painful, but we must trust that God knows what He is doing.

How like a fish

Few people in this world, I imagine, like to be compared to fish. I hope that no offense will be taken when I say that there is no-one in the world that is not like a fish.

The size of a fish varies according to the size of its container (mostly because a small tank stunts its growth and impairs its health). In a large pool it will grow bigger than in a small pool, and while the Utah Salt Lake City West Mission may seem to be a very small pool indeed, covering only two cities and having proselyting areas that are sometimes less than half a square mile in size, the truth is that it is a very large pool indeed.

As Elder Dunford pointed out to me a little while ago, we are being placed in not in a pool of geographic size but of responsibility. There are many other goals associated with this mission, which is a pilot program exploring some new practices of missionary work, but one intention not too oft-discussed is raising the bar of the returned missionary.

The same principle of personal growth that applies to missionaries also applies to everyone else. As a rule people thrive when they are given greater responsibility, so long as it is within the bounds of what they can actually do. Growth comes not from sitting in your comfort zone but from running out of it and waving your arms wildly as you frantically struggle to figure out how to fly because you just fell off a cliff.

Everything in five words

To Moses God stated, "I am what I am."

This is both announcement and declaration. He teaches that He exists. He tells that He is eternal.

But contained within this statement is also a lesson that we can take to heart for ourselves, not in reference to God's nature but to our own, not for the future but in this moment. This is God's revelation of His existence and nature. And it is in the selfsame message that He refuses to make excuses.

He is. He is what He is. He does what He sees to be good, and does not what He sees to be bad. And whether He moves hither or thither, raises the sparrow or lets it strain and grow, calms the storm or steps away, He will not be browbeaten. He may be questioned. But He will not break under pressure and go the easier path, nor apologize for doing exactly as His knowledge leads Him.

Would that we could all be so! How great that we can, and how miserable that so many do not. But in following the example of our God we see the way that is better than the capitulation of our wills. Walk the path that your combined experience- knowledge, faith, and all other things- leads you, and never stray from that guide. When it passes to another road change your course swiftly, and regret not the loss of face that may come, nor apologize for abandoning your friends.

Your true and polar star is your own, and where you follow it you are sure to triumph. They have not your star, nor know the roads that it has brought you to. Where is their excuse to mock or make afraid?

Now, this is not to say that you have license to be, as the scriptures say, a law unto yourself. But the Holy Spirit is to be part of your guide, and it would be foolish to claim that your history and learning- other parts of your combined experience- do not affect how you interpret its guidance. When you take all these things together to walk by the light of the Spirit or to feel your way when God leaves you to your own devices, as He does from time to time, then you have your star and this you should neither disregard nor ask forgiveness for following. You have the guidance that you have been given, and they have not been given it, nor you the guidance given them. To each their own road, let it bring them where God will.

Out of the mouth of babes

"Behold, it came to pass on the morrow that the multitude gathered themselves together, and they both saw and heard these children; yea, even babes did open their mouths and utter marvelous things; and the things which they did utter were forbidden that there should not any man write them." 3 Nephi 26:16

Isn't it curious how the little ones can sometimes be the spiritual leaders in a home?

Sometimes they don't pick up on what's going on. Sometimes the situation is too complicated for them to comprehend. And sometimes they pick up on what God's trying to say so much faster than anyone else.

Perhaps it's unusual for someone with this kind of message to admit that children are not a uniform crowd of Yodas but, quite often, don't come running with pearls of wisdom spilling out their mouths. There is much about children that should never, under any circumstances, be emulated. Sometimes they are the most charitable of God's children, but there are other times that they can be vicious monsters that ruthlessly seize upon anything that makes another child different from the pack.

When Jesus tells us to become as little children, we wants us to be childlike rather than childish. There are some things of childhood that must be discarded. He wants us to take all the good that we can find in the nature of children, discard the rest, and to this goodness add the wisdom of serpents and the learning of priests.

We grow beyond childhood for a reason. To innocence let us add experience. To the stillness that oft lets children hear the words of God where only silence greets their parents, let us add the wisdom that allows us to act correctly on what we have heard.

Never too little

Follow-up to: Sixteen Hours

There always comes a time in life when our labor is done, whether for the day or for good, and we have opportunity to look back and behold all that we have accomplished.

Asking for directions

God has given us each of us a compass to lead us home to Him. Magnetic North is Heaven, but His counsel is our needle. If we discard His counsel, we must likewise discard the needle, and though Magnetic North yet remains, to the awareness of all those who still have their needles, we will not know where to go.

The scriptures are a guidebook from Heaven, and prayer is an opportunity to have an interview with the editor. The guidebook may be difficult to read. The editor may speak REALLY quietly and be hard to hear at times. But when the guidebook is for a certain mountain, and we are all mountaineers thereon, who can deny that it is of value? And who can consider it worthless to speak with He that has reached the mountain's summit?

If you feel that you are too busy climbing the mountain to read about how best to climb it, perhaps it's time for you to sit down for a few minutes. Remember that when you are traversing the greatest mountains you are required to acclimatize at regular intervals.

When you study the scriptures, STUDY them. Don't just read because you love the part where Ammon chops off arms, but because on every page there is something important for you to learn. When we read the scriptures for their entertainment value, or to check it off on our To-Do List, then we defeat the purpose of studying at all.

