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.