Blessed are the gentiles, because of their belief in me, in and of the Holy Ghost.
Quince Rufus Pack at age 94 in 1952 remembers his life:
My dance hall was used by the people for any of the public dances, parties and so forth that they had. One night Fred Robinson had his wedding party and dance. Some of the fellows brought some liquor with them and really made a drunken brawl out of the party.
Two or three days later the Stake President came to see me and told me that if I didn’t quit selling liquor in my dance hall they would have to discontinue holding M.I.A. in my building. Now, I didn’t sell liquor in my store and like I said those fellows at Fred Robinson’s party brought their own. I tried to explain that to Lewis Pond, our Stake President, but he was angry and so was I and before long we were really having an argument.
What if our imagination should become as a little child’s? What if receiving the kingdom of heaven as a little child mostly meant imagining it differently? Not stern and beautiful like Milton, but jolly and abundant.
Last night I came home to my little boy wearing a red bath robe with a red bandanna on his head pirate-style, a garbage bad tucked into his neckline for a beard, and another garbage bag dragging behind his red trike. He was Santa Claus, he said. My littlest girl was wearing a tan quilt with sticks stuck in her braids. She was the reindeer. The reins were from a swing.
The imagination of children is whimsical. They don’t see the unseen world as eldritch or fey. To them, the transcendental and supernatural are friendly, fun, whimsical, domestic.
The childish imagination is Calvin and Hobbes, Narnia, the Hobbit. When the Abrahamic trial comes, it trusts, because it believes that something golden must lie out there in darkness.
“If you’re thirsty, you may drink.”
They were the first words she had heard since Scrubb had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff. For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time, and the voice was not like a man’s. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.
“Are you not thirsty?” said the lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the lion.
“May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to — do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.
Even Lord of the Rings has childlike elements. It has hobbits, the Shire, the last Homely House, Strider. Even its orderliness, its insistence on getting the details right for their own sake, is childish.
Perhaps, instead of standing in awe at the works of God, we should wriggle with delight.
Sarah Alydia Terry Winsor (1857-1950), my great-great-grandmother, as remembered by her niece Orilla W. Hafen in 1961:
Aunt Lydia was one of the girl telegraph operators of pioneer days. The Deseret Telegraph line was extended from St. George to the mining camps of Pioche and Ely, Nevada in 1872, and it was found necessary to open an office in Hebron. (more…)
Today would be Betsey’s 13th birthday. This is what I wrote on her birthday nine years ago.
(more…)
Just as we have parts that exist in space, we have parts that exist over time. We are the sum of our temporal parts, even though not every one of those parts is essential for our identity. Conversely, none of our temporal parts is the whole of who we are. As four dimensional wholes, we are never simply the person who exists at a single point in time.
All the temporal parts of a person (or object) carry the same ontological weight
Think of heaven as the place where the ontological equality of temporal parts becomes absolutely real.
I’ve believed that for awhile. I thought I was the only one, so its comforting to see that this is path others have made.
But I’m not sure about his notion that we can continue to act at any point in time, rewriting the past, as it were. This past doesn’t look rewritten.
“A date is a planned activity that allows a young man and a young woman to get to know each other better. In cultures where dating is acceptable, it can help you learn and practice social skills, develop friendships, have wholesome fun, and eventually find an eternal companion.”
That passage from For the Strength of Youth used to make me think of settings where dating is not the way things are done like that of Brother and Sister Chon. Brother Chon, my bishop when I courted and wed Sister Mansfield, had been a missionary in his native Korea, and following his mission, his mission president took Brother and Sister Chon’s non-LDS fathers out to dinner and arranged a marriage. With the approval of the fathers obtained, the mission president brought the couple together to see what they thought of the idea. Sister Chon asked her proposed future husband if he would always pay tithing. He said he would, and she accepted him. It was sweet almost three decades after their introduction to one another to sit in their home and hear her tell her happiness in marrying a Mormon boy.
“You should not date until you are at least 16 years old. When you begin dating, go with one or more additional couples. Avoid going on frequent dates with the same person. Developing serious relationships too early in life can limit the number of other people you meet and can perhaps lead to immorality. Invite your parents to become acquainted with those you date.”
Over the last several years, it’s become apparent my early 21st Century American culture is another where dating of the For the Strength of Youth variety is not acceptable. The February New Era accurately describes the environment that youth in my ward have experienced: (more…)
On the sweetness of Mormon life.
Easter Morning. You take family pictures under the Bradford Pear. Then you take more pictures after you remember to remove the hanging mosquito trap.
You go to church. You take the sacrament. A girl receives the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Back in 1985, I was a missionary serving in Argentina. Not much news from the United States reached my ears. Destruction of the Challenger space shuttle. Deaths of Orson Welles and Yul Brynner. Among the things that didn’t penetrate the filter of distance and irrelevance were two bombing murders committed by a forger in Salt Lake City. (more…)
The past with the clarity and beauty of a Bruegel landscape
Why is living in the past so popular a pastime?
. . . .
Here is a Mormon model of the pre-existence. Christ presented a plan for us to experience mortality and Satan presented an alternate plan. Christ’s plan allowed full scope for our free agency, so we’d sin, which He would repair by atoning for the sin. Satan’s plan restrained our free agency through repression and tyranny and disinformation/propaganda and who knows, so that we wouldn’t sin. We voted to accept Christ, but Satan and his followers wouldn’t accept the vote, like king-men. Consistent with their plan, like king-men they then went to war to get by force what they had lost by vote. They lost this confrontation too and were thrown out. But the war continues. It has become a bandit resistance campaign of subversion and sabotage.
The model is wrong. (more…)
The heavens declare the glory of God.
It is an old truth that becomes new every time you go out in the twilight, or see the sky on a clear night, or witness the dawn.
I am half-persuaded that urbanization and the indoor life tracks with the rise of atheism.