But it is not enough to simply find True North and follow its lead. There are tollbooths all along the way. Here we pay not in money but in our sins, and there is no end to the tollbooths until there is an end to our sins and we have given up everything weak about ourselves for the sake of reaching our heavenly home.

Where, of course, we learn that whenever we give up that which was weak, it was replaced by something strong.

What a rickshaw driver has to offer you

When Bai Fang Li was about to retire from his occupation as a rickshaw driver at the age of seventy-four, he saw a group of children working in the fields because they were too poor to afford schooling. He immediately returned to the city where he worked and continued his labor. Besides what little was necessary to sustain his spartan lifestyle, all of the money that he earned went to support the schooling of the children in his hometown. He did this for almost twenty years, working until his body couldn't keep up with the strain, and in so doing supported more than three hundred students.

Despite the poverty of his own situation, Bai Fang Li was able to see how much he was still able to offer others, and by so doing directly blessed the lives of hundreds. How much more can we, whose opportunities are not so limited as Bai Fang Li's, offer to those around us?

Fiction: Sixteen Hours

He began his watch before the sun did. The heat of the day had yet to come, and the vanguard winds of a distant storm made the night air even colder than usual. His coat was buttoned tightly, but the cold bit his bones regardless.

Shakespeare's Beam

Follow-up to: Afflatus

Over the past two years I have undergone a paradigm shift in re my understanding of writing and the creative process. Or perhaps I have not had a shift of paradigm so much as I have gotten a paradigm: Whence creativity came from, I did not much consider in the past.

Faith's Responsibility

The LDS bible dictionary tells us that 'faith is a principle of action and of power." Faith possesses an active, not a passive, quality. It is for this reason that we are told "faith without works is dead. "

There are many spheres of action in which faith may (and must) make itself manifest, but there is one that I want to mention in particular today: the overt declaration of itself through words or deeds. You see, faith may be utilized in many covert fashions, acted upon in such a way that onlookers don't perceive the mechanisms operating inside. One's faith can hardly be inspiring if it is not recognized.

Once had, faith is responsible for declaring itself, for being a witness- and not a witness in the closet. A city on a hill cannot- and should not- be hid. In the same way, we should make no bones about what we have conviction of (and, for that matter, what we may be struggling with). The bearing of your testimony can be an important part of letting others know that it gets better, or that there is something more than what they have encountered.

"So let it be written..."

There is very little post-publication editing that goes on in this blog. Hyperlinks will be added, as will other references if relevant, and minor fixes and grammar or spelling (although I would hope to be able to catch these mistakes before publishing). If I turn out to be wrong, if I later decide that what I said was abysmally stupid- I need to keep the post as it is. I can admit that I no longer support that post, or wish that something about it had been done differently, but I don't feel comfortable with outright deleting or changing posts.

For many, this blog gives more information about what's happening to me and who I am than anything else, and to the extent that this is true, to remove content denies the existence of that particular episode. This is what I thought at this time, in this place, and so you see what I was then. Whether I was stupid, lazy, or misinformed, it nevertheless happened, and it would be a lie to pretend otherwise. It smacks of rewriting history and makes me feel like I'm living in my own personal corner of 1984, and that's not an idea that I'm comfortable with.

Fiction: Afflatus

The scarecrow looked behind him. As far as he could see there was the desert. Somewhere out there was the train that had taken him as far as the rails of the Bad Road would go. After he had disembarked, he had rented a horse and gone many days further, until he had reached the small shack that now sat before him in the distance.

Identity Agreement

Follow-up to: Four Snapshots of Eternity

The thread that runs through Four Snapshots is centered on identity. Names tell us who we are, and the knowledge of our identity empowers us. The matter of who we are is truth, and the truth shall make us free.

A little bit of progress, at least

Sometimes people wonder about who I was before I went on a mission and why I went. There was a time when I would smooth over some ruffly parts in my backstory and sweep some dust under the carpets of history. Meditations on truth and honesty led me to change this and be more forthright about some things whenever the topic came up.

The part that I had the most hesitancy about discussing was that, prior to my mission, I was on the track to inactivity in the Church. The reasons for that are better-suited for another post. For my present purpose it is enough to be clear that, though I didn't know it at the time, I was slipping off a mountain.

One thing that I did know wasn't as sure about the Gospel as I should have been. Too many questions and not enough answers, to summarize it briefly, and after much searching without success I decided that the thing to do was to go on a mission. That, at least, should have answered the questions that I had.

To make a long story short, it did (a good thing, too, because they were a bigger concern than i was realizing at the time and, as mentioned before, i wasn't staying active indefinitely with those concerns in my mind)- and in under six months to boot!

What still boggles my mind when I think about it is the response of one member who heard my story, who promptly asked, "but you had a testimony before you left on your mission, right?" I didn't in this explanation, but when I was talking with her I had clearly stated that my intent on going on a mission was to gain one, so I was very confused to be asked if I had had, before going on my mission, something that I was going in order to obtain.

This does leave me in a curious position, however, which I realized after that exchange. I recognize very well the danger of not having testimony before leaving for your mission, and I don't believe that everyone lacking will get one if they go. In such a circumstance I must paraphrase the late and great Hunter S. Thompson: I can't very well advocate it with a good conscience, but I have to admit that it's worked with me.

Where I'd be today without my mission, I don't know for sure, but I do know that it wouldn't be good.

