"Everyday family life fosters or hinders a child's spiritual growth more than any Sunday manual ever could."

Roslyn Welch posted, here, about her parents thoughtful education, both religious and secular, of their children.  It reminded me of my own upbringing for which I am ever grateful.  Among other things, she wrote:

"When it comes to family environment, I won the lottery. My parents are ordinary humans with ordinarily imperfect kids, but they created a family environment that equipped us extraordinarily well to meet faith challenges without fear, betrayal, or emotional crisis. Certainly I hold myself up as no paragon of faith or spirituality. But my own challenges with belief have brought me relatively little personal upheaval and no rupture of my relationships. Whether or not my parents' approach was typical, or whether it would work for everybody, who can say? Nevertheless, and on the strength of personal anecdote alone, here's what worked in our home.

"1) Teach your children to read critically. Reading with my parents was the defining experience of my childhood. They read to us and with us all the time: stories every night before bed, scripture every evening at dinner, Sherlock Holmes stories on long Sunday afternoons, anything and everything on the endless road trips to Utah. Every chapter was a covert lesson in critical reading. To read critically doesn't have to mean negatively or skeptically, of course; my parents approached scripture with love and respect. But they showed us how to read a text as more than just words on a page: look for connections, make inferences, recognize different points of view, point out interesting contradictions, begin to historicize, suggest several different interpretations. A child can't find real value in scripture until she can ask real questions of it.

"2) Buy books, lots and lots of books, for them to read. My parents' personal library is legendary. They bought the best books in every category: Mormon studies, including critical and outsider treatments, and religious studies generally, of course, but far beyond that. Science, history, mathematics. Politics, biography, memoir. Literary criticism, social science. Philosophy and poetry. And shelves and shelves of children's fiction. There was a bookshelf in every room, but the bulk of the collection was shelved topically in the family room where we spent much of our time. The titles and subtitles lining the wood-paneled walls were an education in themselves, and their image still wallpapers the back of my eyelids. I've pulled only a fraction of those books off the shelf, but their presence in the home, their constant accessibility, and the silent conversation among those thousands of spines worked on us day and night. A library of books in the home builds a library of ideas in a child's mind, ideas that can make sense of challenges when they come. Kindle can't do that, folks.

"3) Take responsibility for your own children's spiritual formation.We attended church faithfully every week, but my parents did not rely on the ward to manage our spiritual education. Never directly undermining what was taught on Sunday, my parents personally introduced us to Mormon history, scripture, cosmology, sociology, and culture. They did this in family home evenings, in regular scripture study sessions, in Sunday family devotionals, and in special summertime seminars for the teenagers in the house my mother called "School of the Prophets." They gave us free access to their complete collection of Dialogue and BYU Studies—and they read the journals themselves. They did not parade us past every bit of challenging history or cultural gripe they may have harbored, but they gave us the tools to cope with them when we encountered them on our own."


Well said.

Jephtha and his Daughter

In the last two hundred years there have been multiple scholarly responses to the story of Jephtha and his daughter found in the book of Judges.  In a nutshell, Jephtha, was a military leader among the Israelites in a period of time when they, "again did what was evil in the eyes of God...they abandoned God and did not worship him. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites ..." (Judges 10:6-7).

Jephthah lived in Tob, east of Gilead where he, "there gathered around him some worthless ["empty"] men, and they went out with him." (Judges 11:3) The elders of Gilead asked him to be their leader in the campaign against the Ammonites, but he held out for a more permanent and a broader position, and the elders agreed that, provided Jephthah succeeded in defeating Ammon, he would be their commander permanently. So, Jephthah challenged the Ammonites and after the campaign began to be successful and the Lord began to help him, he made an oath:

"Whatever/whoever emerges and comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall surely be God’s, and I shall sacrifice him/her/it as a burnt offering

The victorious Jephthah was met on his return by his daughter, his only child. Jephthah tore his clothes and cried, "Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low!" but is bound by his vow: "I have given my word to God, and I cannot go back on it" (Judges 11:35). The girl asks for two months' grace, "... that I may go down on the mountains ... and bewail my virginity" (Judges 11:37). And then Jephthah "carried out his vow with her which he had vowed" (Judges 11:39). The story ends by recounting how "the daughters of Israel went four days each year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite" (Judges 11:40).

Contrary to popular understanding of many modern Christians of the inerrancy of the Bible, the accuracy of the Bible translations was frequently doubted by believing scholars in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  The most well known of these might be Benjamin Kennicott (1718-1783) perhaps the leading English Old Testament scholar of the period, who agreed with the deists, such as Voltaire who used the story of Jephtha as a catalyst for their arguments against the veracity of the Bible, that the Hebrew text was corrupt and unreliable, although he and the deists drew different conclusions from this shared realization.  His decades of work in collecting, translating and comparing ancient biblical texts to compare with modern translations was legend.

Scholars of the Christian tradition, both believers, and unbelievers, (as well as Jewish ones before them) have debated this story of Jephtha for centuries, mostly centering their arguments on the etymology and translation of the text.  Some declared that Jephtha actually sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering.  Others disagreed.   For example, there was much debate in the 17^th and 18^th centuries on what should be the translation of verse 31: “Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.”

One key to the scholarly, believing revisionist reading was that “and” (in “and I will offer it up”) could be translated as“or.” Robert Jenkin (1656–1727) who was a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, for instance, wrote that, “it is well known” that the word “which they translate and in the Text, often signifies or.”

