There is a puzzle in Lehi’s dream, little remarked on, that I think I have solved. The answer is continuing revelation.

The puzzle has to do with the river of water and the fountain from which they come.

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I keep  meaning to use Lehi’s Dream as an interpretive lens for the parts of the Book of Mormon we are reading now.  I had this bit about the Nephite journey ending in Jacob revealing the name of Christ-symbolically finding Christ–and another bit about Father Lehi dying and wondering if that was the end of his long journey through the dark wilderness or if it was just the beginning–but instead I keep coming back to the dream itself.

On Sunday a speaker quoted Paul on charity.  Paul says that revelation without charity is nothing.

And though I have the gift of ^aprophecy, and understand all ^bmysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

One interpretation of the Iron Rod/the Word of God is that it is revelation, not just scripture.  I think that is the best interpretation.  But the Word is another name for Christ.   Revelation is not just a guide to Christ.  It is an experience of him.

We tend to think of revelation as a set of instructions to achieve a goal.  Often it is.  But that is the least important part of revelation.  The main thing is the presence of God that fills you with light and love.

We think of the gift of charity as loving others, and it is, but that is secondary to experiencing the love of God where your love for them and their love for you overflow and bounce back and forth and mingle and you can no longer tell where one begins and the other ends.  The love for others is a result of that.

Perhaps the difference between the two different types of those who hold on to the Iron Rod is that the one group treats it just as a set of instructions for getting to the tree, and for the other group the Rod is the Tree, they experience them all over and over again in a cycle of enjoying to the end, and they fall down when they get to the Tree because they recognize Him.

On the sweetness of Our life.

You make one of the last sessions at the old Provo Temple before it all comes down.  You have not been there since you were in college many years ago.  There are swarms of people.  It is a reverent  madhouse.  You could only wish that it were the old endowment to go with the old temple, for just this once.  When you come out at twilight, the lake and the mountains and the clouds mount up in layers of blue and purple behind the dim white of the fountain.

You meet with old friends.

You drive home directly to your stake conference.  Old friends there too.

The temples close annually for a couple weeks of deep cleaning and maintenance. Sometimes they close for a year or two of renovation. Very rare is for one of these buildings, which in their design and purpose point to eternity, to close and never open again. Saturday night the Provo Temple in Utah will close and never open again. Scheduling for the endowment rooms and baptistry for today (Thursday), Friday, and Saturday shows those spaces completely reserved.

After Saturday, the Provo Temple will be demolished, and to the west of where it will have formerly stood, the Provo Rock Canyon Temple will be erected.

Last April I was in Provo for BYU graduation ceremonies, and while I was in town I entered the Provo Temple one last time. I could not devote the hours to engage in ordinance work, but I stopped at the painted/sculpted mural of Jesus with the woman at Jacob’s well. After that I changed into white temple attire and went to the Celestial Room. After perhaps half an hour there, I continued to the floor with the sealing rooms and lingered another half hour. I had last been present in those spaces thirty-three years before, when I was finishing up as a BYU student.

I looked at the aged people around me who had been younger than my present age thirty-three years earlier. I thought of the aged people of that prior time, when I was young, who are now all dead.

I once noticed in the home of a friend a picture from her wedding day in 1993. There she was standing in front of the Provo Temple, which a year from now will only exist in pictures and memories and ordinances like hers.

The Golden Minute, Bruce Charlton’s latest characteristically winsome post, is crying out for a virtue chart.

On the one hand, “for just one time I would take the Northwest passage”–“this was their finest hour”–“better 50 years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay”

On the other hand, “masterful inaction”–wu-wei–“be still and know that I am God”–“the unexamined life is not worth living”

On the one hand, we’ve all had the unhappy experience of being listless and getting nowhere.  We all know energetic people who seem to accomplish much.

On the other hand, so many driven people seem to accomplish things that end up going nowhere.  They do a lot, but what they do doesn’t do anything.  Having goals doesn’t mean you have good goals.  For every Elon Musk, dozens of Jeff Bezos.

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Young G used to think that the chapter in 2 Nephi which is basically Yay Joseph Smith was embarrassing.   It felt like Joseph  Smith was making the whole thing up and felt the need to write his own reviews.

Older G as of last week finally realized that the Book of Mormon being for our day doesn’t exclusively mean 21st C America.   “Our day” is probably everything from 1830 or so on.  Therefore a lot of it is about the Saints and the Restoration.  Joseph and the friends needed the reassurance that they were part of foretold divine history to get them through the trials to come.