The other lesson of Bethlehem

Consider the wise men of the Nativity story: They were obviously men of some spiritual stature, though we know not exactly how great. They recognized the Star of Bethlehem and what it meant, and answered its call. But while they were witnesses to a miracle, they made a grave error and failed to distinguish between who should and should not be told. By relating their knowledge of the Star to Herod, they inadvertently caused the massacre at Bethlehem.

Scripturally, a "type" is not quite a symbol. It is a representation of something in particular, and a representation that naturally belongs to the same class as the thing to which it points. The setting and rising of the sun can be symbolic of the Resurrection, but the resurrection of Lazarus is a type of the Resurrection. The massacre at Bethlehem is a type that teaches us that that spiritual things should not be handed out lightly. President Boyd K. Packer taught that "strong, impressive spiritual experiences do not come to us very frequently. And when they do, they are generally for our own edification, instruction, or correction[...] I have come to believe also that it is not wise to continually talk of unusual spiritual experiences. They are to be guarded with care and shared only when the Spirit itself prompts you to use them to the blessing of others [emphasis added]."

We are counseled to not cast pearls before swine, for our sake and theirs both. As the massacre at Bethlehem or the planned executions at Zarahemla show, being careless about these things can lead to bad circumstances for us personally (even if nothing more results than mockery). What is often worse than what we personally suffer, however, is what may come down on those whom we have told, for "where there is no law given there is no punishment," but "wo unto him that has the law given, [...] and that transgresseth them." In other words, we are putting increased accountability on their shoulders, and if we are not careful we may make them accountable for things that they are not ready for. By being the party at fault for doing so, moreover, we are in a way made responsible for them and some of what is put on their shoulders is likewise put on ours.

Fiction: Four Snapshots of Eternity

"Yesterday's rose endures in its name." -Eco

One.

She thinks that she is going mad. She writes but without direction; her hand has a mind of its own. She writes memories. Her memories, but they are new to her as they form in black ink beneath her fingers and spread across each page with lightning speed.

Blink and you miss it!

Once upon a time I am walking through the doors of the Missionary Training Center for the first time. Once upon a time I am being transferred to West Valley City. Once upon a time I am eight years old, and I am being baptized, and I have never heard of a small town named Magna.

I speak in the present tense because these events are still very tangible to me. My memories, or my reconstructions of them, are not less tangible than the present moment but are differently tangible. There are times when I think back on them and almost feel whiplash from the recognition that these moments, real though they may be, are no longer my present place of habitation (but then there are times when this moment seems almost like a vivid hallucination, and the past no longer so much like a soap bubble universe).

Once upon a time I realize that I have only three months left on my mission, and I feel like it really is the end of my life. The Fifth of November hurtles toward me like a train, and I can't move away.

I don't have much time left, and that disturbs me. It reinforces the need to make every minute count, but even when I do so the strain is only barely lightened. On November 6th there will be something that I could do, but cannot, because I will be in a new life, and no matter how much I do now, there will still be something to do then.

Once upon a time I am dead, and the night is come, wherein no man can work.

Honesty over knowledge

Of what value am I, without my mind? Whether my value is great or small, it exists solely because of the things that I know and how I use them.

Or so was my thinking for most of my life until recently. I recognized that tying my value to my intelligence was not going to be good for me in the long run. There were too many opportunities to be "proven" unintelligent (I use quotation marks because what was necessary was not for my lack of intelligence to actually be proven but only for me to convinced that it was, which is rather different) for me to ever have something stable to stand on.

Worse, what was tied to my self-worth shaped my concerns over my reputation. Did I care whether someone thought that I was too concerned with money? No. I was thrifty, and if it looked differently to someone else then that was their issue. But I did care if I said something- or didn't say something- that led them to judge me as unintelligent. Which led me to behaviors that I didn't approve of, such as sometimes holding back from speaking because I was afraid of being wrong (or of them thinking that I was wrong and never being convinced otherwise).

I finally made a concerted effort to change when I noticed that it was also affecting my ability to change my views, admit defeat, etc. Curiously enough, while this shows to me that even then I placed a higher priority on having beliefs that corresponded with reality, it still took time before I was able to settle on something else to tie my self-worth to.

Thus far (and it's been a couple of months), basing it on honesty hasn't had any bad side effects. Even reputation-based concerns are more helpful than not, because it encourages me to change my views as swiftly as possible when presented with evidence of sufficient quality and quantity, and to speak my mind and volunteer answers readily when questions are asked. I may be wrong, I may look stupid, but no-one can doubt that, if I don't agree with you, it's genuinely because I don't see the evidence for your point of view, not because I'm too prideful to admit a mistake.

Fiction: The Restoration of the Nerf

A legend of our fathers:

In the days before God organized the West Mission, and divided it from the Mission from which it had been organized, there was but one Mission, that was the Utah Salt Lake City Mission. And there were many Mission Presidents that were called to it, and many elders that were called to it, and also many sisters.

Partnership with God

Follow-up to: Absent: One Lion

Brother Yudkowsky has discussed at length a number of rules for designing good utopian fiction (and, indeed, good fiction at all). One of the points that he made was that people need to be capable of being protagonists in their own life stories rather. If, if your own life, you have been reduced to the role of supporting cast because you can exert no appreciable influence on the outcome of events, well, then, something is wrong. To put it in Mormon terms, we are supposed to be agents that act out our wills, rather than objects to be acted upon.