Addressing the problem of why, if Jephtha’s daughter had not been killed, it should have become the custom to “lament” her, Jenkin suggests a better translation than “lament” would be “to rehearse or speak”: “From whence it has been supposed, that she was not put to Death, but was obliged to live in a State of Virginity and Solitude.”  She would have been required to live the life of a Nazarite.

Samuel Humphreys, similarly arguing against the sacrifice in "Sacred Books of the Old and New Testament" (pub. 1735–39), also suggests that “or” is a better translation than “and” in verse 31 and criticizes the Vulgate’s reading “whoever” as inferior to the King James’s “whatsoever.”

Humphreys concludes that if the creature greeting Jephtha is human, “he or she shall be consecrated to the service of God as some sort of Nazarites were; or if it prove a beast, it shall be offered up for a burnt-offering.”

Whichever translation is most accurate, however, and whatever the ultimate fate of Jephtha’s daughter, the story still feels problematic to many readers.  As a teenager, in my first encounter with the book of Judges my response was “What!!??”   What was I supposed to make of this book full of stories of people who were ostensibly of God’s chosen house of Israel but who continually undertook, what seemed to me at best, stupid, and at worst, depraved actions.  In the years of Sunday school and seminary that followed I heard Jephtha held up as an example of the virtue of being willing to sacrifice anything to the Lord as well as the explanations brought forth about mistranslations, stating that his daughter bewailed her virginity because she was about to commence a life of nazarite vows.  The former sounded barbaric and the latter like a senseless imposition of submissive though misguided obedience to parental authority.  Neither sounded like an example of enlightened Godly life to me.

I have come, however, to believe that the book of Judges is best approached as a fine example of what can happen to people in a culture that has a history of belief in God, but who have lost their sense of a direct connection to God and for whom their religious orientation has become, at most, a part of their tradition and culture (and in some cases, see the last couple of chapters for example, is totally abandoned), instead of a breathing, living, daily communication with God.  The stories of Samson, Gideon, and Jephtha all contain examples of this slide into a sense of God as a formula or tradition or a force to make bargains with instead of a divine, loving, intimate, personal daily guide.  As such it is good to look at elements in the story of Jephtha one by one and then look at our own modern culture and relationship with God to see if we find parallels to be wary of.

First, Jephtha’s desire for a powerful position.   The man is asked to assist in the war against the Ammonites.  He refuses, holding out for a more permanent position of power beyond the immediate task at hand before he will join in the war.  His interest is not in the completion of the task being asked of him, but instead in the power and career it will afford him if he participates.  My question:  what are my motives when deciding whether or not to assist in an undertaking?

Second, having procured a conditional bargain with the elders of Gilead (“if you are successful, then we will give you the position you want’) he is willing to sacrifice ANYTHING to be successful.  My question: am I making the mistake of becoming the sort of person who will sacrifice anything, no matter what, in order to become “successful” in the eyes of those in power or those who will determine the course of my career?

Third, the Lord inspires Jephtha once he undertakes the work (yes, God does help further causes even when the leaders thereof are stupid) (vs. 29) and Jeptha’s response is not humilty or gratitude, but rather, bargain-making.  My question:  Do I fail to recognize God as a loving, daily, helpful, awe-inspiring guide, but instead see him as another political ally that I can make intermittant powerful contractual bargains with in order to achieve the good things that I want to have happen?

Fourth, once Jephtha makes an oath, he keeps it even when he discovers that doing so will be destructive.  We see this sometimes masquerading in modern culture as “honor”.  My question: When I make a promise and I later discover that it would be destructive to keep it, does my traditional sense of pride and “honor” prevent me from being humble enough to admit my mistake and do what is kindest and best?  Does my sense of pride and honor take precidence over my commitment to charity and justice?  Does it prevent me from communicating with God about making a change in my declared course of action?

Fifth, (and I realize that some will take issue with this, because it concerns the victim in this case and the phrase in question can have layered meanings) when Jephtha’s daughter realizes that she faces being sacrificed (either literally killed or given over to a Nazarite life) and that there is no recourse for her, the focus of her mourning is her virginity. I guess that this part of the story particularly jumps out at me because of the increasing and erroneous notion expressed in media for young people that, of all things that it would be tragic to die (or to live) without experiencing, the most tragic would be to not have experienced sex.  My question: If I were facing a medical diagnosis with a short estimated time of life left, or if I came to realize that I would be single all of my life, what would I mourn not having the opportunity to do?   Would my sorrow be selfish or selfless?  And would my faith in the recompense and mercy of God carry me through that sorrow?  

Sixth, if we assume the interpretation that Jephtha did in fact sacrifice his daughter we realize that he has offered a sacrifice that is, according to the descriptions given by God, repugnant to God.  God’s descriptions of acceptable sacrifice are very clear in the book of Leviticus.  Human sacrifice of one’s children was forbidden.  Sacrifice of one’s child was, on the other hand, a type of sacrifice that was acceptable in the worship of the god Moloch, a Caananite god worshiped at the time.  Thus we find that Jephtha has dictated the bounds of the sacrifice he will make, using parameters set forth in an aspect of society that does not worship God, instead of following the direction of the Lord as to what an acceptable sacrifice is.   My question:  How often do I determine what is acceptable to the Lord by looking to what the society around me sees as most noble or heroic, rather than seeking to find what the Lord asks of me?

