The other night my parents told me they were attending their next-to-last set of parent teacher conferences at Old East High School in Salt Lake. My youngest sibling will graduate next year and then my parents just won’t have anybody left to conference about. But they told me they won’t really miss it: after 23 years, I suspect they’ve heard just about everything there is to hear about their children as students.

Talking to them, though, got me thinking about teachers and classes I’ve had over the years. My family has never moved more than a couple of blocks and so all of us siblings have attended the same couple of elementary schools, junior highs, and high schools (Bonneville, Clayton (and West), and East (and West), for anybody interested). Most of the teachers I had in high school have retired, of course, but some of the best ones are still around and, in fact, the English and Biology teachers my sister has this year are the very same ones I had when I was a junior.

Thinking about those teachers got me considering the best classes and teachers I’ve had over the years and so I came up with a list of the top ten classes I’ve had—ranging from when I just a little dude walking back and forth to Bonneville Elementary all the way to my time in medical school in Philadelphia. So here, in order, are descriptions of the top ten:

10) Anne Story (Eleventh Grade, Bio): This class actually wasn’t quite as hard as my ninth-grade bio class (see below) but the thing about Ms. Story is that she managed two tough things at once: she was a great teacher who knew her stuff and taught us well, but, even more than that, she was one of those priceless adults who “gets it.” When we stayed out till 3 in the morning painting the E (a large rock on a mountainside that is a symbol of high school pride but which has to be repainted every couple of years to stay bright enough to see from afar), she’d let us sleep in her back room the next morning. When I had to miss classes for senior choir stuff, she was cool with that. When our friend committed suicide, she got what that meant in a way that was totally different from some of the other, detached, adults. She was one of us, and we loved her for it.

9) Brother Clarke (Tenth Grade, Seminary): I grew up a student of The Book of Mormon, and it was Brother Clarke who first really taught me to know and love the New Testament. This was the first year I really started to appreciate the details of the Atonement and Brother Clarke was a teacher without guile–perfect for helping us to learn about the Savior and his sacrifice.

Dr. White (Med School, Anatomy): The first semester of med school was the longest bit of water-treading I’ve ever done–mostly I just worried about making it from test to test alive. But one of the few fun bright spots was, of all things, anatomy. Now, to realize how ingenious Dr. White was, you have to understand that anatomy, at its core, is two things: Too Much and Too Boring–it’s basically the endless study of where a whole bunch of things with really complicated names live in the human body.  NOTHING should be more boring. But Dr. White made it not only interesting but somehow entertaining, even funny. And then, he could manage to compress a month’s worth of “fascia lata,” “flexor pollicus longus,” and “gubernaculum” into two hours of test review–and have all of it make sense.

7) Mr. Eckberg (Ninth Grade, Bio): Of all the teachers on this list, this is the one I would NEVER have put on this list when I was actually in his class. He taught me biology in ninth grade and his class was probably as hard as many of my college classes. Every assignment was a series of essay questions and we got no credit unless the answers were perfect–anything missing or anything wrong and you had to redo the thing and turn it back in for re-grading. He had no due-dates except one big DEADline at the end of the term. And the final was a 900 word matching test with every word in the bio book glossary–except, oh yeah, he removed all the easy ones and there were 30 possible answers for every 20 words. The result was a class that was WAAAAAAY beyond what any little high school freshman should be doing–but here I am a doc these many years later and I can still remember the first time I learned about photosynthesis and the electron transport chain and, more importantly, about writing, studying, synthesis of material, and the scientific method. The class was a doozy, but the learning was worth it.

6) Mr. Miller (fifth grade): Mr. Miller was perhaps the best I ever met at making learning come alive. When we studied the American Revolution, he armed us all with yardsticks and then took us on the back lawn and designated one corner Lexington and Concord, one Bunker Hill, and so on. When he wanted to teach us about writing a letter, he let us help edit a letter he had written urging NASA to launch a bicentennial (or something like that ) satellite. And when he wanted us to learn about making laws and running businesses, he helped us set up our own little thriving “mini-society,” complete with currency, bylaws, conventions, a court, and to each his own business.

5) Dr. York (college, junior and senior year, American Studies): My wife will start rolling her eyes as soon as she sees that I’m going to write about the book Democracy in America, but it really is the best book ever written about the United States. And even though it is about seven-hundred pages long and even though it is thick enough to resemble reading the tougher parts of second Nephi at times, it is also one of the most lucid things ever written about what makes America tick–even though it was written some two-hundred years ago, it still sometimes seems that it explains America better than everything written nowadays combined. Anyhow, Dr. York introduced me to, and then led me through, this book. In his class, I got to interview folks (everyone from a BYU econ professor to a religion writer for the Des News to a homeless ‘Nam vet) about the American Dream and then write a paper about what they said and what it had to do with Tocqueville and all the other things we learned. I remember nights spent by the fire, curled up with my copy of Tocqueville, marveling at the man’s ability to think and to ferret out insights so far beyond the obvious but that ring so wonderfully true.  Reading the book, and attending the class, were like turning and turning and turning a diamond, finding new splendor in each of its million facets.  Dr. York’s was the kind of class I went to college to take.

4) Mrs. Lake (11th grade, English): I’ve always been able to use big words semi-accurately and I’m usually pretty good at sounding like I know what I’m talking about. As a consequence, most of my teachers up through high school thought my writing was “just ________” (fill in happy adjective of your choice).

Then I got to Ms. Lake.

I still remember the first paper I turned in in her class (Becca is undoubtedly rolling her eyes at this point, too, because she’s heard me tell this story about a zillion times). It was a five page paper on the poetry of John Donne. I had spent some time on the writing, I felt like I understood the subject as well as anyone in the class, and I was confident I would get in the high nineties, maybe above one-hundred with the five points extra credit I got for turning it in early. When she called me to her desk to pick up the paper, I walked up with the kind of in-class swagger that only a hopeless nerd can master. I picked up those five pages–plus one extra stapled to the front where she included her comments and my grade–and looked down to see my perfect score: 56. Fifty-freaking-six! And that was with extra credit! I turned the paper over–maybe she had written the number upside down… But no, that was really the grade. And, to make it all the worse, I swear I left a little trail of blue ink all the way back to my desk, she had left my paper bleeding with her bright blue ink and it dripped from all the ways she had slashed and torn into it. Needless to say, she relieved me of any thought I had about being a great writer and made me build my writing style back from the ground up. She was one of the best teachers, and best thinkers, I’ve known.

3) Mrs. Martinez (sixth grade): Ms. Martinez was not my home-room teacher, but I had her for almost everything else–math, English, social studies. What I most remember, though, was that this was the time I first really started thinking about writing. Even though we were only twelve at the time and I can’t imagine we wrote anything that was very interesting or very good, Ms. Martinez read every paper and handed each one back lit up with her neon blue pen. From all her glowing comments, you’d of thought we were all on our way to Pulitzers and the National Book Award. I loved getting the papers back and so I spent more and more time before handing each one in. She lit up everything she taught just like her blue pen lit up our papers and I still remember and feel the influence she had on my life and my love of learning. Call it corny, but it’s true.

2) The Editing Pig (many years, English, grammar, and Strunk and White’s rules of style): So, sometime I will have to do a post on the editing pig, so you can come to understand the true genius of this little yellow piece of plastic pork. Suffice it for now to say that when my Dad was trying to figure out a way to help us learn to edit our papers when we were still pretty little, he figured out that we had a lot more fun editing when it was done with the help of a little yellow pig (the pig was one of those little plastic farm animal toys, about half an inch tall and a bit over an inch long, with a special set of yellow piggy glasses). Sometimes the pig got really excited when we wrote something well, and sometimes he went into cardiac arrest on my dad’s desktop when we wrote run-on sentences of otherwise made him gag with terrible English (reports of the pig needing immediate medical resuscitation may or may not be true…). I can’t begin to count the number of hours my dad spent helping me learn to write, but all the teachers listed above who helped me learn to think and express wouldn’t have been much good if not for the countless hours with my dad and that pig, downstairs under the dim light of Dad’s desk-lamp.

1) Mom (all of the above, and a lot more, too): My mom told me that she got to the point, when my brother and I were little, where she hung her diploma above our cribs and then, while she was changing the umpteenth diaper of the day, she would think to herself, I do know how to have an intelligent conversation, I do know words with more than one syllable… Mom went to college and did plenty well, she is a smart and accomplished lady who could have done a lot of important and more visible things if she had gone out into the world to make her way. But from the time I was born until my youngest sibling went off to school, mom stayed home, and then, even when Natalie was in school, Mom only ever worked when we all were gone for the day. She was always home when we were and so she was there for every crush, skinned knee, good grade, bad grade, happiness, sadness, and all that came between. Like Abraham Lincoln said, “All that I am. All that I hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

Flickering like candleflame
‘Tween this world and the next—
Tentative and tremulous,
She sets her jaw, then 
faces toward the veil.

