The New York Times has recently given a digital subscription to every teacher and student in America. As a result, I can finally read some of the more controversial--or blasé, depending on the day--op-eds and articles that have been behind a paywall. This morning, a number of the op-eds revolved around Christmas and worship. I read two of them, and I wanted to riff off of this one. (I recommend the one about the Zoom church meetings, too, for what it's worth.)
Peter Wehner's thoughts are interesting to me because he has stripped down just what was so revolutionary and radical about Jesus Christ during His own time. As a Mormon--a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--who doesn't really think of himself as a Christian in its modern form, there's a lot that appeals to me. First of all, I think that there's a large difference between Christ and Christianity, the former being of so much greater import than the latter that it hardly bears mentioning. Christianity is what much of the New Testament is interested in establishing; the four Gospels contain all that Jesus said during his mortal (and slightly post-mortal) ministry. It's not a lot, considering how large of an effect His life has had on the history of the world. And, as a Mormon, there are additional components to this--parts of the Doctrine and Covenants, as well as a few chapters in 3 Nephi of the Book of Mormon--that I would call "canonically Christ's". Even with the Mormonic "additional scriptures", what Jesus actually said and did is a pretty sparse account. Even the four Gospels mostly repeat each other, adding nuance, detail, flavor, or expansion in most of the stories. In short, there's not a lot that could be said accounts for Jesus' ministry among mankind. And that's what works so well about Wehner's look. He is drawing our attention to the radical ideas of love, acceptance, and seeking out those most in need of healing--the core concept of Christ's mortal ministry. There's more to what Christ did while He was here, of course. However, His divine ministry, as it were, involved the sacrifice and atonement of mankind, a singular act done by a singular Being that is not really what can be emulated by the rest of us. His mortal ministry shows us how to live; His divine ministry shows us why we live. So it seems fair to me that we spend some time focusing on Jesus' life, particularly as it's currently Christmas Eve and if I don't do at least this essay, there's no guarantee that I'll be having many spiritual experiences over the next two days of avarice and indulgence. I should say that I am definitely a Scrooge: I don't much care for the Christmas season--it's cold, it demands a huge amount for someone whose introverted nature balks at so much interaction, and the lies of the time bother me (kids may know that Jesus is the reason that we celebrate Christmas, but it's the gifts under the tree that make them excited about this time of year; also, lying about Santa Claus has not sat right with me; I remain silent on the topic every year, letting my wife carry that burden of perjury). For a long time, the fact that it lasted all month long--a type of "holimonth" instead of a "holiday"--irked me. Though it could be the COVID restrictions talking, but maybe I'm a bit past that? It certainly hasn't been as draining this year: We don't have to worry about family-, friend-, and ward parties, sledding (harder and harder to do on an ever-warming globe), watching a perpetually-growing list of "traditional" Christmas shows, and an entire miscellany of additional add-ons to the stresses of this time of year. Also, I continue to change as an individual, so my feelings likewise, perhaps, are changing. After however many years to think about it, I may have come to my conclusion about why Christmas, of all the pagan observations subsumed into Christianity's calendar, has left me cold. I think it's because people kept insisting that we should "put Christ back into Christmas". To explain that, let me talk about something else: Cathedrals. I've been to Europe only a couple of times, so I can only speak in a limited way on this, but one of my favorite things to do is to visit European cathedrals. The denomination doesn't matter to me--religiously speaking, Protestant or Catholic, I view them as spiritual cousins rather than ancestors--I just like being in them. I've been to Koln, Notre Dame (both of Paris and Bayeux), and a couple others. They're always exciting to me, letting me glimpse incredible architecture and religious iconography that is familiar-yet-different. After all of the cookie-cutter, utilitarian churches I attended throughout my life, with only a handful of similar artwork hanging on the walls of the hallways (LDS churches don't do bells, stained glass depictions, reliefs, triptychs, statues, candles, or much beyond ninety-degree angles and burlap-textured walls), seeing so much diversity in religious understanding really spoke to me. I would stand outside them and do the very thing their imposing and inspiring architecture was designed to do: Tip the head and direct the gaze heavenward. As far as the religious worship happening there--vespers and censers, kneeling and recited prayers, communion of soul and parishioner--I remained aloof. I had no problem being respectfully reverential toward those who visited the site as a religious duty or desire, but that wasn't my reason for being there. I had a different approach, one that satisfied me and my needs, albeit of a more secular or academic reason. The point of a cathedral is to help the worshippers have a spiritual experience. That's why they're made. (Yes, there were political shenanigans with the creation of many of them, but the motives of those few historical figures aren't what I'm worried about here.) Their splendor, their ingenuity, their imposition, their hope--all of these things are part of what they're designed to do. Just like it's a marvel-bordering-on-a-miracle to see a medieval cathedral rising up from the ground, it's a miracle that God has created Mankind by rising them up from the dust. From the shape of the building as a cross to commemorate the mode of Christ's death down to the materials used--to build upon a rock, rather than a sandy foundation--are all calculated to add to a person's devotion. Do some of the explanations come about through a post-hoc justification that was not part of the original intention? Surely that's so, though that matters very little. The point of the cathedral is to sweep up people in feelings of awe and reverence that can then be easily transmitted to even higher vistas of religious worship. It also acts as a tourist destination. The tragic loss of Paris' Notre Dame still hurts my heart. Seeing it in flames was one of the saddest images in my pre-2020 lifetime. But I haven't lost a part of my religious identity or my history with the loss of that cathedral. As a citizen of the world, I feel that its loss has impoverished humanity; as a worshipper of Christ, I do not feel that same loss. Other cathedrals exist, other churches, other temples. There are other ways for people to worship, but there's no other Notre Dame of Paris. I continue to mourn the loss of mosques, synagogues, monasteries, chapels, and cathedrals due to the degradation of time, the violence of wars, and neglect of parishioners. There is a rich human history in worshipping the divine that irretrievably slips from us whenever these important areas are no longer frequented, remembered, or appreciated. And sometimes, as in the case of the fire at Notre Dame, accidents rob us and our future generations of the devotion of previous generations. It isn't the slowing of worship that personally hurts me, it's the overall contribution to human society that causes my regret. However, true believers will know that it's less the stones and more the stories, less the place and more the people, less the gaudy and more the God that matters. Worship of a place is an idolatry, and loss of great places helps to remind us of that. Christmas is a cathedral. Inside of it, true believers can focus on the stories, people, and God that comprise its walls. Its outer confines, its spires and its clerestories, its flying buttresses and its apses…these are all the exteriority. You cannot see the how high the belltower goes from the pews. When you're inside the cathedral, you can appreciate much of its work, but the purpose is the worship that you can do while inside of it. Though there is some bits of religious performance, there isn't a performative nature to true worship, regardless of where you are. The cathedral is a place wherein the spiritual can happen. So, too, is Christmas an inside thing, a place where the spiritual can happen. And, like all spiritual moments, it is fundamentally and fortuitously personal: No one can be spiritual on your behalf. That's something that can better be done if in a place set aside for it. Christmas is a cathedral. Outside of it, anyone can focus on the marvels that it creates. This is where the lights, snow, red caps with white trim, and the commercialism reside. The sweeping architecture of a capitalist concoction is so stunning, so all-encompassing that it literally causes sleeplessness. This is the "secular" side of Christmas, but it is also part of the building. They are separate, yet connected. And the problem I have with "putting Christ back into Christmas" is that it strives to pull out what is only valuable within. The vespers are best suited for being spoken inside; what makes the cathedral significant to the parishioners isn't found outside. Yet it's the outside that most people see, most people interact with. There are Parisians who never bothered to step foot inside of Notre Dame; I, some random bloke from Chapelvalley Utah, have had the opportunity to walk over its medieval stones twice now. So Christmas is something that can be appreciated (or somewhat ignored…I don't know that any Parisian in the concourse of the past few centuries wasn't at least aware of Notre Dame) at whatever level. The point is, when people insist on their version of Christmas, that their internal become the external, I find myself bristling. There are very few ways that one can do Christmas wrong, but I think there are, still, a few. Those that get bent out of shape because they wish to be wished "Merry Christmas" by apathetic and overworked retail cashiers; that their coffee cups have the "correct" terminology on them; that the parties and the gifts be "correctly" observed; that the "right" meals must be cooked by unthanked and overworked mothers and wives; that the Christmas tree be visible in the White House or Rockefeller Center and bedecked with all of its glitz; that the radio station be tuned to the "Christmas station" in order to listen to the same three hours total of Christmas music that has been stale since before Thanksgiving; that there be a manger scene at their courthouse; that the kids dress up in itchy, ill-fitting clothes to parade in front of the grown-ups while a drowsy rereading of Luke chapter 2 drones beneath the children's buzzing voices; that we "take a moment to think about Jesus" before indulging in the avarice of the season…the issue here is the insistence that the cathedral be viewed from only one angle, that its purpose be monolithic. A believer can enter a cathedral without look up, without seeing the carvings of saints and apostles standing over the entrance and will walk away being fulfilled. A struggling Mormon can cross the ocean and marvel solely at the stonework. It can be a spiritual gift or a secular miracle. Christmas can be many things, but it can't be all things. Insisting that it must be will lead to disappointment, much like if you came to Notre Dame hoping to play some basketball. You've brought the wrong expectation to the right place. (If you really want to play basketball in a consecrated, holy building, just go to your local LDS chapel. We have more basketball courts than we have belfries.) This is more than a "let everyone enjoy Christmas in their own way" plea, however. I think there is active harm in the forcing the internal out or the external in. A cathedral must have both inner and outer walls. Even though it's of the same structure, there is a difference. If anything, I'm saying that the two "sides" of Christmas are fundamentally incompatible: You cannot hold up the façade of a cathedral and claim that people aren't worshipping it correctly when the worship happens on the inside. That, to me, is what happens when people grouse about a "war on Christmas" or think that secular resistance to the ubiquity of the holiday in some way prevents it from existing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that those who gnaw on the non-issue of who says "happy holidays" as opposed to "merry Christmas" have yet to walk in through the doors of the cathedral and instead are fixated on a single stone on the plinth. No, I think that an appreciation of Christmas needs to be as radical as its namesake, with that appreciation being much like salvation: A personal connection that transpires because the individual has chosen to walk inside. Merry Christmas… …and happy holidays, from both sides of the cathedral. As the eleventh month of 2020 begins, I found myself drawn to a map. See, I had this partially formed idea of a story that could be fun to write for NaNoWriMo this year. Unfortunately, I don't know if that's really something I should commit to, what with my wife's recent breast cancer diagnosis. While the treatment looks, at this point, pretty straightforward, I don't know if NaNoWriMo is right (write?) for me this year. If I choose not to participate, it'll be the first time since 2015 that I haven't been a part of the writing challenge. I'm the kind of guy who, when he's experienced a positive thing once, believes he must always experience that positive thing again. This is one of the reasons that I return to It every summer since 2017, why I look forward to October and my teaching of Paradise Lost, and even the fact that I really like commencement ceremonies at the end of the school year. These--and many others--seem to make up the repetitious threads of my life's fabric. Omitting them can be almost painful sometimes.