Whatever interpretation of the story of Jephtha and his daughter one takes as most accurate, the questions are good to ask.


Bibliography:
The Holy Bible KJV
Susan Staves, "Jephtha's Vow Reconsidered", Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 4, pp 651-669, University of California Press 2008.

One man's learning curve of life

My department at my alma mater has a  newsletter that it sends annually to each of us alumni.  This bit, amidst the various news items about various of us caught my attention.

"Neville W______ (MA 1978) died in October 2010 in K______, Maine.  According to his obituary, "W_______ was well educated, attending Kings College (Cambridge, England), Tufts University (magna cum laude, 1965), and Stanford University upon receiving a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1965-66.  After retiring from retail in 2002, Neville was able to return to his lifelong love and pursuit of painting and poetry.  He published his first book of poetry, The Early Morning Clapboarder, in 2007.  His poems remain a legacy of joy, love and wonder of life.  His life is well summarized in a quote he gave for a 2007 interview in the local Tourist News: 'It takes time to reach the center of who you are.  I found that life is ever changing, and there are no certainties, only possibilities.  Love is man's last great hope of peace and the source of all that's important.  The journey is what's important.'"

Well said. A discourse worth listening to.

"Grace shall be as your day."

Brad Wilcox on grace.

Notes on Ephesians 5

1.       To add to your repertoire of information on Ephesians 5:

vs 21, (members of the church) submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Greek word for “submit”: hupotassomai
vs 22 Wives submit submit yourselves to your husbands. Greek word used for “submit”: hupotassomai
vs 23 Husband is the head of the wife. Greek word used for “head”: kephale
vs 25 Husbands love your wives: Greek word used for “love”: agapeo
vs 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church. Greek word used for “might present”: parasthsh

Hupotassomai doesn’t have a direct English equivalent but means something along the lines of “give allegiance to”, or “tend to the needs of ” or “be supportive of” or “be responsive to”. In military contexts it is used to describe taking a position in a phalanx of soldiers; to be united with the group in effort and support. The German Bible translates it as “to place oneself at the disposition of”. This is what members of the church are asked to do for each other and what wives are asked to do in these verses in Ephesians. Its meaning relates very much to the admonition in Galatians 6:2 to “bear one another’s burdens”. Very importantly, Greek not only has active and passive forms of verbs, but also a middle form, which is used when the subject of the sentence neither acts on another nor is acted upon, but rather volunteers willingly to a state of being or to a course of action that is self-directed, not imposed. Hupotassomai, in these verses is in the middle form. Paul uses it to invite a purely voluntary action, not as a command.

“Kephale” is a word used to denote a person who goes ahead into battle, putting himself the most dangerous and vulnerable position in the phalanx.

“Agapeo” is used here and also in the commandment to love our neighbor and God and our enemies and in Jesus’ description of the Good Samaritan who loved and helped freely another who could not (and probably would not) repay his kindness.

Agapeo and hupotassomai are very similar words, both involve giving up one’s self-interest to serve and care for another’s. Both mean being responsive to the needs of others. Many scholars recognize this passage of Ephesians as a chiasmus with hupotassomai at the beginning of it and agapeo as an equal term at the end.

“Parasthsh” means “to stand beside”.

Knowing the Greek words sheds further light on the passage which the English translation obscures.

Thanks for some of the above to various sources, including 

What Paul Really Said About Women: The Apostle's Liberating Views on Equality in Marriage, Leadership, and Love

by John T. Bristow

Thoughtful listening goes both ways. Do I take time to explain well? Do I listen like he does?

"Most often when we pray, we expect to speak while God listens." 

Michael S. Wilcox, "Let Us Ask of God", December 2004

Artist: Nathan Florence

Quote for today

“Jesus Christ and all the writers of the New Testament call us to break free of mammon lust and live in joyous trust...They point us toward a way of living in which everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good. This reality frames the heart of Christian simplicity. It is the means of liberation and power to do what is right and to overcome the forces of fear and avarice.” 
—Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World
by Richard J. Foster 

Thoughts on readers and modern serious fiction

The author Jonathan Franzen was interviewed on NPR yesterday and his comments about writing novels caught my attention.  This particularly:

“…much of the work on a novel for me consists in the kind of work you might do in a paid professional's office of trying to walk back from your stuck, conflicted, miserable place to a point of a little bit more distance,  from which you can begin to fashion some meaningful narrative of how you got to the stuck place. And the stuck-ness, for the working novelist — or at least for this one — has to do with not wanting to get into certain intensely fraught or private experiences… [but] feeling that it's absolutely necessary to say things that are absolutely unsay-able."

When the interviewer asked about “unsayable things” he responded:

“The great thing about novels is…you are converting unsayable things into narratives that have their own dreamlike reality and instead of having factual statements about what is [pause] ‘Here’s the factual statement I will never make about myself, I can’t make about myself, I’m afraid or ashamed to make about myself’.  If that can be translated into characters who feel like they have some independent life and if they are embodying through their story that informational material about myself then I feel as if it’s not quite been said but it’s been enacted.”

