Study notes: Nov 23-29, 2014: "Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern" and other things

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

What I've been watching and reading this week: 

• Article, "The Seven Types of Short Story Opening, and How to Decide Which is Right for Your Story," by Charlie Jane Anders
• Article, "Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern," by Nicholas Wade
• Paper, "Buddhist Hard Determinism: No Self, No Free Will, No Responsibility," by Riccardo Repetti
• Article, "Vladimir Putin is Right Out of a Russian Novel," by Linton Weeks
• Letter, "Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Artists," by Who Do You Think?
• Article, "Neoreactionary Movement," on Rational Wiki
• Article, "Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neo-Reactionaries," by 
• Article, "Mormon Women, Traditionalists and Feminists: An Evolving Conversation," by Andrea Radke-Moss
• Article, "Mormon Studies in the Classroom: Mormon Women, Patriarchy and Equality," by Andrea Radke-Moss
• Article, "Pragmatism and Progress: An Overview of LDS Sister Missionary Service in the Twentieth Century," by Andrea Radke-Moss
• Article, "Ukraine, Not the Ukraine: The Significance of Three Little Letters," by Katy Steinmetz
• Article, "Ukraine or the Ukraine: Why do some country names have 'the'?," by Tom Geoghegan. 
• Article, "Life Tips You Need to Know," by Likes.com
• Article, "College Life: Tips for Survival," by Hassan Ishtiaq
• Article, "What's so bad about hating the Daleks, anyway?" by Charlie Jane Anders
• Article, "The Economics of Star Trek: The Proto-Post Scarcity Economy," by Rick Webb
• Article, "BYU prof fears Mormon scholars are giving in to secularism," by Peggy Fletcher Stack

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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? 

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.

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.

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? 

Prodigals fallen off the bandship

Two bishops are discussing the problem that they each had with a rat infestation in their respective meetinghouses. One said, "We called an exterminator to handle the problem, and since then we've never seen the rats." The other replied, "We baptized the rats, and we haven't seen them since."

I wish that the joke weren't reflective of a sobering truth. Sometimes, people stay. But too often- once would be too many, as Gordon B. Hinckley once said- they fall away. And sometimes- once would be too many- we don't pay them as much attention as we do non-member investigators.

On July 1st, 2012, I was transferred with many other missionaries from the Utah Salt Lake City Mission to help found the Utah Salt Lake City West Mission. Its purpose was to pilot several new programs for the missionary work, and the most important of these was one that gave a new focus on the reactivation of members who had fallen away from the Church in one form or another. While I am hardly about to speak a new doctrine in this post, it is nonetheless a point that some have not yet grasped.

In some of his discourses Brigham Young used the image of the Good Ship Zion, headed surely toward the Port of the Celestial Kingdom. Those that have not boarded the ship are in a sorry state, to be sure: The heavenly city of Jehovah-shammah lies across a great ocean, and they will never reach it on foot or even by another, less-sturdy ship. But at the very least they are still on the ground. 

In more dire circumstances are those who boarded the Good Ship Zion but then jumped overboard at some later time. The ocean across which Zion sails is treacherous, hardly something that a man could swim through under his own power. The ship could surely reach the Port with neither crew nor passengers, but where God does not need us we certainly are in need of Him. Those that have jumped from the ship and its protections are caught in the raging waters of the tempest, and they perish if they are not saved. 

The reason for this is that they have made sacred covenants. Whether they have "only" made the covenants of baptism or have gone all the way through the temple and been sealed to another person for time and all eternity, they have made certain promises to God and God cannot turn Himself away from the obligations that they have entered into. If it is a sin to do something, how much greater the condemnation for one that has expressly covenanted with God, as did Abraham, to not do that thing?

What this means is that the rescue of less-active members is actually of greater importance than baptizing new members. "So many of us look upon missionary work as simply tracting," said Gordon B. Hinckley. As well could he have said, "So many of us look upon missionary work as simply the responsibility of the full-time missionaries." This is changing, if slowly (it takes time to change an entire culture), but if we are less able to say what President Hinckley did we can just as easily say "So many of us look upon missionary work as simply baptizing new members."

It is all the same great redemptive work, because when all is said and the artificial boundaries of terminology are broken down, what "baptizing new members" and "reactivating old members" both mean is: Inviting others to come unto Christ. 

Giving comfort to those in need of comfort

"O Lord, my heart is exceedingly sorrowful; wilt thou comfort my soul in Christ. O Lord, wilt thou grant unto me that I may have strength, that I may suffer with patience these afflictions which shall come upon me, because of the iniquity of this people." Alma 31:31

In my very first area, serving in the Holladay North and Olympus Stakes, I had occasion to meet a young woman who had grown up in the LDS Church but had fallen away almost as soon as she had left the nest, going straightway from Rome to Vegas, so to speak. Some years later she chanced to get a glimpse of her lie from the outside and decided that she needed to put it back in order.

Meeting with the missionaries was one part of her journey back, and I was fortunate enough to work with her for almost the entire time that she received lessons from us. In that time we also received some insights from her. On one occasion she told us of when she had come to work and found that her schedule had been changed without her knowledge: she would be starting an hour later that day than she thought. Because of her tight budget she decided to stay rather than go home and come back later.

While waiting for her shift to start she sat outside on a bench. Shortly thereafter a homeless man sat down beside her and began to talk. There wasn't much direction to it: He would talk about his current problems, then his childhood, then again to something else. And she listened, and she responded with words of comfort, with whatever she could give, and that she responded at all was comfort to him, to know that someone was listening for the first time in so long.

And she realized that she was acting as a proxy for Christ at that moment, that she was His hands there. We are all prodigals and sojourners from our eternal Home, but it wasn't until she related that story and her realized that I grasped that image in my mind and realized, myself, an aspect of His mission and how to follow Him in this aspect. Sometimes, to lift a burden, you just need to listen.

Your turn: When have you had opportunity to help someone with something little and only later realized how much they needed it?