But if COVID-19 has taught me one thing only, it's that we can let go of the barnacles of tradition. After all, yesterday's Halloween celebration was decidedly less-than-familiar: We barricaded our porch with decorations and pumpkins. My younglings, dressed in cobbled-together costumes, dropped the Halloween candy through a six foot tube from our porch and out the mouth of a pumpkin carved to look like it was puking. A handful of trick-or-treaters showed up; a couple of them laughed at my middle child's costume (dressed as the Orange One from Among Us). I stayed inside where I played zombie video games. By 8:30, the boys were cold, no one had come to the door, and so we settled in to watch Ghostbusters. Pretty tame Halloween, to be honest. This morning, I awoke at what felt the normal time, only to be surprise that it was only 7:30am. It took a bit to realize that the clocks had done their biannual treason and I was again in Mountain Standard Time. I normally don't mind the "fall back" part of clock transition, though this time--Ahaha ha--it did take me by surprise. After filtering into consciousness via social media doomscrolling, I got up and got ready for the day. With the boon of an extra hour, I sat down and started a tentative first chapter of the ghost of a story that's in my mind. May as well try, I figured to myself, since you've the extra time. Two hundred words later, I wasn't about to return to the page. See, I'd set the story in the dimly familiar locale of southern Florida. I served my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Miami back in '02 through '04. I still have a lot of fond memories of those two years--and a lot of bad ones, too, as all important experiences bring with them--and that was the primary motivation for me choosing to have this NaNoWriMo idea take place there. After all, I'd spent a couple of years really traversing the area (albeit behind the wheel of a car) and learning a lot about the Latin community that inhabits it. What better way to add a dash of verisimilitude to my story's stew than with a revisit to my old tracting-grounds? My story involves a middle school student, so my first order of business was to dig around and see what middle- or junior high schools were in my favorite area of Hammocks. Despite knowing, even as a barely-even-twenty-year-old missionary, that I wanted to one day be a teacher, I didn't put a lot of time in learning about the school system of Florida. Sure, I probably asked more questions about school than most missionaries did, but I remember really only learning that they started--and got out of--the school year later than I was used to, and that they didn't like the statewide test. Some things don't change, regardless of where you are. I had some faded memories of noting that there seemed to be more external hallways, as well as a tendency to have multiple floors (which was odd to me: My high school's design is a sprawling single-story affair, though I've come to learn that my experience is hardly the norm). But what else was I missing? I hadn't asked kids what it was like to go to school near the turn of the millennium back when I had the chance. I could maybe ask some of my social media contacts--though I don't know if I'm going to put enough effort into this story to make it worth soaking up someone else's time. At any rate, I started poking around, trying to find schools that I maybe biked past during my final few weeks in the sweltering suburb of The Hammocks. It didn't take long before I found the old Little Caesars Pizza where my roommates and I would frequent--usually once a week--to buy ourselves (each, no less) a Hot-N-Ready pie. Shoving past the fog of years, I used Google Maps' Street View feature to plop myself in the middle of Hammocks Boulevard. Off to one side was the familiar-yet-forgotten archway leading into the Blossoms subdivision. A member family--an older couple, if I remember rightly--lived at the far end of that street (which is pictured at the top of this post). Seeing it gave me a jolt. Not surprising that it was the same place I had passed so many times, but that I had actually found a piece of my memory on my little computer screen. I slid down the digital road for a bit, noting Hammocks Middle School to my right (as I was trying to retrace my decade-and-a-half old bike path home, I immediately headed north). I had never noticed it before; or if I had, I'd forgotten. I tried to find my old apartment; no luck, though I think I may have come close to finding it. (Didn't I use to live just off of SW 154th Ave? If so, what was the lane, if it was indeed on a lane?) The then-familiar turns are now lost, to say nothing of the difference of tapping my way through the streets as opposed to cruising on my bright yellow 15-speed bike, right-pantleg tucked into a sock to keep it from being eaten by the gears, tie flapping in the humid breeze. I hunted down the chapel where I attended services, where I helped baptize the last family on my mission in May of 2004, a couple of weeks before I returned home. I smiled in fond remembrance at seeing the Publix nearby, marked on the Google Map with the white grocery cart on a blue field. Seeing that reminds me of the Miamian habit to abscond from the grocery store with the cart (many of the people lived close enough that they didn't need to drive or they were carless), resulting in occasional graveyards of abandoned wire carts on the side of the road. My companion and I, biking past them, would do an impromptu joust where we would give a nearby shopping cart a swift kick as we cruised past. If we could knock it over, we won. I only won once, though it nearly sent me toppling over, too. (As a 130 pound--maybe 150 counting the bike--elder with a poor grasp of Newton's Third Law of Motion, I didn't realize how solid a wire cart really is; I understand that better now.) I tried to find other familiar landmarks, with the occasional, "Wait, I think I remember that!" mumbled as I zoomed in and out on the map. I cruised to other areas where I'd live, including Hollywood (we're still in Florida, mind you) and stared at the bizarre-yet-endearing semicircle roads that spiral off of some of the traffic circles there. I looked over Bayside, where we missionaries would sometimes spend our preparation days. I gave a fond sigh as I looked at the grid-like (and completely out of sync address system) of Hialeah. Memories of October 2003 came, when the Marlins won the World Series and bedlam brought us out of our apartment. (Missionaries for the Church aren't allowed TVs or to listen to the radio at that time, so while we knew that the World Series was going on, we didn't know any details. I, personally, don't think there's a way for me to care less about baseball, but I was still happy that the entire city, it seemed, was happy.) Cars honked, people shouted, and it sounded almost like we were being invaded. But, no. Just baseball. Other recollections slip in and out of my mind, not only as I fiddled with the map but also as I write this essay. I don't consider my mission often--or, more accurately, I don't dwell on my mission often. Every time I speak Spanish, it comes with it a whiff of humidity and too-sharp sunlight. Whenever my "second state" does something newsworthy (which is now memetic, even), I think about some of those places that I took for granted, took for constant. It's natural to do so. Yet locations are Horcruxes of memories: They're places where parts of our souls are shaved off and stored, personal snapshots in the photo albums of our minds. Revisiting your elementary school, saying goodbye to your grandparents' home, driving past the turn to your first apartment as a married couple…these nostalgic particles drift around, undisturbed until some excuse puts you back in the place where you once were. Not all of these memories are fond ones--the waiting rooms in children hospitals, the intersection where you almost died--but they're part of the wheres of what makes up our whos. Looking over the maps that I used to pore over in the evening while trying to determine where I would go to work the next day reminded me that it was one thing to see the world this way--removed and above, complete and broad--and quite another to live it. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick has a line that has long stood out to me, and I think that he's pointing at what I'm trying to say. "It is not drawn down on any map; true places never are." Note: Mormonism is capable of sustaining a lot of different views and attitudes; what I have almost exclusive contact with is the Utah County variety, which is its own unique brand of the religion. Additionally, I'm speaking from personal, lived experience and perceptions that I have received. Others who've been a part of this religion as long--or longer--may remember and view things differently. Obviously, I'm speaking for myself and not for the Church itself, and there are plenty of people who feel differently than the mainstream Mormonism I'm painting here. Exceptions to what I'm discussing here are what give me hope.
