2/7/13
I came to conference this time hoping for real answers to niggly questions about how to protect my children, how to arm them in the face of trials they were weathering individually and the seeming assaults our home was facing. Elder Quentin L. Cook’s talk Can Ye Feel So Now and Elder L. Tom Perry’s talk Becoming Goodly Parents led me to remember concrete things I can retool in our lives to better lead us to the protection I sought; the defenses we need.
Elder Cook quoted Peggy Noonan, saying “everyone knows the culture is poisonous and nobody expects that to change.” He suggests that feelings of spiritual drought can be the result of unwise choices, of casual covenant observance, of giving our best selves to lesser causes or allowing our allegiance to be swayed by intense political views or troubling internet material.
I imagined myself finding the gas mask necessary to live in a poisonous culture, to find the necessary antidote for the poisons around us, once ingested. Ultimately, the antidote for exposure to this poisonous culture is the same as the protection against it: to create and maintain a gospel culture of our own within our homes, to make our homes “the places of refuge where kindness, forgiveness, truth and righteousness prevail.”
I’m a sucker for buzz words. I am always looking for something quick I can say to jog my own memory and the memory of my children back to the task at hand. Maybe rallying cry sounds better than buzz words. After Elder Cook’s talk and our subsequent FHE on it, I found myself asking myself and my children in the face of altercation: “Is this kind? Are you forgiving? Are you being true? Are we being righteous?”
There’s a lot of vigilance required in parenthood. Elder Cook reminds us that we must “have the courage to filter or monitor Internet access, television, movies and music. . . .the courage to say no, to defend truth, and bear powerful testimony.” Sometimes I hear about all this courage needed and I need a nap. Vigilance and courage really are exhausting for the non-confrontational introvert that I naturally am. Perhaps that’s why I took such great comfort in Isaiah’s promise that Elder Cook quoted:
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Elder Perry’s talk dovetailed perfectly with Elder Cook’s in giving me tools for a better home. First, he defined the gospel culture as coming from the “plan of salvation, the commandments of God and the teachings of living prophets.” The “way we raise our families and live our individual lives” is how we put our unique spin on the universal gospel culture.
I want a strong family culture in my home. That gas mask is what I imagine myself building for each of my children. It is important to me to tie choices to consequences and behaviors to covenants. One day, not too long ago, I thrilled to hear the chastisement of my younger son to his pesky older brother “you should not be bothering me—you have been baptized!” But covenants made, while essential steps in the journey to safety are not enough. Elder Cook reminds us of how many things can interfere with our safety and one of them is casual covenant observance.
Elder Perry outlines five things parents can do to create stronger family cultures:
Pray in earnest
Hold family prayer, scripture study, FHE, eat together as often as possible
Avail ourselves of the Church’s support network—teachers, leaders, presidencies
Share testimonies often
Organize the workings of the family under simple rules, expectations, traditions and rituals and family economics
None of these items is breaking any new ground. They are the very definition of the Sunday School answer. But the basics are what build strength. I find that having my attention drawn to them repeatedly helps me to note which areas have become weak or which require attention to bring their use to full power in my life.
The admonition to eat together as often as possible struck a nerve with me. Scheduling and food issues have long made dinner in my home much less than a source of power. But listening to Elder Perry’s talk, I thought why not breakfast? So, we’re trying breakfast together with some initial success.
Elder Perry’s direction to avail ourselves of the Church’s support network got me thinking about the many ways in which we can support each other in our ward families. Years ago, as a recent college graduate, I attended my parents’ ward after a long absence. I looked around the chapel at my former YW leaders, my Sunday School teachers, my basketball coaches. I felt overwhelmed with love for the lessons they taught me, reaffirming what I had learned in my faithful home. I felt grateful for the safe landing site during the days of typical teen friction. They were as integral a part in my gospel instruction as were my parents and in that moment, I could see myself as the product of dozens of faithful foot soldiers and I marveled in the rich blessings of a good ward.
