A few weeks ago at an interfaith-council-sponsored service project, the minister who gave the benediction took a minute beforehand to talk to the kids present about how to pray. He told them that there were four words to include:

Thanks–always start with remembering what you’re thankful for, for the many gifts God gives.

Gimme–sincerely ask for things you need, and even things you just want. God is a loving and wise parent, so you might not get everything you ask for, but the honest expression of the things you most wish for is a good thing to include in the conversation.

Oops–everybody messes up sometimes. It feels good to admit it and ask for help to move on from our mistakes.

Wow !–this was the most interesting part, and this video that Russell linked to reminded me of it. It’s an element of prayer we don’t really teach, I think–giving praise, expressing awe or wonder. I can’t say I’ve ever seen it done in a way that would feel authentic to me. In the South, there’s some praising mixed in with the thanking sometimes (with what feels to me like a LOT of direct address to the Lord), and in some liturgies there’s the Gloria or an adaptation of it. I like it as an element of liturgy, but I can’t figure out how it fits in my personal prayers, and it just feels weird. Reading the psalms aloud is my favorite way to express praise and wonder, but even that feels better in a crowd, or better yet, a choir.

What do you think? Do we need to say “wow” more? If so, how? And is the 4-word rubric a useful shorthand for teaching prayer to kids?

It is before Thanksgiving, I know. Nevertheless, the time has once again come to consider our relations and judge among them who will receive something cool and who will receive n’importe quoi.

Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (Deseret Book, 2009), $41.36
The Harper Collins Study Bible (HarperOne, 2006), $26.69
The Old Testament, has it been four years already? Perhaps the least favorite quartile of our Gospel Doctrine regimen. I am certainly not alone in my general ignorance of the Jewish Bible. Deseret Book has a strong offering for those interested in gaining some context in Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament. Kevin and Ben’s reviews highlight the benefits many will find in its pages. People in the know, however, insist that getting a high quality study Bible is essential. I’m told that Harper Collins’ is the best around. Don’t worry about it being a different translation; it will certainly help you (and the Relief Society used a similar contemporary volume for study from 1942-1944).

When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought (Oxford University Press, 2009), $21.56
The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford University Press, 2009), 23.96
Perhaps with your helping of ancient near east you might also be interested in histories of ideas that we generally think came from that context. Givens is a Mormon author extraordinaire, but in his volume on the pre-mortal life, he peers across cultures and times to view the evolution of what many of us view to be something Mormon. Zvi Ben-Dor Benite gives us a world history of the Lost Ten Tribes. Mormon Israelism is peculiar, to be sure, but this fine study is a nice introduction to the broader context of the history and myth of the exiles (SPOILER: they are not at the North Pole).

The Year My Son and I Were Born: A Story of Down Syndrome, Motherhood, and Self-Discovery (GPP Life, 2009), $16.47
Many of us know and love Kathryn. Her memoir is a moving look into her life with her trisomic son. Many reviewers have lauded this book (e.g., see here). This is one that could easily be welcomed by those who aren’t Mormon.

Mormon Passage of George D. Watt: First British Convert, Scribe for Zion (Utah State University Press, 2009) $39.95
Biographies are an important genre and this year Ron Watt’s biography is an important contribution to that genre. I have repeatedly recommended Ron’s article in Utah Historical Quarterly on the Journal of Discourses as essential reading and this book should be equally so. Beyond the titular attributes, George Watt was a key recorder of sermons in early Utah and was involved in fun projects such as the development of the Deseret Alphabet. This book doesn’t come out until the second week in December and we should have a review up early next year. Another must-have with a slight possibility of release before Christmas is Mark Staker’s long awaited volume (keep a look-out Santa).

The Tree House (Zerahemla Books, 2009), $14.92
I don't read a lot of fiction, but Doug Thayer’s novel comes highly recommended by Margaret Blaire Young, who is to be trusted. Mormon fiction that isn’t crap. How about that?

BYU Studies, 1 year for $25
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon thought, 1 year for $37
Journal of Mormon History, 1 year for $45
Why yes, this is the third year recommending these subscriptions. People like to get them. Both BYU Studies and Dialogue are general Mormon Studies publications. You’ll find a little bit of everything (though Dialogue also has regular fiction). The JMH is not a subscription, per se. It is actually a membership to the Mormon History Association which comes with a year’s worth of journal and a regular newsletter. It is strait up Mormon History, as the name implies. They are all quarterly, but BYU Studies is typically significantly less pages than the other two. You can also purchase single issues from the respective websites.

Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry (BYU Studies/University of Utah Press, 2009), $44.95
Post-Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899 to 1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen and Avery Woodruff (Utah State University Press, 2009), $26.56
On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1889 [Paperback] (University of Utah Press, 2009), $30.36
These next two groupings of books are primary sources. Essentially specialty volumes, these books can also be engaging for the average reader under the correct circumstances. Derr and Davidson’s complete volume of Eliza R. Snow’s poetry is a substantive compilation (almost 1,400 pages!) that gives unprecedented access to Zion’s poetess. Derr was kind enough to answer some questions about the volume here and here. USU’s publication of the Woodruff’s correspondence is short but extraordinary. Owen was an apostle who married a second wife after the 1890 manifesto. These are the letters between husband and spouses. Lastly, UU Press has recently made available the diaries of Hosea Stout in paperback. Previously published in 1964 and 1982, Stout’s diaries are an important account of late Nauvoo, the trail West, and early Utah. Used copies typically sell in the hundreds, so this is a great way for more of us to get access.

Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations, Manuscript Revelation Books (Church Historians Press, 2009), $89.95
The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale University Press, 2009), $23.10
The hardcore researcher or perhaps the vain will certainly want a copy of the most recent volume from the Joseph Smith Papers Project: the Manuscript Revelation Books (see review here). The perhaps high price for a book is actually very low for the quantity and quality of materials it contains. Also out this year is the fruits of Royal Skousen’s meticulous years (decades?) of work with the Book of Mormon. I’m looking forward to the reviews, but I have enjoyed reading through what is perhaps our closest approach to the words as they flowed from the Prophet’s lips.

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GENTILE PICK
The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook, $21.57
If the Joseph Smith Papers Project made a cook book, this would be it. These guys make the best food ever.

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For previous years recommendations see here: 2008, 2007, and 2006.

Last Sunday was a personal milestone for me as a Gospel Doctrine teacher. It was the first time I’ve ever taught a class on Blacks and the Priesthood. Come to think of it, it may be the first time I’ve ever been present in a class on Blacks and the Priesthood, whether as teacher or student (though maybe I’ve just forgotten). As someone who has ridden the priesthood ban hobby horse over the years, and who has suffered lots of angst over it, I’ve long wanted to teach this topic, but never before had the right opportunity. Sunday was the first time I felt I had such an opportunity, so I took it.

The assigned chapter from the D&C manual was “Lesson 42: Continuing Revelation to Latter-day Prophets.” When Steve Evans pointed this out to me at Molly Bennion’s post-Sunstone NW party the night before, I started brainstorming various ideas for the lesson, with the help of a few other Sunstone folks, assuming I’d talk about the “nature” of revelation or something. But not until the next morning, when I actually opened the manual, did I realize how mislead I’d been by the lesson title. For this was really the Correlation–KJV Bible–Additional Quorums of the 70–OD-2 lesson, all rolled into one week. One can’t possibly cover all these juicy topics in one lesson (indeed, I found myself wondering if the manual-writers didn’t intentionally put all this material in one chapter for precisely this reason), so I just chose OD-2. I started off by inviting a couple people to read the full declaration. Then we dived right in.

Let’s face it, the priesthood ban is an uncomfortable historical episode for a lot people. For many more than I suspect most of us realize. I sometimes forget that just because I like to run my mouth on a topic, this doesn’t mean the less gabby among us aren’t thinking, pondering, stewing over, and getting frustrated over the same topic. I made a decision at the outset not to talk around the hard questions, but to confront them squarely, as I wanted to prevent the discussion from going off on a tangent or collapsing into euphemisms and feel-good cliches. We tackled these questions:

– What exactly was the policy that OD-2 overturned?
– Who precisely was subject to the priesthood restriction and who wasn’t?
– How did implementation of the policy work in practice?
– When and from whom did it originate?
– What is the Church’s current explanation as to why there was a priesthood restriction?
– What are the explanations that church leaders and members used to give?
– What have LDS leaders had to say about these earlier explanations in recent years?

Many class members shared explanations and rationalizations for the priesthood ban that they had either heard or embraced over the years. This was fascinating, as a lot of different theories were offered up — ranging from the Levitical precedent, to 19th Century American society-not-being-ready-for-a-too-progressive-Mormonism, to white LDS members-not-being-ready-for-the-change-any-earlier, etc. All these theories were familiar to me, but it was interesting to hear so many of them. Some classmembers offered explanations of which they themselves were clearly skeptical. Others offered theories that they evidently embraced (though no one was particularly dogmatic in presenting his or her own preferred explanation). I decided to let people air their answers without giving in to my desire (sometimes strongly felt, I assure you) to combat certain theories too harshly. I politely raised problems with some of them, but I didn’t drop the hatchet. I decided that it was more important to dispense with Curse of Cain rationalizations and fence-sitting pre-existence narratives, than it was to go the extra mile of showing up other popular theories as deficient or bankrupt. In retrospect, I think this was the right choice. The fact that so many class members offered so many competing, often incompatible, theories hopefully served to undermine the credibility of all the theories generally. (Perhaps a personal smackdown from Aaron Brown might have done this more effectively, but it might have made me appear too strident, and I felt like I had put enough on everybody’s plate as it was).

Some of the explanations offered by the class presumed that God was very much behind the priesthood ban, even if His reasons are obscure, while others clearly favored explanations that absolved God of any responsibility for the policy at all. I pointed out this division between the various theories, and I decided to tackle this head-on. Anticipating that the refusal to acknowledge God’s hand in the policy would be more controversial than dispensing with any particular explanation for God’s involvement in the policy, I broke out Stephen Harper’s “Making Sense of the Doctrine & Covenants,” specifically this paragraph from the OD-2 chapter:

Still, unanswered questions do remain. When was the link between the books of Moses and Abraham forged? How are those passages to be interpreted? Is there a genealogical link between the ancient Canaanites and modern Africans, or is such a link an unfounded assumption and a relatively recent creation by slavery proponents that was uncritically accepted? Were blacks denied the priesthood because of an inherited curse or because Latter-day Saints, conditioned by cultural prejudices, misinterpreted the Pearl of Great Price, or for some other reason?

(Emphasis mine).