I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--a Mormon--and I don't view politics the way the majority of my local congregants do. If I had to peg my personal concepts of Mormonism, they'd probably be closer to an LDS liberation theology than where many might expect a Mormon to land. Like any honest seeker of truth, my understandings of the world shift and change as new information comes in. My feelings and ideas also change--there was a time, for example, when I believed that global warming was a hoax, simply because I thought that I was a Republican, and Republicans denied the clear scientific evidence--and so I'm writing this not as an endpoint of my thoughts but rather one that's spurred by recent events and disappointments. It's part of my own journey. What I'm doing here is trying to answer the question that I found in comments to one of Pat Bagley's tweets (which is funny and, to only fuel the irony of this post, I'm linking to but not sharing outright because it has swears and, as a Mormon, I've issues with that). In it, Pat "translates" Evan McMullin's tweet which expresses his disgust at the police brutality against a senior citizen in the recent police riots. Within Bagley's comments is the one I have as the image at the top of the post, from @the_real_scott: "Speaking of Mormonese, I can't understand the Mormon ease in voting for something that is antithetical to everything they say they believe morally. I really don't get how they support Trump's lies, crimes, and overt racism." Good wordplay there, and it shoots straight at my own questions about how Mormons feel about the impeached president. First of all, the majority of Mormons seem to be okay with President Trump. Despite his bragging about sexual assault--revealed before the election happened--his impeachment, and any other catalogue of horrors and abuses, Mormons are poised to vote for him again in November, based upon polls taken at the end of May 2020. And though they've not loved him the way Mormons usually kowtow to Republican presidents, they still abide his presidency by almost two-thirds majority. (Admittedly, that particular stat comes from 2018, and opinions can change.) In short, the impeached president's bragging about murdering someone on 5th Avenue has, metaphorically, held true with the majority of members of the Church of Jesus Christ: Despite his clear disdain for religion--using it as a prop to shore up his Evangelical base--as well as his frequent maligning of Mormon-favorite Mitt Romney, President Donald Trump remains popular among the pious. It should be clear, if it weren't yet, that I view the impeached Donald Trump as a danger to our country and a "king of shreds and patches," to quote Shakespeare. He took a position he was not qualified for, put in office against the wishes of the majority of voters, and has done a worse job as president than I anticipated--which is really saying something. As a human, he's undignified, incapable of coherent thought, and an embarrassment. And, as much as it might pain him to hear it, for Mormons, I don't think it's about him. For some members of the Church, it wasn't about Trump; it was about his competition. To many Mormons, voting for Trump (which both Mormon-heavy Utah and Idaho did in 2016) was more about voting against Hillary Clinton, whom they viewed with suspicion (at best) and outright hostility (at worst…and at more normal levels, from my experience). It feels like much of the AM dial in Utah is dedicated to conservative talk-radio, and talk-radio notoriously despised Clinton, whom they viewed as an Obama-surrogate (among other things). Right or no, the perception of Clinton as somehow even worse than President Obama was definitely part of the milieu in Utah County circa 2016. The case against Clinton was manifold, but the one that I heard a student say that continues to haunt me is that she was "overqualified" to be the President of the United States. And, of course, the sarcastic catchphrase of the election: "But her emails!" was viewed, not as conspiracy-theory bleating, but a coup de grâce about voting red. Abortion is a flashpoint for a lot of members of the Church: The Church is opposed to at-will abortions, so voting for a candidate who embraced the continued legalization of abortion was a non-starter. Marriage, another bastion of Mormonism and an area where the Church feels constantly threatened, was brought up against Clinton. I saw people deride her for staying with the impeached Bill Clinton, despite his highly-public affair. I also heard people use the idea that Bill was a rapist, and therefore Hillary should not be president. (I haven't heard if these same people were distressed by the sixteen allegations of sexual misconduct against 45 has changed their opinions on the toupee-wearing jack-o-lantern.) Trump is on his third wife, and has admitted to extramarital affairs--including a large-scale scandal with a paid-off porn star--but I've not heard much among my conservative friends about whether that has changed any feelings. Despite all of this, Clinton is no longer running (though I hear enough about both Clinton and Obama from conservative defenders of the impeached president that I sometimes wonder) and so voters for Trump no longer have to be his supporters, right? Well, this is where it stops being about Donald Trump, at least from what I can understand. It's not his personality, but his politics where a lot of Mormons align with him. Yes, on the whole, Mormons are opposed to Trump's stance on refugees--consider Governor Herbert's request at the end of 2019--and they aren't a fan of his blatant sexism (I guess; Mormons have a really strong definition of gender roles, but they don't like it when people are mean about those sorts of things). Really, it's more of a "hate the sinner, love the sin" sort of an approach. The death of Antonin Scalia--and the Supreme Court Justice seat McConnell and other Republican senators held unfilled until after the election was over--appeared to me as one of the deciding factors for a number of people: Better to have a spray-tan afficionado in the Oval Office and a conservative Justice than a competent Commander-in-Chief who would put a liberal Justice in place. And so we hit the paydirt of what Mormonism as a political force means. I personally think that the politics of Mormonism is divorced from the theology--as I mentioned before, I lean toward a type of liberation theology, rather than the prosperity theology that has been a part of Mormonic politics/culture for as long as I can remember--and that can, in part, be laid at the feet of President (of the Church) Ezra Taft Benson. His cold-warrior approach to the way the world worked in his time gave a lot of grist to the conservative movement, including his proclamations that the Constitution is a "heavenly banner". (I personally don't know that I want a banner in heaven that enshrines slavery, 3/5 personhood to Blacks, or busies itself with letters permitting piracy…but to each his own, I guess.) Don't get me wrong: I'm a fan of the Constitution. But I'm not a fan of thinking it as some sort of extracanonical scripture (that's what Shakespeare's for) that makes it sacrosanct and above reproach. President Benson wasn't alone in this--we've a long-standing love-affair with conservativism in Mormon history. Heck, BYU's no-beard policy comes in response to counterculture activism in the 1960s and the overall association of hippies and communists to looking less well-groomed, including the wearing of facial hair. What better way to show we're anti-communist than by keeping our faces clean-shaven? The point is, that since at least the mid-twentieth century, Mormonism and conservativism have been growing together. That, however, doesn't explain all of it… From what I can tell, Mormons really want to be a part of the Christian name brand. I wrote about my own feelings on this (before the Church came out and made it a verbal taboo to use the nickname "Mormon"), which haven't changed very much. However, part of my argument is that, aside from a superficial dictionary definition of the term Christian, Mormons aren't Christians. And we're definitely different from the evangelical strains of American Christianity. We members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints won't be accepted as part of the body of Christ. Though old, this article from Michelle Vu at The Christian Post really puts a finger on the issue when she quotes Dr. Richard Land's analysis. We're considered a fourth Abrahamic religion: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism. However, going it alone is hard to do, especially when there are areas of commonality--a love of Jesus, a hope to do good, a desire for divinity and a blissful afterlife--that make Evangelists appear like natural allies in a world we've been taught to fear, reject, and help save. The marriage of so-called "conservative values" and the Evangelical Right, along with its fusion to the Republican party, has created a web of loyalties and assumptions that Mormonic politics has embraced almost wholesale. This is, to finally get to the answer from @the_real_scott's original question, why Mormons are at ease with Trump. It isn't Trump that they're at ease with: It's the initial next to his name. It's the Republican party that Mormons like. Sure, there are plenty of instances of disagreement--after all, Evan McMullan snagged almost 22% of the electoral vote in 2016, showing a very strong resistance to picking Trump. In fact, McMullan is an interesting case, because it shows that some (quite clearly not all) members did take issue with Trump, but still wanted their conservative views intact. For them, they felt that they were presented with two evils, and so decided to choose neither.* Had those who voted for McMullan instead picked Clinton, Utah would have gone to a Democratic candidate for the first time since LBJ.** Of course, they picked McMullan because they wanted an alternative to the personality, not necessarily to the politics, of the GOP and Trump. From what I can tell, the reason why Mormons will vote for Trump again in 2020--and, since it's 2020 and everything is topsy-turvy, it'll probably be in higher numbers than four years ago--is because they have long considered conservativism as a shibboleth for their religion. The broad strokes of Evangelical politics and right-wing thinking have enough religious parallels that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will go along with almost any candidate with an R next to his (almost always his***) name. --- * I get the idea of voting one's conscience: I would argue that people's conscience should be, before "smaller government, lower taxes!", the moral "Don't vote for fascists". But that's just me. ** What's interesting to me isn't the infrequency of Democratic votes, but when they happen. In Utah's whole history, they've voted for five Democratic nominees in a total of eight elections. The remaining twenty-three elections all went to the Republican. And who did they vote for? Well, in the twentieth century, they went with Wilson--who won because he "kept America out of the war" and then sent Americans to war shortly after his second inauguration--before going along with FDR all four times. They even voted for his vice president. Utah didn't even vote for JFK, yet they helped rehire his vice president. I wonder if it had something to do with their perception of how the wars were progressing. I'd have to do more research, but I think that's fascinating. Oh, and did you notice how safe Utah is for Trump? There's no doubt that the Beehive State is securely in the impeached president's pocket. No doubt at all. *** Obviously, there are plenty of females in the Republican party and in the Utah political system. But there's definitely a preponderance of males. Also, the curious case of Ben McAdams versus Mia Love deserves more digestion than a footnote can handle, but it is absolutely worth mentioning that there is a Democrat from Utah in the House of Representatives. It's also worth pointing out that he ended up there because he had 694 more votes than Mia Love. And, to be honest, I was positively gob-smacked when I heard that McAdams won. The world is filled with all sorts of exceptions and unexpected turns, isn't it? At the end of February, I decided to do something that was a greater sacrifice for Lent than I normally do: I gave up being on Twitter. I didn't delete my account (though I did ditch the app on my phone), and I had a couple of visits there (sometimes a link from a news article took me to Twitter; I watched a Dave Matthews livestream from his home and tweeted how much I liked it; my website automatically shares a link whenever I publish a new essay), but for the most part, I did exactly what I said.