Though Franzen is talking about information about himself, the description also applies to authors who use this genre to relay information about social issues they know first hand as well.  He captures in these words something I’ve long understood about much of modern serious fiction; that it is an author’s way of portraying something that is a profound and also disturbing ("unsayable") truth to him or her in a way that is less direct than prose and, because it is fiction, also allows dramatic flair to be added to creatively emphasize the author’s emotion or thoughts on the subject or theme of the piece of work.  As such, it can be, in some situations, an effective way of teaching the reader, adding to the vibrancy of the reader’s understanding or empathy of the subject being addressed, particularly if it is a subject that the reader has not experienced first hand, or has been previously only marginally aware of.

In this sort of previously unaware reader, the reading experience, if it is taken thoughtfully, adds insight or understanding or sympathy.  It may even become a stepping stone to passionate action when the subject is encountered in daily life.  On the other hand, unfortunately, if the reader approaches the book as entertainment, it tends to harden the reader, making it more difficult for him or her to respond with anything other than passive amusement when the issues in the novel are encountered in real life.  

For a second group of readers, those who have encountered the "unsayable" issues portrayed in their own lives and are still dealing with the fallout the experience is quite different, and also variable.  If they are still angry or frustrated, the reading can feel cathartic, expressing in a dramatic form the feelings that they are still dealing with.  On the other hand, if the issues are still ongoing and raw, it can re-open old wounds and cause increased pain.

Finally, this type of fiction doesn’t work at all for a third group of readers.  For a reader who has experienced first or second hand in the real world the "unsayables" that the novel deals with creatively, and has already addressed and is still addressing it directly in their own mind and actions in proactive ways, the dramatic flair of fiction is annoying.  For such a reader, that fictitious dramatization often feels like a trivialization of sober reality, making a serious matter look like a form of voyeuristic entertainment that reduces the reader of it to a passive consumer.  And for this group of readers, passive consumption in response to the topics being addressed is unacceptable.

This last group of readers requires personal narrative or prose that they can use in the work they are already doing.  Fiction doesn’t work.

Prodigal's Older Brother Syndrome

It occurs to me that one of the reasons we may become judgmental of others who have not made the same decisions or commitments, or are not in the same place on the road home that we are might be this:

If your sense of self-worth is grounded in your ability to comply with the expectations or hopes of someone else (be it God, or a parent, or some other major figure in your life), then you will almost automatically have a psychological need to perceive as less-worthy someone who has not complied with those expected actions.   And any intimation that one of those "less compliant" people is loved and forgiven and blessed as much as you are will likely be very unsettling to your own sense of worth.  When this is your state of mind, it is easy for your sense of unfairness to overrule your comprehension of mercy and charity.

So really the cure for such a state is not necessarily persuasion that judging is wrong, but rather the education of the mind to understand the reality that the highest we can seek for is not "worthiness" but, rather, complete charity and the embracing, personally, of the principle of mercy.

So disciplining ourselves to value who we intrinsically are, and at that same time, learning to be able to perceive value in the intrinsic natures of others, in all their variety, and not place our sense of self-worth upon what we've achieved may be key to avoiding "Prodigal's Older Brother Syndrome".

Learning how to do this in a world where we are constantly called upon to measure and compare our scores and achievements and decisions with our own previous ones as well as with those of others or with what we perceive as "the ideal", and in communities that reward and laud us accordingly, is no mean feat.


.

A Line from "First Knight".

"How could I not love him, he wears his power so lightly, has such gentleness in his eyes."

"The bedrock moral issue for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is how we treat each other as children of God."

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued the following official statement on immigration yesterday:

Around the world, debate on the immigration question has become intense. That is especially so in the United States. Most Americans agree that the federal government of the United States should secure its borders and sharply reduce or eliminate the flow of undocumented immigrants. Unchecked and unregulated, such a flow may destabilize society and ultimately become unsustainable.

As a matter of policy, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discourages its members from entering any country without legal documentation, and from deliberately overstaying legal travel visas.

What to do with the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants now residing in various states within the United States is the biggest challenge in the immigration debate. The bedrock moral issue for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is how we treat each other as children of God.

The history of mass expulsion or mistreatment of individuals or families is cause for concern especially where race, culture, or religion are involved. This should give pause to any policy that contemplates targeting any one group, particularly if that group comes mostly from one heritage.

As those on all sides of the immigration debate in the United States have noted, this issue is one that must ultimately be resolved by the federal government.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is concerned that any state legislation that only contains enforcement provisions is likely to fall short of the high moral standard of treating each other as children of God.

The Church supports an approach where undocumented immigrants are allowed to square themselves with the law and continue to work without this necessarily leading to citizenship.

In furtherance of needed immigration reform in the United States, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supports a balanced and civil approach to a challenging problem, fully consistent with its tradition of compassion, its reverence for family, and its commitment to law.

"I want to hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm going to put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm going to have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down."

~Mitch Hedberg

Insight from L.

 Jesus and Satan are polar opposites in the following way:

Satan does all he can to minimize the gravity and seriousness of sin and, when you do sin, does all he can to persuade you that you are horrible and/or seriously lacking, are a lost cause and declares that now, for you, there’s no way you really ever can come to complete reconciliation with God.

Jesus, on the other hand, is totally honest about the gravity, darkness and seriousness of sin and, when you do sin, does all he can to persuade you that you are known and loved, knows certainly that you are not a lost cause, provides a universally accessible way for you to become truly completely reconciled with God and has the power to make it so.