For those of you who have been at this party for years and wonder what took me so long, well, I’m just  happy to be here.

Sunday is like going to a retreat every week, or it should be.  If the calling does not permit it, the calling, or the way you perform it, ought to change.

21st Century Nephi: And lo we did travel without recipe apps, and cooked our meat without online instructions

Anecdote/Joke:  The kid is handing over the cash in a tithing envelope.

It’s for you, bishop.

Tithing or fast offerings?

It’s for you, Bishop.

But I don’t need the money, kiddo.

But my dad says you are one of the poorest bishops we’ve had.

On the sweetness of Mormon life–

you are traveling.  You stop in at a small branch on the edge of a small town.  The nearest congregation is 70 miles away.  The high councilman and his wife drove about 120 miles to be there.  The Branch President holds the service to introduce you to all 20 congregants, from about age 80 to about age 5.  When the service begins you weep from the presence of the Spirit.  The peace of God whose intensity passes your soul’s capacity to bear.

The people of God and the Holy Ghost.  The people of God and the Holy Ghost.

And it came to pass that the Lord did warn me, that I, Nephi, should depart from them and flee into the wilderness, and all those who would go with me.

Wherefore, it came to pass that I, Nephi, did take my family, and also Zoram and his family, and Sam, mine elder brother and his family, and Jacob and Joseph, my younger brethren, and also my sisters, and all those who would go with me. And all those who would go with me were those who believed in the warnings and the revelations of God; wherefore, they did hearken unto my words.

And we did take our tents and whatsoever things were possible for us, and did journey in the wilderness for the space of many days. And after we had journeyed for the space of many days we did pitch our tents.

-2 Nephi 5.

Parts of the Book of Mormon were meant for our day,  meaning right now.  Parts were meant for the 1800s.  In particular, there are multiple exoduses described in the Book of Mormon.  Lehi’s family, Nephi’s group, and later the exodus to Zarahemla.  Even Lehi’s Dream begins with an exodus.

 All lovingly preserved for long centuries to prepare the Saints for their trek to Salt Lake.

The pioneers were one of the great works of God and his people, long prophesied and prepared for, and are rightly treated as such.

And the beginning of Lent, if that is something you want to add to your Easter observance

Fire, Burn, by John Carr, 1957.

A neat little locked-room mystery novel transposed to the late Georgian era, combined with a tragic romance, combined with a mystical time travel element.

Quite engaging.  It held me to the end.

I have two criticisms.  The explanation of the mystery seemed a little contrived, and I never got the full sensation of being submersed in a different era.  It came close, but  never quite moved beyond being a contemporary story with historic trappings.

P.S.  If you don’t like these little reviews, let me know.

What you reading?

An adult comic book.

Eww, like superhero sexy time?

Ick, no.  It has adult superpowers.  The hero’s superpower is when he makes decisions he ignores sunk costs.

What?  What’s his weakness?

When he makes decisions he ignores sunk costs.

. . . Fascinating.

The villain’s superpower is he has a big network and lots of social influence.

Update

One of the boyos–his superhero name is DeaconBoy!–said that having a social media influencer villain would actually be pretty cool.  But the hero should be RealLifeMan!  Their epic showdown would take place in augmented reality.

I think its really hard for moderns to grasp how  much the Book of Mormon is concerned with corporate salvation as a group, not individual salvation.  Though this changes throughout the book, and may be one reason the Lord told them up front that corporately their effort was going to fail.  Even so, the famous promises in the Book of Mormon about keeping  the commandments and prospering are corporate commandments and corporate promises.  Lehi’s original dream was about part of his family not willing to be led by him to the tree.

Weird thought of the day:  because we do not have an ancient world view, do we mistake the extent to which the Book of Mormon is a satisfying read as a revenge plot?  We tend to see the narrative arc as “eventually the Nephites are all destroyed.”  If we extend it a little bit, we end on a hopeful note, “eventually the Nephites are all destroyed, but their record comes forth and creates the modern church.”  But the actual arc as portrayed by the Book of Mormon prophets ends with, “and then the Great and Spacious Building is thrust into the pit it dug for the Saints.”

That is a phrase that came into my head and won’t leave.  I don’t have an answer to it yet.

We all know what the iron rod is.

But what is your iron rod.

Here’s a simple but unique approach to understanding the atonement and law and justice that I believe is at root the same point that Lehi is making in 2 Nephi 2.

Be warned: our friends have not been very excited about this insight in the past, probably because its a bit horrifying.

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