Here's the thing: I'm not Catholic. I have a few acquaintances, mostly from my quidditch days, who are Catholic. That isn't to say that I've a lot of claim to the tradition. Like much of my understanding of Mormonism and the culture of the Church, I recognize that Protestant--and, sometimes, even Puritan--influences have dictated what my religious experience encapsulates. My choice to participate in Lent had more to do with a desire for a kind of religious solidarity within my own tradition: The safest sort of religious experimentation that a person could do. The impetus is actually years old: I was talking to Dan Harmon, one of my quidditch buddies, who was came to my school to talk to my creative writing students about screenwriting (which he had studied in college). I took him out for lunch once the school day was over, and he readily agreed to eating pizza, which he'd given up for Lent. In subsequent conversations, it turned out that Dan wasn't Catholic, he just liked participating in these sorts of religious traditions. (I don't know what his current stance is on any of this, as I've lost contact with almost every vestige of my quidditch life.) That inspired me to try the same thing, using my Mormonic upbringing to conceptualize it in a way that made sense to me. To that end, I decided that, if I was going to do something for Lent, I would need to give up something that I would genuinely miss. For Dan, he gave up pizza; for me, I gave up Twitter. See, I have a hate/tolerate relationship with Facebook, but Twitter is a different animal. In Twitter, I feel as though I'm getting glimpses of other parts of the world. Yes, there's the center of a Venn diagram there: I follow certain people because of mutual interest. Authors, book agents, fellow teachers, dinosaur lovers, and comic book geeks inhabit my Twitter feed. (I also, quite begrudgingly, follow all of my representative legislators, though none really uses the platform for much of substance.) I also have made it a point to include LGBTQ+ and people of color in my timeline to give me an additional dose of "I didn't know that". In other words, Twitter helps broaden my view of life and living, with a lot of interesting things going on. And, boy, there are a lot of things going on right now. COVID-19's ravaging of the world is worth talking about, and the solidarity and commiseration that happens on social media is definitely one of the best parts about this crisis happening when it has. We've all had a good laugh at a post that was shared by a friend, neighbor, or whoever that perfectly recreates our own feelings. It's times like this when social media is at its best. Giving up Twitter, then, was a really hard decision. I made it before the crisis escalated to the point that our country's leadership could no longer deny it, and I think that was a good thing. It meant that I had already made the decision, so I didn't have to try to rationalize whether or not to commit. I'd done so; only thing left was to keep the course. At first, it was pretty difficult. I'm quite used to Twitter and would jump on during loading screens of video games, when I had a random thought to share, or just because I was bored with the conversation happening around me. Its ubiquity brought me comfort and I definitely dealt with a type of withdrawal. What helped--and what, I think, is the point of Lent--was that, during those first few days off the platform, every time I considered what I wanted to do and had to reject the "Go on Twitter" impulse, I had to think why I was missing it. End result? Participating in Lent meant that I thought about Jesus a lot more than usual. I'm convinced this is the intent of Lent, as it was a more authentic sacrifice than almost anything else at that moment in my life. I could have given up wearing a man-bun for Lent, but that wouldn't have mattered at all because I don't normally wear--or even much care for--the man-bun look. And though Twitter can have great value, its largest contribution in my life was to burn time trying to learn something new amid the constant stream of thoughts and words, 280 characters at a time, scrolling across my screen. Losing that but replacing it with the thought of "Hey, this reminds me of Jesus and His sacrifice that's coming up" made a difference in my life. The downside of this, however, is two-fold: One, I learned that I still need/want to scroll through social media. Two, that itch wasn't lost as much as transferred…to Facebook. I'm not a fan of Facebook. At all. Yes, there are some positive things about the website, and it could even be a good tool for improving the world. And, of course, the vast majority of people who read this essay will have become aware of its existence via Facebook. (I get the irony, folks.) Anyway, Facebook (as an entity; not individuals utilizing it) is not really improving the world, and it likely never will, but hey, at least there was potential at some point. As it stands, I don't like the platform for a number of reasons. Some are petty and nitpicky (I hate the fact that it doesn't automatically post the most recent posts--the fact that you can switch things around, only to have it change depending on the device you're using only makes it worse), while others are larger (Facebook is better at ads, especially the way it culls posted information to sell more stuff that I don't really need…and, yes, Twitter does this, too; they're just not as good at it). But there's one thing about Facebook that really grinds my gears: I know (almost) all of these people. That may sound counter-intuitive, as that's the entire point of Facebook. But Facebook is like dancing in a car at a red light: You think that you're pretty much doing your dance by yourself, only to realize that everyone you went to high school with is sitting in the car next to you, watching you with mixtures of embarrassment and interest. If a person on Twitter dislikes my hottake on something, I can block them and move on with my life. Detritus is as detritus does. But on Facebook, many of the responses to posts come from "friends" that I've accumulated over the years. Blocking or unfriending them comes with strings; there's a diplomacy, a politics involved with no longer being a part of someone's Facebook life that isn't as apparent in Twitter. If I don't like following a celebrity or an author because she says something stupid, then there's no real loss there. Facebook, however, changes the dynamic. If someone I know says something stupid, then it's in my face, again and again (because of that idiotic "Top Stories" default). Under normal circumstances, I can roll my eyes and choose not to engage with Facebook at all. I get my itch to scroll scratched elsewhere. But this year's timing between Lent and the COVID-19 crisis has meant that I couldn't scroll through Twitter whilst waiting for my video games to load. Instead, I was on Facebook a lot more, which meant that I was exposed to bad ideas more frequently. (And why is it that the worst ideas of your friends are the ones that show up the most often?) When it finally got too much and my distaste for the platform reached its zenith was when a friend from my mission posted memes and comments criticizing, downplaying, or entirely dismissing the quarantine. Now, I am no defender of America's response to the pandemic: We had a lot of warning that was ignored from the top down, and we still have a false-hope narrative that disregards science and history to try to mollify people. Until a vaccine that is tested, proven safe and effective, and ubiquitous, my family--with our half-hearted son--will be endangered by any premature "return to normal". Choosing to let our son out of the house is actually a life-and-death decision that we will have to formulate going forward. America has lost over 20,000 people at the time I'm writing this, and it's probably higher due to underreporting of numbers. Our lives permanently changed when 9/11 saw a tenth that number die--COVID-19 is going to radically alter America and the world. So when friends--not internet strangers or possible troll/bot accounts, but people I've broken bread with, been in their homes, took classes with in high school or college--spread idiocy like, well, a virus, it gets beyond tiresome. It gets dangerous. And it isn't just that someone else might read their meme and think, Hey, the quarantine is stupid! Sure, that might happen, but the danger comes from the further spreading of disinformation that is too easily shared. For example, I heard someone talking about a handful of different COVID-19 related stories: Almost all of them were either false or unproven. It's as if people are unaware that Snopes exists. Being exposed to that is damaging to my mental health, because the message I hear from falsely optimistic people, or those who don't actually maintain appropriate distances, or who go to the airport to welcome home missionaries in direct defiance of Church and state requests is a simple one: The life of your family is irrelevant. Living with an at-risk member of the populace means that I can't, in good conscience, head to the store with a mask on and think all will be fine and dandy. Living with an at-risk member of the populace means that I could be a vector of disease. As I told my students, half-hearted people don't get to survive pandemics. The only way to save my son's life--again--is to lockdown my home and take every precaution that I can. And as much as I recognize the heartache and sadness that comes from not celebrating Easter as a large, rowdy extended family dinner, it also means that we don't have to miss going to the funeral of someone we could have otherwise protected. So, yeah. I'm not a fan of Facebook. That's where I see the most frequent eye-rolls and yeah-rights of the whole pandemic issue. Is Twitter a better place than its competitor? I honestly have no idea. I haven't been on Twitter in multiple fortnights. I will say this, though: The only way I get through this potentially months-long tragedy-in-waiting is through the help of my friends. And Facebook gives me a view of many of them that tells me that may be a false hope. I hate seeing that. I hate feeling and thinking that. Yet I can't shake the sentiment. I learned that, while giving up Twitter for Jesus was good for my soul, Facebook certainly wasn't. The hard thing is, there's still something that I desire from social media. I want…something that social media provides. If I can find a way to scratch that itch a different way, I'd probably be less stressed and worried. Maybe I should start an Instagram account… Lots of tweets and social media posts are showcasing the major personal events of the past decade. I threw together a quick list myself, but thought that it could be worthwhile to go through with a bit more detail. As far as I can remember, here are some of the interesting things that happened in the twenty-teens.