No Other Gods

I’m in the process of re-reading the Old Testament, so I’ve been thinking about the notion of  worshipping other gods which is a constantly reoccuring subject matter there.  There aren’t very many traditions of polytheism currently being practiced in North America these days, which leads us to hear to the oft-repeated question in Sunday School classes,  “What are the other gods we might be tempted to worship today?”  And people tend to think of cars or wealth or position or power or celebrity.

I think it might be helpful to consider what the patterns and desires are that were expressed in ancient worship as we try to consider what the parallels in our era might be, so, drawing upon my meager knowledge of South Asian and African cultures that do include differing gods and my understanding of ancient Greek and Roman religious beliefs which also included gods competing for mortals’ attention I can come up with the following:

Worship most commonly involved:

• A belief that a god’s opinion of you, or that being in his or her good graces, is the most important source for your success in life and your material well-being and emotional stability.

• A belief that sacrificing things that are important to you in order to win a god’s good opinion and help is effective in gaining what you desire.

• A belief that the gods that other people look to for help are not as powerful or effective as the ones to whom you look for help.

• A strong sense of tradition and custom that feels familiar and comfortable.

So, therefore, in considering the answer to the above mentioned Sunday School question…

From which people or institutions do I seek approval more than I seek to please God in my quest for social success, material well being and emotional stability?  And, is one of those people me?

For which goals or for which people’s approval do I sacrifice things that are most important to me? 

Are there things, philosophies or people that I think are more effective in helping me achieve my desires than God is?  Do I act like there are?

As I consider the people who I feel I most need to please in order to succeed, or the philosopies or assumptions that I most need to conform to in order to be succesful, how many of those are ones I embrace simply due to tradition and a comfortable sense of the familiar or established?

Food for thought.

Stumbled upon today

"Sometimes I don’t see my 5-year-old either, or my husband, or my 2-year-old.  It’s easy to see them as obstacles.  But then I wake up, remember that they are here happening for me, not to me."
~ Kamille

To Give and to Receive

To give yourself to a spouse in marriage:  to remember, as life gets crazier and children come and dreams look possible and you feel the thrill and sense of accomplishment that comes from giving yourself to those people and goals, that your giving of yourself to your spouse comes first and, if nurtured, will last longest and best.  It’s easy to lose sight of that.

To receive to yourself someone as your spouse in marriage:  to remember that you actively received that spouse, the attractive and good as well as the unattractive and imperfect aspects of their lives and personalities.  It is easy, as time passes, to be annoyed and frustrated at the minor imperfections and differences your spouse brings to a marriage and to wish that they were different from what they are.  But the covenant is to receive a spouse, not selectively accept only the parts that we like best and be dissatisfied with the parts that are different.  It’s easy to lose sight of that too.

What John Murdock wrote

 “In one of these meetings [at the School of the Prophets] the prophet told us if we could humble ourselves before God, and exercise strong faith, we should see the face of the Lord. And about midday the visions of my mind were opened, and the eyes of my understanding were enlightened, and I saw the form of a man, most lovely, the visage of his face was sound and fair as the sun. His hair a bright silver grey, curled in most majestic form, His eyes a keen penetrating blue, and the skin of his neck a most beautiful white and he was covered from the neck to the feet with a loose garment, pure white, whiter than any garment I have ever before seen. His countenance was most penetrating, and yet most lovely. And while I was endeavoring to comprehend the whole personage from head to feet it slipped from me, and the vision was closed up. But it left on my mind the impression of love, for months, that I never felt before to that degree.” 

John Murdock Journal, typescript, BYU Archives, p.13, capitalization standardized, italics added

Saving, in more ways than one.

Do not leave yourself or your family unprotected against financial storms. Forgo luxuries, for the time being at least, to build up savings. How wise it is to provide for the future education of your children and for your old age.

The smaller the family income, the more important it is that every dollar be used wisely. Efficient spending and saving will give the family more security, more opportunities, more education, and a higher standard of living.

Ezra Taft Benson, "Pay Thy Debt, and Live", Ensign, June 1987, 3

L’s parents lived on his father’s modest income.  His mother was a master at budgeting and making do and she and her husband were united on their financial priorities and they believed in putting aside savings for the things that were most important.  L’s father died suddenly and unexpectedly when L was 16 years old.  Two years later L started college.  A combination of scholarships, work study, attendance at a subsidized university and money his father had carefully saved for his education allowed him to graduate with his bachelor’s degree debt free.  Scholarships and work study were not available for his graduate education but the money his father had set aside was enough to cover his tuition at a state school where he was fortunate enough to be admitted.  He lived at his mother’s home for those first two years in order to cover his living expenses and then, after we were married, I worked to pay for them.  He graduated from with his doctoral degree without any education debt, something for which we are profoundly grateful. 

My parents had a larger income, though they also had seven children which made budgeting also important.  My father had paid for his undergraduate education with a combination of work and financial assistance from his father, who had saved money for that purpose.  My mother was an undergraduate with another two years of school ahead of her when she married my dad in his second year of post graduate education.  She worked part-time and finished her education two months before I was born.  Financial assistance from both of my grandfathers was essential for my parents’ family as my father did his six years of residency at a time when residents were not paid anything at all.  My parents were profoundly grateful and determined that they would try to bless their children similarly.

