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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love is a celestial motivator

"Therefore, if you do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth) and is trodden under foot of man." Alma 34:29

On an online community called Less Wrong, where folks try to improve the way that they think in order to be, well, less wrong, a returned missionary named Calcsam discussed his idea for the "governance structure" of a rationalist community whose members would, on a regular basis and in person rather than over the internet, support each other in all spheres. The entire thing was explicitly modeled after the LDS Church, right down to the manuals.

Less Wrong is a predominantly atheist community, notwithstanding the presence of such members as Calcsam, and one poster responded with something to the effect of "Sure, Mormons would sacrifice all that time and money to this kind of thing because of the perceived rewards and punishments, but atheists never would." I don't think that this is quite true, to begin with. A man named Eliezer Yudkowsky is the most prominent member of the community and himself an atheist. He is also someone that cares an awful lot about everybody, which fact hit me most strongly with a single sentence that Brother Yudkowsky used at the end of one of his blog posts: "I want you to live."

But this is merely the clearest expression of a love for others that I detect in Brother Yudkowsky across the board. He does not want any person to die or suffer, and he is willing to put in significant work to this end. You could argue that it is the purpose of his life's work, in fact. And that love, the potential to have which is part of our divine birthright, is why an atheist could do it. Fear shouldn't be a part of it, nor greed.

But this brings us to, well, us (that is, the LDS). Why do we do these things? I can't say for everyone, only myself, but even if I could there would be little point to doing so. What I want to do is ask. You see, there's no point to doing any of it if you don't do it out of love, and as Latter-day Saints we need to hold ourselves to as high of a standard as anyone else. When the two great commandments are centered on love, how can we think to get into the Celestial Kingdom of God by living for that purpose? That is to say, Jesus Christ lived not for the glory that we give Him but for others, and had He lived for the glory He would not be worthy of it. Similarly, our own motives must be not for reward but out of love, and so I ask you to look inside yourself and determine where you fall, and if necessary get onto the Lord's side of the line.

Not who you think it is

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." Isaiah 53:3

When I think of The Lord of the Rings and notice a Christ figure, who do I imagine?

Not Gandalf, who can come to mind so easily because of his fall at Moria and his transition from Gandalf the Gray to Gandalf the White.

Not Frodo, who sacrifices so much in order to dispose of the One Ring, which is Sin in this view.

The One Ring is sin, yes, but of the many characters who so imperfectly represent Christ there is another that comes more prominently to mind: Gollum.

Certainly "there is no beauty that we should desire him," but it goes a little past that. When it comes down to it, Frodo cannot do the deed. He stands at the edge of the Crack of Doom, having traveled so far to rid himself (and the world) of sin, but at the last he cannot do it. There are sins of ours that we are disgusted by, but there are yet others that are, ah, precious to us. Pet sins, so to say. When I am angry, for example, it is not rare for me to like that feeling, to have to step outside of myself and give a reminder that yes, it may feel good to be angry at someone, but it still isn't right.

We don't have to worry much about sins that we don't like. The ones that we're warned of all of the time are the sins that we enjoy, and because we enjoy them it is so hard for us to get rid of them. And sometimes even if we hate that particular sin it is still difficult to be rid of it. I am sure that many recovering addicts will agree with me on this. Ultimately we cannot get rid of everything on our own.

Luckily for us, and for Middle-Earth, Gollum-Jesus is available. Yes, it is painful for Frodo-Everyman when his finger is bitten off, but is this pain not infinitely less than the alternative that would have come? Frodo has lost the Ring through the action of his intercessor, that painful benefactor that led him to this place to start with, and he can return to his home at last.

As a final note, Frodo could not have stood at Mount Doom without traveling through Mordor (with eagles or without them, still would have had to cross the territory). Without the Atonement of Christ we cannot be rid of sin, but even with it we cannot only say "Jesus is awesome" and then sit on the couch. As C. S. Lewis says we cannot call ourselves Christians if we fail to take "the slightest slightest notice of what he [Jesus] says," and what He says is "Come, follow me" and "Come unto me." If He has traveled through Mordor and stands at Mount Doom, then, we cannot stand at the Shire and think ourselves about to dispose of the One Ring forever.