I see the same thing now in the ward where my children are growing. I am deeply grateful, for example, for the Bros: my nine year old son’s primary teachers last year who intricately tied each of their lessons to baptismal covenants, to preparation for ordination to the Aaronic Priesthood (they taught a large class of boys) and they were cool, so cool in their faithfulness, that if the Bros said it, my often troublesome son would do it without question. In many other ways we have been blessed by the faithful observance of our ward members and I am reminded by Elder Perry of the beautiful synergy the Lord envisions within His church organization.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Exact Obedience in an Imprecise World
1/16/13
One Sunday evening in November, I found myself in a little chapel in Talence, France, waiting for Elders Andersen of the Twelve and Kearon of the Seventy to speak to a group of missionaries. I am not currently a missionary but was in attendance with my husband to celebrate twenty years of the first stake in Bordeaux, organized on the last day of his mission there. My husband introduced me to one of the “goldens” — the large group of young adults who had been baptized while he was there in the Bordeaux mission. One of my husband’s missionary friends mused that he didn’t know why there were so many, these “goldens,” and why they found them, but the lovely woman knew. She said, “You were obedient. Obedience brings power. It brought you to us.”
Later in the meeting, Elder Andersen told a story of a former elder, not in attendance, who wanted to be perfectly obedient. One evening, even though they had no more appointments for the night and even though it was pouring rain so meeting street contacts was unlikely, it wasn’t yet 9:30, so he wouldn’t go inside the apartment. His companion stood inside the doorway, begging him to come inside, but he stood out in the rain and (not so) miraculously, a man walked up to him. The elder asked what he knew about Jesus Christ, and the man’s heart was pricked: he knew this elder knew something he needed to know. He was taught and accepted the path of gospel discipleship, because an elder wouldn’t go in out of the rain until it was time.
My mission president (in Brazil) often spoke of obedience. He counseled us to seek out the predicate laws for the blessings we needed. He implored us to be exactly obedient, to seek that power. Even though we served in Brazil, where the church is being accepted readily and seemingly easily, we served in the heart of historical Brazil, where the Catholic church is strongest (at one point I served in a small town with two different convents and a monastery), where people seemed most inclined to cling to tradition, even if it brought them no peace, no light. President Smith taught us that we would find power in obedience, the power to teach, the power to find those who were ready for change, for light.
Exact obedience is a funny thing. The world would have us believe that obedience is mindless, is a sign of cult worship, is something no thinking person would engage in without firm rewards in view. But we know different. We know that “when we obtain any blessing from God it is by obedience to that law upon which it was predicated.”
Frequently, we are reminded of obedience. Bruce R. McConkie said:
bruce mcconkieObedience is the first law of heaven. All progression, all perfection, all salvation, all godliness, all that is right and just and true, all good things come to those who live the laws of Him who is Eternal. There is nothing in all eternity more important than to keep the commandments of God (The Promised Messiah, 126).
But world wars, nameless conflicts, and unfathomable atrocities have scarred the world’s history with nightmares of fascism and terrorism brought to power in part by mindless obedience. Exact obedience is not the same thing as blind obedience. Missionary obedience is a different and far less nuanced thing than obedience as a regular workday citizen and member in God’s kingdom.
We are charged to be thinking and educated participants in the Lord’s work, but still to support our leaders. We are to counsel together in the councils of the church and in our families, but to obey the counsel of bishops and stake presidents and leaders. How do we learn and practice intelligent obedience, perhaps even dissenting obedience? How do we express frustrations to the bishop, but still be willing to serve and do what he asks? How do we teach our children to be obedient, to sustain and support and to think for themselves?
To a certain extent, I think the distinction is one of vocabulary: We obey the Lord; we follow the counsel of the bishop. Some leaders don’t appreciate the distinction. Some even have a very my way or the highway approach. Often we won’t agree with the leadership style of a leader. How do we sustain him/her nonetheless?
In the law there is a concept called black letter law: the express written terms of a statute. Everything else is how law enforcement and the courts interpret the law. In the Church, I see the scriptures and the General Handbook of Instructions to be black letter. The words of all our leaders fall somewhere closer or farther away from that black letter.
I once had delusions of becoming a professional seminary teacher, so I took the teacher prep classes offered to that end. Our instructor offered the notion that words from our leaders may be placed on a continuum of weight, giving the most weight to what the prophet says (obviously with highest weight to the current prophet among the words of all the prophets) and the least doctrinal weight to statements by local leaders, seminary and institute teachers, EFY speakers, or charismatic and inspirational writers. There is worth in much of it, but not necessarily weight.
In my mind, I wonder if there isn’t some way to combine the two concepts of black letter law and authoritative weight based on ecclesiastical position (an apostle trumps a seventy; any General Authority trumps John Bytheway). We offer our souls on the altar of complete and exact obedience to God as fulfillment of our covenants, seeking understanding for those concepts and commandments that chafe or that defy our understanding. We follow all the black letter commandments first, seeking to understand even as we obey. We counsel with our local leaders, seeking both to understand and inform in those matters that we disagree or fail to understand all while sustaining and supporting even in our disagreement. And counsel from other leaders falls somewhere in the middle.