Father,
As her spirit flees
Her battered broken bleeding
Shell,
Unlock my grip,
Let loose my hold,
And soften my resolve that she
Stay here.

And when the billowing curtains
Finally flutter apart and she steps through,
Let that mellifluous reunion with her
Too-long-departed Fred be as
Sweet as honey. 

Let luminous music sing her home,
And bathe in angel light her
Knowing again—now, finally!—the wholeness she once 
daily felt
wrapped tightly in his arms.

Father,

take my sins away.

Do not just  make me shine.

No:

uproot from me the

tumors  whose

tentacles have thrust themselves too

deep and tangled for any

scalpel of my own.

Take from me what I

love or ignore, which in my

need or apathy

turns my heart away.

Let no lesser moon

sway my compass this way or that, but let only

North persuade me toward the bright and morning and star.

Beyond action, word, and thought

let your alchemy

sanctify my

impulse–the deepest nature that

directs the motives

guiding who I am

and will become.

I hope Barack Obama means what he says about us “not belonging to red states and blue states, but the United States of America.”

There is a lot of talk about Mr. Obama’s “mandate.”  People say he now wields the capital he needs—from both congress and the people—to enact liberal, partisan policies.  Many liberal folks apparently envision a nascent Obama revolution to counteract the conservative shift that began 28 years ago with Reagan’s inauguration.

But such thinking is short-sighted for a number of reasons.  First, Obama’s victory was impressive and important, but hardly a landslide.  A director of media for the McCain campaign, when asked if his candidate had underperformed, deadpanned: “well, considering we have the least popular war since Vietnam, the worst economy since the great depression, and the least liked president since Hoover, I’d say we didn’t do too badly.”  Considering the circumstances, Obama’s not-too-impressive final margin should serve more as a reminder of the country’s conservatism than as a supposed “mandate” for radical liberal reform.

In any case, exit polls still show that a plurality of Americans self-identify as independent, while more are conservative than liberal.  America has not shifted to the left.  Instead, a conservative but mostly independent America—either reacting against the current administration or putting faith in the Obama appeal or both—has voted in a man promising to transcend the political divide.

Additionally, Mr. Obama is a student of history and should know that hyper-partisanship isn’t likely to work anyway.  It only took Mr. Clinton two years to lose his majorities in congress and Mr. Bush’s partisanship has led to the very national and governmental polarization that helped make Mr. Obama’s call for unity so appealing.  It may be the case that the best way Mr. Obama could effectively evict himself from the oval office four years from now would be to further polarize the electorate by sticking to traditional blue policies.

But this is not to say, by any means, that Mr. Obama should be hesitant or timid.   Quite the opposite: please, Mr. Obama, be bold!  But do not be a bold Democrat; instead, as you promised in your victory speech, be the bold President of Americans of every ilk, color, party, and name.  When you appoint your cabinet, avoid the temptation to choose only the party faithful.  Instead, embrace contradiction—appoint republicans, independents, and democrats.  Furthermore, as you decide which policy goals to pursue, do not choose some republican and some democrat—instead, rise above petty past ideas to forge new proposals that incorporate the best of both political worlds.  Finally, when you speak to and about the American people, do not divide us into “real” and false, “patriotic” and not, “bitter” and sweet, or black and white; instead, please continue to recognize that all Americans—perhaps especially those who do not agree with your stance—are sincere and, almost always, are seeking the good of those around them.

That, after all, is the ultimate promise of an Obama presidency.  Not that he will be the liberal savior come to undo what Bush has done.  But that he we will be a man courageous, nuanced, and smart enough to understand that the formulations of both parties have fallen short and that our best days will be ahead of us only as we find ways to include all Americans in forging our newly-coalescing political identity.

Personally, I oppose gay marriage (along with John McCain, Barack Obama, and many other folks from all parts of the political spectrum; and, yes, I know Mr. Obama does not support proposition 8).  I have tried to articulate my reasons and have found it a little bit tough.  But that explanation is not my primary intent today.  I will say that I view marriage as not only an agreement binding two consenting adults but as a covenant which receives the blessing of both God and the state and which is meant to furnish and then care for future generations.  I believe gay marriage moves us away from marriage as a contract with society, God, our progenitors, and our progeny, and toward an insular view of marriage as only a contract between two people.  I think that trend is worrisome.

As I said, however, that is not my reason for writing.  I understand many people don’t agree with me.  Further, I know many people both within the church and without believe that proposition 8 discriminates, that those with homosexual inclinations are a minority who need constitutional protection, and that proposition 8 would be a codification of unfounded prejudice.  My purpose today is to address the difficult question of what these folks are to do: specifically, how should a member of the Church act when his heart seems to say he should do differently from what the Prophet counsels.

One group of those within the Church who oppose proposition 8 has even formed a website to tout their opposition (actually, a number of groups have done this, but I am most familiar with one such).  The website, broadly speaking, makes two fundamental points.  First, it emphasizes a human aspect of the question by introducing us, through writing and video interviews, to members (or former members) of the Church who feel same sex attraction: proposition 8, the site argues, relegates these folks to inferior status in the eyes of the law and drives these people from the Church—sad potential consequences, indeed.  The second broad point the website makes is that no church member should “blindly” follow counsel from anyone, including the Prophets.  The website wants us to understand that the brethren have consistently asked us to gain a testimony of their teachings and, the website contends, if you have not done so with regards to church counsel on proposition 8, and if you think or feel it is a bad idea, you should feel free to oppose the legislation.

I would like to address these two points:

I.    With Regards to Compassion

A couple of weeks ago, a child from my primary class told me, “brother Johnson, on the way to church we were having a debate in the car about who was the nicest person in the ward, and I told everybody it was you.”  I was flattered, kind of blushed, and didn’t know what to say.   I’m sure it’s not true, but I share the line to support the notion that, I think, I’m a pretty nice guy.  I’m paying a lot of money and spending many hermitted hours in the library to become a doctor in large part because I care about people, all people: big people, little people, old people, young people, Mormons and not, gay and not, etc, etc, etc.  I really want to help people; I’ve wanted to since I was young.

And I oppose same-sex marriage.

That doesn’t mean I hate folks who feel same sex attraction, or that I’m bigoted or discriminatory, or that I have anything personal against anyone with any different kind of sexual feelings.  The question of gay marriage is complicated and has social, moral, legal, and governmental ramifications.  It is true that the feelings of those who would like to enter into a homosexual marriage are important, but they are not the only consideration.  That’s important to remember because if you think those feelings are the only thing that matter you’re likely to have a pretty low opinion of anyone who opposes gay marriage or supports proposition 8.  A supporter of proposition 8 becomes a bigot or a prude—and that’s not fair.  Indeed, many who support it may be well aware of those who wish to enter homosexual marriages, may feel a good degree of compassion and love towards them, and may, nonetheless, say, “for other convincing reasons, I support proposition 8.”

The point is: it is not impossible to love people who feel same sex attraction and to support proposition 8 at the same time.  Christ, after all, loves all of us perfectly even though He often does not approve of things we do and even though He knows we should not have some things we want.  To pretend that compassion requires acceptance of everything a person desires is to greatly oversimplify the matter and is unfair and, in a sense, prejudiced towards proponents of the proposition

II.    About Prophets

When I’m not on a busy rotation, one of the first things I do in the morning is scan editorials, especially from The Washington Post.  I read because I like to engage the authors.  I agree with some of the authors most of the time and almost all the authors some of the time, but I will never find an author I agree with all the time, and that’s part of the fun.  I read and I think: what do I think about this?  Do I agree?  Why not?  Is this in line with my values? What I would write? And so on.  In a sense, I’m kind of like Wall-E, the little robot in the latest Pixar movie.  At that movie’s beginning, he is shown tirelessly completing his “waste allocation” like a mechanical Sisyphus—forever compacting and stacking the world’s endless garbage.  As he works, however, he finds and keeps for himself little treasures that catch his eye—enshrining, back in his bunker, the resulting collection of his most valuable and beautiful odds and ends.  When I read in the morning I am a little like him: a lot of what I read is either repetitive, wrong, or useless—but, every once in a while, I find a little nugget of truth that I add to my store of knowledge.

Many people, it seems, approach general conference (or other words from the brethren) in much the same way I approach the day’s menu of editorials.  Now, to be fair, the Wall-E analogy is probably a bad one for most members of the Church listening to the brethren because most members probably like most of what they hear the brethren say—otherwise, why would someone remain a member?  And, of course, no one is perfect in heeding all the counsel offered by the brethren.  But the point of the Mormons for Marriage website seems to be that we should subject the counsel of the prophets to the same scrutiny to which I subject the words I read in the daily papers, choosing by our best judgment, just like I try to do, whether to accept or reject to counsel.  True, MfM would add a spiritual component (after thinking about counsel, they argue, pray about it and see what your heart tells you), but the end result is still the same: analyze, ponder, pray and then do what your heart tells you, whether that is what the brethren preach or not.