2010 The decade began with me and a fellow teacher doing a short film Winterim. (Winterims will be brought up in each year for the simple reason that they're actually something different in my otherwise pretty consistent teaching career.) This was my second year at the school, but the first year as a full-time teacher. By the time March came along, my second child was born, which was a different experience than the first one--having a wireless baby was new and exciting. Not only that, but the delivery wasn't as hard on my wife, which was great: I couldn't understand how women could have more children when I saw how badly it hurt my wife to give birth our first. With Number Two arriving, I comprehended that births usually don't lay up the mother for a solid week. Of course, that doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of hospital stuff that year. Son Number Two had a condition called hypospadias, so he had to have a minor surgery along with a circumcision. Not only that, but Son Number One had his third--and, thus far, last--heart surgery to correct his tricuspid atresia, which consumed the entirety of June. At the time, we lived in our townhome, which fit our family just fine. We kept going forward with work and school (I was taking night classes to get an endorsement in history). I began work on what I thought would be my magnum opus, Writ in Blood. This would consume my writing for a couple more years. Come August, the curriculum I had taught for the past two years shifted a bit, pushing the 10th grade toward a broader swath of history. Instead of going from middle ages to the Victorian era, I now taught from the Italian Renaissance up to modern day. This shift was (so far) the biggest change in my curricula that I've had to adjust to. I'm glad that we did, as I much prefer what I teach now. Still, it was one of the biggest changes in my career. Just before Thanksgiving Break, the school moved buildings. We went from a refurbished bowling alley to a custom made school. Though I've moved rooms a couple of times since those days, I am happy to report that we haven't had to move the entire school again. That's a relief, I must say. 2011 I started this year teaming up with the same teacher as the previous year. This time, we did a Garage Band Winterim, where we set the kids up in small bands, had them compose a song, and then perform it for the parents at Winterfest. This was fun, as it gave me a chance to play the guitar more than I normally do, and the students did--for the most part--a really great job. Most of this year is pretty unremarkable, save for a couple of things. One, I pressed on with Writ in Blood, which remains one of the books that I'm most proud of, despite the fact that it was flatly rejected during submissions and rather ruined when I went back and tried to tinker with the thing. The second is that this is the year that I deeply studied World War II. That gave me a whole new way of seeing this monumental event, which is something that I try to transmit to my students every year, even now. I believe we went to Disneyland this year for the first time with our oldest. He loved it to pieces. 2012 Thus began one of the biggest pivots of my life: I taught the Harry Potter Winterim to nine students. Then, with them, my wife, and my coteacher, we flew out to Orlando to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The class was inexpressibly impactful, and it ended up changing not just how I viewed the book series, but sent me down a path I never expected: I started playing quidditch. This came about because we learned how to play with the Winterim, but the enjoyment of the sport led to creating an actual team. I joined the Crimson Fliers during the summer of 2012, which I pursued for four years or so. I still love and deeply miss quidditch, in part because of its connection to such a special experience (the Harry Potter Winterim specifically, but Harry Potter more broadly, too), but also because the people I met during quidditch are some of the most remarkable human beings I've ever had the pleasure of getting to know. It's a scar--one that will likely remain with me for another decade. I continued working on Writ in Blood as I finished up my history endorsement. Back then, I would go to class on Saturday mornings, take three hours of notes, eat a high-calorie, low-cost lunch at Burger King, then slam out a chapter or two at the UVU library before heading home. I really enjoyed this, as it allowed me time to write. By this point, I had stopped teaching three sections of Socratic Seminar and instead had things like mythology or two sections of creative writing to help round out my teaching day. That sort of flexibility remains with me to this day, meaning I have two sections of Socratic 10 and two elective classes of different stripes. The election of 2012 was a divisive one (aren't they all?) and it was the first time since '08 that I was more than just dimly aware of politics. Because I'm Mormon (you know: a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), there was, I think, an assumption that I'd be voting for Mittens Romney; I didn't. I think about that election a lot--how the GOP tried a nice guy approach and was soundly defeated, so they went with the most vile they could and won--and how the world might be different had Baseball Mitt had taken the White House. At the very least, we wouldn't have to deal with Agent Orange. 2013 This Winterim saw me making comic books with the students. Like almost all of the Winterims of the decade, I taught with another teacher. This time, it was the art teacher, who's also a big comic book fan. It was a fun experience, but in the aftermath of what 2012 had done for me, it wasn't particularly memorable. By the time 2013 rolled around, I was pretty established in my career. There was a reputation at the school to maintain, plenty of stuff to keep me busy, and the addition of our third child--another boy, bringing our family to its full allotment. I turned thirty that year, which meant a lot to me at the time. I think the idea of having finished my twenties with every goal checked off save one (being published) was significant. I think this also gave me a bit of an existential crisis, as I didn't really have a lot else to try to do. Not that this year specifically stands out to me, but I should point out that every year, Gayle and I went down to the Utah Shakespeare Festival, both during the summer and again in the fall with the students. We had family vacations of all different sorts, though I'm hard pressed to remember what we did each year. I do know that in the fall of 2013, though, I got a new assignment: Teaching the Shakespeare class. I remember this specifically because I sat with my newest son on my lap, reading Twelfth Night aloud to him as he slept. It was a pleasant experience, to say the least, but it was all in preparation of teaching the Concurrent Enrollment English 1010 class with a fellow teacher at the school. So it was equal parts preparation and pleasure, I suppose. The Shakespeare class was greatly enhanced by what came around at the end of the year and beginning of the next. Over Thanksgiving Break in 2013, I left the country for the first time: I took a short trip to Paris to better prepare for Winterim 2014. This was surprisingly impactful to me, and I rely on my Parisian experience whenever I'm teaching my students about Les Misérables or French history--especially the First World War. There's something profound about being in the places where history happens, and I'm hopeful that someday--not that I've any idea how it'll happen--I can return to Europe and England. 2014 This was the Winterim that has the largest effect on me, followed by the World Wars Tour (2017) and my first Harry Potter (2012). I and a dozen or so students flew out to England and had a literary tour. We visited the big tourist sites (and sights), including the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, and Piccadilly Circus. But we had special additions: Seeing John Milton's grave, visiting Stratford-upon-Avon and Shakespeare's grave, and the Harry Potter backstage museum in Watford. We saw the Eagle and Child (where Tolkien and Lewis would meet and talk about their fictional worlds that have made such a large difference in my life), Cambridge, Oxford, and many other places that will always live on in my mind as foundational. It was truly a remarkable experience. With that sort of a high, it was difficult to return to the normalcy of 2014. I had finished Writ in Blood sometime between 2013 and 2014, and having spent over three years on a single book, I decided to no longer try to write sprawling behemoths. Instead, I began what is my normal way of working, which is to make a novel that's between 50- and 100,000 words. The first experience I had with that was writing Chelsea Washington and the Pathway of Night, my only attempt at a young adult novel. I'm still pretty happy with it, at least in terms of what I was trying to accomplish, and it really helped set me up with the idea that I can start and end a novel in the same year--in this case, it only took a couple of months. My experiences with quidditch continued apace, and I went to Quidditch World Cup 7 in South Carolina that April. It was wonderful to see so many committed athletes, to try to play better than I had before, and to go through something that I never thought would be a part of my life: Sports. Despite going to England for nearly two weeks, I'm pretty certain we went to Disneyland this year. I know we went at some point around here. Strange to say, it's kind of hard to remember. I do know that it was at the end of this year--right before Thanksgiving, I think--that a couple of important things happened. One, we decided to move out and rent our townhome, thus allowing us to save a bit of money with which to--we hoped--spend on a newer, bigger home. The five of us were feeling a bit cramped. (Also, my calling as Elders' Quorum president had been eating away at me and this would get me out. It's selfish, I know, but that's the truth.) Two, I self-diagnosed myself as having depression. It came about slowly, as I realized that what a lot of people on Twitter were describing was similar to my own experiences. Once I realized that I have some sort of chemical imbalance in my head, a lot of my life started to make more sense. I didn't do anything with this information, per se, but it was an important start. 2015 Winterim this year went to The Lord of the Rings, which involved not only studying the text closely, but having the students try to pull a Tolkien and invent their own languages and secondary worlds. It was pretty fun, and I know that I enjoyed it. Much like the comic book Winterim, however, it hasn't stuck in my mind as strongly as some of the others. This year saw me and a coworker joining forces to tackle the Shakespeare class again, which was necessary because I'm still without a Master's degree. Still, I enjoyed teaching Shakespeare in this way, with the texts being the foundation for the different styles of writing that we were teaching the students. Quidditch World Cup 8 happened (again in South Carolina), which I attended with my team. It was fantastic--the Crimson Elite finished 18th in the nation, which is no small thing, in my view. It also marked the last time that I was to play a tournament with my quidditch friend. I retired from quidditch some time between 2015 and 2016 (I don't remember when, exactly). I don't regret that--it was sweet while it lasted, but it couldn't remain. But that doesn't mean I don't miss it. Living with the in-laws was far from an ideal experience, but it did help the way we'd hoped: We were able to get some money saved up for our own house. While we were basement dwellers, my oldest son turned eight, which meant that he decided to be baptized into the Church. I hadn't really anticipated it happening in my in-laws' ward, but my wife and I bought the townhome in January of 2008--eight or nine months before the housing bubble popped. That slowed down our ability to move on from "Old Place" (as we now call it). That summer was a new chapter (lol, pun) in my writing, as I finally mustered up the courage to ask my wife if I could abandon her for the better part of a week to have a writing retreat. I went in the middle of June and wrote most of what I later called Conduits. I wrote 34,443 words (I made a spreadsheet that kept track of the numbers) and had at last figured out how I can best work: Highly focused, in a single place, where my responsibilities can't reasonably be split in any other direction. Since then, I've had numerous retreats, all of which having done a great deal to help my writing along. Oh, and I also started my annual NaNoWriMo tradition this year, too. 2016 This Winterim was really great for me, as it was a chance to teach about dinosaurs. I teamed up with the biology teacher and we had a great time talking about dinosaurs, having the students come up with their own museum layouts, and learning about the terrible lizards. We even visited St. George for a day or two to see some dinosaur-related things, and we got lost in the Nevada desert with a bus full of kids. We made it home all right in the end, and it was a great adventure for us all. By the time spring rolled around, our renters were ready to move on and so were we. We sold our townhome and, with the equity (not much, but some) from it, we were able to move into a much bigger home. New Place (as we call it) is where we still are, and where I'm writing this now. Our first summer in New Place was a busy one, as we moved in on the fifth of July. We had a lot of settling in to do, as well as adjusting to the new commute we'd have every day. Not only that, but I used a week or so right before we moved to go out to the cabin and have a writing retreat. It's become a staple of my summers, now. By the time November came around, Gayle and I were preparing for another European trip--packing bags, making sure we knew where our passports were, getting schedules settled--and then the election came. It's fair to say that I was much more attentive to the entire thing, and