Why draw attention to this passage? After all, Harper’s is just a rhetorical question, left unanswered, and hardly a ringing endorsement of the God-ain’t-the-author view. But, I told the class, if Deseret Book is now willing to publish works that directly question the divine provenance of the ban (see above), and that don’t answer the question in the negative, what does that tell you about where we are and what direction the Church is heading in with respect to this subject? I felt this was a very effective tack, maybe more so than quoting something more eloquent and elaborate from, say, Armand Mauss would have been. (Unfortunate as this conclusion is, for I’d much prefer to quote Mauss).

As the hour drew to a close, the conversation turned to the nature of prophets, how to trust prophets if they are partly products of their time (capable of giving us erroneous instruction), the role of personal spiritual confirmation in evaluating truth claims (even when they come from prophets), and the limitations of this approach as well. This was an inevitable turn in the conversation, and for some, a potentially troubling one. I refused to give everyone easy answers where there are none.

In conclusion, I bore testimony that if LDS history tells us anything, it is that continuing revelation doesn’t always provide neat little building blocks on top of firm foundations. Sometimes, it blasts away part of the foundation, or at least what we’ve thought of as the foundation. There are major paradigm shifts in LDS thought. There are revolutionary moments in our religious understanding. We’ve had them before, and we may well have them again. Just as we can look back at Mormons in the 1950s who were certain Blacks would never receive the priesthood (at least not until the Millenium), and Mormons in the 1880s who just knew that God would never instruct his people to abandon polygamy, and see that our forebearers had limited understanding, Mormons 20 or 50 or 100 years from now may look back at us quaint, turn-of-the-century folk quite similarly. Then again, maybe 2009 really is a pinnacle year in the history of the Restoration — a year where every social norm, practice, and doctrinal understanding has been finally set in stone, never to be altered. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

How well did the lesson go? Personally, I thought it was the best lesson I’ve ever given. Perhaps I only feel this way because I finally gave a lesson I’ve long wanted to give, but that’s still my sense of it. It terms of audience reaction, it’s harder to say how well it went. My sense is that lots of people really liked the discussion and found it meaningful. I had several people speak to me about it in superlative terms afterwards, but I often get that, or something close to it. It’s the folks that don’t give you feedback that you wonder about. Hard to say what they thought.

Suppose a couple, having problems with fertility, decides to try IVF as a means of having children. For the sake of the hypothetical, let’s say initial fertilization goes very well and the couple ends up with 30 viable embryos. After 8 pregnancies with three embryos implanted each time, the couple is exhausted and now has 24 children. They are done having kids.

What does the couple do with the six remaining embryos? You make the call.

True story (as in one I haven’t made up):

In the summer of 1996, Henry B. Eyring was vacationing in Europe and spent one Sunday with us in the Salzburg ward. At lunch someone asked him what he thought about the European Union. These were his words:

China’s on the rise and America’s still powerful — small nations will need to group together to compete in the world. A country like Austria needs the European Union.

So there you have it. Prophetic support for Project Europe. [TONGUE/CHEEK]

When my parents voted for the UK to join the European Economic Community in 1973, they were voting for Britain’s inclusion in a European free trade zone. This week, the EU will have its first president. The stone rolls forth.

Would you allow your teenage daughter to attend a sleepover hosted by her friend who recently self-identified as lesbian?

About a year ago I posted on that other blog about the girl-on-girl trend sweeping pop culture. My biggest concern then was the way this trend seems geared toward male gratification. And that still turns my stomach.

But today I’m thinking about a different facet of the problem: the confusion this trend has generated in relationships between young women. To quote myself:

I don’t think homosexuality should be demonized. But I don’t think it should be normalized. And I certainly don’t think it should be glamorized. I’m particularly concerned about the glamorization of lesbian sexual activity, because women’s sexual orientation has been shown to be much more fluid than men’s, which means women are more susceptible to sociocultural influence on their sexual behavior.

I don’t have my head in the sand about the reality of lesbian attraction. Some young women are going to feel significant, spontaneous sexual attraction to other women. But young women kissing each other simply because it’s cool? If they find themselves aroused–and some certainly will–that can add a whole lotta unnecessary complexity and confusion to a developmental process already fraught with difficulty and danger.

This complexity vividly came to mind yesterday when a friend told me about her 14-year-old daughter’s conundrum, and asked me the question I asked you at the beginning of the post. And now you may answer.

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Hey!! Jan Shipps will be speaking TONIGHT at the Salt Lake City Library. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Jan’s work for Mormon Studies. In particular, her 1985 book Mormonism should be near the very top of anyone’s list of Really Important Books You Must Read if You’re Going to Think of Yourself as a Reasonably Informed Mormon or Student of Mormons or Mormonism (RIBYMRIYGTTOYAARIMOSOMOM).

Jan will be speaking about what the field of Religious Studies offers for the study of Mormonism. Besides being an astute observer of Mormonism, Jan is a witty and engaging speaker and a delightful character and YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THIS TALK if you can possibly get there!!

Tuesday, November 17
Level 4 Meeting Room, Salt Lake City Main Library
210 East 400 South, Salt Lake.

Mingling at 6:30 pm, lecture starts at 7:00 pm.

Three cheers for Sunstone for sponsoring the event!!

Along with Steve Evans and J. Stapley, I was honored to present as part of the Pillars of My Faith at Sunstone Northwest this last Saturday. Most of this story will be familiar to anyone who’s followed my journey, but I agreed to post and share my thoughts. Thanks also to Molly Bennion and Mary Ellen Robertson for all the good work they devote to others.