Of course, the only time this becomes an issue is when a person feels he should do what the brethren counsel him not to do.  In that case, the person must ask: will I follow the Prophet or will I follow my heart?—I cannot do both.  And that is a hard question, especially when your heart seems to be responding to a call for compassion, as many would say is the case with proposition 8.  It is, in fact, not much of a stretch for a thinking person to become convinced that the “intelligent,” “informed,” “kind,” or, even, “Christian” thing to do is to not do what the prophet counsels.  It is fairly easy to begin to believe that those who follow the prophet are mere members of a herd—they are simply following the crowd (hence the worn-out phrase “blind obedience”), while those who “go against the grain” are doing so because of deeper compassion and more complete intellectual rigor.

That image of the herd moving mindlessly in lockstep, however, is an unfair characterization and a dangerous and disappointing generalization.

It is unfair first because it does not duly credit the depth and quality of the motivation of those who choose to follow the Prophet.  It is true that a person may do something just because everyone else is doing it, but that does not mean that everyone who acts with the majority is doing it simply to follow the crowd.  And, indeed, I wager that most folks in the Church follow the prophet not because it’s popular but because they are acting on faith.

So, even if you say I am opposing proposition 8 out of compassion, the response of many church members would be, not well, I follow the prophet no matter what he says, but, instead, I have faith the Prophet will lead us to life and salvation, my faith leads me to follow his counsel.  That difference is important: the first would pit compassion against mindless lemming-like obedience, the second pits compassion against faith.  In the first case, of course, compassion wins; but in the second case, even if you think compassion better than faith, you’re forced to admit that the call is really close and that faith is a wonderful and desirable virtue.

Still, even if a person who follows his heart in opposing the prophet concedes this point, he may be left saying: I understand the motivations of those who choose to follow the prophet on this matter, but I have thought about this issue, prayed about it, pondered it, read up, and tried to listen for the Spirit, and I have concluded that my actions—though they oppose the prophet on this issue—are what God wants me to do.

That is a very convincing argument.  Indeed, in a postmodern world where each person is to seek and establish his own morality it seems the matter might warrant little more discussion.  But a member of the Church, it seems to me, must be in but not of the postmodern world.

At some point, one has to ask: what is a prophet? Or, even better: why does the Lord give us prophets? As I alluded to above, some seem to conclude that prophets are like really good editorialists: wise and well-intentioned old folks: Because they are prophets, we regard their counsel with spiritual, not just secular, scrutiny, but we still accept or reject it as we see fit.

The problem is that by making this argument we end up robbing the prophet of the very mantle that sets him apart from other men.  The more we come to see his counsel as optional, the more we dilute the idea of prophecy and revelation until, pretty soon, the prophets become, in our eyes, simply a few more well-meaning men who happen to guide us in religious matters.

Now, let me be clear: I know that an entire army of internet commentators could parade onto this site and produce a litany of strange-sounding quotes from general authorities of times past and then say well, obviously we shouldn’t always follow the prophet because look at this counsel. By and large, however, that kind of quote is an anomaly and/or opinion and not official church doctrine.  What I mean to discuss here are the tenets and principles the brethren teach clearly, repeatedly, and emphatically—all of which apply to the counsel regarding gay marriage and proposition eight.

We sometimes refer to prophets as “watchmen on the tower.”  This analogy teaches that prophets, because of their mantle within the priesthood, see things we do not see and understand things we do not understand.  The very reason we have prophets is so they can lead us and instruct us in the way of life and salvation.  Indeed, one could make the argument that the time a prophet is most important is precisely when he counsels you to do something you would not otherwise do.  If the prophets only gave counsel with which we agreed there would be no need for them to live on the tower, so to speak—our own judgment and spiritual intuition would be enough to get us through.  The purpose of having a prophet is that, through them, God can allow us to act as if we had wisdom which, for now, is beyond our grasp.  For even with all our powers of both reason and spiritual/moral intuition, we will not always make the right decisions—our ways are not His, neither our thoughts His, after all.  The moments when we are disagree with the prophets, then, may be the very times when the prophets are most necessary—even life- or society-saving.

Additionally, most members of the Church do not face a choice between following the Prophet and following the heart very often because usually both agree; consequently, in a sense, the opportunities to demonstrate faith by following the Prophet are few and precious.  We should remember, also, that sometimes to Lord gives commands whose purpose may seem clear but whose true intent only He knows.  Those who marched in Zion’s camp, for instance, thought they were on a military mission to redeem Zion; the truth that only appeared in retrospect, however, was that they were engaged in a journey to emphasize principles and purify souls—they thought they knew the business they were about, but the Lord accomplished other, different purposes.

As Elder Eyring once explained:

“Sometimes we will receive counsel that we cannot understand or that seems not to apply to us, even after careful prayer and thought. Don’t discard the counsel, but hold it close. If someone you trusted handed you what appeared to be nothing more than sand with the promise that it contained gold, you might wisely hold it in your hand awhile, shaking it gently. Every time I have done that with counsel from a prophet, after a time the gold flakes have begun to appear and I have been grateful.”

In the end, I think the most important word in Elder Eyring’s quote is “trust.”  I follow the brethren not because I am blind, but because I believe they are prophets who see and understand things I do not—I trust them.  I don’t think they are perfect, but I believe the God who speaks to them is and, when they act with one voice and give the same counsel clearly, repeatedly, and emphatically, I believe they really will lead me in the ways of life and salvation.  My trust in them is bound up in my testimony of the prophet Joseph and in my intimate knowing of divinity and the tender mercies of the Father toward his children.  When I raise my hand to sustain them, I do so because I believe they are God’s prophets, called to lead us to the Promised Land.  Sometimes I may not understand their reasons.  But that, I believe, is when it is most important to follow them.  For that acting without understanding, that stepping into the darkness—even when our pondering, prayer, and soul-searching have failed to illuminate the steps before us—is one of the most important steps we take in the journey of faith because it requires a powerful and meaningful degree of humility that opens us to a kind of spiritual growth that is otherwise simply not possible.

The gospel’s great truth is this: this isn’t it. This mortal world, though eternally important in its implications and consequences, is but the second act. This wouldn’t matter so much except that this realization changes essentially everything. Indeed, not only changes it but alters it almost unrecognizably: what seemed of grave import is suddenly a laughing matter and what hardly gave us pause now fills our minds with serious reflection.

Recently, while in Buenos Aires, Becca and I visited a most unusual zoo where we met, at the opening sidewalk, a full-grown dazzlingly beautiful tiger being led around on a leash as if he were a poodle. We proceeded to enter cages where puppies—and we—mingled with full-grown lions—only the latter, to our surprise, were being cowed by the little dogs. Mere mutts, with no pedigree at all, yapped at the heels of the kings of the jungle and those royal beasts bore it without a reaction because they, the lions, were raised amongst the puppies. Brought up in a world of smallness and seeming sameness, those great predators believed themselves common mongrels.

My father, seeing a picture of Missy next to a true Mufasa, commented, “man, someday those lions may realize what they can really do—when that happens, I hope I’m not the one in the cage.”

And that, I wager, is one of the great purposes of the Gospel: it is the place where lions come to remember who they are. Indeed, the gospel, and its reflections in the outside world—Nature, the chapel, the scriptures, writing in the best books—are really the only places where we can heed Jacob’s invitation to see the world as it really is. In the gospel we learn who we really are and just what it is we are made of. We learn that some things are actually of worth but that most of what the world values is only that which moth and rust doth corrupt, which thieves do break through and steal.

With the plan of salvation it becomes apparent that family is the point, and that, in sharp contrast, most of those things to which the world aspires constitute sound and fury, signifying nothing. We were sent here to be together as husband and wife and we join together in that union so we may thereby make our way together back to the presence of God.

And that of course, in the end, is our reason for everything; reunion, atonement, coming home again. The gospel helps us realize the import and gravity of T.S. Eliot’s observation that the true voyage of discovery will be to return where we started and see the place for the first time. All of this, of course, only realized through the merciful power of Him who is present in every part of what is important—the Redeemer and our advocate before the Father.

There is a danger in this knowledge, however, for it freights us with solemn responsibility. For the gospel teaches that it is not just we who are lions—it is everyone around us. Indeed, Satan has done one better than those zoo-keepers. The latter used real puppies to convince the lions they were impotent; the former, however, is so very clever that he has used real lions to convince other lions that they are not who they really are—what an awesome frightful magician he is! For the truth is: in all the world, amidst all the strife, poverty, corruption, wars, envy, and pride—there resides not one single puppy, rather, only lions unaware. Everyone I meet—and scoff, hate, abuse, fool, and harm—is not a mere mortal, but a lion slumbering beneath the illusion upon which our scorn feeds. Each beggar who stretches out his hand to me—his skin mottled, his eyes cloudy, his breath laced with yesterday’s booze—is a lion with unfathomable potential. We treat each other as we do because Satan in his great cunning has convinced us that there is something more precious than souls—that land, wealth, status, power, or, really, anything, is more important than the welfare of all the world’s lions. That is His great lie—the great reversal, the great perversion: he would have me believe, as he has taught from the earliest generation, that I am not my brother’s keeper.