I seek the power that exact obedience brings. I have felt it. Just recounting experiences where obedience has brought blessings brings the Spirit to a discussion. But non-missionary life is not replete with black letter law in the way that missionary life is. Exact obedience is harder when it is less clear what is expected. Sustaining leaders often means counseling together with them and there isn’t the same feeling of rectitude and power in submission, in dissenting obedience as in the clear black letter lines of missionary obedience. But obedience is still the first law of heaven.
One Sunday evening in November, I found myself in a little chapel in Talence, France, waiting for Elders Andersen of the Twelve and Kearon of the Seventy to speak to a group of missionaries. I am not currently a missionary but was in attendance with my husband to celebrate twenty years of the first stake in Bordeaux, organized on the last day of his mission there. My husband introduced me to one of the “goldens” — the large group of young adults who had been baptized while he was there in the Bordeaux mission. One of my husband’s missionary friends mused that he didn’t know why there were so many, these “goldens,” and why they found them, but the lovely woman knew. She said, “You were obedient. Obedience brings power. It brought you to us.”
Later in the meeting, Elder Andersen told a story of a former elder, not in attendance, who wanted to be perfectly obedient. One evening, even though they had no more appointments for the night and even though it was pouring rain so meeting street contacts was unlikely, it wasn’t yet 9:30, so he wouldn’t go inside the apartment. His companion stood inside the doorway, begging him to come inside, but he stood out in the rain and (not so) miraculously, a man walked up to him. The elder asked what he knew about Jesus Christ, and the man’s heart was pricked: he knew this elder knew something he needed to know. He was taught and accepted the path of gospel discipleship, because an elder wouldn’t go in out of the rain until it was time.
My mission president (in Brazil) often spoke of obedience. He counseled us to seek out the predicate laws for the blessings we needed. He implored us to be exactly obedient, to seek that power. Even though we served in Brazil, where the church is being accepted readily and seemingly easily, we served in the heart of historical Brazil, where the Catholic church is strongest (at one point I served in a small town with two different convents and a monastery), where people seemed most inclined to cling to tradition, even if it brought them no peace, no light. President Smith taught us that we would find power in obedience, the power to teach, the power to find those who were ready for change, for light.
Exact obedience is a funny thing. The world would have us believe that obedience is mindless, is a sign of cult worship, is something no thinking person would engage in without firm rewards in view. But we know different. We know that “when we obtain any blessing from God it is by obedience to that law upon which it was predicated.”
Frequently, we are reminded of obedience. Bruce R. McConkie said:
bruce mcconkieObedience is the first law of heaven. All progression, all perfection, all salvation, all godliness, all that is right and just and true, all good things come to those who live the laws of Him who is Eternal. There is nothing in all eternity more important than to keep the commandments of God (The Promised Messiah, 126).
But world wars, nameless conflicts, and unfathomable atrocities have scarred the world’s history with nightmares of fascism and terrorism brought to power in part by mindless obedience. Exact obedience is not the same thing as blind obedience. Missionary obedience is a different and far less nuanced thing than obedience as a regular workday citizen and member in God’s kingdom.
We are charged to be thinking and educated participants in the Lord’s work, but still to support our leaders. We are to counsel together in the councils of the church and in our families, but to obey the counsel of bishops and stake presidents and leaders. How do we learn and practice intelligent obedience, perhaps even dissenting obedience? How do we express frustrations to the bishop, but still be willing to serve and do what he asks? How do we teach our children to be obedient, to sustain and support and to think for themselves?
To a certain extent, I think the distinction is one of vocabulary: We obey the Lord; we follow the counsel of the bishop. Some leaders don’t appreciate the distinction. Some even have a very my way or the highway approach. Often we won’t agree with the leadership style of a leader. How do we sustain him/her nonetheless?
In the law there is a concept called black letter law: the express written terms of a statute. Everything else is how law enforcement and the courts interpret the law. In the Church, I see the scriptures and the General Handbook of Instructions to be black letter. The words of all our leaders fall somewhere closer or farther away from that black letter.
I once had delusions of becoming a professional seminary teacher, so I took the teacher prep classes offered to that end. Our instructor offered the notion that words from our leaders may be placed on a continuum of weight, giving the most weight to what the prophet says (obviously with highest weight to the current prophet among the words of all the prophets) and the least doctrinal weight to statements by local leaders, seminary and institute teachers, EFY speakers, or charismatic and inspirational writers. There is worth in much of it, but not necessarily weight.
