Child of Light on display in the Conference Center, Salt Lake City
Sculptor Laura Lee Stay Bradshaw b.1958
Cast bronze, 2003
The sculptress: “Ever since I can remember I had an insatiable desire to create.”
Your relationship with time gets weirder the older you get. The days jam together so fast. It’s as if there is a wreck at the end of time and your days are piling up behind it.
There’s a hill near where my parents live that stands up out of the plain. It’s probably an old volcanic cone. An old family trust owns it and from time out of mind there have been three crosses on the top and the local Catholics hike up there on Good Friday. This year my father and a few of his cronies in the ward are going to join them.
Like this
Good Friday as the traditional name for the day of the Savior’s death is a bit ironically named given the traditions surrounding the day. In medieval Christendom, all Fridays were considered to be dark and unlucky because of Good Friday. They didn’t eat meat on Fridays, as a form of mourning fast. In their church services the candles were snuffed out. The processions were woeful.
Which was and is entirely appropriate. The rhythm of mourning on Friday and rejoicing on Sunday is right and natural. We are joining the early apostles and saints in their sense of defeat after defeat on Friday, with the wholly unexpected shattering victory on Sunday. Even with our knowledge that Christ’s agony and cross were essential to his work, you can’t easily think of death and torture as good.
But there is an important sense in which today’s Friday is Good Friday. There is an extremely important sense in which on this day Christ won victory after victory and Sunday is not an unexpected reversal but the climax win of a Man who has won and won and won again.
I’ve got a lot in my soul this morning. Forgive me if it comes out in a tumbling flood.
Today is Palm Sunday. Today Christ entered Jerusalem as her secular king. There is a kind of chiasmus of power in the Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem to great acclaim as her king, is successively betrayed and betrayed and beaten and tortured and killed, and then on Easter assumes total power as the king of all.
Conversely, there is a kind of inverse pattern of the trappings of power. He starts off with a pre-coronation triumphal entry, which then builds to where (at his actual nadir) he is presented to the people, crowned as a king, lifted up in sight of all with an inscription proclaiming him the king—but then when he has become actually king of all instead of ceremonies and acclamations he has small, quiet conversations with his friends. I don’t think there is anything per se wrong with the trappings of power. But I wonder how much unrighteous dominion comes from people wanting the trappings of power instead of actual lasting authority?
In Western thought, we think of Mind & Body as a duality. With the recent preeminence of Artificial Intelligence, I got thinking, what is the alternative? Turns out, it is far more complicated in many traditions. In many traditions, there are layers between the body and conventional soul. Others see the soul as united but distinct entities.
Many different traditions – Chinese, Indian, Native American, Ancient Egyptian, Jewish…
Jewish? Ok, that is interesting. There are three words that all translate to soul, three different kinds or parts of the soul: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah.
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There once was a man who always told the truth. It was not just that he never lied. He always told the truth. It was very peculiar talking to him–words and phrases we take for granted he found difficult and had to qualify or elaborate on. He could not function as a normal human being.
However, he never died. He continued to age but instead of growing weak and feeble like we do he just grew into further stages of adulthood, stages that we normal humans, contaminated by falsehood, have never seen.
Eventually his unending life grew weary to him. But that same thing that committed him to truth would not let him seek death.
The Savior spoke in parables, so that only those who were ready would understand.
The Savior had Isaiah write in complicated prophet-talk, so that only those who took the time would understand.
In our day, the Savior speaks in understatement. So that only those who take him very seriously, will understand Him.
Tolkien had the One Ring destroyed on March 25th.
This is also the Feast of the Annunciation and the traditional date for the Crucifixion.
Thank you to our Catholic brothers.
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/pearce-tolkien-and-march-25?amp
It’s the last verse that gets me every time. Lyrics here. (more…)
At one point in the New Testament, Peter tries to give the Savior a pep talk, telling him he didn’t need to die on the cross. Perhaps he just didn’t want Jesus to be so pessimistic. The Good Shepherd replied with,
23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
24 ¶ Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matt 16:22-26
Now, why am I posting this? I was angry when I last posted about Brandon Sanderson and his apostacy. Stages of Grief, perhaps. If the pattern of LDS artists who make it big holds, he will dwindle into obscurity and become a footnote. But I should be less contentious… while still speaking the truth boldly.
But this has given me much to ponder. One person pointed out, it may be he has a child who is struggling with this. There are many members who throw their beliefs and covenants away at the first sign of LGBTQ+ struggle or questioning in their children.
This is a level of Niceness that is Abhorrent Sin. As CS Lewis said, The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men.