Thus he bids us wear disguises, hoping we see only the masks when we look at our fellow travelers. He has done this so subtly, for he divides the world in so very many ways: ethnicity, class, race, home, pedigree, academic degree, ancestry, skin color—on and on the list continues, all of them names of lesser distinction applied to the sons and daughters of the living God, distractions from who we truly are. He will use anything—any distinction, any difference—to bring us, as President Benson taught, to have pride looking both up and down. Any enmity he can engender is merely the reflection of our forgetfulness. But in holy places, in sacred moments, we remember. The light of the gospel cuts through this mortal fog and grants us a view as long as we care to gaze. And with that view—stretching on as it does past the horizon and on to something like eternity—we see we really are all alike—the accoutrements with which we adorn ourselves during this mortal journey are trinkets, nothing more. In the end, each man is only one Being’s spiritual son, and that will be, finally, the identity that most matters.

The prophets, the scriptures, and all the world’s greatest teachers preach this same great truth: that our fellowmen are what matter most. Thus Marley’s cry echoes down through the ages as he desperately seeks to alert all of us before it is too late to the truth he only grasped when, dead, he found himself forced, trembling and in agony, to survey the wasteland of lost opportunity that was his life: “Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?’” And then, with utter pathos, his plaintive reply to his still-foolish friend’s attempt at consolation: when Scrooge says, “but Marley, you were a very good man in business,” the doomed man howls—along with the rich man who finds no drop of water to quench his burning tongue—“business! Mankind was my business.” It is no wonder both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young preached that, when it comes to beggars, it would be better to heed the appeal of ten liars than to turn away one honestly seeking succor.

For that is the other great truth: we are all beggars, recipients, if we will, of the divine gift. When we present before our maker, it will be starkly, horrifyingly naked unless we are clothed with that covering which is not of our own design. Only that which is gifted to us will cover us in that day. And only therein vested can we find the presence and peace of mind to then look up and hopefully hear those blessed words: “well done.”

For the atonement is the heart, the tree, the vine, the sun, the vital force. Without it the rest withers and pales, drained of life, worse than death. The devil and his angels are all we would be without it. The stark reminder given us in the book of Mormon most forcefully is that only through Christ does anything else worth worrying about have meaning because it only through the atonement that the reuniting that will be the end of the faithful saints’ journeys is possible. When the Brother of Jared found the veil drawn back to reveal his Savior he realized it was ultimately “the righteousness of the Redeemer,” not of Mahonri, that made that meeting possible. Thus the most important symbolism in every gospel ordinance suggests that everything else goes back to the sacrifice of the Lord—it is only though his most painful price that our blood can be redeemed. We are all beggars in tatters, true, but he has rewards our pleading and our utmost effort with blessings beyond measure—with the opportunity to return to the one place, the one presence, where we could never, ever, on our own, deserve to be. Clothed in His glory, having then done our all, we will, at that day, through His great suffering in Gethsemane and Calvary, find that our hope for a “far better land of promise” has been made blessed mellifluous reality. We will then know, as we once did long ago, the sweet embrace of Jesus. We will know, in that moment of oneness with He who bought us out of captivity, that His grace makes our earnest effort enough. For His love has not wavered, does not falter, and will not, at that most vital moment, fail—it is a perfect atonement and we, through it, will arrive home again to go no more out forever.

I used to live in the world

he told me

but maybe you don’t know about living in the world, since you’ve always been in the Church.  It’s like those young guys, you know, who hang out on the street corners—I used to be like one of them: cussin, wastin my time, I was in the world.

But that was until I found the church.

And he wasn’t talking about our church, either.  His name is Brother Walker and my more-in-tune wife was sensitive enough to invite him and his wife to our house for dinner when we met them at Church last week.  And so it was that, over heavenly salmon and amazing peach cobbler, brother and sister Walker sat across from us—around a table hardly big enough for two—and told us their rather remarkable story.

He is a tall man, with a chestnut complexion and a salty goatee—a commanding presence with a resonant heavenly voice.  His wife is smaller, with a penchant for bashfully looking away, especially when she laughs, and a poof of white hair illuminating her wizened face; she wore a doily on her head the first time she came to Church.

She was sixteen

He told me

When we married—and I was eighteen.  That was fifty-four years ago now—that’s been a long, long time.

And then they looked at each other wistfully, memory’s current flowing between them:

We both love to study, but we were so young when we married, we got our education late, we had to be workin, after all, to support ourselves.  But we went to college at night—I got my BA in eight years, in psychology, and then I started workin at a school for retarded children and decided I wanted to study special education and so I started studyin for my masters degree and I almos’ got it, too—I wuz jest a semester away, when I was called to the ministry.

By this time, we had finished our food and were sitting contentedly around the table, hands clasped in front of us, relaxed against the back of our chairs as the weather outside turned tempestuous and wind blew the tree branches against our windows.  He continued:

My wife and I, you see, had begun goin’ to church, we were goin’ with the seventh day Adventists, they are my wife’s people.  And I would go for prayer meetin’s in the morning and we would wait for the Bishop to come and preach but sometimes the bishop didn’t come and so the people would say to me “preach!”  But I didn’t know nuthin’ about preachin’  But every Sunday they would ask me and so, finally, I bought a book about how to prepare a sermon and I started to write one down, and the next Sunday I started preachin’ and they all said to me “you misst your callin’!  You shoulda been a preachuh!”  And then, the thing was—they were right—I felt it, I knew: the holy Spirit was guiding me—I was supposed to be a preacher.  And I said, “Lord, I can’t do this, I don’t know anything about preaching!”  but it was right, it was the Holy Spirit, I was meant to preach.

And so he did.

Bishop Walker went on to tell us the story of his preaching: he returned to school and got another BA, this one in divinity.  Then he kept studying and got his Masters of divinity and stopped his work as a teacher to become a chaplain.  He began attending a new Church as part of his ministerial education and he and his wife began to worship with a denomination I had not heard of, the Seventh Day Pentecostals (worship on Saturday but believe in the gifts of the Spirit).  Over the course of these years, they also raised a family—two sons and a daughter—and eventually buried the two sons.  They moved about a bit between Philadelphia and New Jersey and, by the end of two thousand and seven, Brother Walker found himself as the acting Bishop of their local congregation—preaching some and focusing his outreach on personal ministry to those in need.

And so, just a month or so ago, the new year dawned, even as the sun is beginning to set on their lives.  Far from the worldly man he says he once was, “Bishop” Walker now radiates the calm that accompanies those who walk at peace with themselves and their God.  He and his wife were quite comfortable where they were, until a morning just after the turn of the year:

I was prayin’ one mornin’, and I said, “God, tell me how to draw as close to you as humanly possible.”  And then into my mind came the words:

I mean, I’m an old man, it’s kind of late to be changing.  I didn’t know if I could do this, but I knew it was right.  I knew the Lord was leading me.  My wife, she didn’t accept it as quickly as I did, but she told me she’d follow me anywhere.  And here we are.  I know it’s true.  I know it’s right.  I know this is where God’s leadin me.

And so, Saturday last, the good Bishop attended his regular meetings, and announced to his congregation that he would be leaving, that God wanted him somewhere else.  And he and his wife were baptized and then, this week, confirmed.  He told us how, this morning, as he read in the Bible before coming to our meetings, he read the great intercessory prayer and then read the promise that the Lord would send his comforter, and then how, as he sat on the stand waiting for a very new member (who, incidentally, had to be instructed on the stand, as to the halting words he was to say) to confirm him:

As I waited for the layin on of hands, I was cryin, but it was all I could do to contain myself, to keep myself from ballin like a baby, I wanted to break down and just cry up there, but I couldn’t let myself do that, so I just cried, you know, quietly, and they laid their hands on my hand, and, wow—wow.

(wrote this last Friday, still think it holds pretty well):

I don’t usually talk explicitly about politics on this blog, but as Super Tuesday approaches, and what with Mitt Romney garnering so much attention, it seems appropriate:

Mitt’s road, incidentally, is uphill and very steep. Mitt is probably the best reincarnation of Ronald Reagan the party will see for a long time–charismatic, affable, down-the-line conservative, good-looking, a clear communicator–but for some reason I don’t quite understand, the country in whole and even the republican party itself does not seem particularly interested in Ronald Reagan. Despite incredible amounts of advertising, an overwhelming financial advantage, incredible tactical superiority, and a dirth of attractive Republican candidates, Romney has been unable to make a real impression. So far, his only wins have come in places where other republicans hardly seriously campaigned. The only exception is Michigan, but even there it seems the other candidates were content enough to let Romney win while they focused on South Carolina and other upcoming states.

