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.

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.

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.

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."