To illustrate this idea he brought up several stories, among which was The Chronicles of Narnia. He felt that Aslan made the Pevensies superfluous and that, because Narnia would have been saved with or without them (indeed, with or without anyone but Aslan), they were made supporting cast and had suffered, so to speak, an "amputation of destiny."

While I do support his general idea, I don't agree that the Pevensies got nothing out of the deal. The key is in looking at the Chronicles as a bildungsroman (indeed, in looking at our own lives as each a bildungsroman). The conflicts are not important. What is important is how each child reacts to the conflicts that they encounter: Edmund, for example, turns traitor then repents himself, and seems to keep this episode in mind from then on and give second chances to others. Perhaps Susan's desire to grow up so quickly stemmed from those years in Narnia when she was no slip of a girl but a royal queen.

The point is that the story isn't what Aslan could or couldn't do without the Pevensies- or what God can or can't do without us. The entire history of the world is full of God working with men and women to accomplish His purposes, not so much because He cannot do it alone but because, by becoming co-creators and participants in the drama, we are afforded an opportunity for growth that we would otherwise not receive.

Absent: One Lion quite clearly states that Narnia was saved without the intervention of the Pevensies. Narnia did not need them. But the Pevensies needed Narnia, and we need God, to develop fully.

Intertextuality

If you look at older posts you will see that the number of hyperlinks in them is increasing as time goes on. Eventually there will be some posts that will have very little that is not hypertext. The first reason for doing so, as pertains to hyperlinks that lead to other posts of mine, is to make this blog like Wikipedia insofar as you go from one post to another and keep finding new posts to click on and read.

The other reason for doing this is to illustrate intertextuality, or "the interrelationship between texts [and] the way that similar or related texts influence, reflect, or differ from each other." As the stories that I have told thus far are meant to point forth certain ideas, so to is this blog also meant to illustrate the idea that all books are really one book, and everything (not just in literature, by the way) is connected. These blog posts do not exist independently of each other, nor did they spring from my head without deeper origin like Athena, but they are all part of a single blog, and are drawn from everything else that has so far come out of the world.

The Golden Rule and charity

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Matthew 7:12

More than any other law, I think that the Golden Rule is very relevant to emulating God's selfless love for ourselves and others. The glory of God is intelligence, and His supreme understanding leads him to have selfless love for every existing thing. Together these are His chief attributes, but just how often do we take for granted His love for us?

We are commanded to treat others as we would like to be treated; does this not include how we would like to be treated by God? As one prophet put it, "You should forgive and overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you?" We are all beggars, but if we squabble between each other for scraps how is it that we will be looked kindly upon by our Lord?

God exercised tyrannical dominion, if He exploited our flaws, if He removed Himself from us forevermore after impatiently counting out the four hundred and ninetieth time, how few of us would remain alive in the furnace of His wrath? And yet how quick are we to abuse our power, and how slow to forgive?

If we want others to love us- if we want, at least, for God to love us- then truly we should have love for others. God's love is not conditional upon it, but that is the only kind of love that we would want above all others, and we should act accordingly.

Fiction: Absent: One Lion

Elsewhere, a kingdom is still saved. Elsewhere, a war is waged and peace is won. A table is still broken, and four chairs filled. But for others, and by others.

Can I refute myself?

Follow-up to: The Pillar

In the post What will your mansion look like? I brought up the idea that we are continually changing so that, from one period of time to the next, we are not genuinely the same person.

The Pillar gives me the opportunity to contradict myself and support a different point of view that I find to be as defensible and, even to myself, preferable.

The idea, quite the opposite of the concept that we change so thoroughly as to lose ourselves, is that we don't change. Or, rather, we don't change, what is us does not change. Because what is good and just in us, what is virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, is a permanent jewel. It may be obscured for a time but even if it is lost we will find it replaced in time to come. Your mercy, however small; your love, however weak; your hope, however struggling: these and all other virtues shall never leave us throughout the eternal duration of our progression in Heaven. Wisdom will receive wisdom, light will cleave unto light, and every good thing that we hold will be added upon.

But what is corrupt in us will be scoured away as the eons pass. What is imperfect, or frail, or weak about us is temporary, and if your heavenly future belongs to you, and not to some power that descends from but nevertheless is not you, then it is more "you" than you are today. Now, you are a pillar of stone, but one day the sculpture that is within you will show forth, and it will be seen that all of the dust and rubble was only there to be carved away.

What does Mormonism mean to me?

When I sit down and turn the lights out, what does Mormonism mean to me? When I lay down to sleep and wait for morning, what does Mormonism mean to me? 

Other people say things in answer to questions like this. Most of the time, so do I. But this question is answered differently for me. I could bring up particular scriptures and give a commentary on them, or talk about family history work, or speak on how the Book of Mormon has affected my life. But I feel that no matter what I say there is someone else that has already said it, and said it better.

What Mormonism means to me is encapsulated in the lyrics of the hymn If You Could Hie to Kolob, written by William Wines Phelps, an early member of the LDS Church.

If you could hie to Kolob

In the twinkling of an eye,

And then continue onward

With that same speed to fly,

Do you think that you could ever,

Through all eternity,

Find out the generation

Where Gods began to be?