When I turned 18 and started college I also worked and studied and it was savings set aside by my paternal grandparents for their grandchildren that made up the difference in my tuition.  I finished without any debt as well.  Their assistance enabled my father to shift his education savings towards the education of my younger siblings.

What L and I found was that this tradition of older generations saving for the education of the younger leaves a profound gift of freedom for both generations and the extended family, not just the younger ones who are in school.  Finishing school without debt saved L and me not only from huge amounts of stress and anxiety about the future, but also enabled us to be available for more opportunities for service.  If we had been paying off education debts when L’s brother was called to serve as a mission president at the end of L’s training, we would not have been able to provide the financial assistance he needed in order to be able to respond to that call.  But, because we had no debt obligations, we could.  And L’s brother was able to serve.

We started saving for our children’s education when they were born.  At first it was only a little bit while we were living on L’s early small salary, but we knew we needed to start that habit in order for it to last for the ensuing decades.  We knew that if we waited we would wait too long.

 Sometimes we forget, as parents thinking about the future educational needs of our children, that financial aid packages not only require work study, grants, and student loans, but also parental contributions as well. I have sweet friends who were unable to save for their children’s education and thought that if they sent their children to community colleges and state schools they would be able to manage that.  Little did any of us anticipate how those tuitions would increase over what they were when we were students.  They are now are paying off parental obligation debts they incurred for their children’s education at state schools while their children struggle to pay off their own portion of those education loans.  My friends had planned to be serving as senior missionary couples by now, but those debts make that not possible.

Yes, if your children are blessed with particular athletic or academic gifts, or admission to a particularly inexpensive school they may be able to get themselves through their undergraduate education with a lot of work and no debt.  And I am very much in favor of students working to help pay for their tuition. But it is much, much harder for a student to graduate debt-free than it was when I was a student as tuition costs have far outstripped inflation. And the financial outlook is even grimmer for the children being born today.  It behooves us to make sacrifices that enable both them and us to enjoy freedom from enslaving debt as much as possible.

Finally, many parents are poor enough that saving is impossible.  Financial aid, scholarships and work study will likely decrease in the future as educational institutions struggle with budget decreases and rising costs.  The competition for those resources will increase as student population increases.  It behooves those of us who can set at least some money aside for education to do so in order that those resources may be spread more widely among all who need it.  Thus, saving for education not only blesses you and your children and your extended family, but also gives you opportunity  to fulfill the commandment that we assist those in need.

Ezra Taft Benson’s counsel has proved wise for us.

Taking upon yourself a name

Last night, due to a Primary lesson I’m preparing, I was trying to think about how to explain the concept of taking upon oneself the name of Jesus Christ when one receives baptism.  Children understand the idea of identifying themselves as individuals by their first names and being a “Jones” or a “Smith” by affiliation because of their last name.  But when you talk about adding Christ’s name to your identity they often don’t understand, because, of course, you don’t change what you call yourself.  Your name doesn’t change, even though you have gone through the formal ceremony of deciding to become Christ's “son” or “daughter”.

But how about if we thought about it rather like a title of responsibility?  Think about Albert who married Queen Victoria.  When he married her he was Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, (and after 1857) Duke of Saxony, but his friends and family simply called him Albert.  After he married Victoria went by “HRH Prince Albert” in formal circles and was called simply “Albert” by his wife.  He would not have introduced himself as “Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony” or even “HRH Prince Albert” though he was duke of Saxony and designated as a Prince and always knew that about himself.  Perhaps in his mind, every time he introduced himself or said his name in one of its shortened forms, he was aware of the parts unspoken, though he felt no need to mention them.

Which made me think, what if, every time I introduced myself or said who I was on the phone, I said my usual name out loud and then in my head added “a disciple of Jesus Christ”.  What a pointed reminder it might be to me each time about how I should be treating the person with whom I was speaking or what my priorities should be or how I might better respond to the challenges or opportunities of that particular day.  It might not be a bad idea.

Autumn!

This caught my attention when I was working in the attic this week.  Fall colors.  We DO get some of them here.

Spreading Out Your Blessings

I ran across this brief story this morning:

I was in a Salvation Army store recently, and a young woman was looking at a nice black lace blouse and two shells to wear under it.

I remarked, "That is lovely." She looked up, glowing, and said, "My husband got to work some overtime this week and he said he'd take me out Saturday night. I want to look nice. Which one do you think looks best?"

I truthfully told her I thought either one would work fine and she would look so nice. She was so happy, and it was obviously an unusual occasion for her to get to go out.

I thought then how fortunate that someone had donated the nice blouse instead of keeping it or selling it at a garage sale.

We are cleaning out a lot of unused stuff I had been saving for a garage sale, but that convinced me to donate it, instead, and I did.

I also saved myself the hassle of a sale to only be stuck with the leftovers...


Food for thought.

Philosophy When There's Two Weeks to Go

I come from a long line of talented hostesses.  Many are the women in my family tree who not only have had excellent skills and aptitudes when it comes to making a lovely welcoming experience, but also enjoy the process and pull it off happily.  I have long enjoyed and appreciated their gifts.  I also realize that for some reason those gifts skipped me.  Certainly I can clean the house and cook good food and make people feel welcome, but the flower arranging, color coordinating, display and elegance gifts have consistently eluded me.  I am like the appreciative member of the audience at the opera, fully amazed and happy about the performance, and totally unable to sing like that.  That's fine.  Not all of us need to be opera singers or fabulous hostesses.  However there are times when it would be helpful to be one or the other.