the feelings I had about the election are still raw. We had started listening to the Hamilton soundtrack during our move, and so there was a sense of optimism that I'd been harboring for a few months. When the election came out with Clinton having over three million more votes yet still losing the presidency, I had a really hard time believing that America was on the right track. I've yet to change my mind on that. 2017 The World Wars Tour was supposed to be a really powerful and profound experience--and, to an extent, it was--but there's always an issue with time. We spent far too much of it traveling from one place to another, rather than really soaking in what each place had to offer. I definitely would do the tour differently if I had a chance to try again, but the trip wasn't a disaster by any means. It was, as I've mentioned before, an incredible experience that changed my life. Walking through a death camp, through a battlefield, through a museum of collected artifacts, of talking to a man who saw his own father die on the family room floor because of Nazi shells…it was unforgettable. My Shakespeare classes were changing again--we were doing a "Stage and Page" version of the class now--but other than that, there really weren't a lot of big things going down. My writing continued, with some weekly progress in the form of my creative writing classes, though without any sort of progress on the publication front. I'd finished a couple of other books, though I was still reluctant to edit them in any sort of noticeable way. Then summer came, and I brought my writing group along with for a writing retreat. It was very successful--in that month, I wrote over 77,000 words--and it also brought into the world War Golem, the book that I think is the most prepared for some sort of publication. (Whether or not that ever happens is unknown--doubted by me, believed in by most everyone else.) That summer was also remarkable because it was a Disneyland year. I remember this fully, as I got to visit an old high school friend who lives in California. We had a great trip with the Mouse and my friend, including a visit to Blizzard Entertainment campus and seeing some of the neat things they have there. On the way home, I picked up a copy of It from the Barnes and Noble in St. George. That book, as any frequent reader of my essays knows, has also fundamentally changed my life. 2018 I had originally planned on doing a Shakespeare Winterim, but it fell apart at the last minute and I ended up needing to dust off an old one and resubmit it: Thus I taught, for the first time, a repeat Winterim. Ironically, it was the same one that I'd taught my first year--now almost ten years before. The Video Game Winterim was really enjoyable--we played VR games, students invented their ideas for their own video games, and I blew their little minds with some light theory. I wouldn't mind doing that one again, though not for another year or two, methinks. I'd prefer a fresh crop of students--no double dipping. This year marched along in pretty familiar strokes. We did manage to go to Moab for a family vacation during Spring Break, which was a lot of fun. My second son decided to get baptized. My wife and I kept teaching; I kept doing the things that I'd normally do (going to LTUE in February, for example, as I've done every year since the beginning of the decade--I guess I should've mentioned that in 2010, yeah?). One thing I started doing differently in 2018, though, was writing in my reading journal about the things that I thought about whilst reading a book. I don't do that with all of them, but getting into that habit meant a lot. When summer came around, I decided to reread It, this time with pen in hand. Some of my most honest and profound personal thoughts came because of that experience, which is why I love It. I had my writing retreats--solo (56,000 words) and as a group (33,000 words)--and pushed out War Golems, the sequel (it has a plural on it, see?). I haven't looked at the book since I wrote it, but it's never too far from the back of my mind. I'm still not certain how I feel about it, which is probably a good thing--it's not settled, as it were. One remarkable thing about 2018, however, was that I was accepted to a special training at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. I went there with a coworker and had a fantastic experience. I saw much of the city, the monuments, and the Library, as well as some time in the Folger Shakespeare Library and I got to handle original, 17th century copies of Paradise Lost. It was definitely a highlight of the year and of my whole life, honestly. 2019 That brings us to this year. My Winterim was on fantasy literature, so we got to go to my wife's happy place, Evermore, and I got to enjoy a lot of time in some of my favorite pieces of literature. Both this year's and 2018's Winterims saw me teaching by myself--there wasn't time to pull someone in on last years, and this year's didn't need another set of hands--but I still had a good time. It was not, perhaps, the most incredible experience I've ever had, but not everything has to be. One of my writing group friends suggested that we pool together some cash and rent an Air BnB for a winter retreat, which we did at the end of January. It was successful, despite being shorter than I'm used to, and I finished up a NaNoWriMo book, as well as worked on a novella I've been picking at for over a year. I ended up with just over 15,000 words for the day and a half of work. A surprise came our way when my wife was offered a slightly different teaching job for the fall of 2019. Instead of teaching six classes of eight grade science, she would only teach three classes and spend the rest of the time as a teaching coach. She decided to go through with it, despite her reservations about the new administration at her school. Summer saw us at Yellowstone National Park--which the boys in particular loved; I liked it, despite having conjunctivitis--as well as a couple of writing retreats (75,000 words between the two) getting some of my novella-project taken care of. The new school year started without me teaching creative writing for the first time in almost a decade, as well as a CE class and a Shakespeare class--separate this time. It has been a fairly straightforward year, though the decade has treated me differently than I had ever anticipated. Never would I have thought that I would be a world traveler; not on a teacher's salary--and, strangely enough, I only went because I'm a teacher. My family has blossomed and continues to grow. My oldest now comes to school with me (he's in 7th grade). I have written over 1.7 million words since I got married, with the vast majority of those being written in the last decade. The one great regret--the largest failure of my goals and thoughts about the future--is that I'm still unpublished. I know that everyone has a different path, a different journey toward being published. Knowing that, however, doesn't really take the sting away. I do hope that I can change that…though I don't know how I will. I'm not really sure what the future holds. For now, it's enough to look forward with some hope, some trepidation, some familiarity, some newness. In short, there's a life in front of me. I now only need to go and live it. I'm working through another Mark Edmundson title. This one is Why Teach? and it's really good. I'll write up my thoughts about it later, so suffice to say that I'm enjoying it a lot and I am excited to also push through his slim volume Why Read? as soon as I can.
A couple of days ago, I came across one particular quote that stood out to me. He was talking about the two different types of college--the corporate one and the scholarly oasis one--and said that the leadership that's generated by the corporate one tends to be less of actual leadership and one more of enthusiastic regurgitation. He says, "What people usually mean by a leader now is someone who, in a very energetic, upbeat way, shares all of the values of the people who are in charge." That got me thinking. In education, we have some Twitter personalities that are sometimes called "thought leaders" and they'll be people who tweet faux-profound messages like, "Grades indicate an end of learning" or (and this one falls into Edmundson's quote quite aptly), "Principals, the likelihood of anyone else in your building having principal experience is slim to none. Be confident in your decisions, your process, and your shortcomings. Most recognize that they don’t fully understand your role and want to support you." The ideas typically aren't bad, per se, but they're an energetic, upbeat way of sharing the values of the people in charge. And isn't that very much what we want in a leader? My bosses are all on my wavelength--or I'm on theirs, perhaps?--and so I'm happy to go along with them. Though we bump into conflicts every once in a while, it is, for the most part, a pretty smooth experience going from one day to the next. So what about in my religion? This one is trickier, because there's an implicit (and sometimes not-so-implicit) gag order on criticisms, critiques, or questions about leadership decisions. I think back to my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Back then (early 2000s), the missionary program asked missionaries to memorize six different discussions about core principles of the gospel. By memorize, I mean to literally memorize, word for word, what was written in the discussion pamphlet. This was something that I saw some value in, as it helped me to gain a stronger (admittedly, gospel-centric) vocabulary in Spanish. But I rarely recited the charlas (the Spanish word for discussions) verbatim, despite having a couple of them fully committed to memory. Though there was personal benefit to the memorization process, it wasn't useful outside of the confines of my apartment. Despite it not being something that I utilized "correctly", my mission president*, a man whom I love and respect now as I did then, was constantly pushing the memorization process. He testified to its importance and explained why we, as missionaries, would only be remiss by letting the memorization process slacken. Part way through--not even a full year after I began, if I remember correctly--the Church reversed course on the memorization process. Instead, we were to use the charlas as a guide to outlining a custom-made discussion for our investigators. (The new thrust ended up being a stop-gap between the old discussions and the next phase, which is currently being used and is called Preach My Gospel.) As soon as the new outline-only format, with no more need to memorize, happened, my mission president immediately began testifying to the importance of outlines. He used personal experiences--just as he had with the memorization format--to explain and expound the value of such a teaching tool. From then on, in my mission, we outlined, feeling the support and leadership of my mission president. In the years since then, I've have cause to reflect on that. I don't say this to in any way diminish my mission president's leadership calling, his role, or his effectiveness. He led me through the very difficult process of a two year mission, far away from home. He helped shore me up and encourage me when I needed that support. So I'm not trying to say that he wasn't a leader, despite my quote by Edmundson at the top. What I can't quite get out of my mind is his firm resolve to say what the Church asked him to say. And maybe that's it: Maybe what's important here is to see my mission president's commitment to the Church, rather than any program or procedure. In a rapidly changing church environment**, trusting the leaders is to not trust the policies. The thinking, I suppose, is that the policies can change…but our leaders change, too. Widescale shifts in Church policies (how long we attend services on Sundays, how we minister to one another) are all welcome and interesting--but they didn't start happening until President Monson died. So obviously the leader does matter…and the leader also changes. Our ward was split last week--our first Sunday services under a new bishop (a new leader) is today. It will be interesting to see how my new leadership differs from the old…and whether I feel an Edmundsonian vibe coming from the new bishopric, or a sense of leadership in a less jaded, less cynical way. --- * If you're unfamiliar with how missions are set up in the Church, there's a man who serves for a number of years as the president of the mission. He's the one who decides who serves with whom and where, as well as other important decisions for how missionary work unfolds in the section of the world to which he's been assigned. He acts as a surrogate father for a lot of the missionaries, and though some people have really negative experiences with their mission presidents, mine were nothing but pleasures. ** I spoke about my own experiences in the field, but the Church recently made a large change in how often missionaries can talk to their families. Only a month ago, missionaries could only call home on Mother's Day and Christmas morning. Now, they can text and Facetime and communicate with parents on their preparation days--meaning weekly. Going from four times in a mission to weekly is a massive change. (It makes sense to me, as parents can be a great source of help and support to their missionaries, and there's little reason, I think, that a 21st century missionary needs to rely on 20th century policies.) There were good reasons for the old policy, and good reasons for the new. That it's changing so much is indicative of how much policy is being upended by the new First Presidency. Recently, Russell M. Nelson, the prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave a talk about the change in what he wanted people to say in reference to the Church itself. This is not a new topic for him; in April Conference of 1990, he gave a separate address that touches on the same themes. All of them are concerned with how the Church is named and how people refer to it. What is different is who is saying it and the more distinct prohibitions that have come down as a result.