The pillars of my faith are planted in soil that is still soft and freshly turned. The ground where they rest is still marred by the plow, loamy and verdant from only relatively recently having been broken and turned. This lose fresh soil makes my pillars more like stakes, sprouts… wisps of what they may someday be, but the seeds are planted nonetheless, and I have seen the seeds sprout that may someday have the breadth of pillars, the strength of cedars. Not yet, but the promise makes me gasp in awe, and make me willing to gamble on faith.

My search for faith and God started early. Growing up, my childhood home was built on old orchard land, in the California that used to be the fruit-basket of the state, but is now paved over, crowded and beats to the rhythm of silicon instead of seasons.

Being on old orchard land, my home had plum, apricot, pear, cherry, avocado, almond, walnut, tangerine, orange and grapefruit trees. We had chickens, rabbits, a goat and a dozen dogs. My brothers and I had a carefree, happy freedom on our land. My aunt and her family lived down the road and my grandmother only a few minutes beyond. Doors were always unlocked, and I spent at much time at friends and family as I did in my own home; it was a good upbringing.

And yet, even at a young age, I knew I was missing something. Keenly, I felt it- but didn’t have the words or frame of reference to give it voice- I only knew there was a void, and that something important belonged there. When I was scarcely older than my kindergartner, I recall studying the nativity set my mother would put out at Christmas. There were no scriptures in our house, and I had never seen anyone in my family utter so much as a prayer over a meal- and yet I was mesmerized by the little statues. It was a family heirloom, and my mother would set it out simply as a nod to tradition. But that little glass Jesus was the repository for the first prayers of my life. I knelt down, and began to cry, as I poured out my heart to the tiny glass Christ. I remember shaking with fear of being discovered doing something so oddly unfamiliar, but so compelling I could not stop myself. I knew someone was listening, and wanted to hear me.

When I was a young teen, tagging along with a friend and her mother, I purchased my first scriptures from a Christian book store. My babysitting money had been saved, and I chose a green leather bible with the words of Christ in red. My friend would go over passages from the New Testament with me, and I would highlight words I liked with my little yellow pencil. At home, I kept the bible hidden behind other books on my crammed shelves, and hoped my mom wouldn’t notice when she cleaned my room. Most kids hid comics or Judy Blume novels- I hid the bible.

As I grew into my teens, my boldness and my yearning for answers grew. I would go to church with anyone who would take me. I attended synagogue, the Kingdom Hall, Catholic mass in Latin, Hebrew school, charismatic Christian church, the old Lutheran A-frame down the street, the small chapel across form my elementary school, a Sikh rite with a classmate, a Native American pow-wow and even LDS services with another classmate. I was on a mission.

As my teens unwound into early adulthood, my family life began to unravel, and my parents divorced leaving me floating and on my own before I was quite ready. I headed off to college, boyfriend and roommate in tow, and continued my search. I searched in places I do not tell anyone about, and places that were regular and simple. There is not a church or school of thought I didn’t check delve into, or at least consider for a moment, but still I wandered, unsatisfied, and looking for… for something. Looking for that feeling I got at six from that little glass Jesus. Looking for someone listening for me.

Since I was stumbling around in the proverbial dark, I made some mistakes. It took fifteen years of getting mad at God- yelling and fighting and cursing and crying and trying not to care about a God I wasn’t sure was even real, before the answers came pouring down, raining on my parched soul.

The birth of my first child is where God finally spoke to me in a way that was impossible not to hear. When my son slid from my body with that final great push and they set his slippery body on my beating heart, I knew God was real. Years of searching fell away as I looked in awe and wonder at my first child, and I knew, I knew with all my heart and soul, that there was a God, and that he was right there with me.

That is the memory I have of my first son’s birth. Not the pain, not the sheer exhaustion of pushing and delivery- that all fell away, and I sobbed and wept, yes for my son, but really it was for God. In every picture of my son’s birth, my face is bathed in tears. I’m the only one who knew what those tears really meant.

After this awakening, I found renewed fervor to seek out a house of worship. I wanted my child, and future children, to have a foundation that I had lacked. I wanted them to know God as part of the weft and weave of their daily life, know Him as a cornerstone and never feel the void I had so long yearned to fill. I understand I cannot really provide this for my children, that their paths are their own to walk, yet I knew I needed to try.

I was church shopping. One Sunday, purely because I liked the building, I went to the local Mormon Church. Knowing nothing about wards, blocks of classes, dress or really anything- I just showed up. I had a squirmy baby, and sat alone in the back and left right after it was over. But something stuck with me. It was a fast and testimony meeting, and I was absolutely amazed by the parade of young people bearing their testimonies. At that meeting, the vocabulary and vernacular was unfamiliar, but the spirit present was what I had been seeking. What I left the meeting with was a feeling that “something is happening at this place, and I don’t know what it is, but its right”. What I hoped for for my children was happening in that building and I wanted to know more about it. I didn’t “know” much, but I knew I was coming back.

The next Sunday, with the slight, shy defensiveness of someone unsure, I announced to my husband that I was going to church. He raised a perplexed eye as he glanced up from the couch, but nodded and went back to watching the baseball game. I gathered my son, and off I went. Two months later, still incognito in the back, I approached the missionaries after Sacrament, introduced myself and asked what I had to do to be baptized.

I actually kept my membership a secret from my family for a long time, simply because I knew what would happen. When I finally told my mother, she gave me a choice between her or the Church. She believes I have been brainwashed, am brainwashing my children and am ruining my family. And yet, somehow, I knew I could not turn my back on what I had come to understand of my Savior. And while I know He is everywhere, I found my answers for Him here, and here is where I plant my stake.

