Liberal Mormon Spirituality

Bain Capital's final audit

2012-01-18T19:02:00.003-05:00

Reblogged from The Mormon Worker:

Someday Mitt Romney and the rest of the leadership of Bain Capital will stand at the judgment bar of the great Jehovah, where the books will be opened for a final audit. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the interview will include an exchange something like this:

AUDITOR: You know, I worked for several years at one of the plants you shut down. I was left unemployed with a family to feed, while you made . . . let’s see, where’s that figure . . . ?

ROMNEY: Um, excuse me, I’m sorry . . . sir . . . I don’t understand. You’re saying you were an employee of one of our companies? There must be some mistake . . .

AUDITOR: Truly I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these–

You know the rest.

Disclaimer: My audit will be grueling, too, for different reasons.

Epiphany

2012-01-06T20:55:00.001-05:00

He is the light and the life of the world--
a light that is endless,
that can never be darkened,
and also a life that is endless . . .

(Mosiah 16:9)

First snowfall

2012-01-02T08:53:00.003-05:00

When I went out to walk the dog, I discovered that overnight we had received the first snowfall of the season. A nice way to start the new year.

So now I have to do my annual "snow quotation" from Angels in America: "Soon, this . . . ruination will be blanketed white. You can smell it—can you smell it? . . . Softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace."

We received just a dusting of forgiveness and grace, but still it's something.

I'm not sure why I find snowfall a spiritual experience. It's like, you look out your window, or you open your front door, and surprise! Manna from heaven! I remember once as a teenager in Utah, trudging to a ward youth gathering through thick falling snow in the dark. I came out of an alley shortcut, and there was this orange streetlight and the snow falling like ashes inside the parabola of illumination. I stood under the streetlight and looked up into the snowfall, which seemed to be radiating out from a point directly in front of me, and just had this quasi-rapturous experience.

Awesome. My love of life and my hope for the world have received a little shot in the arm today.

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T12:51:00.003-05:00

Nephi cried to his God
on behalf of his people.
And the voice of the Lord
came to him, saying:

Lift up your head
and be of good cheer.
See--the time is at hand!
On this night, the sign will be given,
and tomorrow I come into the world,
to show the world that I will fulfill
everything that I have caused to be spoken
by the mouths of my prophets.

(3 Nephi 1:11-13)

Advent 4

2011-12-18T18:07:00.002-05:00

Keep the commandments
and the covenants to which you have bound yourself,
and I will cause the heavens to shake for your good.
The Evil One will tremble,
but Zion will rejoice on the hills
and flourish.

Then will come the time
when my people will be redeemed.
They will be led by my power,
and nothing will stand in their way.

Lift up your hearts! Be glad!
Your redemption is close at hand.

Do not be afraid, little flock.
The kingdom is yours until I come.
And I am coming quickly.

(D&C 35:24-27)

Advent 3

2011-12-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

In former times,
we were slaves to the powers of this world.

But when the time had waxed full,
God sent the Begotten One,
born of a human mother—
born, like us, in subjection to the law,
yet with power to set us free.

Through him, we have been emancipated!
We have been adopted into God’s family!
God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of the Begotten One,
so that we, like him, may call God, “Abba! Father!”

Once you were slaves;
now you have become God’s children.
And because you are God’s children,
you are also God’s heirs.

(Gal. 4:3-7)

Advent 2

2011-12-04T13:19:00.002-05:00

A voice calls out:
Prepare a path for the Holy One through the wilderness!
Pave a road for our God through the desert!
Fill in the gullies; level the hills;
smooth out the rugged ground and the rough places.
Then the Holy One will appear in glory.
All who live with see it!
So God has decreed.

O Zion, herald of glad tidings—
climb to the highest peak!
O Jerusalem, herald of glad tidings—
shout with all your might!
Do not be shy, do not hold back.
Let everyone for miles around hear you proclaim:
Here is your God!

(Isaiah 40:3-5, 9)

12/4/91 - La Romana

2011-12-04T07:44:00.009-05:00

On this day 20 years ago I was serving as a missionary in the town of La Romana, out on the eastern end of the Dominican Republic. The red dot on the map below.

Wikipedia informs me that La Romana is the third largest city in the Dominican Republic, after Santo Domingo and Santiago (which is the headquarters of the LDS mission that covers the north of the country). I find that claim fishy, though, since according to the 2002 census, the population of La Romana was 191,000, which put it 9th on the list of cities ranked by size, after various cities in the Santo Domingo metropolitan area, Puerto Plata, and San Pedro de Macoris. I suspect someone's trying to inflate La Romana's importance for the sake of attracting business to the Zona Franca (which I'll be talking about in next month's post).

Anyway, let's go with an estimate of 200,000 for the population, though it could conceivably be closer to 250,000 now (which is the estimate Wikipedia gives). To put that in perspective, it's twice, or more, the size of Provo, which has a population of about 110,000. That surprises me because La Romana wasn't as crowded as I'd expect a city of that size to be. Of course, it's bigger now than it was 20 years ago, but when I look at YouTube videos of people driving through the streets, it still has the look of a town, not a big city. Low buildings. The streets not too crowded. And clean.

