"Both Feet Forward"

My friend J. shared the audio of Scott Swofford's Devotional Address with me.  Honesty, humility, interested listening, real appreciation and love in our discipleship vs.our tendency to point out the virtues of what we know and what we hope we are.   Well worth the 25 minutes of listening.

I'm leaving links here so that I can find and review it again.

http://www.byutv.org/watch/b6ed3495-be74-42ae-850c-a43f5beaf34f/byu-devotional-address-scott-swofford-111114

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6GB9uv2S58

Political derision or fear among us.

“There is nothing in the world more deleterious or harmful to the human family than hatred, prejudice, suspicion, and the attitude that some people have toward their fellows, of unkindness." 

“Whenever your politics cause you to speak unkindly of your brethren, know this, that you are upon dangerous ground.” 

~George Albert Smith

"Political differences never justify hatred or ill will. I hope that the Lord’s people may be at peace one with another during times of trouble, regardless of what loyalties they may have to different governments or parties.”

~Gordon B. Hinckley

 

When Saints Differ

Recently a decision was made in a stake in my state not to participate in a particular service opportunity. I am not privy to the reasons why, but my best, most understanding guess is that the stake president felt that the nature of the service, though it was compassionate, was too closely related to a topic that is currently warmly debated by the two major political parties, and that, though members of the stake could freely volunteer to serve on their own, having that service sponsored by the stake would create antipathy and division among church members who held opposing political positions. Basically the stake president had a good finger on the spiritual pulse of his stake.

In other words, they, like many of us, had not, as a group, learned the lesson of the people of Ammon and the Nephites.

We often discuss the heroic nature of the “sons of Helaman”, young sons of Ammon's people, who, not bound by their parents' oath of non-violence and full of faith in God, went to war alongside their Nephite brothers to defend their homes and families from annihilation. We don't often stop to consider the geopolitical state of the place where they and the Nephites were living. Basically, there were two groups of people living in proximity under one government there, one group convinced that they should lay down their lives rather than take up weapons to fight, the other, convinced that they had a moral obligation to fight against aggressors.

When the Lamanites began to attack and kill Ammon's people some of them were, naturally, sorely tempted to set aside their moral convictions and religious commitment to non-violence. It would have been easy for their neighbors, the Nephites, to encourage them to do so and to resent their position of non-violence when they were all threatened by the Lamanite armies. And those of Ammon's people who were not inclined to pick up their weapons of war, but were determined to maintain their standard of non-violence could easily have looked down upon the Nephites who chose to fight back, seeing the Nephite belief as less noble or inspired than theirs.

However, remarkably, these two groups, ones we might consider political opposites in their positions when it came to matters of military aggression, did not despise, argue with or contest with each other. Instead of becoming divided by their differing political opinions, they supported each other in their respective rights to act according to their moral positions. The people of Ammon were supportive (and likely also grateful) for the protection of the Nephites who volunteered to fight off the Lamanites who were attacking them. It would have been a natural human response to be, instead, simultaneously dismissive of the Nephites' position that military might is a necessary skill to learn, perfect and use. It would have been easy for them to insist, therefore, that their sons choose non-violent response as well. But they did not. They allowed their sons to make their own choices.   Remarkably, the Nephite position was similarly respectful. They actually encouraged the people of Ammon who had made a sacred commitment to non-violence to maintain that commitment while, at the same time, intending to do whatever was necessary to fight of the Lamanites who sought to destroy them both. They respected the people of Ammon's moral response to a terrifying situation even while they felt a moral responsibility to respond in a way that was directly the opposite.

Here were two politically opposing views in a desperate time, each held by people who understood that they were divinely tied to each other by their faith in God. The result of that understanding was not only eventual victory over the aggressors (at a terrible cost, as is often the case), but even, perhaps more profound, a sense of unity of brotherhood and respect for freedom to respond according to conscience had played out between those two groups and had transcended their widely differing and opposite personal responses to a political crisis. What could have created division, resentment and discord, instead created mutual respect for differing positions and willingness to honestly respect and coordinate with each other's choices of how to respond.

It is interesting to contemplate just how much that amazing phenomenon may have played into the successes in the chapters that followed both during the subsequent war, and also in the peace between them in the years that followed.

I whole heartedly believe that “If ye are not one, ye are not mine”. And I believe that that doesn't mean that we must all see eye to eye or agree on issues. I believe that the story of the people of Ammon and their neighboring Nephites teaches that  we can love and respect each other enough to work respectfully, unitedly and for the common good, each in a way that he or she feels called by God to do, in spite of how different our calls to action may be, or how widely our political and social positions differ.