So, now, as I embark on the final preparations for my lovely daughter's wedding reception, I am appreciative of the help offered by my talented female relatives, conscientiously giving it my very best effort, and fully aware that my efforts and my results will not be opera star quality.  In this situation I have found the following guidelines and insights helpful.

The first is a couple of sentences in a piece on courtship and marriage for parents of young people that I saved years ago.  I don't know the author.  "Ideally courtship leads to a wedding...The reception following should be moderate and dignified."

Moderate and dignified.  I think we can do that.

The other is from a syndicated article that appeared in our local newspaper.  The author is Donna Milligan Meadows, and she wrote about illusion and beauty.  One of the things she wrote about was the struggle she had as she tried to make her backyard garden a lovely setting for her daughter's upcoming wedding, and the concern she felt about the setbacks of torrential rains and flourishing weeds in the weeks leading up to the celebration.  She wrote:

"As I was kneeling in mud trying to pull a few obvious weeds, a tree branch brushed caressingly across my shoulder like the soft touch of a tender hand and in the quiet breeze I heard [my friend's] gentle voice from the past saying, 'Donna, it's all an illusion.  The details don't matter.'  Again, I knew she was right.  I looked around and saw that not only had the weeds flourished in the constant downpours, so had the flowers; they were luxurious.  The plants and what grass remained green looked emerald and sparkled in the sunlight.  
the illusion of my yard was a place of peace and tranquility.  Once my daughter walked into view in her elegant, snow-white dress, with the glow of love in her eyes, no one would notice the weeds or the brown spots in the grass.  This outdoor setting  was just a fragrant backdrop for an unforgettable event."

So, modest, dignified, fragrant backdrop, here we come.  As much as I might wish I could make it so, it won't be sophisticated or fabulous, but it will be fine and it will be good and we'll enjoy the process.

The Top Seventeen Books

I woke up this morning thinking about reading.  (I'd enjoyed the luxury of reading through a copy of Elizabeth Coatsworth"s Here I Stay the evening before, while waiting for an appointment.)  This led me to make a mental list of books that I'm very glad I have read over the past thirty years because they have taught me or reminded me of good and helpful things at various points in my life.

Here's the list, in the general order in which I recall having read them:

Couples--Carlfred Broderick
One Flesh, One Heart--Carlfred Broderick
Believing Christ--Stephen Robinson
For the Love of Children--Edward E. Ford and Steven Englund
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk--Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
Siblings Without Rivalry: how to help your children live together so you can live too--Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
My Parents Married on a Dare--Carlfred Broderick
Plain and Simple: a journey to the Amish--Sue Bender
Feeling Good: the new mood therapy--David Burns
Christlike Parenting--Glenn Latham
Celebration of Discipline: the path to spiritual growth--Richard J. Foster
The Peacegiver--Richard Farrell
Counseling With Our Councils--M. Russell Ballard
The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Living on a Budget--Peter Sander and Jennifer Bayse Sander
Financial Peace Revisited--Dave Ramsey
What Paul Really Said About Women--John Temple Bristow
Real Love in Marriage--Greg Baer

I'm currently studying "Women in Eternity, Women in Zion" by Alma Don Sorenson and Valerie Hudson.  So far it looks like it may be worthy of adding to the list.  We'll see.

Update, May 2020.  “Women in Eternity was good, but didn’t quite make the cut.  See my review dated 6/7/2013
Looking back at the  9 1/2 years since this post I would add “More with Less”, by Francine Joy to the list.
I’ve started “Christ in Crisis; Why we need to reclaim Jesus” by Jim Wallis this month.  It’s looking like it may make the list.

Everybody loves J.

    

  

   

Charleston

"And the Lord hath performed his word..."

"Whatever good we do, we must look upon it as the performance of God's promise to us, rather than the performance of our promises to him.  The more we do for God the more we are indebted to him; for our sufficiency is of him and not of ourselves."

~Matthew Henry (1662-1714) commentary on 1st Kings, 8:20

Alma 39, a parable

You have driven to southern Utah to do some camping and hiking with your 17 year old son, your 10 year old nephew and 6 year old niece. After hiking in, you find a good campsite near some slot canyons you hope to explore and set up camp.

The next morning your niece and nephew wander off to explore the area a bit while you start breakfast and your son reads.  Time passes and they don't return so you call to your son who stuffs the magazine he was reading into his back pocket and the two of you start out to look for them.  It doesn't take long for you to find them standing at the bottom of a small slot canyon, about 10 feet down.  You can see the traces of the small slide they created as they slipped down the side of the canyon.  They are unhurt, but they are unable to get themselves out.  The sides of the canyon are too steep for them to navigate and the ends of the canyon are clogged with debris from earlier flash flooding.