In my mind, I wonder if there isn’t some way to combine the two concepts of black letter law and authoritative weight based on ecclesiastical position (an apostle trumps a seventy; any General Authority trumps John Bytheway). We offer our souls on the altar of complete and exact obedience to God as fulfillment of our covenants, seeking understanding for those concepts and commandments that chafe or that defy our understanding. We follow all the black letter commandments first, seeking to understand even as we obey. We counsel with our local leaders, seeking both to understand and inform in those matters that we disagree or fail to understand all while sustaining and supporting even in our disagreement. And counsel from other leaders falls somewhere in the middle.
I seek the power that exact obedience brings. I have felt it. Just recounting experiences where obedience has brought blessings brings the Spirit to a discussion. But non-missionary life is not replete with black letter law in the way that missionary life is. Exact obedience is harder when it is less clear what is expected. Sustaining leaders often means counseling together with them and there isn’t the same feeling of rectitude and power in submission, in dissenting obedience as in the clear black letter lines of missionary obedience. But obedience is still the first law of heaven.
The Gift of Tongues
12/12/12
I taught the gospel in very small towns in Brazil almost twenty years ago. There was no internet, no lds.org. There wasn’t even a satellite dish at the stake center (if there was a stake center at all), not even the closed-circuit radio broadcast of my youth in the eastern US. Members waited patiently for the Liahona to read the words of the prophets in general conference. But for solemn assemblies, the church sent a video tape of the solemn assembly session so that the members could participate in sustaining a prophet of God.
My first conference was a few months after my arrival in Brazil. My Portuguese was finally gaining ground and the homesickness was finally beginning to abate. We took the hour long bus ride with investigators and members to the nearest church building where a television sat atop the podium in front of a standing-room-only congregation to see the new prophet (President Hunter), to hear his counsel and to raise hands to sustain him.
I’d never watched a dubbed conference before and, standing in the back, I found myself quietly crying. Conference for me has always been an auditory feast. My childhood was filled with the scratchy whisper of President Kimball, the fiery bellow of Elder McConkie, and the distinctive Idaho warning voice of President Benson. My young adulthood had warmed to the soothing counsel of Elder Scott, the tender (often cracking) voice of President Eyring and the piercing and precisely crafted words of Elder Maxwell. I reveled in the opportunity to “listen to a prophet’s voice” and here I was in a place, among people I was beginning to love, who loved the Lord and His prophets and they would never hear the prophet’s voice. Not really. They could see him in these rare video taped meetings. They could raise their hands to sustain him, but the voice they heard belonged to someone else.
I spent my mission watching the love the Brazilian saints have for the Lord and His servants. I saw how dearly they loved President Faust because he never lost the Portuguese he learned as a young Brazilian missionary. They loved and accepted each word of the gospel translated for their consumption, but to have the words of their leaders directly in Portuguese was something they treasured close to their hearts.
Fast forward to the present. Our stake president spoke of his brother in law, who organizes interpretation for the church. He described the vast cubicles in the conference center where the words of the prophets are interpreted into many languages. And then he began to lay out the criteria for interpretation. Only native speakers with beautiful language skills and speaking voices would be enlisted to interpret conference. Only women would interpret for women, men for men. Ages of speakers would be matched with ages of interpreters. All this so that those listening to interpreted conference messages would have the closest approximation of what their prophets’ voices actually sound like. My heart remembered Brazil and solemn assemblies of almost two decades past.
We met a lot of Pentecostals in Brazil. They would always ask about the gift of tongues in our church. We would talk about the gift of tongues given to missionaries to speak in the languages where they serve. We would talk about the importance that messages be understood to be edifying. But sitting with the stake president, I saw that gifts of tongues are also small things, tender mercies like a woman interpreting for Sister Beck and an experienced man interpreting for President Monson.
I taught the gospel in very small towns in Brazil almost twenty years ago. There was no internet, no lds.org. There wasn’t even a satellite dish at the stake center (if there was a stake center at all), not even the closed-circuit radio broadcast of my youth in the eastern US. Members waited patiently for the Liahona to read the words of the prophets in general conference. But for solemn assemblies, the church sent a video tape of the solemn assembly session so that the members could participate in sustaining a prophet of God.
My first conference was a few months after my arrival in Brazil. My Portuguese was finally gaining ground and the homesickness was finally beginning to abate. We took the hour long bus ride with investigators and members to the nearest church building where a television sat atop the podium in front of a standing-room-only congregation to see the new prophet (President Hunter), to hear his counsel and to raise hands to sustain him.