Or see the grand beginning,

Where space did not extend?

Or view the last creation,

Where Gods and matter end?

Methinks the Spirit whispers,

"No man has found 'pure space,'

Nor seen the outside curtains,

Where nothing has a place."

The works of God continue,

And worlds and lives abound;

Improvement and progression

Have one eternal round.

There is no end to matter;

There is no end to space;

There is no end to spirit;

There is no end to race.

There is no end to virtue;

There is no end to might;

There is no end to wisdom;

There is no end to light.

There is no end to union;

There is no end to youth;

There is no end to priesthood;

There is no end to truth.

There is no end to glory;

There is no end to love;

There is no end to being;

There is no death above.

There is no end to glory;

There is no end to love;

There is no end to being;

There is no death above.

This is what is in my bones when I hear and speak of Gethsemane, Calvary, and the Empty Tomb. This is what I try to see when my eyes are closed, what I try to hear when there is silence. This is what the Gospel means to me, and this is what I think when I think of the Christ's conquest of Death. 

The Twenty-dollar bill

Take a twenty-dollar bill. It is crisp and clean. It is worth exactly twenty dollars. Now send it out into the world. It is spent on food. It goes into the bank. It is withdrawn, and given to a child on her birthday. It is spent on books at a yard sale, then lost on the streets. It is found. It is spent on drugs. It is spent on favors. It is spent on clothes, and milk.

On and on it goes, and one day, by sheer luck, it comes to you again. And you recognize it for what it is, because of the mark that you had put upon it before you sent it out into the world. It is torn. It is stained. It is crumpled. It has sustained life, and it has enabled vice.

But for all that has been done to it, and all that it has done, its value has not diminished one whit. Despite everything, it is still worth exactly twenty dollars, just as when it was clean and crisp and fresh in your hands.

Fiction: The Pillar

The man shuddered, and returned his attention to the pillar in his room. There were small features evident in the otherwise faceless pillar: a slope here, a dip there. He ran a hand along the surface of the object frequently, more often than he raised his self-made chisel to it and chipped away.

Wanderers far from home

Follow-up to: The Emperor's Children

Whatever else may differ between us on account of our respective journeys in the world, there is something shared between all of us since before this world's foundations were laid. Since before the structure and path of this world was planned and organized, we were sons and daughters of Heavenly Parents, and future Kings and Queens of Heaven.

No matter what we have done, for good or ill, we are first and foremost children with divine and royal potential, and we can never erase our blessed heritage. Some of the emperor's children sold the ring given them, but this did nothing to change who their father was. It displayed a lack of respect for sacred things, and prevented them from being given further responsibilities and greater stewardship, but nothing that they could do was sufficient to disown them from their family.

Follow the leader!

In a recent devotional hosted by our mission president, President Swain brought up a favorite game of his childhood: follow the leader. He wanted to highlight a difference between how the leader in that game operates, and how Jesus Christ does.

In this game, the aim of the leader is to make it impossible for you to follow him. When you are incapable of doing as he has done you are eliminated from the game, and only when everyone has been eliminated does the leader win. As the followers, our goal is the same no matter who is our leader- to follow exactly- but unlike other leaders in this game Jesus' goal is not to eliminate us. No matter how often we fail, in fact, He won't eliminate us. The only ones who do that are ourselves, when we give up and refuse to try again. 

The Gospel: So What? Who cares?

Because the Gospel doesn't come prepackaged in shiny new wrapping paper made of magnets.

It comes packaged in whatever you package it with. It is delivered in the way that you deliver it. And if you do not take the time to do it justice but crudely stuff it into a brown paper bag, then you can hardly begrudge someone for mistaking it for liquor and asking you to move away from their curbside. 

The Gospel is the Good News. It is the best news, in fact. But we need to make people care about it, and before they can do that they need to know what it is. The biggest problem that we have today is not people who know what the Gospel is and reject it but who think that it is something that it is not, and reject the thing that they consider it to be. They want it, they need it, but they don't know it. 

There is a famine in the land, a spiritual famine, but when you hand a package to the starving you must mention that therein is bread if they are to take any interest in it. We teach by the Spirit and preach by the Spirit, and we- both parties- must receive by the Spirit. But if we do not make sure that the Spirit is there with us as we teach, then there is no presence of the Spirit for them to plug into, and they cannot have it testify to them that what they are hearing is true. 

Don't just throw the Gospel at people like a hand grenade. Don't shove it into their hands and run away. Tell them why it will make them happy, and why they would want to receive the Good News into their life. 

There comes a time in every conversation that the talking must end, and both parties must have a reason for continuing it. In the words of the Fed Net Announcer: "Would you like to know more?" But for your friend to answer, "Yes, I would," she actually must like to know. 

Your turn: What is something that you can do to help someone in your life understand the Gospel better and receive it? 

Fiction: The Emperor's Children

"Go to, then," said the emperor, "and live in the land. The day will come when I shall call you home again, and till then you will learn and prosper."

What will your mansion look like?

Follow-up to: And There Are Many Rooms

Orson Scott Card's Xenocide taught me that we are dying all the time. Who we were ten years ago is not who we will be ten years from now, and only a continuity of consciousness lets us believe that we are an unbroken stream of mono-identity. At heart we are the sum of our thoughts and experiences, and when these things have changed sufficiently between any two moments, in those moments are two different people. The image that I developed after some time was that of a man standing on a tower of corpses, each one a previous self.