I wonder if that has to do with the fact that La Romana is a company town, owned mostly, as I understand it, by the Central Romana Corporation. They own the gigantic sugar factory at the south end of town, at the bottom of the hill the city is built on. During the months of peak production, the lower part of the city fills with this sugary smoke which as missionaries we tried to avoid; people who actually live in that part of town don't have that luxury, of course.

I'm going to poke into the economics of La Romana more in next month's post. For now, let me just try to give you a more concrete picture of the city, as I experienced it.

First, a map with places that loomed large in my experience of the city.

1. The stake center.
2. My apartment, near the downtown city park.
3. The meetinghouse where my branch met. It's now located next to a jumbo supermarket, which wasn't there 20 years ago.
4. The sugar factory.
5. The Zona Franca—the Duty Free Zone. Apparently there's a newer one operating as well just north of the city (a little beyond the upper border of my map).
6. Casa de Campo, the major tourist resort. A common P-Day destination for missionaries.

The outlined area was my assigned mission area. The easternmost part, the neighborhood across the river, was so affluent, we never worked there—too intimidating. There was a very poor neighborhood hugging the western bank of the river—we also didn't work there. The area around the city park represented a typically developed area. The westernmost part of our area was the least developed. Twenty years ago, its streets hadn't been paved, though satellite images suggest they may be now. I would certainly hope so.

Here are a couple YouTube videos of people driving around the streets. I can see signs of development—e.g., new businesses—but otherwise it looks not too different from my memories. In the first video, the camera operator is riding a motoconcho (motorcycle taxi) downhill from the part of the town where the stake center's located in the direction of my apartment. In fact, the video ends about a block from my apartment. In the second video, they start not far from my meetinghouse, near the sugar factory, and drive uphill toward and around the city park where we missionaries used to go to buy breakfast from Freddyburgers, an egg sandwich vendor. (Oh, how I want one right now.)

To finish today's post, let me list the first names of a few people who stand out in my mind from my time in La Romana.

Isabel. A convert. A young mother of two children. She lived with her brother, who repaired TVs out of their home though he never seemed to have much work. A former Pentecostal. Later in my mission, I met her at a regional conference, where I learned she was in the Primary presidency. Then she disappeared. I asked a missionary friend to look her up, and he reported back that she had dropped out of church because she became pregnant. I assume her relationship with the man was driven by economic necessity; I was—and am—sad about the situation, not that I think she made the wrong choice, but sad that she had to make that choice.

Of the people I knew in La Romana, Isabel is the only one I've seen since my mission. That was during a trip in 1998. She had moved from a hut in the back patio to a narrow apartment looking out on the sidewalk—an economic step up, I presume.

Irma. My maid. A middle-aged woman with children who were young adults. She cried when I left and quit the next day, which I take to mean that there was a mothering thing going on. One of her sons was getting ready to try to sail to Puerto Rico by yola, a small boat. Quite dangerous, though I can think of two people I know off the top of my head who succeeded, then got caught and deported back to the DR.

A great story about Irma: When she was a young mother, she worked as a maid at Casa de Campo. One day she took her children with her. The security guard didn't want to let the kids in, but Irma said, "These are my children, and this is their country, and I want them to see how beautiful it is." The guard backed down.

Luisa. One of those investigators who likes having the missionaries over though she isn't interested in converting. She ran an illegal lottery: I never understood how that worked (I thought it better not to ask), but it had something to do with a lottery in Venezuela.

Rando. A friend, though never an investigator. He was of South Asian descent. I don't know what he did for a living, but he had what I would consider a comfortable middle-class life. (I don't know how he himself would describe his socioeconomic situation.) He was Hindu, a devotee of Krishna.

Thanksgiving - Advent 1

2011-11-27T12:21:00.003-05:00

MARK 13:31-36

All my words will be fulfilled,
but only God knows when that day will come.
Do not lose hope, then.
Watch for the promised hour, and pray.

You are like the servants of a householder
who has gone away on a journey.
He has assigned each of you your work
and has instructed the doorkeeper
to be on the watch for his return.

Stay awake, then,
for you do not know
when the master of the house will come.
It might be in the evening,
or at midnight,
or in the dark hours of the early morning,
or at daybreak.

If he returns unexpectedly,
will he find you attentive at your post?

************

I saw my mother for the last time, alive, at Thanksgiving a year ago. Memories of that Thanksgiving and the one before that, which I also spent with my parents, are jumbled up in my mind.

I feel sad, but less so than when she was alive.

Contemplative prayer - November

2011-11-11T21:52:00.002-05:00

This post is a week late, but here's the Gospel reading from the first-Friday contemplative prayer service for November. The theme was the Communion of Saints, in honor of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. I reused the same readings from last November, except that I created a new rendering of the Gospel reading.

It was a very small service—me and a cellist—but I hope God was honored by the offering.

Next month's theme: "Christ the son of Mary."

************

LUKE 6:20-23, 27-28

Jesus said:
Congratulations to the poor!
You have God’s kingdom for your inheritance.

Congratulations to the hungry!
God promises that you will eat your fill.