I’d never watched a dubbed conference before and, standing in the back, I found myself quietly crying. Conference for me has always been an auditory feast. My childhood was filled with the scratchy whisper of President Kimball, the fiery bellow of Elder McConkie, and the distinctive Idaho warning voice of President Benson. My young adulthood had warmed to the soothing counsel of Elder Scott, the tender (often cracking) voice of President Eyring and the piercing and precisely crafted words of Elder Maxwell. I reveled in the opportunity to “listen to a prophet’s voice” and here I was in a place, among people I was beginning to love, who loved the Lord and His prophets and they would never hear the prophet’s voice. Not really. They could see him in these rare video taped meetings. They could raise their hands to sustain him, but the voice they heard belonged to someone else.
I spent my mission watching the love the Brazilian saints have for the Lord and His servants. I saw how dearly they loved President Faust because he never lost the Portuguese he learned as a young Brazilian missionary. They loved and accepted each word of the gospel translated for their consumption, but to have the words of their leaders directly in Portuguese was something they treasured close to their hearts.
Fast forward to the present. Our stake president spoke of his brother in law, who organizes interpretation for the church. He described the vast cubicles in the conference center where the words of the prophets are interpreted into many languages. And then he began to lay out the criteria for interpretation. Only native speakers with beautiful language skills and speaking voices would be enlisted to interpret conference. Only women would interpret for women, men for men. Ages of speakers would be matched with ages of interpreters. All this so that those listening to interpreted conference messages would have the closest approximation of what their prophets’ voices actually sound like. My heart remembered Brazil and solemn assemblies of almost two decades past.
We met a lot of Pentecostals in Brazil. They would always ask about the gift of tongues in our church. We would talk about the gift of tongues given to missionaries to speak in the languages where they serve. We would talk about the importance that messages be understood to be edifying. But sitting with the stake president, I saw that gifts of tongues are also small things, tender mercies like a woman interpreting for Sister Beck and an experienced man interpreting for President Monson.
Connection to the Divine
9/30/12
I helm a large ship. In the deep waters in which I sail, it is essential that I have the knowledge and skills to return me Home again. Every spiritual experience I have provides knowledge of the heavens: the points by which I guide my ship Home.
Attending church, feasting upon the scriptures, praying, fasting, and serving in the Kingdom are all things which serve as sextants, helping me to measure my distance from Home and the direction in which I must travel to return. Covenants and ordinances are my rudder, providing me power to steer my ship more steadily in the keeping of these serious and sober promises and in the making of future ones.
I help my children steer their ships as I teach them of heavenly bodies, crafting their own rudders and learning the use of their own sextants, linking their spirits to God and to us as a family. When I keep this vision in place, my efforts seem more substantial, more successful, and less Sisyphean, less futile. I want my ship to be strong, connecting me to the divine, to heaven, to Home.
Obvious things disturb my vision and weaken my connection to Home: sin, anger, covenant breaking, even becoming casual in my worship. But there are stealthy sandbars as well. Entropy is a big one for me. When there is chaos, when things in my daily life become too much like an absurdist play, I go further and further adrift, seemingly unaware of the directional damage done in merely navigating the chaos instead of wiser helmsmanship.
Wikipedia defines the nautical version of being adrift as “loose from moorings”, “a vessel [that] goes where the wind and current take her.” Simply put, I lose sight of the goal. Susan C. Jones from the YW General Board gave a talk at the 2009 BYU Women’s Conference about helms. She talks about D&C 123:16, where Joseph Smith counsels that “a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves.” She suggests that daily times of stillness and feasting upon the scriptures are two ‘very small helms’ to more fully guide our ships through difficult patches. I know that daily times of stillness and meaningful, feasting scripture study give me great spiritual guidance—they provide ongoing connections to the divine that I need and seek, as surely as the stars guide sailors.
The very structure of God’s church has always provided for building connections to the divine: God wants us connected to Him.
In Old Testament times, they had sin, burnt, and peace offerings — the Law of Moses was the divine connection through which the Israelites partook of the Atonement which was to come.
With the completion of the Savior’s part of the Atonement, the Law of Moses was fulfilled. Our latter-day connection to the divine — our participation in the Atonement — is by exercising faith, hope and charity. We follow the first principles and ordinances of the gospel: faith, repentance, baptism, and receipt of the Holy Ghost. We endure to the end: obedience, sacrifice, gospel living, purity, and consecration. We prepare for and make covenants in the temple and we keep those covenants to eventually enter full fellowship with God.