And There Are Many Rooms is a new way of discussing the idea, which my trainer gave to me because its previous form- that of our recurring personality-death- caused a reflexive denial in most people that I discussed it with. Personally I had no issue with it, but then, I have a different view of these things than many other people.

Because the man's cottage stays the same, what is not illustrated in the story is that change is inevitable. Whether we like it or not, the house that we are living in is not the house that we will always live in. Our goal, then, must be to ensure that Tomorrow's House is superior to today's, rather than inferior to it.

Ice Cream Trucks

In my second proselyting area there were many ice cream trucks in a small area. It was not uncommon to look down one end of a long street to see an ice cream truck and then to look down the other end to see another operating at the same time. In my current area we do not have so many ice cream trucks, but we do have a more memorable one.

There are two ice cream trucks that I am aware of, to be exact. One is much like every other ice cream truck that I have come across. Imagine an ice cream truck in your mind, and it won't be far from this one. The other is run by a woman from India, and it is, I must say, a very sketchy ice cream truck. It is a regular van, actually. Pictures of ice cream are crudely pasted onto the side of the van, and the passenger seats have been removed to make room for a large cooler. Her approach is heralded by music, as all ice cream trucks are, but she plays Silent Night, Jingle Bells, and other songs.

I am pretty sure that she is playing a single Christmas CD over and over.

It is the music that she plays which strongly convinces me that this woman does not know very much about why ice cream trucks do what they do. She has decided to run her own business, and that is to be lauded, and for some peculiar reason she has decided to sell ice cream. Unfortunately, the extent of her research seems to have been looking at ice cream trucks already in operation and copying what they do without understanding the principles behind these actions.

Similarly, when we act without understanding, we can look just as ridiculous as this ice cream truck lady. Of more concern is that we can at times be ineffective, sometimes to the point of actually hindering our purpose. There may be someone who is concerned about the quality of the ice cream, because of the appearance of her truck, and so does not buy (I myself must say that the ice cream is just as good as anyone else's, however), just as we may not always get the result that we want when we do not know how it will get us that result.

It also makes it difficult to not sacrifice the spirit of the law when we do not know what the spirit, or principle, is. Without understanding the principle, we cannot adapt to changing circumstances.

We will still weep for Wile E. Coyote

On the Cartoon Network website there is a game where you play as Wile E. Coyote and chase the Roadrunner past many obstacles. A few years ago I came across it and wasted almost an entire night trying to catch the Roadrunner. And when I had won the game, I wanted to punch my computer: Instead of catching that blasted Roadrunner there was an animation of Wile E. Coyote failing yet again.

There are no words that exist to adequately describe how much I hate that game and, much more, that Roadrunner. 

Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner star in what is possibly the most depressing cartoon that I have ever watched. And I have seen Neon Genesis Evangelion. Wile E. Coyote always fails. It matters not how much he plans, or how much he prepares, or how brilliant his schemes are. He will fail. How adamant this fact is was made clear to me the first time that I saw him use a slingshot. It was meant to propel a rock at the Roadrunner but when released it remained as it was, taut and suspended. Wile E. Coyote stood in front of it to inspect the problem. Then it released. 

The very laws of physics work against Wile E. Coyote. But he can't do anything else but pursue the Roadrunner. 

To me, Wile E. Coyote is a potent metaphor for fallen man, and the Roadrunner that he pursues is "lasting happiness." He can't get it, no matter what he tries to do. As the slingshot incident proved to me, fallen man is physically incapable of catching his Roadrunner without outside assistance. As fallen humans we are like a man who swims against the flow of a river and wonders why he makes no progress and comes up against such opposition. 

We must rely on the grace of God to redeem us from death and provide a way for our natures to become higher-minded than they are. On our own we can do nothing for ourselves, any more than a blind can see for themselves or the deaf hear. 

In the meantime, I await the day when someone will intercede on Wile E. Coyote's behalf, and make possible his lasting happiness just as surely as the Atonement of Jesus Christ made possible ours. 

Fiction: And There Are Many Rooms

Two cousins lived beside each other, each in their own home. They had been inseparable friends, more brother and sister than cousins, from childhood (and, said those who knew them, perhaps from before even then). One of them, the woman, had, since a young age, been continually renovating the house in which she lived, expanding and demolishing, constructing and deconstructing, and for what purpose her friend never knew (nor was ever told, despite frequent queries). The other, a young man, was oft bewildered by this behavior, being quite content with the little cottage of his forefathers.

Our most sacred of "Sacred Times"

Follow-up to: Old Words for New

"And there was War in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels." Revelation 12:7 (KJV)

Joseph Smith taught that the War in Heaven was not the work of death but a conflict of words and ideas. It was an essentially missionary conflict, with each side trying to sway as many as possible from the opposition. He taught as well that the war continues today. It is for this reason that I label the War in Heaven as the most sacred of the Sacred Times presented by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There is a war of ideas being waged now, as there has been many times in the past, but the very first such war was that which was waged in Heaven itself.

We live today in a proselyting time, as it always is when God's Church is present. Today, as always, we fight "the war between truth and error, between agency and compulsion." The gardener may take part in the Creation as she organizes her small corner of the world and brings order out of chaos, but there is one theme that is predominant in our lives and persists no matter what else we are doing. Today, as always, our most important identity is that of a "salvation missionary."