Now, McCain has almost all the momentum going into the virtual nationwide primary and Romney is left hoping he can turn enough states to stay in the race. He may be able to strike some kind of advatange with advertising, and if he employs a cunning enough strategy he just might be able to keep things competetive. It seems like a tall order, though, because for all the airtime Romney can buy, it will be very difficult to outadvertise the newly-ordained and long-awaited “GOP frontrunner.”

The GOP x-factor is Mike Huckabee. Despite his win in Iowa, serious observers have always known he never had a chance to be president. His policies are too liberal for most mainline republicans and his experience is too shallow for the independents and cross-over democrats he might otherwise attract. What with the all-but-official declaration that this is now a two-man race, one wonders what Huckabee gains by staying in the race. I wonder, though I don’t mean to suggest any official agreement between the two, if he has stayed in as a help to McCain–a sort of firewall against any extra support Romney might garner. This would make sense on a number of levels. While Romney and Huckabee seem, in a sense, to be very different candidates–one a retired Baptist minister, one a former Mormon ecclesiastical leader, one a Reaganesque conservative, one a pseudo-populist with certain hardcore social conservative commitments–the fact remains that they both play to one very important segment of the GOP crowd: conservtaive Christians. Huckabee appeals to the Christian base both by virtue of his explicitly-emphasized religion and as a result of his devotion to the causes of life and family; Mitt, on the other hand, has tried desperately to appeal to this segment of the base by his committment to the Reagan coalition. Consequently, by staying in the race as long as possible, and especially in the south, Huckabee siphons support away from Romney, stealing desperately-needed voters. It is true some of Huckabee’s supporters might otherwise vote for McCain, but I think the majority would favor Romney, disdaining McCain’s maverick and rather unrepublican tendencies.

If this were true, it would not only give McCain reason to celebrate Huckabee’s continued presence in the race–as inconsequential and Quixotic and that might otherwise be–it would also make Huckabee the perfect running mate if McCain wins the nomination. By choosing Huckabee, McCain first scratches the back of the friend who scratched his, and then immediately solidifies his support on the far right, with the very voters who are most likely to stay home from the polls harumphing in McCain is the GOP nominee. It sounds, in many ways, like the perfect plan for wrapping up the primary and then shoring up the probability of winning the general election.

All of this begs the question: does McCain’s likely victory help Barack Obama? I must admit, I do not see Hillary Clinton’s appeal. I know she has long been annointed to “the inevitable one” (a frightening fact in itself, dynastic as such an appointment would be), but beyond that early inauguration by the press, she strikes me as cold, calculating, political, and divisive. I know pundits praise her apparently vast knowledge of policy matters and I know she has made much of her “thirty five years of experience.” The first of these matters I will have to grant her, but I would then point out that others of her remaining contenders, Mitt Romney in particular, share this talent and may exceed it. And the second matter–her experience–strikes me as questionable at best. The experience she has emphasized most strongly, after all, is her time in the white house. But this seems to be to be political chicanery: she wants on the one hand to claim her husband’s experience but on the other to declare her political independence from him; she wants to take credit for assisting in many of his successes while only claiming to have learned from his failures; and, of course, she immediately distanced herself from the dismal failure that was her only true substantial foray into public policy during that time: her healthcare plan. Consequently, her experience does not seem to me more impressive than that of the other candidates (especially since none of our most recent or greatest presidents has had direct in-the-white-house experience before entering office anyway) and her policy knowledge also does not, in my mind, set her apart.

Barack Obama, it seems to me, is the much more attractive candidate. He is charismatic and eloquent and, moreover, is a man of vision. He has been compared much recently to JFK and the comparison seems apt. That, of course, if both a warning and an endorsement, since JFK’s presidency was a decidedly mixed bag. But it still makes him more attractive than Hillary.

More importantly to this discussion, however, is Obama’s cross-over appeal. Hillary is, in many ways, Romney’s perfect foil. Knowledgeable, like him, and a member of the vanguard of old party ways. She represents the Democratic party’s past and in consequentially divisive–those who supported her husband are likely to support her but she in unlikely to attract new voters. If she were running against Romney I don’t think that would matter because the country is poised, as it usually does, to change political colors this year and elect a democrat. that calculus is disrupted, however, if McCain wins because he would attract substantial crossover support–enough, I think, to beat Hillary. That, then, makes me wonder if Democrats hoping to tie-up the coming general election won’t gravitate toward Obama if only because his appeal to independents and even some republicans makes him more likely to beat McCain than Clinton who cross-over appeal seems to be about like that of Justice Robert Bork

For the sullen,

There is, in a wheatfield buried in snow,

Silent coppercold comfort.

As if, with the drowning out of jubilant life

there resides in the Earth empathy deep as frost

wrapped like tentacles around

roots long ago

thrust into the

silent, silent, soil tomb.

To the prodigal,

the golden roiling wheatfield’s waves—

now hushed—

whisper life unbegun:

the wintry soil barely suppressing the

trembling seeds,

tremulous life still captive.

Death and life,

beneath the Earth:

begetting one another—

each the other’s beginning and end,

each the other’s shadow,

each the other’s

meaning beneath the wintry meadow.

One of the dreaded rites of premedical passage is the organic chemistry lab class. Therein, a group of hapless twenty-somethings meets for three hours a week, in their blue jeans and protective goggles, to learn how to isolate, combine, and change chemicals.

It was my worst grade in college.

There was something fascinating, though, about the class’ concept. In organic chemistry, life’s building blocks are reduced to stick-figure drawings: a dot or letter for the nucleus of each atom and a line for the bonds between them. Much of the organic chemistry experience is drawing this kind of picture. As chemicals undergo different combinations and transformations, the dots and lines shift accordingly. Each student quickly learns that an arrow represents the movement of a chemical bond–as atom A dissociates from atom B and latches onto atom C, the arrow indicated the switch.

What strikes me about this process–whether represented on paper or enacted with beakers, acids, and bunson burners–is that there is no going around the steps necessary to make compound A into compound B. The process which affects the change might require ten steps: heating compound A, separating the remaining solid, whetting it with water, washing it with acid, cooling it down, combining it with X, stirring, waiting, removing the powder, and then drying it with a special separating compound. There is no going around the necessary steps because each step brings about the actions represented by one of those arrows–each macroscopic thing we do moves a bond from here to there and the end result is the actual transformation from A into B. It is not that A has simply become like B–it actually is B, the chemical structure has changed.

I wonder if ordinances function in a similar fashion. I wonder if they affect, in some ineffable way, beyond our mortal comprehension, a change in our most basic spiritual matter so that they are necessary in some literal and eternal way, not just as a symbol of our dedication and not just as a means for exploring the meaning of spiritual things–though both of those purposes are important, but in some physical/spiritual fashion which eventually allows the Great Alchemist to transform men into gods

I remebered as I listened to Elder Eyring speak today (from a conference a couple of years ago) the importance of our motivation in determining the impact of our actions in the spiritual life.

I witnessed the importance of motivation most dramatically when I returned from my mission. I left for Mexico after a year at BYU. During that year, I had begun to delve into religious philosophy and to fancy myself quite the intellectual. I was asked before I left to speak about the importance of the Atonement . I very much wanted that talk to leave the ward abuzz. Having lived there my whole life, I knew most of the ward members as well as I knew my grandparents. Many had lived in their homes since the time my home was an empty lot and most of them were deeply-rooted Mormon folk who could reach easily back to pioneer ancestors. I wanted to wow them; and wow them I did. I spoke about one of Bertrand Russell’s essays on the nobility of atheism and how my faith in Christ solved the vexing problems Russell posed. It was an articulate and capable treatise and my family and I received cards along the lines of “that was the best Easter sunday meeting we have ever had.”

Six months into my mission I found the talk among my few papers and in the midst of very different circumstances. I had traded my comfortable Provo environs for the dusty streets of Cuatitlan Iscalli where I labored with a series of companions I didn’t get along with. I had just passed my first Christmas in the field and was convinced that the oft-heard aphorism that your mission Christmases would be your best were rubbish–I spent mine more homesick and glum than I had ever been. Still sad a few days thereafter I read the talk and was baffled by the pretentiousness, the calculated attempt to impress. It was disturbing and struck me as poor motivations with a spiritual sheen.

Eighteen months into my mission, with my farewell talk all but forgotten, I had waded my way through much more difficulty and sorrow and had found myself humbled first by circumstance and then by desire. At that time, I found that my prayers took on a new feeling: Dear Father, please help me not to care about leadership or about prestige or about what other people think about me, please help me not to care about seeming “spiritual,” just help me to care about other people and about being like Jesus. Help me only care about what Thou wouldst have me do. Please.