I feel that I should say that I wrote about my own feelings about how the Church is discussed a couple of years ago, and much of what I wrote there remains my opinion. As much as possible, I feel like people talking about the Church ought to designate it using its full name, per the request of the institution. There is, however, more to be said about this topic. The problem with talking about it is some assumptions that I want to unpack. If you're unfamiliar with the Church, you may not recognize the way the president--often called the prophet (as opposed to the Prophet, who was Joseph Smith) of the Church--is considered. Particularly in official decrees over the pulpit during General Conference (which is what that first link is connected to), the pronouncements of Church leaders is considered sacrosanct and of divine origin. This is part of the reason why, back in October 2010, there was a kerfuffle about Boyd K. Packer's modified version of his talk on same-sex attraction: If the speakers at General Conference are inspired of the Lord, how can they say anything astray? This type of thinking is fundamental to Mormonism (yes, I used the M-word; I'll explain why in a minute) because the entire concept of coming into the Church, of conversion, is a belief in continued revelation--both organizationally and personally--that allows anyone to come to know the truth of the gospel as contained within the doctrines of the Church (see Moroni 10: 3-5). Without revelation about what is and is not orthodoxy (and, quite often, orthopraxy), the Church's entire conceit is lost. So when a Church leader says something in April or October General Conference, it's considered a soft-kind of scripture. (Most talks recycle ideas and themes from the canonical texts, though they will quote each other frequently, and very rarely would anything come across as being "new" doctrine--hence the stir Elder Packer's comments created, as well as their omission.) This is why it's such a big deal that the president of the Church made the kinds of nomenclature changes* as he did back in October. As a member of the Church, I'm not supposed to criticize or argue against what has been done. As a Mormon, I'm really uncomfortable with the declaration. And the two conflicting emotions have given me a bit of an identity crisis. Part of this is because I still stand by the idea that Mormonism isn't Christianity. While I love my Christian friends and my atheist friends and my Muslim friends and my all-of-the-other-things friends, there is enough difference between Mormonism and Christianity that I do not want to be considered a Christian. That is a term for the branch of religion from which Joseph Smith broke back in 1830. Christians believe in the Bible; Mormons believe in the Book of Mormon and the Bible and the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants. Much like Jews believe in the Tanakh and Christians in the New Testament and the Tanakh, I feel that my religion is an outgrowth of a previous one, built upon its foundations and using its texts, while at the same time expanding. And a term that works very well for indicating that unique and powerful doctrine is Mormon. Now, President Nelson pointed out that using the term Mormon omits the name of the Savior from how we're viewed. I don't disagree: It's one of the things that makes it hard for other Christians to understand that we believe in Christ. I don't think that someone who doesn't know who we are, however, is going to have more positive feelings toward us simply because our two-syllable name is eschewed in favor of the eleven-syllable one. And I simply don't feel that my belief in Jesus Christ, His sacrifice, and His Atonement are lost when I use the word Mormon to describe my beliefs. And that, right there, is part of what makes this particular topic so fraught. How can I say I disagree with the prophet? A man whom I said I sustained as prophet, seer, and revelator? It's…tricky. Believing in President Nelson's guidance as the leader of the Church doesn't mean I have to turn off my brain. I flatly disagree with my Sunday School teacher, who said that the leaders of the Church are "perfect". I resist the hero-worship that many Saints practice (as one bishop said, "If it's good enough for President Monson, it's good enough for me") and would rather not defer my feelings to another. But why would I be enamored of a nickname to the point of opposing the president? (And I don't think I'm opposing him; I'm stating why I feel differently than others.) President Nelson alluded to Romeo and Juliet (how could you not? Shakespeare is everywhere) in his talk, saying, "What's in a name, or in this case, a nickname?" A rose really does smell as sweet, regardless of the language naming it. Without going into Derridean postmodern deconstruction on the purpose and power of words--which absolutely do matter and, so far as our society operates, really do mean things--I assert that Mormon is a word that easily and clearly describes the types of beliefs that I hold. Mormonism is an excellent way of describing the religious philosophies that I espouse. In his talk, President Nelson reminds us of how the term Mormon was used as an epithet and a way of speaking derogatorily about members of the Church. That much is true. But the thing about derogatory terms used against a particular group is that the group can also appropriate that term. Because words matter and mean things, that means that words are power. To usurp a persecutor's power, one can usurp that persecutor's term. This is why the Black community can use the N-word (and those outside of it really can't), as it defangs the pain the word can cause. Queer members of the LGBTQ+ community (and I know there's arguments about what to do with that argument which I'm not up to speed on, so I'm using this term for the nonce) also took what was supposed to be the verbal rock of the word queer and used it to build their own fortress to protect themselves from the scorn of those who hated them. In other words, it's only an epithet to me if I'm willing to let it be. And, as a member of the community, I feel I'm justified in choosing to feel that Mormon describes me in a non-persecutorial way. Additionally, it's important to note that our early history shows an acceptance of the term. Brigham Young was fond of saying "Mormonism" (as he always put it into quotes), going so far as to asssert that "Mormonism" was true. Even Joseph Smith omitted Christ's name in an early version of the Doctrine and Covenants**, and I don't think that Smith's actions were "victories for Satan". Of course, that's the tension inside the Church, isn't it? We believe in continuing revelation, but we always cleave to our canonized past. I don't know how to square that circle, save to say that, for me and myself, I don't have any problems with the M-word. It fits who I am and what I believe; it's convenient and it creates a solidarity for the persecuted past through which my ancestors suffered; and even if it is a bit of a shibboleth to others, I see it as pushing me into a deeper exploration of whom I believe in. --- * Clearly, it's not a "change" in that the Church didn't get a new name. It's the same as before. In fact, it's not even a request to others that they stop using the term Mormon, as the Church has been asking that for years. It's a change in how we, as members, think of ourselves. ** "Joseph Smith oversaw the editing of the text of some revelations to prepare them for publication in 1835 as the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of the Latter Day Saints" (Introduction). ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! For most of the people who read my essays, there's no need for explanation of the title: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has, for the past 38 years, had three hours of church meetings on almost every Sunday. Back in October, President Nelson announced that there was going to be a change in the amount of time members were expected to be in church each week, shifting from a three hour block to a two hour block and an hour or so set aside for at-home study.
I am in favor of this, if only because it means that I have one fewer hour in which to sit on the metal folding chairs, also known as a violation of my Eighth Amendment rights. The ostensible reason to do this is for members to have more opportunities to study at home and to fortify their familial relationships. (It has faint echoes of a comment I saw somewhere that members of the Church worship families more than they do Jesus; there may be something in that, but I'm not interested in pursuing that thought right now.) The practical result is that my church meetings, which have started at 8:30 in the morning this year (a true trial of my faith) and ended at 11:30 will now begin at 10:20 and finish at 12:20pm. This shows that faithfulness through heartache and sorrow can often lead to great blessings. I'm not much of a morning person--weird, considering I'm a teacher--and I never have been. All joking aside, one of the largest difficulties that I had as a missionary in Florida was following the rules of when to go to bed and when to wake up. I never mastered the different circadian rhythm; within a week of coming home I was back to my midnight to bed, nine-in-the-morning to rise routine. And though having church meetings begin at 8:30 doesn't sound too bad, I should remind you that the weekends are, historically in my house, the times when we finally caught up on all that sleep we'd been missing during the early-hours of the week. I take the idea of Sunday being a day of rest very seriously, so I'm excited to finally be able to get the rest that I need. As for the new structure, I think it sounds great on paper. I've been unsure what to make out of Sunday School for a long time, as the pedantic lessons tend not to be particularly interesting to me, and the third hours of the block were often so physically uncomfortable (seriously, the metal folding chairs the Church purchases make me sad simply to think about) that I rarely pulled much from them. Seeing the shift to one hour dedicated to the sacrament and remembering Jesus Christ, the other being on more practical, communal-modes of worship? Well, that all sounds good to me. I don't know how well it will go in our household once we're back. We'll arrive home in time for a late lunch, so after that, what will we do? Some members are talking about having dedicated scripture study time. Others talked about doing "stations", short activities that the younglings can more readily enjoy--ten minutes coloring in a scripture-based coloring book, a Church-created video (complete with soft-focus speech), or time in their personal journals. One idea that I think I'll definitely use was the idea of strapping the kids in the car and driving up the canyon. We're kind of far from the mountains--they're visible from where I live, but they aren't close, necessarily--but there's a lot of places in this city that we've yet to explore, despite living here for over two years. Maybe we should plan on poisoning the atmosphere as we trundle about and talk of Jesus? In terms of personal study, I'm trying to wrap my head around what I'm supposed to do. When I read literature, I do so with certain lenses--some of them are inherent, others are institutional--and try to find alternative impressions and ideas from the text. In other words, I like to deconstruct things and poke at assumptions within the texts. That's not really encouraged when it comes to scripture study. Admittedly, there is a wide range of interpretations out there--the hermeneutics of the Bible are robust enough to keep a person busy for a lifetime--but when you're a part of a church like mine, there's a lot of pressure to color within the lines. Individual interpretations are often considered secondary to official pronouncements, and approaching the teachings of the Church in any other way is all too frequently considered "apostate" or indicative of a weak faith. Not only that, but I usually end up with a lot more questions than answers when I think religiously. It's not that reading the Book of Mormon gives me questions, per se, but more that I interrogate works. It doesn't matter what it is. I think, perhaps, this is why I love reading Milton so much. Paradise Lost is one of the most doctrinally dense pieces of writing on the planet, and I love to interrogate it. What's interesting about that, is I usually interrogate it based upon my religious lens: The Mormonic* answers to the Miltonic questions is fine for me. That is, I want to read Paradise Lost in order to ask questions that I then think have scriptural answers. But if I go the other way--reading the Book of Mormon and asking questions--then the place I usually turn to for satisfaction is instead the area that's taking me down a dubious path. Gayle said that we can incorporate Paradise Lost into our studies, if it makes me feel better. It does…though there's a definitive risk that I'd put more time and effort into reading Milton than Moroni, if only because Milton is a way better writer. I can really only think of one exception to when prose is superior to Milton's poetry when describing an important idea, and that's because the prose version is Milton's own. So though the Book of Mormon has a straightforward way of approaching a doctrinal thought, I'm not drawn to it in the same way that I am to Milton's more convoluted approach to the same topic. I would rather hear Milton's Satan ruminate on the repercussions of agency and free will than a handful of important but dry lines in the Pearl of