You tell your son to wait with the children and you scurry off to your campsite where you gather up the long rope your father had put in the trunk of your car before your trip.  Returning to the site you realize that there are no trees to which you can tie the ropes but you and your son both weigh significantly more than the two children and you know your nephew has some experience rappelling, so you make a plan.  Handing the rope to your son you instruct him to find a place where he can sit and brace himself and serve to anchor it.  You take the other end and toss it over the side of the canyon, instructing your niece on how to tie it around her waist properly.  She manages to do so with the help of her brother and with some effort you and your son are able to pull her out of the canyon with your father's rope.  Checking to see that your son is well braced for the second rescue, you throw the rope to your nephew who secures himself.  You wedge yourself against a rock and start to pull and he begins the ascent.  As he nears the top you reach out one hand to help him over the edge when suddenly the rope behind you goes slack.  Unable to stop the rope from slipping with just one hand in spite of your frantic efforts, you watch, horrified as your nephew falls back into the canyon.  You yell and quickly  peer over the edge.  He is seated at the bottom of the canyon, doubled over, holding his arm.  You turn around and yell a question to your son asking what happened.  He is sitting where you left him, a magazine at his side. It is quickly apparent to you that while attempting to pull the magazine out of his pocket to look at it, he had lost his grip on the rope.  He was pulling out the magazine to read it!!!???  Now????  You feel the utter dismay and frustration at his thoughtless negligence surge through you.  You tell your nephew to hold on, that you'll try again.  He replies adamantly he can't do that, his arm hurts too much, his ankle is twisted and what if the rope fails again like it did just now?   You do all you can to reassure him that it will work, but having having fallen once he doesn't trust the rope. You turn back to your son and the wind riffles the pages of the magazine beside him.  You realize it's a copy of "Penthouse".

Alma 39

“Most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost”. (Alma 39:5) This is the phrase that Alma uses as he chastises his son, Corianton in chapter 39 of Alma after Corianton had left the ministry and gone after the harlot, Isabel.

But Alma is not talking about sexual sin. Fornication and adultery certainly are serious sins, but they are not the ones Alma is talking about. A close reading of this chapter reveals that he is talking about something more destructive; the sin of abetting the spiritual death of another person.

Alma remonstrates Corianton in verse 2 for his boasting in his strength and wisdom. Corianton seems to have been a cocky fellow, the sort of overly confident person who is generally unaware or dismissive of the effect of his actions on others. When called to be a missionary he, after awhile, left the ministry (v. 3) to pursue Isabel, likely thinking about nothing much more than his own interests and desires, ignoring completely the effect of such actions on others. Alma is very clear in verse 3 about what Corianton SHOULD have been doing instead. And it is not chastity he talks about, it is the abandonment of his calling to teach people about Christ and the light and truth of his gospel. “Thou shouldst have tended to the ministry wherewith thou was entrusted,” says Alma, “Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord?” (verse 5)

Now it’s easy to think that the “these things” refer to sexual sins, but there is a brilliant exposition in verse 6 that shows that "these things" is something else.

In verse 5 Alma says Corianton’s sin as almost as abominable as the sins of the shedding of innocent blood (consciously causing the untimely physical death of someone else) or denying the Holy Ghost (choosing spiritual death for yourself). In verse 6 he lays out clearly the latter of those two sins and its analogy to the sin of which he accuses Corianton. Watch the parallel.

“For behold, if ye deny the Holy Ghost when it once had place in you, and ye know that ye deny I, behold this is a sin which is unpardonable;

Yea, AND whosoever murdereth against the light and knowledge of God, it is not easy for him to obtain forgiveness.”

Alma is telling Corianton that his serious sins has been that abandoning his calling to teach light and life and, not only that, then acting in ways that actually abet the spiritual death of others. Alma elaborates in verses 11 through 13 when he again warns Corianton not only to avoid Isabel but to avoid being led away by any vain or foolish thing because “Behold, O my son, how great iniquity ye brought upon the Zoramites; for when they saw your conduct they would not believe in my words. And now the Lord doth say unto me: Command thy children to do good, lest they lead away the hearts of many people to destruction…turn to the Lord…that ye lead away the hearts of no more to do wickedly”.

The three great sins are not denial of the Holy Ghost (choosing your own spiritual death), murder (causing the physical death of another) and breaking the law of chastity. The three great sins are denial of the Holy Ghost (choosing your own spiritual death), murder (causing the physical death of another) and this third one: aiding and abetting another person’s spiritual death. Christ’s great work for us is the effectuation of redemption from physical death and spiritual death. You can see why it might be therefore that our greatest sins are committed when we work directly against that, causing physical death or spiritual death in ourselves or in others.

This is the reason Alma spends the rest of chapter 39 admonishing Corianton to repent and return to the Lord and his calling to the ministry “that ye lead away the hearts of no more to do wickedly” and declare the word to the people “that salvation might come unto them, that they may prepare the minds of their children to hear the word at the time of his coming” (verses 13 and 16) . He is calling upon Corianton to cease committing the sin of abetting spiritual death and to take up the work of encouraging spiritual life.

Perhaps we take too lightly this sin, or perhaps we, like Corianton simply are oblivious to the seriousness of it. Jesus however did not and was not.

Matthew 18: 6-7:
And whoso shall offend (GR: cause to stumble) one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come: but woe to that man by whom the offence commeth!

Sexual sin is a serious sin, but it is not the sin Alma is talking about in Alma 39:5. It is the sin of self-indulgently and unconcernedly causing, aiding or abetting another’s spiritual death and rejection of light, making it harder for them to find and return to the Lord’s presence thereby “lead[ing] away the hearts of many people to destruction” (vs.12), particularly when we have been called and accepted a call to bring them spiritual light and life, that the Lord decries so seriously and that Alma calls “most abominable in the sight of the Lord save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost.”