And I did. Miracles followed. Events I now can hardly believe flowed freely. And, in that context, I finished my time in Mexico.

While there, in addition to my love for the people in Mexico, I came to love the people in my ward back home more. This was because I realized each scoutmaster and Bishop and primary teacher and even custodian (they would come see us when we were playing basketball till all hours of the night) had taken a turn molding the clay of my character and so the fruit I harvested in Mexico bore the imprint of those who raised me in Salt Lake. As I sat down at my computer to type my homecoming talk, I was overcome by a very different prayer than the one I gave (if I did) before left: Father, I don’t care what anyone thinks about me or this talk, but please let everyone know how much I love them and what a wonderful wonderful thing they have done in Mexico. Please let them know what wonderful people they are and what a difference they made in Mexico.

I will never forget the speech. It was dramatically different in both form and content from my farewell: gone was the alliteration, the imagery, the philosophy, the craft, the art–replaced instead by stories of people I knew and by a love I felt overflowing from within toward the members of my ward and my mexican friends.

I gave the talk by mentioning, by name, those in my ward who had touched me and the specific lessons they taught me: Bishop Ward about faith, Scoutmaster Skankey about stick-to-it-iveness, Krista Tucker (a lame, deaf, dumb, mentally retarded girl) about loving without words, and on and on. And then I shared the story of one person I had been able to touch because of each lesson: the woman whose house we found by following a prompting after sincere prayer, the girl whose house came at the end of the last street on the last hill just before the time to retire, and the family I taught practically through pantomime before I learned Spanish.

During the talk the congregation looked at me with a kind of rapt attention I don’t ever remember seeing before or since. But I know it wasn’t me they were seeing; they were meeting, through my words, the people they had touched in Mexico, people they loved though they’d not yet met them. We were wrapped together, in that moment, in a buoying spirit which left a hush and a glow on the congregation. When I sat down, silence spread like peace over the room and we basked in the love that still hung in the air like dew.

During my junior year of college, as I worked toward finishing my B.A. in American Studies, I took “Studies in the American Experience,” the major’s capstone course taught with wit and acumen by Dr. Neil York. About half way through the course, Dr. York explained to us that we were entering a third of the course where we would discuss some troubling aspects of America’s past. Over the next month or so, we discussed a number of mostly glum historical topics such as “America and Blacks,” “America and Asians,” and “America and the Minority.” Dr. York detailed the tragic paradox which weaves itself through American history, starting with a slaveholder who penned “all men are created equal” and working its way right up through the specatcle of Rodney King.

Apparent in all of this was an ideological double-mindedness–a large gap between the American ideal and the American reality. And, as is always the case, that gap is, in a sense, more troubling because Americans are so quick to proclaim the importance of “justice for all”–it would be one thing for an apathetic people to indulge in practices perpetuating racial and other types of inequality, but for a people steeped in the hope of being the Promised Land, such a perpetuation is particularly unconscionable.

And yet…

And yet, it is not the gap that strikes me most strongly, for almost every nation in the hisotry of world has failed to live up to its ideals in one form or another, and those civilizations that have not done so were so fraught with barbary and injustice as to care very little about their appearance as just or otherwise. No, what is most striking about the history of America is the doggedness with which the American ideal asserts itself–for all her shortcomings, and despite all the frustration and apathy such a record might invite, America, the people, the polis, has shown a remarkable tenacity, a Quixotic insistence on clinging to the idea that, indeed “all men are created equal.”

While our history has been anything but linear, and while I do not mean to suggest that every setback and sidestep has been merely a pace toward destiny, yet America’s overall tac, viewed from the distance of hindsight, shows an encouraging trajectory, as if, from the beginning, we were somehow moving steadily and steadfastly toward the City on a Hill we at first envsisioned ourselves to be. It is as though our wars and tragedies and upticks and scandals and movements and ages have labored together, over the course of the centuries, to bring us toward a world where a man is “judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character.”

But, of course, such grand visions do little good today, here, now. No, such grandeur will not prevent a single injustice today or cure a single contemporary social ill. For that, we need something much more pedestrian, though equally noble: political involvement, democratic responsibility, and social conscience. Perhaps out of some sense that that is true, my mind and heart have gravitated almost in spite of myself toward the coming presidential election. For better or worse, the office of the American Presidency has become uniquely powerful. There is much to the idea that the President of the United States of America is the most powerful man in the world, commanding as he does the military and ideological might of the world’s most powerful nation. Grave then, is the power and responsibility each of us wields, all of us wield, as we step to the ballot box on Tuesday. The man we elect on that day in November will have four, or eight, years to steer the good ship America either toward or away from that city on a hill. As the last eight years have taught us, there will likely be violent storms amidst the next eight years, too, and it will likewise be the commander’s duty and challenge to lead the ship through those stormy waters. It is my belief that the moral critical mass of Americans–both leaders and followers–will continue to guide us toward that just destiny and it will be for history to look back upon our next president and determine whether his leadership kept us in line with our historical tac toward justice.

I see my will with Thine to meld;

Allow Thy grace to work in me.

I pray Thy love my heart to swell

that through thy pow’r I’ll be like Thee.

For freedom flows from founts that I

would not have thought: in Thy control

I look to see a bluer sky

and corridors of freer souls.

(v. 19-20):  It seems strange that the proud persecute the humble.  But the proud are acutely and naggingly aware of the distance between who they are and who they purport to be and they become convinced they can narrow the gap by continually reinforcing the difference between their supposed selves and the people they make out the humble around them to be.

The people of God, on the other hand, freely share with all around them their most precious possesions.  Their attitude of abundance informs them there is always enough and to share.

In this way, those of the Church (in their hearts) are like men at a fountain doling out water by the quart while the belittled cling to their teacups chanting “this is mine.”

Vs. 22 will soon point out that an attitude of abundance resides in both those within the Church and without and that not all abundant souls belong to the body of Christ.  Still, the Atonement–in its infinity–provides special access to abundance; indeed, only through it is the ultimately abundant universe accessible.

***

There is beauty in the equality and adundance of the people of Nephi in the first years of the reign of the judges.  They shared not only their material goods but the things of God, as well.

It occurs to me that abundance is, to some extent, a comparative term: it refers not to an objective measure of goods but to what we have in relation to what we want.  Hence, a poor man who wants for nothing lives in abundance while a rich man who lusts for more lives in scarcity.  The abundance of Zion, then, lies not necessarily in its material wealth–though that, too, may be present– but in the largesse of the hearts of the Christians who are Zion’s inhabitants.

Toward what star or pole does my nature incline?

Is there within, or without, or flung beyond the horizon

some invisible Presence toward which I wander–unled, unheeding, unknown?

What magnetism sways my needle, what force persuades my feet this way or that, what knowledge without articulation guides my soul?

Some constant, surely, some light darkness does not dim..

Yet oft my needle spins, possesed by some lesser power, some subtle mini-magnet convincing South North, just for a day.

Following, I set off, heading toward a destiny unsought and dark, pale and lifeless.

If South is North my endurance is worthless, I trek toward nothing.

Yet South is never North, me compass notwithstanding.

I cannot change the ageless planes which orient forces forever.

Beneath more visible swayers are powers too deep for feeble understanding.

One such dwells deeply within the fabric woven through us all and therein my compass find knowledge and this sure:

It is the bright and morning star.

Fluid glass, flowing like molten lava. But the vision inside would grab my attention even more. I wondered today what it would be like if I could peer into each person’s soul during fast and tesimony meeting. For a testimony, like any public expression, is part artifice–though, at least in this case, it is also part conviction. Still, most who speak in our meetings tell some part of what they think we want to hear. There is less of doubt and more of certainty than resides, I think, in their hearts. This is not to say they decieve us intentionally, but only that there is a judicial distance between the thoughts and feelings of my heart and what I will say from the pulpit. Would I have it be otherwise?

Still, what if, for a day, each person were made of glass? What if instead of the unflapable Bishop, I saw a fellow beset–at times–by grief, pain, and doubt? What if, instead of certainty seemingly rote, I saw conviction forged in the fiery furnace of doubt, inquiry, and wrestling with difficult questions? What if the “I know” became “I did not know, I feared it was not true, and I still succumb to questions on other matters, but some part of my soul is now different–this I know to be true?” And what if, instead of “I love my family,” the struggling mother articulated the weight apparent on her shoulders: “my family life has not been so good of late. My husband leaves me for his church calling and that makes me feel unimportant. My children are often thankless and thoughtless and they have their share of fights. My basement is a mess and I’m lucky if I can straighten the living room in time for the home teachers’ arrival. Sometimes I feel things kareening out of control and I wonder if I can even keep them from whirling completely into chaos…” And then, after honesty, the other truth, just as deep, “and yet, I love my family.”