A wise sailor uses all the tools at her disposal, never throwing her sextant overboard for bossiness, never angry at the strength and the weight of the rudder. She sees their role in guiding her journey and eventual return to port, to Home. Sometimes I don’t think I am all that wise a sailor. I don’t always see things in their proper light. I don’t always teach my children commandments as learning the heavens and finding passage Home. Sometimes I just teach rules. Rules often feel cumbersome; rules do chafe. When, however, I better see the power and depth of the seas through which we must travel, I cast about better for a good map, for well-calibrated sextants, for steady rudders. I fall back on past divine connections made, experience with the heavens, to guide me in making the next connections.
My tendency is to stay close to the harbor. I always want easy access to a “you are here” map. I suppose I do not have an explorer’s heart. But God knows that little growth comes in a voyageless life. He nudges me forth from the harbor, forcing me to realize that I know enough of the heavens (and can learn more) to make it Home, that I have crafted a steady rudder and it is true. He teaches me that I will find necessary treasures only in sailing away.
For others the reverse is true–the harbor is constraining; open water and its adventure call out over the small sounds of the port. My teenagers have adventurers’ hearts. For them, God teaches that rudders must be crafted and tended, celestial bodies must be studied and sextants calibrated. The adventurer must learn to trust that a strong and steady helm affords safety when open water turns treacherous. I hope, with my help in teaching of the heavens, that my adventurers will ultimately carry their treasures willingly and happily Home, guided and connected by their own connections to the divine.
Guiding my ship in the deep waters of life without divine connections, without small helms would be treacherous at best. Seeing each act of service, of stewardship, of covenant making and keeping, as a connection to God, to other deep water ships, helps me to see these acts, these choices as safety precautions, as safe ports in an ever raging storm.
I helm a large ship. In the deep waters in which I sail, it is essential that I have the knowledge and skills to return me Home again. Every spiritual experience I have provides knowledge of the heavens: the points by which I guide my ship Home.
Attending church, feasting upon the scriptures, praying, fasting, and serving in the Kingdom are all things which serve as sextants, helping me to measure my distance from Home and the direction in which I must travel to return. Covenants and ordinances are my rudder, providing me power to steer my ship more steadily in the keeping of these serious and sober promises and in the making of future ones.
I help my children steer their ships as I teach them of heavenly bodies, crafting their own rudders and learning the use of their own sextants, linking their spirits to God and to us as a family. When I keep this vision in place, my efforts seem more substantial, more successful, and less Sisyphean, less futile. I want my ship to be strong, connecting me to the divine, to heaven, to Home.
Obvious things disturb my vision and weaken my connection to Home: sin, anger, covenant breaking, even becoming casual in my worship. But there are stealthy sandbars as well. Entropy is a big one for me. When there is chaos, when things in my daily life become too much like an absurdist play, I go further and further adrift, seemingly unaware of the directional damage done in merely navigating the chaos instead of wiser helmsmanship.
Wikipedia defines the nautical version of being adrift as “loose from moorings”, “a vessel [that] goes where the wind and current take her.” Simply put, I lose sight of the goal. Susan C. Jones from the YW General Board gave a talk at the 2009 BYU Women’s Conference about helms. She talks about D&C 123:16, where Joseph Smith counsels that “a very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves.” She suggests that daily times of stillness and feasting upon the scriptures are two ‘very small helms’ to more fully guide our ships through difficult patches. I know that daily times of stillness and meaningful, feasting scripture study give me great spiritual guidance—they provide ongoing connections to the divine that I need and seek, as surely as the stars guide sailors.
The very structure of God’s church has always provided for building connections to the divine: God wants us connected to Him.
In Old Testament times, they had sin, burnt, and peace offerings — the Law of Moses was the divine connection through which the Israelites partook of the Atonement which was to come.
With the completion of the Savior’s part of the Atonement, the Law of Moses was fulfilled. Our latter-day connection to the divine — our participation in the Atonement — is by exercising faith, hope and charity. We follow the first principles and ordinances of the gospel: faith, repentance, baptism, and receipt of the Holy Ghost. We endure to the end: obedience, sacrifice, gospel living, purity, and consecration. We prepare for and make covenants in the temple and we keep those covenants to eventually enter full fellowship with God.