It is hard to do, but I believe that peaceable, mutual respect in spite of glaring, seemingly insurmountable differences of deeply held opinions about what course of action to personally take is one of the keys to Zion.

Clear about me and understanding the reality of you.

I have learned or relearned recently that I am at my best when I am fully aware of and able to articulate what I know and wish for AND when I am highly attuned to the reality of the feelings and words of a person with whom I am interacting, without chafing at them.

If I do the first without the second I tend towards selfishness or insensitivity.  If I do the second without the first I can tend to feel taken for granted and to feel disconnected and/or frustrated.

But when I do both together, I am more likely to feel aware, and at peace within, and more connected.  And my ability to act with purpose and clarity increases.

I should remember that.

Comprehension, not conformity, in creating religious understanding and religous community

"If a substantial number of sane and intelligent people believe something that seems to you utterly without sense, the problem probably lies with you, for not grasping what it is about that belief that a lucid and reasonable person might find plausible and satisfying.

'Until you understand why people of good sense, learning, mental health, and sound intelligence find a particular worldview convincing and worthy of allegiance … you haven’t really understood it. You don’t have to accept that other worldview, but, if you’re serious about understanding it, you really have to grasp it."

~Daniel Peterson,  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2012/05/petersons-first-rule-for-the-study-of-other-religions.html

"What it means to “be” Mormon is a social construct that results from an interplay of definitions and practices, bandied about by different parties who have a stake in the definition of the term. While there is an official, institutional Church with more-or-less clear-cut doctrines and policies, the interpretation and inhabitation of these teachings and practices vary from individual to individual.

"In other words: While there is a literal Mormon Church, there is no such thing as “Mormonism” as an empirically homogeneous or monolithic experience. Instead, there are Mormonisms, as various as the individuals who embody them, but predicated on certain communal elements that they share with their faith of origin. Individuals understand their faith and their religion in temporally, generationally, and geographically situated and specific ways...

"To paraphrase Daniel Peterson:  Until you understand why people of good sense, learning, mental health, and sound intelligence find their particular interpretation and embodiment of Mormonism to be convincing and worthy of allegiance, you haven’t really understood it."

~Rosemary Avance   http://www.fairlds.org/fair-conferences/2012-fair-conference/2012-seeing-the-light-parallels-in-mormon-conversion-and-de-conversions-stories

A rabbi's thoughts on Pope Benedict's contributions

Benedict and the Rabbi

A Christian pope on the Hebrew Bible.

by Meir Y. Soloveichik, director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and associate rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan

After Pope Benedict XVI’s surprising announcement that he would resign from the papacy, leading adherents of diverse faiths immediately began to evaluate his legacy. Catholic theologians have emphasized the enduring import of the thought of the man who spent most of his life as the theologian Joseph Ratzinger. Jewish leaders, meanwhile, have by and large celebrated the pope’s statements against anti-Semitism, promotion of interfaith amity, and the further improvement of Vatican-Israel relations. Yet there is one fascinating aspect of Benedict’s legacy that neither side has noted, in which philosophy and interfaith engagement are joined: that he began and ended his papacy by celebrating the Hebraic, traditional Jewish understanding of love and marriage.

Known as John Paul II’s doctrinal enforcer who inveighed against a modern “dictatorship of relativism” at his predecessor’s funeral, it was expected that his publications as pope would cultivate further controversy. Many were therefore surprised when Benedict began his papacy by issuing the encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), an examination of the biblical notion of erotic love. In this encyclical, Benedict began by noting that much of religious thought tends to draw a sharp distinction between eros, the “love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings,” and agape, the term taken to mean spiritual, benevolent, generous love. Benedict notes that some Christian thinkers have rejected eros as selfish and physical, and that Christianity in the past has been criticized as having been opposed to the body; he admits that “it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed” in Christian thought. What can cure Christianity of this mistake, he shows, is a deeper study of the Hebrew Bible’s description of love. The Hebrew Bible, while firmly opposing pagan sexual practices, nevertheless celebrates man’s and woman’s desire for each other as divinely designed. To engage in utter rejection of eros would be to divide the physical and spiritual, the body and soul, which only together constitute the essential identity of human beings:

Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved. Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness. .  .  . [I]t is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature. Only thus is love—eros—able to mature and attain its authentic grandeur.

Under this understanding, eros and agape are not opposites; rather, in marriage, they complement each other, with eros serving as the foundation for agape. In seeking a term that implies the sanctification and elevation of the erotic impulse, the pope emphasized a Hebrew word for love,  ahavah, at the heart of a biblical book. “How,” Benedict asks, “might love be experienced so that it can fully realize its human and divine promise? Here we can find a first, important indication in the Song of Songs, an Old Testament book well known to the mystics.” In this book, a searching lover finally finds his beloved, and discovers, in Benedict’s reading, the importance of love beyond one’s self. The ideal of ahavah, for Jewish scripture, is marriage, in which man and woman’s natural urge for each other become sanctified not by denying their natures but by directing their love toward each other. Here, Benedict turns to the first story in the Hebrew Bible.