Great Price. When both have great substance, I think I'd prefer the one with exceptional style. All that being said, I'm hopeful that I will feel more spiritually enriched through personal study and time with the family than I ever did during the seemingly-endless three hour block. We'll just have to wait and see how it goes. --- * So, Mormonic isn't really a word, and the Church's recent allergy to the term Mormon is something that I've been thinking about a lot. I do believe there's a difference between Mormonism and the teachings of the Church…but that's a topic for another day. Today's lesson in Elders' Quorum was about reconcilement, which we treated as a matter between people. That is, how do we, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints react to offenses and mitigate the effects of when we inadvertently offend. It's a not infrequent topic, especially in a Church concerned with membership retention. Still, I ended up listening with less than half an ear as the word reconcile is one that does something different to me than, I'd guess, most people. See, back when I was a teenager, I had two musical interests: Third wave ska (with some punk thrown in for fun) and Dave Matthews Band. The two aren't particularly comparable, but hey…who can ever really justify the ways of their music tastes to men? And, in my defense, I liked the energy of the former and the technical abilities of the latter. (If you ever hear me play the guitar, you'll hear both influences heavily in the way that I approach music.) Anyway, one of the things about the Dave Matthews Band back in the nineties is that they encouraged their fans to record the live shows, to share and collect the unique versions that came out of each of their concerts, as it were. (I don't know if they still do that nowadays, as I've stopped listening to their stuff after the early aughts.) It wasn't as easy to swap that information back then as it is now. After all, high speed internet was for schools, colleges, and businesses that could afford it. I was still on a slow dial-up connection (56k baby!), so I couldn't really download those songs in any real quantity. Fortunately for me, one of the guys in my home ward was also a DMB fan, so he had a small collection of these "bootleg" songs. He burned me a CD so that I could enjoy the alternative versions. One of them, which later became the song "Bartender" on the Busted Stuff album, was called "Reconcile Our Differences"*. You can see the lyrics here, which are important for this particular post because they differ so much from the eventual "official" version of the song.** "Bartender" has some similar themes that clearly started in "Reconcile Our Differences", but since I listened to the bootleg version long before I saw the fully produced album, I often think of "Reconcile" as the superior version to "Bartender". In the song, Matthews sings about what remains of a person when life runs out. Though he drifts over a number of different possibilities, the section that always stood out to me was this part: We reconcile, our differences Matthews is a fairly irreverent person--I remember reading an interview back in '02 or thereabouts where he said he believed in God, but not that He had a plan or anything--so the particular image of a heavenly swimming pool isn't too far afield for the man. Nevertheless, I'm struck by its mundanity, especially as I consider the idea by Montesquieu: "If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides." Whatever the eternal nature of the attributes of God, there's always a contemporary insistence on how He thinks and behaves, one that shifts as time and cultures march forward. I once asked if God wears a tie; why would I not also be curious if He has a swimming pool? But it isn't the swimming pool that really gets to me: It's the whole verse. If we can reconcile our differences, could God and the devil? Today is John Milton's 410th birthday, and in honor of that--and because these types of questions push me in this direction…and because it's actually an accident I did this--I looked up the beginning of Book IV in Paradise Lost. This, you'll remember, is the moment when Satan arrives on Earth and has a deep, honest conversation with himself about what he's about to do. He asks some questions that…well, you should read it for yourself (starting on line 32). It's powerful stuff. So, instead of paying attention to my peers as they discussed not being offended when other people are jerks, I went through a close reading of Milton's masterpiece. It raises all sorts ideas in my mind, but the one that I'm always most struck by whenever I read that part is whether or not God would forgive Satan. Or, maybe, could. Both possibilities are fascinating, as I think both provide different ways of reading both Satan and God. If He would forgive Satan, I think it would be along lines like those that Satan outlines in the poem: […] is there no place In this sense, the price to get back into God's good graces are too high for Satan to countenance. God would; Satan wouldn't. This becomes less about God and more about Satan, as the metaphorical ball is in Satan's court. By the end of the Satanic soliloquy, we get this bit: "For never can true reconcilement grow/Where wounds of deadly hate have peirc'd so deep" (4.98-99).
And that's one of the saddest parts, in my mind, about what's going on with Satan in Paradise Lost. He has come to a conclusion that "all his good prov'd ill in me" (4.48) and, in the case of God's grace, "Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate,/To me alike, it deals eternal woe" (4.69-70). Regardless of God's love or hatred, Satan feels the same pierced wounds. If love feels like hatred, then how does one feel love? But what about the could part of the supposition? Could God reconcile His differences with Satan? Can He walk "on and on" with the devil, let His fallen angel Lucifer into his swimming pool? There's a bit of a double bind here, because if we argue God can't do that, then He isn't the omnipotent being He's supposed to be. Some might argue a won't that's strong enough to be a can't, though that might only be a semantic pivot. Here's some set up to the question that I ended my own exploration with during quorum meeting, and I'll admit that it comes from a uniquely Mormonic point of view: In Mormonism***, there's an understanding that before birth, all current humans had a soul residing in Heaven with God. Therefore, the human family antedates our current world. The extension of that is everyone--all of the angels, all of us, and even Christ Himself--are connected in a familial bond. Lucifer, then, is also part of the celestial family before he was evicted. In that sense, Lucifer is a spiritual sibling to everyone on Earth. And that leads to my question: Does God miss His son Lucifer? For some reason, I'd like to think that He does. --- * Despite my tepid efforts, I couldn't find a version of the song with the lyrics I've linked above. The song's tune is, as I said, on the Busted Stuff album. It's a good one, and the new lyrics in "Bartender" are also thought-provoking. I'd recommend checking it out if you like his style of music. ** At the time, Busted Stuff wasn't even produced--there was, as I seem to recall, a bit of a falling out with the band's producer that led to a bunch of the songs being scrapped--so I listened to the in-the-works music (called, alternatively, The Summer So Far and The Lillywhite Sessions), which had "Bartender" in basically its final form. *** I think there's a difference between teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Mormonism; hence my usage of the word. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, weekly sermons are colloquially called "talks" and the speakers are culled from the members of the congregation--the ward. Considering the fact that, on a local level, the Church relies on lay clergy, this isn't really surprising. The bishops who oversee the ward have full-time jobs on top of what is, essentially, a full-time calling don't have the spare hours to come up with a weekly sermon as some denominations allow. And, since there's a quasi-democratic feel to a lot of Mormonism, we have members speak to each other.
For some, this is exciting, as they like to talk about the Gospel and they don't mind being in front of other people. My wife and I fall into that category: Speaking in church doesn't really distress us and the biggest concern is that there be someone sitting with our three rambunctious boys during the meeting. For others, this is one of the hardest trials of their faith. They hate being in front of people, and public speaking is one of their greatest fears. Today, as I was listening to the speaker's talk, I noticed something that would help Sacrament Meeting talks go a lot better. It's a small thing, but I think it's worthwhile. I think LDS speakers need to stop introducing their families, themselves, or even greeting the congregation (particularly if the ward isn't in Hawaii where saying, "Aloha!" to each other is fun, whereas here it's just painful and awkward). In other words, public speaking should take a page from comedians. So, this is uncomfortable, but back before we all learned what a dirtbag Louis C.K. is, I watched one of his comedy routines. He had some really funny stuff, but I don't recommend it for people who would prefer that they don't have tons of swearing and filthy jokes in their comedy. Since I'd watched his special, I remember hearing somewhere that one of the things that Louis C.K. did that made him so popular was that he never gives up the first thing he says. It's never filler--not a "Hello Salt Lake City! How are you tonight?" or "Thanks for being here! Wow! There sure are a lot of you here. Heh heh." He starts straight out of the gate and doesn't let up. Again, we now know that Louis C.K. is an abuser, which does make it awkward to use him as an example--especially for something like speaking in church--but I think the lesson (rather than the man) is what matters. Church talks would be a lot better if the speaker stood up and spoke instead of dithered. Because first impressions only happen once. There's one moment when everybody is on your side, ready to jump in with you, and it's when you first take the mic. After that, they tune out, they get distracted, they get bored, or, if you're really lucky, they get interested. Imagine this: Sister Jones stands up at the pulpit. She adjusts the microphone and says, her voice wobbly with nerves, "Good morning, brothers and sisters. Or is it good afternoon?" Then she giggles and a couple of polite smiles wend their way toward her. "I got a call from the bishop last week asking if I could speak today. I don't like speaking, but I said yes anyway. I'm going to talk about temples, but first I wanted to introduce myself and my family…" Aside from the fact that, from an active church-going position, almost everything there is a cliché (a major strike against the ward's interest in her talk), but I've just learned that there's nothing about the topic that I need to pay attention to for the next few minutes. It's going to be autobiography, and while that's cool, it's not what I came to church to hear. Second scenario: Sister Johnson stands up at the pulpit. She adjusts the microphone. She stares out for a long pause--maybe even a few seconds. Long enough that people look up, curious. Did she forget her notes? Is she too nervous to talk? Is she already crying (a real possibility in a Mormon meeting)? No, none of those things. She's actually waiting for people to pay attention to what she has to say, because what she has to say is important. "The temple has saved my life," she then says without preamble or introduction. The statement is shocking (in a safe, Mormonic way), intriguing, and definitely makes an impression. She can then go on, expanding on the statement. As she goes, she can drop additional details about her family--how she and her husband, who met at BYU-Idaho, always wanted to go to the temple together to be sealed to their adopted son--and then continue to use the story to pull the congregation in deeper. Of the two, I'm already more interested in fictional Sister Johnson than I am Sister Jones (who, for the record, is also fictional…though I'm pretty sure that it's in the Church Handbook somewhere that every English-speaking ward in the country has to have at least one Sister Jones and one Sister Johnson). And here's the thing: It isn't about how well Sister Johnson speaks. That isn't what matters. The reason I bring this up is because, as a church filled with lay clergy, it's the onus of each member to help fortify one another's testimony, to bear their burdens, and teach from the unique, lived experiences that each member has. The topic per se isn't new, but Sister Johnson's take on it is, and that take ought to be understood and appreciated by each person in the audience. That's the point of having speakers at a Sacrament Meeting in the first place. If what they said was trite, there's no reason for them to speak at all. From a doctrinal point of view, the most important part of the entire three hours of church meetings is partaking of the sacrament. So why stick around? Well, we're supposed to gain something from the talks. And that, I submit, is why I spent my time in that meeting thinking about how the speaker could do a better job speaking. Wow. When I put it that way, I sound like a hypocritical jerk, don't I? Well, that's not what I meant to be. Maybe I should be more careful about how I talk about church, huh? |
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