LDS History in Context of the Strauss-Howe Generational Cycle

In 1991, William Strauss and Neil Howe proposed a system of generational cycles, each cycle having four distinct stages that lasted twenty years give-or-take. Each generational stage took its nature by reacting to the generations that preceded it, most especially by reacting to faults in the generation that directly raised it (these reactions, of course, produce other faults that cause a similar reaction in the generation to follow). All countries go through this cycle, but Strauss and Howe were specifically interested in America's.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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? 

The Other Side of the Line

Follow-up to: Two Fishers

What is it that is most sacred? What is it that lies on the other side of the line which divides the sacred from the mundane, the divine from the profane?

Have we stepped into the realm of sacredness when we break bread in remembrance of the body of Jesus Christ and drink in remembrance of the blood that He shed? Or when one, sitting, has hands placed upon his head to confer the Melchizedek Priesthood upon him and ordain him to the office of an elder?

Most would argue in the affirmative. But what about a hike? A bowl of soup? A transient dream?

For Mircea Eliade the Sacred hearkened back to some First Example, but we can draw another concept for this same term: The Sacred is that which changes you.

When you have seen the Mountain, you have seen neither foothills nor an uninspiring pillar but Mount Kenya, where according to Kikuyu myth God lived when He ventured down from Heaven. You have glimpsed the footrest of His throne, or the dome of His revelations. You have seen His temple, which is like a reagent. It will work through you like yeast until you are transformed, and nothing can rid you of it.

Whether you welcome the change or despise it, an encounter with the Sacred does not leave you the same as you once were, and the only question is whether or not you encourage further change.

All of us must one day cease to ask whether it was Father Lehi that they encountered in the night or specter from the subconscious and experiment upon the word, so to speak, then ask what change, if any, it worked upon them. This is what the man in Two Fishers must wrestle with, and perhaps it is what he understands from his partner's words in the dream.

Fiction: Stories We Tell Each Other in the Dark

There was a couple and their children that I witnessed, sitting all together around a silent pit. The wind howled, and the trees shook, and the storm clouds gathered above them.