………

So now, seven years later, I stand before you to talk about the pillars of my faith. I mull this idea over, turning it in my wind and worrying it smoother like an old river pebble. My pillars are still but saplings. And yet I have learned, I have walked a path both stunningly familiar and altogether my own.

I began my journey well-versed in the ways and things of the world, but rather naive in the machinations and ways of an organized church. It hasn’t been a perfect journey, but it has been perfect for me. There are many reasons why I landed here, those reasons are what feed the saplings of my pillars. One of those Pillars is the room for personal revelation and having an open cannon.

We are a living church. One of our greatest blessings is that we belong to a church with continuing, ongoing revelation. The heavens are open. We reject this notion of God being done communicating with us. Having this open canon means we have the limitless and hope-filled potential for more binding revelation to be given and received.

The exhilaration of finding long-yearned for answers here- answers that did not disallow my own personal revelations, was almost narcotic. When I joined, I joined with gusto. I dug into the history, and made learning all I could my pet project. Along the way, my mother began to toss out little tidbits she has googled for me about Church history, and I began to notice, with a little bit of a start, that things I learned in Sunday School didn’t always jive with the things she sent me to read. So I dove into that too. I made it my project to learn all I could about our history, and face it head-on, so that when something was lobbed at me, I was not only prepared for it, but ready to handle it with ease and grace. It became an interesting personal journey, running parallel to finding my legs as a member of my ward.

My first Visiting Teacher was the Temple matriarch. My first Home Teacher was the Stake Patriarch. Sensitivity on the part of my bishop led to these stellar examples being a regular part of my life, and I was showered with the best examples of being Mormon. Framed temple pictures, photos of the prophets, Greg Olsen prints, the Proclamation and a dozen other symbols of my new faith were bestowed on me by kind ward members. Overwhelmed, I felt I had to display all of these things in order to be a “good Mormon” girl. All the other homes I visited had similar decorations; I must need them, right?

I was grateful for the kindness of my new friends. And yet… Somehow, these things were a like a shoe too tight.

At first, I thought I was slipping in my new faith; what kind of woman would not be grateful for so much kindness? Along with the gifts of faith from my sweet ward members, I was reading Richard Bushman, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Arrington and Bitton. I wondered if I was cut out for this; maybe all the changes were just too much. I felt out of place and wondered if I could be a good Mormon and yet not embrace everything about the culture of Mormonism.

The Gospel is nothing if not personal. As members of the LDS church, we are inheritors of this rich tradition, being taught from the cradle that the Lord not only loves each of us, but that we are individuals, valued and known deeply and personally to our God.

One of my favorite scriptures, Mormon 9:27 says, in part, “…doubt not, but be believing, and begin as in times of old and come unto the Lord with all your heart and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him.”

These are not the words of a distant God. We are not commanded to simply rely on the grace of another, or the oil borrowed from the lamp of another. Indeed we are cautioned against doing so over and over. We are given intelligence, agency and pondering minds so that we might study the words of our scriptures, hear our prophets, listen to the called and inspired, figure out what they mean to us personally, and apply them to our lives.

Internalizing this possibility created a powerful confluence of faith and influence, and it molded the woman I am today. My faith is still an imperfect animal; it wavers, it surges, it crests, and it subsides like the tide. But I stay with it, because time has shown me that changes are the norm- change is the constant, and that is part of being here on Earth. The coolest thing is, the roots of my little mustard seed, since they have grown on a moving, tumultuous vessel, are flexible and very strong.

I have made peace with some of the hard things. God has blessed me with some experiences that are not to be put to words, but that are powerful enough that the light from them sustains me, even through dark patches on my journey.

I’ve come the point where it’s comfortable for me to acknowledge this Church is run by men, however inspired, currently or historically, they are still men, with feet of clay just like the rest of us. I am at peace with this. Because we are a church run by human beings, we make mistakes. No mistake, no matter what, changes the “rocks” this church was founded upon; Salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the forgiveness for our human foibles found therein.

The principles taught are good ones- be kind, share with others, give to the less fortunate, take care of your bodies, love your family, be faithful, strive to improve, be honest, treasure your children, live within your means, be prepared, and so on… does the perfection of those who teach these principles really matter?

I find that my testimony, though still not as vast and all-encompassing as some Saints, is indeed deep. The minutiae of Mormon life does not worry me or cause me pause- I don’t care if there are inconsistencies, glitches in history, imperfections or living rooms full of kitschy art. The open cannon and the ideal of continuing revelation leaves room for the strongest of my saplings, Hope. What I do know is this:

The Lord expects me to figure things out for myself. Studying, praying and listening for the whisperings of His spirit will never lead me wrong.

Had I subscribed to and confused the culture of Mormonism with the Faith of Mormonism, I would surely have fallen. It wouldn’t have taken long for the frosting to wear thin-I’d have found myself, like the Pharisees, praying on the street corner, and getting my just reward.

The church is not perfect, and if I had continued on in this faith believing it was, it would have undoubtedly led to a fall- disenchantment and disillusionment and eventually, dis-fellowship.

Taking off the shoe that was too tight- stripping down the cultural accouterments that felt contrived to me, relying on the promise of a God who speaks to me, actually forced me to find my own voice, my own faith, and grow into my own skin. My life, my whole life, had been retooled, redirected, and refocused, and not through machination of my own; there are directions, situations and people that cannot be explained away by any logic, coincidence or theory. An alchemy has been worked on my heart; the hand of the Lord can be seen as clearly as I see my own fingerprints.