In coming days, we are going to need both charity and faith guiding hardness. If we are this soft and weak, we will merely be puppets for any man or devil to manipulate. So easy to manipulate. We can not be a light to the world, if we are shaken by every wind. We need to be kind like the Savior and CS Lewis, not the World.
One of the talks in the most recent General Conference, talked about flying a kite. A child wished to see the kite fly higher, so he suggested they cut the string. But the Father saw the folly in that, because it was only that string that held it up. Our difficulties are not our enemies.
I remember a story from Conference not long ago, about a man who drove into the mountains to get firewood, but his truck got stuck in the snow. Since he was already there, he cut wood and loaded his truck. Then he tried again to drive in the snow, and was successful. The weight of the truck made him able to get through the snow he could not have otherwise. We do ourselves and others a grave disservice if we deny others their struggles and weights.
Abraham could not have become the Father of the Faithful, without first sacrificing Isaac. That seems a bit paradoxical, but it is no less true. Nor could Jesus have sat down next to the Father, without first undergoing Gethsemane and Golgotha. Our desire to follow Jesus must also include bearing our crosses, and not stealing them from others. It is taking the Atonement away from people. They need the power of the Savior in their lives.
The Savior said he can make our burdens light. Do we believe in Jesus? Do we believe Jesus? It is easy to believe Him when nothing is on the line. When things are difficult, is when the rubber meets the road, and we learn what we really think.
Of course, we should comfort the afflicted, but we dare not deny them the Cross they so desperately need. There are some who are too nice and too comforting, to where they will deny all crosses, to make things easier. They are damned souls who do such things. Utah in particular, is especially vulnerable to this kind of apostacy.
In the climax of one of Sanderson’s Stormlight books, Dalinar (a repentant Warlord) is offered to have all his pain and guilt taken away by a demigod Odium (Divine hatred, without context or restraint). Dalinar replies with a defiant shout, “You can not have my pain!”.
May we all understand this, and bear our crosses, and not take them from others.
The Book of Mormon for a long time was more seen as a miraculous sign than as a source of scriptural content. For a long time, the Doctrine and Covenants has been the opposite: mined for doctrine. But it would be better if we balanced that by also seeing the Doctrine and Covenants as itself a miraculous sign that the heavens are still open. In a sense it almost doesn’t matter what God wants to talk to you about–the mindblowing thing is that God is talking to you! Let it be his views on the dimensions of the temple, so long as it be His!
Approach the Doctrine and Covenants not only for what is in it but as a celebration that it exists at all, pay extra attention to your patriarchal blessings and General Conference talks this year, make a revelation journal yourself, and you will not be far from the mark. Your theme this year should be that the Heaves are Open.
In Lehi’s dream, there is a fountain that starts clean and then quickly becomes dirty. The image you should have in the D&C is not a fountain flowing from Joseph Smith from which we now draw refreshment. The image is a fountain that sinks into your soil, and mine, that saturates all of mount Zion, and now a new fountain is springing up where I am and where you are, saturating the soil even more, and my children and yours are also now fountains, and our neighbors, our friends, their children, fountain after fountain after fountain, and now the whole hillside is one great spring and the flow is too wide and too clear to ever be dirtied.
I am told that Elon Musk has asked for more positive news. Here I am, answering the call:
There are more 84-year old South Koreans than there are 1-year old South Koreans.
Everyone loves Grandmas.
A doctor drew a sample from a milkmaid’s cowpox and said he would use it to create a vaccination against smallpox. He told her she’d made a great contribution to the world. The next day the rest of the milkmaids lined up outside his house, but he told them there was no more need. He already had his sample.
They went away sad. As the cows came running up to them for relief from the pressure of the cows’ udders, the milkmaids said, ‘there was our only chance to do something significant.’ As they expertly and smoothly sprayed liquid streams of milk into their pails without hurting the teats, they said ‘we will never be able to do anything of value.’ As they walked back down the lanes and laborers and childrens came out to the fences begging for a taste they said, ‘here we are stuck in this meaningless job.’ As housewives and farmers grinned at the pails they delivered, they said, ‘we just aren’t good for anything.’
I’m looking for any suggestions you have to make engaging with restoration scripture more valuable this year. Any and all thoughts welcome.
As part of this it might be helpful to start by reflecting on what helped you with the Book of Mormon this year.
A magpie was disgruntled. “Look at those two turtledoves,” the magpie said. “All they do is coo. They coo when they peck for seeds. They coo when they settle down to rest. They coo when they are just looking at each other. It’s pointless. Clearly its not a form of communication.”
The wise old owl said, “they are saying they are happy together.”