A missionary is one that is on a mission. He preaches, evangelizes, or spreads news, but the nature of this news is not specified by his being a generic missionary. His mission may be anything, really. This is why we are not only missionaries but salvation missionaries, whose mission is to be the instruments of God in saving the children of men. Our reason for doing so is found in the question "If you came across a drowning man, would you ask if he wanted help before you dove into the water after him?"

I am currently serving as a full-time (salvation) missionary for the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints, but when I am released this will not change my identity as a salvation missionary, only how I approach the duty.

They, the Builders of the Nation

"In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time." Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries

Ultimately one can think of the Sacred as that which either has meaning in itself or serves to draw our minds back to such things. Eliade posited that religions center around an "eternal return" to the Sacred: rituals reenact the Sacred and even allow us to become participants in the great drama. We are not merely remembering Christ's sacrifice when we take Communion but are fellow-guests at the Last Supper, just as we are explicitly baptized to follow the example of Jesus Christ.

Another good example is that of the Mormon Pioneers. By taking the Exodus from Egypt as an example they were able to take strength in their afflictions- even from their afflictions. They were heading to their own Promised Land just as the children of Israel were, and just as surely were being lead by God. Indeed, even the Exodus fell into an archetypal flight from Babylon to Zion.

For the modern-day Church, the trials of the Pioneers have fallen into the Sacred. We are regularly called to remember them and see ourselves in their shoes- we even stage a Pioneer Trek every four years so that the youth can relive it. Just as the Pioneers found strength in the Exodus, so too can we take strength from remembering that we are all pioneers in some manner, and by putting ourselves in their place we can discover that when you follow in the footsteps of another, your way is made easier because of the rocks that have already been moved by those that went before you.

Well is it said of them, and well may it also be said of us as we identify ourselves with their mantle:

They, the builders of the nation,
Blazing trails along the way;
Stepping-stones for generations
Were their deeds of ev'ry day.
Building new and firm foundations,
Pushing on the wild frontier,
Forging onward, ever onward,
Blessed, honored Pioneer!

Ida R. Alldredge, They, the Builders of the Nation

I hope they call you on a mission

"And now, behold, I say unto you, that the thing which will be of most worth unto you will be to preach repentance unto this people, that you may bring souls unto me, that you may rest with them in the kingdom of my Father. Amen." D&C 15:6

And again, "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Matthew 10:39

There were several reasons that I had for going on a mission. The most prominent was that I wanted to kill the natural man in myself, or discard my demons and leave them behind for something brighter. I am a better person than I was twenty months ago, and the path that I am now on is not the path that I was on before I left.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said that every good thing that happened to him in his post-mission life can be found to have originated, in one way or another, from his mission experience. I have not even finished my mission and, simply in the choices that I will be making as opposed to the choices that I would have made in a different life, already I can attest to the truthfulness of this. What sort of woman I will marry, what I will do with my life, what college I will be attending and what degrees I will be working toward, are only a few of the things that have been affected by this. Even my writing has been affected.

Spiritual retreats are undertaken in order to draw closer to God and recenter oneself on Him. The most example most compelling to me is seen in the "formation" of Jesuits, who more than once withdraw from the world to one degree or another in order to refine themselves in a kind of short-term monasticism. Going on a mission is sort of like my regency stage or perhaps the Spiritual Exercises, to liken it unto Jesuit formation.

Am I now remade wholly pure? Am I without spot at this moment? Certainly not. But when the journey is over even the slightest of errors can have lead to a great divergence between where one wished to be and where one is, and my mission was a course-correction. Moreover, I know the path like I did not know it before. Where I once had only heard of the Mountain, and had some intellectual acceptance of its existence, I had, I now realize, little will to follow the trail laid out for me no matter the obstacles.

And this is something that I want for more than just myself. If you're not sure about serving a mission, I implore you to get down on your knees tonight and ask your Father in Heaven what His will is- and I guarantee you that, if there is love for mankind in your heart, He will call you on a mission.

Fiction: Old Words For New

Now behold, there was a young woman who had grown into the time of her duty, and had sat at the feet of her parents, which were just, and had taught her in the way that she should go. And the time came that she had grown into her duty, and was called to go into another world, as it were, or in other words a place where never she had walked before.

The Brand Name

Follow-up to: The Seller of Stars

"In the beginning was the brand name, and the brand name was with God, and the brand name was God." John 1:1 (PKD).

In Philip K. Dick's essay How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, he relates a tale about the translation of his book Ubik into the German language. The translator looked at the declaration "I am the word," in the context of the speaker making several statements to the effect that it was God, and concluded that what PKD was having the speaker say was "I am the brand name." PKD goes on to briefly speculate what The Gospel According to St. John would have looked like had the same man been responsible for translating that, too.

A silly anecdote but one that reminded me of the main theme that I present in The Seller of Stars: Satan's best trick is in convincing us to look no further than the Almighty Dollar and that there is nothing in this world that cannot be bought, and no man in it who will not sell his soul so long as the price is right.

These two sides of the coin are where he suckers us in. We want to believe that whatever we want is there for the taking, requiring only a fee for purchase. We also want to believe that everyone else is all-too-willing to sell their souls for a dollar, because it's easier to do it ourselves so long as we can say that we're no worse than the rest of the crowd.