I had the honor of presenting during the Pillars of My Faith segment at Sunstone Northwest on Sunday. Below are my rough notes. Thanks to Mary Ellen Robertson and Molly Bennion for putting on a great symposium for a good community.

What are the pillars of my faith? My Mormonism is a community of Saints, a Zion of individual souls that come together to worship God and be saved through Christ. As such my fundamental image of faith is the mosaic, the wonderful art of forming a picture composed of countless individual tiles. I have in my mind the picture of God, the master Artist, placing each of us uniquely within his plan, cementing us together, ultimately forming a masterpiece.

I’m sure there’s nothing new to this metaphor — it even sounds cliche to me sometimes. But the symbol still resonates with me on a level that is hard to describe. The first time I thought of the Church in this way was shortly after finishing my mission, when I was touring through the Loire Valley in France with my parents. We came to the town of Germigny-des-Prés, which today is a fairly unremarkable farm village, but back in the year 800 it was a nexus of art and learning. Bishop Theodulf, who was one of Charlemagne’s closest advisors, had his country residence in this town, and he built there an oratory chapel, which looks at first blush like your garden-variety Carolingian chapel, but upon inspection you see influences from ancient Rome, as well as from Byzantium, Armenia and even Moorish countries. It is an Eastern chapel found smack in the middle of the West. But the real masterpiece of this little chapel is a mosaic tiled ceiling in its east wing. It has no equal in all of France and rivals the great Byzantine mosaics of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and San Vitale in Ravenna. The mosaic shows the Ark of the Covenant, flanked by cherubim on either side and featuring the hand of God, reaching down to touch the Ark from a starry sky. At the bottom is an inscription in Latin that reads, “”See and contemplate the holy oracle with its cherubim and the resplendent ark of the divine testament. Before this spectacle, beset the Thunderer with your prayers; and, I pray of you, remember Theodulf in your prayers.”

Theodulf himself is a character worth remembering. He was bishop of Orléans and was a major figure in the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of amazing arts and culture. Theodulf was avant-garde in publicly admitting that he read and enjoyed pagan poetry such as Virgil and Ovid; he believed in public education; and perhaps most importantly, Theodulf famously advocated a culture of hospitality, preaching that those who turn away the stranger or the poor traveler have no hope of finding a spot at God’s banquet table. Theodulf embodied a spirit of intellectual and spiritual curiosity, cultural inclusion and personal piousness that rival the best of us today. But in his little private chapel, beneath the stars of his mosaic, Theodulf asks us to strive to touch the Master of Thunder with our prayers and to contemplate the holy oracle.

When I first visited Germigny-des-Prés I only knew a little about Theodulf, and I couldn’t read the Latin inscription below the Ark of the Covenant, but I still remember me, this weak, tired 21 year old, staring up at this glittering scene of the stars and the Ark of the Covenant and the Hand of God, and I felt the presence of God, the Master of Thunder. I almost felt like Elijah, in Kings: I stood in the chapel and saw this mosaic, but the Lord was not in the mosaic. I saw the stars, but the Lord was not in the stars. I saw the Ark, but the Lord was not in the Ark. And after the Ark, a still small voice. I’ve been to many of the great cathedrals and religious shrines of the West, and in many of them I’ve felt the Spirit of God, confirming the reality of the Creator in my heart. But this experience in that little mosaiced chapel remains one of the spiritual highlights of my life. I’ve often thought about the history of that place and the beauty of those little gilded cubes of glass; it is amazing to me that such little things as those, when put together, could form a masterpiece that has such potential to bring us closer to God.

My view of Mormonism as a mosaic of Saints also stems, in part, from my upbringing. Like most great comedians and Mormons, I was born in Canada. I spent my youth between the cities of Vancouver and Calgary. If you’ve ever visited those cities — and every traveler should — you’ll recognize that there is an immense cultural divide between the two places: the first has a west-coast vibe coupled with a liberal metropolitan feel, akin to San Francisco. Like Seattle, Vancouver is a town of some quiet graces. It is encircled by old, green forests while the city itself is often shaded in mist. Calgary, my second city, is the Dallas of the North: an oil town, home to rodeos and a sense of frontier machismo. There is nothing subtle about Calgary. In the summer, it sits in the middle of a golden prairie with the Rockies in the distance. But the thing to remember about both of those wonderful cities is that they are both Canadian cities, and as such they are inherently superior to any American city, and also: they are chock-full of socialists. That’s right: Canadians, that cheery, helpful lot of Godless Communists who believe in things like high taxes and public options and libraries. Canadians are also desperate for immigration to fill up their frozen wasteland territories, and as such Canada embraces a multiculturalism instead of any single national dream or identity. In fact, in 1971 a federal law was passed to promote and enhance the distinct cultural identities of all Canadians. If America likes to speak of its “melting pot,” Canadians speak instead of — you guessed it — a mosaic. And so we see ourselves as a community of individuals, with distinct identities but the common and distinctly Canadian goals of peace, order and good government. Now that I think about it, I view my own cultural identity as a series of mosaic tiles as well; there’s hints of the Vancouverite, shades of the Calgarian, and of course a deep dark shadow over it all from when I became an American citizen.