A wise sailor uses all the tools at her disposal, never throwing her sextant overboard for bossiness, never angry at the strength and the weight of the rudder. She sees their role in guiding her journey and eventual return to port, to Home. Sometimes I don’t think I am all that wise a sailor. I don’t always see things in their proper light. I don’t always teach my children commandments as learning the heavens and finding passage Home. Sometimes I just teach rules. Rules often feel cumbersome; rules do chafe. When, however, I better see the power and depth of the seas through which we must travel, I cast about better for a good map, for well-calibrated sextants, for steady rudders. I fall back on past divine connections made, experience with the heavens, to guide me in making the next connections.
My tendency is to stay close to the harbor. I always want easy access to a “you are here” map. I suppose I do not have an explorer’s heart. But God knows that little growth comes in a voyageless life. He nudges me forth from the harbor, forcing me to realize that I know enough of the heavens (and can learn more) to make it Home, that I have crafted a steady rudder and it is true. He teaches me that I will find necessary treasures only in sailing away.
For others the reverse is true–the harbor is constraining; open water and its adventure call out over the small sounds of the port. My teenagers have adventurers’ hearts. For them, God teaches that rudders must be crafted and tended, celestial bodies must be studied and sextants calibrated. The adventurer must learn to trust that a strong and steady helm affords safety when open water turns treacherous. I hope, with my help in teaching of the heavens, that my adventurers will ultimately carry their treasures willingly and happily Home, guided and connected by their own connections to the divine.
Guiding my ship in the deep waters of life without divine connections, without small helms would be treacherous at best. Seeing each act of service, of stewardship, of covenant making and keeping, as a connection to God, to other deep water ships, helps me to see these acts, these choices as safety precautions, as safe ports in an ever raging storm.
Mites
9/20/12
Our ward is noisy. We are a young ward, with a big and growing Primary and at least 50 babies who will not even be old enough for nursery this year. We also have several children sprinkled along the autism spectrum in our ward. I teach the 6-year-olds. Our class was waiting outside the restroom between sharing time and class time on Sunday when Andy came down the hall, fully melted, looking for his mom. Andy is one of our less-verbal Primary friends on the spectrum. He loves Primary and is preparing to be baptized in a few months.
Church is hard. Noise. Random, jarring motion. Too many people. Disorder. More noise. Church is just hard and sometimes things are just . . . wrong from the get-go. Things were obviously wrong for Andy this morning as he barreled past my class in full rage. My class was visibly concerned with this display–we all were–and then I noticed little Zoe to my side quietly circling her fingers around her ears in the universal sign for crazy. “No,” I said forcefully, (perhaps too forcefully), “Andy is NOT crazy and that is not okay. We will talk about this in class.”
Once we moved to our classroom, we had a class discussion about what autism is: that it is not your brain going crazy, that it is not a disease and any other analogy I could pull out of my head to explain a non-neurotypical brain to a class filled with 6- and 7-year-old brains. I tried to focus on how much Andy loves primary, that he is preparing for his baptism, just like they are, that his brain sees and hears things differently, that our other friends with different brains love primary and are doing the best they can. Each of our bests is different.
I’m fairly certain that autism will stick more firmly in my class’s conscience than the planned lesson on tithing, but isn’t it really the same thing? We each come to church, to life, with our talents, whether they be mites or myriad. We are commanded to share, to tithe, to develop and to grow. We each fight battles on the inside and outside and sometimes things are wrong from the get-go. I struggle to teach my class, and my children, about serving to the fullness of our privileges, of our understanding: that Andy was really more reverent on Sunday than Zoe was; that more is required of my 11-year-old than of my 4-year-old. When we know better, we are expected–we are commanded–to do better.
Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m one of the prideful Jews throwing in measly offerings out of my abundance while the widow threw in her mites out of her lack. “Serve in the widest community you can address,” was the rallying cry at the end of Elder Holland’s recent CES address. I know that in some situations, that community is no wider than the walls of my home. But is it now? Now that I only have one child at home during the day? Am I serving as widely as I am truly able? Am I as prayerful and reverent as I can be in the circumstances in which I am living?
What is the answer? I need margins, perhaps vastly wider margins than those of many of my friends. Calendars suffocate when filled with appointments and commitments. Long lists of demands exhaust and I feel very much like Andy, fully melted, putting on a brave face. Is that what serving in the widest community I can address means? Does it mean filling commitments to the point that the Spirit is lost to the suffocating rage within me?