The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Two aspects of this are important. First, eros is somehow rooted in man’s very nature. .  .  . The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfill its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa.

Benedict then turns to more particularly Christian aspects of religious thought, but the encyclical is remarkable for its sensitive philosophical and exegetical engagement of Hebraic ideas. Let us now flash-forward to 2012, and the pope’s annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia. The world’s one billion Catholics did not know—but Benedict undoubtedly did—that this would be the last Christmas address he would deliver as the leader of the Catholic faith. In his speech, Benedict defended the age-old definition of marriage as the union of man and woman. This of course is unsurprising; yet what was unexpected is that the pope chose to do so by citing another European religious leader, one who is not a bishop or cardinal, but rather the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim. In a recent lengthy essay defending his opposition to same-sex marriage, Bernheim stressed the importance of the Genesis account in teaching us philosophically about the nature of marriage and identity, and emphasized the ideal of a child being raised by both father and mother. Benedict referred to Bernheim’s essay as “profoundly moving” and cited it extensively in his address.

This elevated Bernheim’s document from an essay written on behalf of French Orthodox Jewry to a statement studied by Catholics all over the world. Because it was written in French, many Orthodox Jews around the world knew little about it. Yet after Benedict’s address, Bernheim’s piece was read and translated by Ralph Hancock, a political philosopher at Brigham Young University, and thereby made available to Jewish thinkers everywhere. Recently published in First Things magazine, Hancock’s translation can be read at firstthings.com.

Let us consider, in summation, this remarkable turn of events. A rabbi, writing in Paris, defends Judaism’s traditional notion of marriage. This essay is read and cited in Latin by a Catholic leader and thinker in Rome, who from the very beginning of his papacy exhibited a deep interest in Jewish thinking about love and marriage. The pope’s endorsement thereby leads to the translation of the essay by a Mormon philosopher living in Utah. The essay is then exposed to diverse communities of faith in the English-speaking world.

All eyes now turn to the conclave of cardinals who will select Pope Benedict’s successor. One of the questions the cardinals will unquestionably consider is which Catholic leader can most eloquently and effectively defend a traditional moral worldview that is no longer taken for granted in the West. Members of other faiths are equally concerned with this task, and one of the lessons of Benedict’s writings is that different religious communities can learn from each other in this moral and philosophical endeavor. As such, the statements and encyclicals that bracketed this brief but important papacy are a possible sign of more enduring intellectual interfaith engagements yet to come.

Meir Y. Soloveichik is director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University and associate rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan.

Embracing Good Change

This from the Church News, here.  I would have liked to have heard the entire address.

"Our willingness to accept change in the kingdom helps the Lord hasten His work," Elder Paul V. Johnson of the Seventy and Commissioner of Church Education said during the Church Educational System's "Evening with a General Authority" held in the Tabernacle on Temple Square on Feb. 8. "Resistance to inspired change hinders progress of the kingdom."

Drawing from the last half of the New Testament as an example of a major challenge the early Church faced as the Gentile converts were being assimilated as Christians, Elder Johnson spoke of how teachers can better adapt.

"This was a major change for the Church, and many members struggled with it," he said. "The problem was, at least in part, a result of a faulty understanding of the doctrine. ... Their misunderstanding, confusion and hesitancy to accept and make needed change slowed the work and diverted tremendous amounts of effort from Church leaders to deal with this issue. We are better servants and better disciples when we respond appropriately to change. When we don't respond properly to change we hinder the Lord's work."

Adapting to change can be challenging, Elder Johnson taught, but just like Paul — who had been a strict Pharisee and was able to make the change and help the Church with the big challenge — individuals must learn to adapt.

"One of the reasons we struggle with change is that we, over time, can get things out of proper perspective or put a policy or practice in a more central position than it deserves," he said. "We can confuse means with ends. I hope when we face change in the kingdom we can be like Paul and help foster that change rather than reacting like those who fought the change and hindered the progress of the work."

Sometimes individuals can see the need for change, but don't realize that it still takes effort to actually do things differently, he said.

"We can respond appropriately to change by being prayerful, humble and teachable; by accepting new opportunities or assignments with a positive attitude, and by being willing to try new approaches or methods with a sincere desire to improve," he said.

It is also critical to listen carefully to the counsel given by the leaders of the Church, he said.