And of course Mormons have been in Canada for hundreds of years, from the days Charles Ora Card was sent by John Taylor to stretch the polygamous stakes of Zion Northward. A Canadian Mormon is an odd thing, because we preserve much of the traditional Mormon culture even while remaining decidedly un-American. We make funeral potatoes, but don’t really care about freedom of speech. We attend early morning seminary, but have little problem with socialized medicine. From what I have seen, such is the experience of many Mormons outside of the United States — we are creatures of two worlds. From the standpoint of religious devotion and piety, we tend to be very conservative, often protective of the institutional Church even as we don’t quite understand some of its action. But from a political and social standpoint, international members are almost uniformly liberal compared to their American counterparts, often embracing policies and politics that would make Skousen drop dead (again). Of course, those students of history in the room will no doubt recognize that Cleon Skousen was in fact Canadian himself, but I digress. My point here is that members of the Canadian Church, and members of the International Church already innately feel something that it seems to me the American Church is only beginning to discover — that Mormons can be, and are, a widely diverse group with views from all over the political spectrum. Indeed, all God’s critters got a place in the choir already, whether or not the institution is prepared for it.

So what then do we sad Mormons do, when our Sainthood is composed of all sorts of characters with all kinds of crazy views? How can we reconcile the confines of a fairly rigid centrally organized religious institution with the intense contrasts between individual members?

There are two key attributes to a mosaic, which may seem obvious. The first is individuality: a multitude of separate, distinct and unique tesserae are needed. If all of your tiles look alike, you will have uniformity — and there can be beauty in uniformity — but you don’t have a mosaic, you have have a monochrome fixture, which might work as a tiled backsplash but is certainly not high art. You need contrasts, complementary colors and shades along the spectrum if the collective work is to have any artistic purpose. It is the ultimate harmony of the individually unique that brings power to the master’s plan.

The second attribute is cohesion: those distinct tiles must come together and adhere to form a larger tableau, in which the distinctiveness of the individual tiles merges together in favor of the overall vision of the artist. And so in my faith I feel a dynamic between these two compelling forces; my natural tendency towards individuality and unique identity, contrasting with the need for community and the obligation to be part of something larger than myself. In Mormonism this is a classic tension, as members feel torn between individual quests for knowledge and identity on the one hand and the demands of the group to conform and to shoulder each others’ burdens.

In similar fashion, I find that I mostly think about myself, my individual freedom and my self-determination when I consider our relationship to the Gospel. While this isn’t wrong, I’m missing the bigger and better picture. Others prefer to look at the functioning of the group and the overall directives that bring us together as a community. But I’m not sure that’s right either. So it is when you are facing a piece of mosaic art; you can focus on the single tesserae, or look at the big picture. But neither is seeing the reality of the mosaic, and neither way is the whole truth. We cannot be either myopic or hyperopic if we want to see things as they really are.

A friend recently pointed me to the novel Bee Season, by Myla Goldberg. One of the recurring themes in the book is the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or healing or perfecting the world. One character explains, “the mystics believe that in the beginning of the world God’s divine light, containing all that is good, was enclosed in sacred vessels. But because there was already sin in the world, these vessels could not contain the light and shattered into countless pieces… it is our job to locate these shards and to mend them through good deeds, so that God’s light can be whole again.” The fixing of the world entails bringing all of these small pieces of light together through our good works. But let me clarify something: these shards of light are within ourselves and in all those around us. We are engaged in the cause of healing the world by becoming at one with our fellow Saints and by being examples to the rest of the world — we are the salt of the earth, the leaven of the world. The task of Mormonism is literally to save all the earth by bringing all of us together in Christ. As our leaders are fond of telling us, Mormons are a peculiar people; the essence of Tikkun Olam is that by being and acting our peculiar selves, together we can have universal consequences and help change the world.

This means that we must not deny our identity, either by giving up our individuality, or by hiding our Mormonism. I feel the temptation — some might call it stark reality — that to go into public life and be accepted by society, you must to a certain extent downplay your Mormon culture or hide it entirely. I remember the first time this happened to me as an adult in college. I was out getting a burger with a couple of friends, when the discussion turned to how culturally insular Mormons are and how they lack real ‘bite’ and self-awareness because of their piousness — actually, I believe what was said was more like, “Mormons are so lame.” One particularly cool guy said to me, “Come on, I bet you’ve never used the F-word.” I replied with a good deal of blustering about how I really was hip and edgy, a real rebel. To prove my point, I looked him in the eye and cursed at him. The man’s reaction was, “see, now you just look stupid.” And he was right.

Conversely, I’m sometimes tempted to overplay my Mormon identity as opportunities arise, to seize upon stereotypes of social conservatism or piousness, however inaccurate they might be. This is a pressure I feel almost daily within the world of Mormon blogs and internet interactions. It is far easier for me to act as an easy stereotype than to represent myself in a genuine and complex way. But we must also refuse this path, and instead be nothing more nor less than our honest selves. I can say this much, echoing what one Jewish author has said: non-Mormons respect us when we respect our religion, and non-Mormons are embarrassed by Mormons who are embarrassed by their faith. If we are to bring together all these diverse shards of divine light, we must be true to ourselves and respect what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks refers to as the “dignity of difference.” Joseph Smith introduced to us the challenge of bringing all of humanity together, sealing generation to generation through our particular faith. Only by respecting this particularity can be come close to achieving that goal, and this means being proud of our Mormonism.