Somewhere along the line, many Mormons mistook the ideal for what actually ought to be right now and concluded the distance that separated themselves from that vision of perfection was a measure not of their mortality but of their failure–as if every moment not worthy of emulation made them outcasts from the Saints. Consequently, we work up a sweat every day, and especially on sundays, trying to convince ourselves and each other that all is well in Zion and that our family is the one that is spared from the rolling that makes the rough stones smooth–as if we, for some reason, were chosen to come to Earth with the buffing already accomplished.

The sad consequence is that on the day when I am most in need of help, when I feel my imperfection most acutely, I may arrive at the chapel, look around, and think, “no one hear knows how I feel, no one here understands this pain, everyone leads such a charmed life–I wish there were some bone deep empathy from which to drink.”

I can only imagine my reaction if I showed up one day and souls clothed in resplendent glass passed in front to share conviction. If I could see into each soul, I imagine shock would assert itself first–”the stake president thinks that? The Elder’s Quorum president stuggles with this? You mean the perfect family has that much contention and strife?” And yet, after the shock faded–and it would not last all that long–I would find myself easing into my seat, breathing more deeply, and my own facade would quickly melt away, my own shield dissolving into glass as I allowed others to peer into me and to see what grief is alive inside. And out of this mutual admission of the sting and bite of reality would be born transcendent love. For the Gospel was never meant as a sermon to the perfect, but as a salve to the wounded and water to the parched. If we all were covered in glass, we would spend time dressing each others’ wounds rather than trying desperately to hide our hurt from each other.

Alive with new spiritual splendor, Teresa immersed herself in the Gospel. Active in her Denver ward, she found special joy serving in the House of Lord during the Denver Temple dedication—she attended every dedicatory session, savoring the succor she found. One morning, as a session ended, she called my Father in tears and said: “Kimball, I heard Papa—you remember his tenor voice?—singing in the choir.”

More than anything, though, Teresa longed for a child. Nathan was a wonderful, supportive husband who encouraged her Church activity and they acutely felt the absence of offspring, praying often they might conceive. For many years, Teresa’s womb lay barren—they could do nothing but ask, hope, and wait.

And then, the waiting was over: in the spring of 1985 Teresa called to say she would give birth in August.

By July, she was aglow with divine anticipation. The Salt Lake summer had grown dry and hot and my family decided to drive to Seattle for a visit to my Father’s best friend. My brother and I could hardly wait—we had never seen the ocean; and so, early one summer morning, we set out north along I-15, bound for the Northwest coast. Our passage in our old brown Toyota soon grew terribly boring, and time seemed to stretch out beyond the horizon—my brother and I wondered if the journey would ever end.

After thirteen long hours, we finally arrived but, almost as soon as we entered “uncle�? Paul’s house, I knew something was not right. The phone kept ringing and it was my Father, not Paul, who did all the talking. My Mom stepped into another room and closed the door. My father’s face grew pale and then tears slipped from his eyes and wandered down his cheeks. No one said much to me until my Dad approached my brother and I: “boys, we need to go home.�?

We got back in the car, turned it around, and headed into the endless night. Sleep soon overcame me and I do not remember much of the journey home. I only knew that, when we arrived, my Father dropped us off and then disappeared—my Aunt Teresa, they said, was sick.

They tried to explain, but what could I understand: I didn’t even know how babies were made, so what could I comprehend about premature labor? How was I supposed to know about hemorrhage and surgical complications? I had never heard of life-support and I did not know about comas. I just knew Aunt Teresa was supposed to be having a baby and my Father, a few weeks earlier, had been very happy. A couple of nights after our return, my Dad came back from the hospital and he and my mother embraced and cried and cried. I ran to them and gave them hugs: “mommy, daddy, it will be ok. You’re ok. Be happy, stop crying.” My Dad looked at me, wishing I understood and said, simply: “Aunt Teresa died.”

And with her death, Teresa seemed to slip from our grasp, like a ghost who would not be delayed. Her daughter, Katie, survived the delivery and Nathan promised my other aunt he would “raise a Mormon girl.” He remarried, though, and not long after the tragedy he and his new family moved far away. Understandably, they started a new life and our role in it was very small. We missed Teresa, and wondered about her daughter, but life revved up again and moved with forgetful speed onto other matters.

Many years passed and my brother and I came of age. In the meantime my Mom gave birth to two daughters—our family finished at six. I completed elementary, then junior high, then high school and, in the fall of 1999, set out for BYU. My first year was intellectually harrowing as I grappled for the first time with foreign philosophers and different kinds of Mormon thinking. Through it all I grew and prepared to serve a mission. I submitted my papers in the winter of 1999 and received my call—to Mexico City—in February of 2000. In April, after finishing the term at school, I bought my suits, collected my ties, entered the temple, and prepared to leave to Mexico. As a nineteen year old, I didn’t quite understand when, the Tuesday before I entered the MTC, my Father said through remembering tears, with his hands on my head, “And, Tyler, I bless you that you will not be called—as both your Father and your Grandfather were—to lose your mother while on your mission.” How could I understand, then or now, the weight those words carried?

In all of this, Teresa was almost forgotten to me. She still lived quite brightly, of course, in my Father’s fondest memories. For me, though, she was ephemeral, a spirit whose memory faded into the mist of my earliest memories—when my Dad began mentioning Katie in his letters, I couldn’t quite grasp her importance. I did not understand the significance of the fact that Teresa’s daughter became acquainted with my sister online. I did not know what it meant when those two became friends and I did not realize the depth of my Father’s joy when he learned Katie had been baptized at age eight and that her father had followed suit—that Nathan was a man of his word. And I certainly did not quite grasp the meaning of a letter I received eighteen months into my mission.

Nathan, my dad told me, had renewed contact with our family. He was wonderful, as we had always known, and he and my Father had grown to be something of friends. More than that, though, Nathan had called my Father to say Nathan and Katie were coming to Salt Lake City.

“That’s wonderful,” my Father responded, “we’ll have you over for dinner.”

“That would be nice,” Nathan replied, “but we’re coming for more than that.”

“Oh, really,” my Dad returned, “what did you have in mind?”

“Katie and I are coming to be sealed to Teresa in the Salt Lake temple—we want you to be there.”

Nathan and Katie sealed to Teresa? Could it really be? And so many years after her death? Was it real? Do such miracles happen? They do, for a few weeks later I received the following in the mail:

“The very next week we went to the Temple with Nathan and Katie for a sealing long to be remembered. I was so impressed with Nathan’s quiet resolve [and] Katie’s exuberant understanding…. At one point at the very beginning of the Temple ceremony I felt as if an unseen door had been opened to allow into the room several folks from the other side.”

Through that open door came a host of visitors and, with that, the arc of my Father’s tragic story settled into a sort of resolution. In some divine harmony, joy accompanied sorrow and reunion, longing. There, in the touch point between temporality and eternity, many generations of Johnsons, Kimballs, and others gathered to see the sealer forge those everlasting bonds: my grandmother, once frozen and lifeless in the snow; my grandfather, once left weakened and wan by the cold; my aunt, once lost, then found, then lost again; my father; my other aunt; Teresa’s daughter; and Nathan—gathered together around the altar in the sealing room of the Salt Lake Temple, angels and humans commingling as friends, the veil all but forgotten.

Once, after she had returned to church, Teresa was staying with our family in Salt Lake. Late one night, my Father found her studying her scriptures at the table in our kitchen. He pulled a chair up next to her and watched as she read and marked. He fingered her scripture case, turning it over to see a patch that read: “gravity.” My Father looked at it quizzically and then interrupted Teresa’s reading:

Teresa, what does “gravity” mean?

She looked up and replied: “God’s love is like gravity. You can hate it, curse it, and say it doesn’t exist, but it’s always there and it always works.” And, she might have added: “invisibly, but palpably, it operates forever, drawing us imperceptibly, inexplicably, and eternally together. ”

In an attempt to establish a new life, Teresa enrolled in a self-realization program. There, her new spiritual advisor directed her to “face her childhood values” by attending, just once, an LDS sacrament meeting. And so, for the first time in many, many years, Teresa showed up at a ward in Denver, Colorado intending a short, perfunctory visit. The Bishop, however, invited her to talk. The gentle conversation that followed ended: “Teresa, you’ve done nothing for which you can’t be forgiven–please come back.”

Not unlike that of Alma the younger, Teresa’s return journey began with a cascade of prayers ascending to heaven: in Salt Lake, her father, sister, and brother prayed for her return to the Lord; in Logan, where he now directed an Institute, Brother Christensen prayed similarly; and, just as real, my Father recorded in his journal, “Mom has to be pushing hard from the other side….”

References to Teresa and her new husband, Nathan, pepper the next few years of my Dad’s journal. Nathan, not a church member, exuded a contagious charisma that quickly won over my family. He married Teresa in Denver, though they would later move across the country. They visited occasionally and my father records small steps in Teresa’s progress: one entry has her asking for a blessing, another attending a ward meeting. At this point my memories of this story begin. Most are somewhat vague, but I have in my mind’s eye a vivid picture of Teresa’s bright red hair, long blood-colored finger nails, glowing staccato laughter, and wonderful presents.