The man in The Seller of Stars sold his soul for his fondest desire, whatever it may have been. He doesn't even need to be told that everyone else is doing it. He just needs the opportunity to make the purchase, and is willing to believe that his eyes- his spiritual sensitivity- is a commodity to be traded like everything else.

Edit 14-08-2013 It has been mentioned that some people have mistaken or may mistake my reference to PKD's essay as an endorsement of it as scripture, as inspired, or anything else along these lines. To reemphasize what I hope is clear to most already, I bring it up because it helped to cement in my mind the imagery of Satan wanting to convince us that, in effect, God is not God, but money is.

Tending to your "Tree of Life"

See also: Wisdom from the Tree of Life

As an image we can understand the Tree of Life in many ways- let us for now understand it as being symbolic of eternal life as John's Gospel defined it: to have a personal knowledge of God and Jesus Christ.

Alma teaches us that this tree of life springs up from a seed called Faith. It requires careful attention to grow properly but gives a bountiful harvest upon reaching maturity. We can then partake of its fruit, which holds more seeds.

In the allegory of the olive tree one of the concerns had by the Lord of the vineyard and His servants is that the branches will grow too numerous in comparison to the roots. What are the roots? The Atonement of Jesus Christ. Without this single thing there would be no value contained within any of the other doctrines or principles of the Gospel. The Resurrection, eternal marriage, work for the dead, and countless other things would not even be possible, much less worthy of our attention, without the Atonement.

The tree is a lovely thing, praiseworthy and of good report. All of it has value. But if the branches outweigh the roots, or our understanding of the most important principle is outweighed by "appendage doctrines," then one day it may be said of your tree, "the wild branches have overcome the roots thereof" and "it beginneth to perish." Sufficient attention must be paid to the roots in order for the tree to be properly nourished, or else it will wither and die.

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

"And behold, the watchman upon the tower would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off; and then ye could have made ready and kept the enemy from breaking down the hedge thereof, and saved my vineyard from the hands of the destroyer." Doctrine and Covenants 101:54 

One of my favorite scenes in the film The Return of the King is when the warning beacons of Gondor are lit. As the camera pans out and moves (if I recall correctly how it goes) and we see the beacons on the tops of the mountains being lit each in turn, I was in awe. Part of it was that I like mountains, snow, and fire, and putting them together in a scene is really nice, but also what was happening as the distress call was being made from Minas Tirith. So many miles being spanned so quickly, and all might have been lost without those fires. 

But what if those fires had been ignored by Rohan? It would not have mattered that they were lit, then. In the same way it does not matter if God guides us, whether through scriptures, living prophets, or personal revelation, if we do not listen to His guidance. 

"Behold, I sent you out to testify and warn the people, and it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor." D&C 88:81

We can stretch the idea a little bit more, however, in a way that we cannot with the typical "man in a watchtower" analogy that is used by many Latter-Day Saints to describe the role of living prophets and apostles. The prophets are in a position to receive revelation and counsel for the entire world, and so they are akin to a man in a high tower who can see what we cannot and warn us of dangers of which we may not be aware. However, not every person hears the watchman's cry- not that they fail to take it to heart, but that they literally never heard it. Nor is every invasion is one which the watchman is placed to see- an apostle cannot be in every neighborhood and family at once, and typically does not offer counsel for each local situation. 

Instead we find ourselves in the position of needing to light a warning fire ourselves when we see the prophet light his, and also of needing to light a warning fire should we be the first to see the problem, without waiting for someone else to do it. Let us not fall prey to the bystander effect when lives and souls are on the line. We must, all of us, be ever on the watch for danger both to ourselves and others. We're all in this together. 

Your turn: How can we be better beacon-wardens for each other? 

Fiction: The Seller of Stars

Beneath the hang of every rainbow there is the fairy market. Here there is every thing for sale, both pottage and signets, silver and blood, and for any price there is something to be had.

Symphony and Flood

Follow-up to: Song and Rain

"The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering?" Luke 13:15

"Don't let yourself get distracted by the small stuff; cut through to the meat of what must be done" is how I could summarize the idea put forth in Song and Rain.

The Pharisees were not wholly bad folk. Despite what they may have transformed into by the time of Jesus Christ, for most of their history at least they were deeply concerned with social justice and even in His day enjoyed mainstream support among the Jewish people. It was a Pharisee, Hillel, who famously stated the maxim, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary." The group arose out of the turmoil following the Exile, concluding that Israel had suffered so because they had neglected to properly follow the commandments of God Because of this they sought to raise the bar and fill the profane life entirely with the sacred: there was no room in a properly holy life for impure things.

Phariseeism anticipated the Church of Jesus Christ in these latter-days with this focus. Their intention was to make Israel live up to its calling as a "kingdom of priests" by laying down the temple ritual onto everyday life. The name itself derived from the Hebrew word pārûsh, meaning "set apart." Over generations they apparently degraded into straining over gnats while swallowing camels, however, and herein we see a warning sign provided us by history and the scriptures: When we forget the principle behind the law and follow the law blindly for its own sake we make are left holding a corpse. The principle is the spirit and the law is the body, and though the spirit is ennobled by a tabernacle of flesh it is nevertheless the superior partner. Without the body there is still intelligence in the spirit, but without the spirit there is only death in the body.