More than this sense of external pride, though, is required if we are to accomplish anything. For me, it means we must also live our Mormonism. We can’t pretend to aspire to bring the whole world together if we get hung up on the differences among our own people. Sometimes this means swallowing those parts of being Mormon that taste a little bitter, whether it’s dealing with pronouncements from Salt Lake that we might not agree with, or lessons that bore us, or sitting next to a brother or sister at Church whose personal politics offend us. Recently I have felt tested and torn by the incredible polarization among us on issues relating to the rights of gays and lesbians. How can I respect the dignity of being a Mormon, being different, when those differences sometimes make me cringe? I don’t have an easy answer to this, but I still feel that we cannot just simply pick and choose what relationships we form — because if we do, we tend to end up with self-resembling relationships, when what we need are connections to the Other. Like the tesserae, God needs the contrast for His work; we need something different from ourselves, even if sometimes we don’t like it. I am incomplete alone. So each week I get plunked together with you lot and we worship together, forming connections, when we might never otherwise choose to connect.

I feel cemented in my Mormonism. I am just one miniscule piece of it, and feel squished in sometimes; sometimes I feel out of place, and sometimes I wonder what this is all about. But I have confidence in the artist, the Master of Thunder, who is arranging us and placing us all together in His intricate design. I don’t know what form this work will ultimately take — it may be that I never get to see the entirety of the tableau. But in the meantime I rejoice in our differences and in our sameness, seeing the wonder of our individuality coupled with the amazing potential of our collective efforts. I believe the best blessings of Zion await us when we come together and embrace the distinctiveness that makes God’s mosaic possible.

When the book Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament came out, Julie at T&S posted a very positive review, and I followed that up with my own (see “Finally!” FARMS Review 19/2 [2007]). A couple of months ago Julie and I had the chance to meet one of the coauthors of that book, Eric Huntsman, and found him to be as delightful a person as he is fine a scholar.

When I saw the title to the book under review, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament, it was obvious to me that this was meant to be a companion volume to the NT one. Richard Nietzel Holzapfel contributed to both volumes; here he is joined by Dana Pike and David Rolph Seely (an old friend). These are all fine scholars at BYU. And this book shares the same virtues as its NT companion, particularly its graphic richness and its presentation of solid scholarship for an LDS audience. In many ways I could just copy my earlier review of the NT volume and apply it to this one as well.

The book is a large format coffee table book. The main text walks the reader through the OT itself, offering lots of historical context from the contemporary ancient Near East along the way. Every page features either pictures or sidebars, or both, explaining particular issues, texts and concerns. I really like this format, as the text is sufficiently broken up that it is not overwhelming to the casual reader.

Let me just mention more or less at random some of the sidebars and pictures one finds along the way in this volume:

1. Near the beginning there is a lot of good, basic information given to get things started, such as a glossary of OT terms, a genealogical chart of Semitic languages, a comparative chronology of the OT, a chart showing the various canons of the OT, a comparison chart showing the development of the alphabet, a four-page treatment of the names of God, and much more.

2. At p. 58 is a nice full-page explanation of the formation of Israelite proper names.

3. P. 63 features a nice prosopographical chart showing the covenant family line of Abraham.

4. P. 66 features a useful explanation of slavery in the OT, something we KJV readers are simply not prepared for with such renderings as servant and various forms of maid rather than the more direct slave.

5. The Amarna Letters are described in a page-long sidebar at p. 85.

6. The isue of dating Moses and the Exodus is broached at p. 95.

7. P. 102 features an explanation of why Moses is often depicted with horns in art. I remember covering this same point when I taught GD, mainly because the scultures of Moses with horns are just so cool!

8. P. 104 has a cool picture of incense spoons such as would have been used at the tabernacle/temple with an image of a human hand on the curved side of the spoon, thus depicting a hand in cupping shape.

9. P. 108 explores the question of where the Ark of the Covenant is (if it’s not in a big government warehouse, that is…)

10. P. 115 has an awesome picture of Samaritans observing the Passover by roasting lambs on spits. At the very beginning of the book the authors make the point that the temple was something different than we imagine; in many ways it was a slaughterhouse. (This reminds me of a lecture I went to once at the UoU on “sentimental phil-hellenism,” which pointed out that the beautiful white marble temples of ancient Greece that we so admire in ancient times were not white at all but painted garish colors).

11. P. 120 gives a biblical calendar for the various feast days.

12. The problem of large numbers in the Bible is addressed at p. 126.

13. P. 145 describes the Documentary Hypothesis–two words I never heard uttered together in all my relgion classes at BYU.

14. Questions about the historical accuracy of the Book of Joshua are addressed at 160.

15. Levirate marriage is described at p. 189.

16. P. 199 describes how we recovered a verse in Samuel from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

17. P. 215 features a discussion of scribes and the Bible.

18. Pp. 226-27 describes poetry in the OT.

19. A graphic comparison between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel is featured at p. 249.

20. P. 262 describes the Divine Council.

21. A page is devoted to the Tel Dan inscription at 273, and another page is devoted to inscriptions that mention “YHWH and his Asherah” two pages later.

22. Each of the Twelve Minor Prophets gets his own sidebarred treatment.

23. The expression “a virgin shall conceive” is examined at p. 296.

24. P. 303 describes the Sennacherib Prism.

25. The Lachish Letters are described at p. 331, and the Cyrus Cylinder at p. 361.

These random descriptions of what you’ll find in the book cannot really do justice to the richness of the material presented here. Indeed, I will renew my complaint from my published review that these sidebars are not reflected in the Table of Contents; I think they should be.

Anyway, while the FPR crew probably won’t learn much from this book, if the OT hasn’t really been your cup o’ tea in the past, I suggest you give it another chance, and use this volume as a companion to your study in the 2010 curriculum year. I think you’ll find the world of the OT coming to life and breathing actual interest into the pages of the text itself.