Teresa called my Father from Denver one March morning in 1983 and said: “I want to go to General Conference on Easter Sunday.” My father’s initial response: “you want to go where?” When he knew she was serious, though, he eagerly agreed and they headed to the Tabernacle–my straight-laced RM Father and his flamboyant ex-hippie sister. Part way through the session, Elder F. Burton Howard began:

“Let me ask each of you to picture two crystal goblets…. They differ in size and shape. They are both of good quality…. One has been carefully kept in a china cupboard. It is clean and polished. It is warm and inviting in appearance. It sparkles in the light and is filled with clear water. The other glass is coated with grime. It has not been in the dishpan for a long time. It has been used for purposes other than those for which it was made. Most recently it has been left outside in the weather and served as a flowerpot. Although the flower is gone, it is still filled with dirt. It is dull and unbecoming in the light.”

Then, coming to his purpose, Elder Howard asked: “Is not each of us like a crystal glass?” and proceeded to explain how the owner of the goblets finally recovered the second one and, with great difficulty, returned it to its original luster.

My Father’s journal entry from that day rings with surprise, delight, and hope:

“Today is conference. I got up at 4:00 am to go with Teresa to Temple Square to attend the ‘Easter Sunday’ conference session. Can you imagine that—Teresa insisting that we go to conference—at 4:30 am, no less? There is truly something different about her. Her countenance has changed. Elder F. Burton Howard’s talk today was on repentance. He made an almost perfect (for Teresa, perfect) delivery. She turned to me part way through the talk and said, ‘this is the one I came to here.’”

A couple of days later, my Father and Aunt visited Brother Christensen in Logan, this would be the first meeting since that night spent sobbing in the janitor’s closet. My Father recorded:

“Teresa and I drove to Logan today to see Bro C., her old seminary teacher. What a marvelous experience. One which I shall always remember! A miracle is occurring in Teresa’s life. She and I had a wonderful talk on the way up. She told me of the numerous times she has felt the closeness of mom and dad. In fact, she said that while she was thinking of mother after an extremely trying day she heard Mother’s voice singing ‘ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray?’ With tears in her eyes she knelt down and prayed. She was overwhelmed by a flood of the Spirit. Her testimony was strengthened…. Her Bishop…has determined that she should write on a piece of paper, (many pieces if necessary), all of the things she can remember doing since age 8 for which she needs to repent. I think that would be difficult. At any rate, we had a marvelous visit with Bro. C. He seems to say all the right things. He gave Teresa a blessing which was just right. He blessed her with strength to continue. One very important thing he said was, ‘I bless you that you will be able to do things which will motivate your husband to come into the Church. But remember it must be his decision to come. And when he does become a member of the Church you will be very happy.’”

My grandmother’s death, the night with Brother Christensen, the welcoming Bishop, the prayers from many quarters, Elder Burton’s conference talk, the visit to the Institute in Logan, Teresa’s irrepresible spirit, and innumerable other unrecorded influences combined to guide Teresa toward home. In between these more remarkable events, she met over many months with her Bishop, working to “return the luster” to her soul. In those quiet moments in the Bishop’s office, Teresa spoke of a long night of wandering and of years spent empty, spiritually wan. Soon, however, the night was receding before the gentle light of Jesus’ love: the Bishop pronounced Teresa clean, restored to full faith and fellowship in the Church.

As if to give substance to the symbolism of her spiritual journey, Teresa returned, about a year after Elder Burton’s talk, to her childhood ward. My Dad wrote about the experience this way:

“Today I had a most amazing experience. 2 Nep. 27:23. Teresa is here to visit from Texas. She attended the old 5th ward…for fast and testimony meeting. Our family was also there. Shortly after the time for testimonies came she stood up and quickly walked to the microphone in the front of the hall. ‘Brothers and sisters,’ she began, ‘It’s so good to be here…It’s been such a long, long time.’ She then bore an exquisite testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, of repentance and of the Kingdom of God on Earth. She has truly been through the depths of Hell, having suffered much because of her sins (we’re talking here heavy-duty sins of the ‘you-name-it’ variety for 10 or 15 years)…. Now, the light she gives forth, the joy that is hers… She bore such a beautiful testimony. It is indescribable how good it is to have her back. After Teresa spoke, the rest of the meeting seemed to revolve around her and her life’s story…. Sister Williams, holding back tears, said ‘Teresa, I don’t know you, but how I love you for the change you have made. And how I loved your mother. When my son was doing things I knew he shouldn’t, I felt all alone. I felt as if no one had ever been through what I was going through. Your mother would come to me, tell me of your situation and then go on to tell me of her love for you. That’s what she talked about most of the time when we talked was her love for you. Oh how she loved you. She said, “that’s all you can do, is love them and love them and love them some more!” I know she has been loving you from the other side of the veil since her death. How happy she must be today.’ Bishop Nelson…echoed some of Sister Williams’ thoughts. He then went on to note that it was her parents’ faith that made it possible for Teresa to make it through her life…. Brother Canon said, simply, ‘I am so grateful to have been here today and witness the results of the miracle which has taken place. Thank you, Teresa. Thank you.’ I have no words to describe my feelings. The veil was thin. There was much rejoicing on both sides of it.”

A year or so later, Teresa returned to Bro. C. to hand him a stack of paper about an inch thick. “If ever you meet someone who thinks she cannot come back, please show her this,” she said. “But, what is it?” he asked. “The Bishop asked me to write down all the sins for which I was seeking forgiveness—that’s the list.”

The next few days pulsed with surreal happenings. My Father, barely off the airplane, attended his mother’s funeral the Friday after returning home and watched from the stand as the throng filled the chapel, then the gym, and then spilt into classrooms and hallways. My Mother, then just a friend, showed up at my Father’s doorstep with a casserole and time to talk. Letters came from the First Presidency, the Missionary Executive committee, and from President Jensen, who said, in part:

“Never did I think that you would face such a trial of your faith in going home….I am sure that as you look over the past few months you will see little ‘nudgings’ of the Spirit that have quietly but surely given you the faith and the courage to handle properly this trial of your faith….”

And, amidst all of this, my Father suffered–often alone. He would, of course, have had at least two more months with his mother if he had returned home after only two years. As it was, he spoke at her funeral on Friday and then at his homecoming that Sunday. There was something of comfort in that accutely sad time: the throng of loved ones, the flood of letters, the ready embraces, the many comforting voices–all of these combined to weave for my Father a cocoon of sorts to shield him from private, personal, poignant grief. The weeks and months afterward, however, opened into a kind of emotional void, a “nothing time,” as C.S. Lewis called it: as the letters, phone calls, and well-wishes faded, only a space was left, the place Nana used to occupy.

The Comforter was there, though–His presence palpable amidst the dissipating, misty grief. Even these many years later, my Father is adamant about the peace that perfused that empty time, like blood flowing into capillaries. Even in quiet moments, perhaps especially then, my Father became acquainted with something deeper; even in Nana’s absence, he learned, in his bones, of “the things that do not change.” Of course, such spiritual pondering has a way of dissolving itself into the temporalities of everyday life and, before long, life resumed its brisk clip: my Father returned to college, my mother and my Father began dating, they married, and life moved from slogging, to walking, to running at a breathless pace.

In October of 1980, about three years after my grandmother’s death, I was born. At that time, I was my grandfather’s only namesake (the first son of his only son) and he rushed to the hospital the morning of my birth to hold me and cry for joy. Only two years later, my little brother, David, joined me. By that time, we had moved into a small red-brick home in Salt Lake City, my Dad had passed the bar exam and was beginning to practice law, and my mom had given up her job teaching special education to stay home.

Even as life resumed it’s brisk pace, however, my grandfather’s heart and health were slowly failing. The nights spent in the snow had weakened him substantially and he could not shake the lingering effects. His health slowly deteriorated and, about the time of my brother’s birth–much too early to remain in my memory–my grandfather also passed away. There was little drama or fanfare, this time, but still a gnawing, aching sadness.

Meanwhile, my Aunt Teresa had kept up her wild ways. That night spent crying with Brother Christensen, as well as the toll of my grandmother’s death, had begun a change deep within her heart—but her transformation would not be apparent for many years. Instead, she seemed at first to return to the life she had made for herself and her husband in the relative solitude of the Colorado mountains. My father is unsure what her life was like during the years directly following my grandmother’s death, but he supposes Teresa had probably come, with her husband, to a new equilibrium which was not quite “hippy” but still far from happy. Around the time I was born, Teresa divorced her husband and, as time wore on, her soul began to wind its way toward home. She would never abandon her spunk and vim, but in the space of not so many years, the change that had been imperceptibly proceeding within began to show signs without.