Sometimes it seems that my widest community, my highest and best use of myself is to be still and know God. (Psalms 46:10) But I also know that stillness without structure can quickly devolve into idleness, into being slothful and not a wise servant, (D&C 58:26) into not serving at all. D&C 58:27 talks about being “anxiously engaged in a good cause … bring[ing] to pass much righteousness.” I seem to need to build structure into my margins, to focus less on the margins and more on finding the right balance of margins that allow me to serve to my best.
It would be really easy for Andy’s mom to give up on church. But she wants to serve; she wants to worship. Many times, Andy wears noise cancelling headphones which seem to help. Ben, another primary friend, often stands in the corner during Sharing Time so he can’t see the antics of the other primary children, or he takes a break in the bathroom for a bit. But still they come; still they offer up their mites and are blessed; and bless.
Andy sang a short solo in closing exercises on Sunday. The Spirit was electric in the Primary room. Noise was banished in the reverence of the moment, in the consecration of his mite.
Our ward is noisy. We are a young ward, with a big and growing Primary and at least 50 babies who will not even be old enough for nursery this year. We also have several children sprinkled along the autism spectrum in our ward. I teach the 6-year-olds. Our class was waiting outside the restroom between sharing time and class time on Sunday when Andy came down the hall, fully melted, looking for his mom. Andy is one of our less-verbal Primary friends on the spectrum. He loves Primary and is preparing to be baptized in a few months.
Church is hard. Noise. Random, jarring motion. Too many people. Disorder. More noise. Church is just hard and sometimes things are just . . . wrong from the get-go. Things were obviously wrong for Andy this morning as he barreled past my class in full rage. My class was visibly concerned with this display–we all were–and then I noticed little Zoe to my side quietly circling her fingers around her ears in the universal sign for crazy. “No,” I said forcefully, (perhaps too forcefully), “Andy is NOT crazy and that is not okay. We will talk about this in class.”
Once we moved to our classroom, we had a class discussion about what autism is: that it is not your brain going crazy, that it is not a disease and any other analogy I could pull out of my head to explain a non-neurotypical brain to a class filled with 6- and 7-year-old brains. I tried to focus on how much Andy loves primary, that he is preparing for his baptism, just like they are, that his brain sees and hears things differently, that our other friends with different brains love primary and are doing the best they can. Each of our bests is different.
I’m fairly certain that autism will stick more firmly in my class’s conscience than the planned lesson on tithing, but isn’t it really the same thing? We each come to church, to life, with our talents, whether they be mites or myriad. We are commanded to share, to tithe, to develop and to grow. We each fight battles on the inside and outside and sometimes things are wrong from the get-go. I struggle to teach my class, and my children, about serving to the fullness of our privileges, of our understanding: that Andy was really more reverent on Sunday than Zoe was; that more is required of my 11-year-old than of my 4-year-old. When we know better, we are expected–we are commanded–to do better.
Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m one of the prideful Jews throwing in measly offerings out of my abundance while the widow threw in her mites out of her lack. “Serve in the widest community you can address,” was the rallying cry at the end of Elder Holland’s recent CES address. I know that in some situations, that community is no wider than the walls of my home. But is it now? Now that I only have one child at home during the day? Am I serving as widely as I am truly able? Am I as prayerful and reverent as I can be in the circumstances in which I am living?
What is the answer? I need margins, perhaps vastly wider margins than those of many of my friends. Calendars suffocate when filled with appointments and commitments. Long lists of demands exhaust and I feel very much like Andy, fully melted, putting on a brave face. Is that what serving in the widest community I can address means? Does it mean filling commitments to the point that the Spirit is lost to the suffocating rage within me?
Sometimes it seems that my widest community, my highest and best use of myself is to be still and know God. (Psalms 46:10) But I also know that stillness without structure can quickly devolve into idleness, into being slothful and not a wise servant, (D&C 58:26) into not serving at all. D&C 58:27 talks about being “anxiously engaged in a good cause … bring[ing] to pass much righteousness.” I seem to need to build structure into my margins, to focus less on the margins and more on finding the right balance of margins that allow me to serve to my best.
It would be really easy for Andy’s mom to give up on church. But she wants to serve; she wants to worship. Many times, Andy wears noise cancelling headphones which seem to help. Ben, another primary friend, often stands in the corner during Sharing Time so he can’t see the antics of the other primary children, or he takes a break in the bathroom for a bit. But still they come; still they offer up their mites and are blessed; and bless.
Andy sang a short solo in closing exercises on Sunday. The Spirit was electric in the Primary room. Noise was banished in the reverence of the moment, in the consecration of his mite.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Interlude
For a time I wrote some pieces over at Real Intent. I'm dropping them in here now, with their original post date listed.
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