Congratulations to those who grieve!
God will give you cause to laugh for joy.

Congratulations to those who are hated,
excluded,
reviled,
or defamed in my service.
When this happens to you—celebrate!
They are treating you
the same way they treated the prophets;
therefore, God will award you the same compensation.

But listen:
Love your enemies.
To those who hate you—do good.
Those who curse you—bless them.
Those who mistreat you—pray for them.

11/6/91 - My first day in the Dominican Republic

2011-11-06T07:24:00.008-05:00

Twenty years ago today, I woke up for the first time in another country. We'd flown into Santo Domingo late the night before, drove to the mission home through dark streets. At the mission home, we elders, 8-10 of us as I recall, slept on mattresses in an upstairs room. I remember lying there in the heat, listening to the night noises outside, feeling as if I was drowning in the humidity, and realizing there was no way to escape it. I was in another place now, thousands of miles from home. (Or is it just hundreds?) It was sink or swim for me here.

I imagine that immigrants must experience something like that.

Here's a map I created that shows the Dominican Republic in relation to the continental U.S. I've highlighted various places important in my life, in addition to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. (I visited the latter in 2007.) The San Francisco Bay Area, where I was born; Seattle, where my mother died; Idaho and Utah, where I spent most of my growing up years; North Carolina, where I did my doctorate; Ohio, where I am now. The idea here was to give myself a picture that integrated the DR into my mental map of other locations important to me, to prevent the DR from being a far-off, foreign place detached, in my imagination, from the place where my "normal" life occurs.

For example, I'm a bit startled to realize, as I look at this map, that when I flew from North Carolina to Seattle to be with my mother, I traveled farther than I would have if I'd gone from North Carolina to the Dominican Republic. Seattle "felt" closer to me because it was in the U.S., whereas the DR was an ocean and a customs transit point away.

So here's a satellite view of the part of Santo Domingo where I woke up twenty years ago, the way it looks today. I know this probably means very little to anyone else reading this blog, but I never cease to be amazed that I live at a time when I can do this.

And here's a "cleaner" map of the same area:

Let me identify some places. For future posts in this "mission reflection" series, I promise I'll hunt up somewhat more interesting things online, like YouTube videos or photos.

1. The Santo Domingo temple. I've never been; in fact, until today I wasn't entirely sure where it's located. It's built just a few blocks west of the major avenue that marked the border of my mission (which had the east side of the city).

2. The Olympic Stadium. During my mission, Thomas S. Monson and James E. Faust came here to speak at a regional conference. I just had a "Duh" moment: Monson is now church president. So in an anticipatory kind of way, I saw a church president speak in the Dominican Republic. Whatever that's worth.

3. The location of the mission office, at least 20 years ago, when I was there.

4. The location of the mission home. That's where I woke up this morning 20 years ago.

5. The stake center where missionaries serving in the capital typically gathered to watch General Conference. I don't know how old this stake center is in the scheme of Dominican Mormon history—I wish I did.

Let me point out here that the mission office and home and the stake center are located in Gazcue, which is one of the older, nicer neighborhoods in the capital. It's adjacent to the colonial zone (the eastern end of this map), which is a major tourist attraction. Gazcue includes or is in proximity to government buildings. It's the kind of place where government officials would have lived in the Trujillo era—they may still, for all I know. Some of the nicest hotels are located on Gazcue's stretch of the coastline. In establishing its presence here, the LDS Church was making a bid for social respectability.

6. It's not clear to me if it's still there, but 20 years ago, there was a Marriott hotel here, where my parents stayed when they came to come pick me up after my mission. Next door is the Jaragua, a posh hotel where the mission's Christmas conference was held one year. In the mission photo we took outside the hotel, the hotel itself takes up most of the picture: the missionaries' faces are little specks. It makes for odd iconography. At some level, conscious or unconscious, the elderly American missionary who took the photo was keen to show off our relationship to this luxury hotel.

7. More or less here was the Hotel David, a tiny hotel that I stayed at during a return visit to the Dominican Republic in 1998. More on this below.

8. Location of the first cathedral built in the New World, 500 years ago.

9. Location of the Columbus house, now a museum: A big tourist attraction.

Let me say this about the Hotel David, and I'll end this post. I was searching online just a little while ago, trying to find the exact location of the Hotel David. And I learn that it's apparently changed hands, and a new hotel is being built on the spot. And then I Google my way to a reference to that new hotel on a discussion board for gay men vacationing in the DR. And one of the topics they're discussing is hustling, and whether and where you can meet Dominican men who will sleep with you without expecting you to pay for it. A couple posters made these sober comments about how where there's a sharp economic disparity between the sexual partners, it's to be expected that money will trade hands.

No. No. No no no no no. I am sitting at my desk, spluttering. Whoa. I know I'm naive about the ways of the world. But my God. This is not... the DR is not your sexual playground, you assholes. That someone can be so... sober about the fact that you're paying for sex because you're richer than your partner—which is to say that you know this is an exploitative relationship, but you're just shrugging your shoulders over it because that's just how things are... I can't finish that sentence by describing what I think you deserve to have happen to you, because I'll regret it.

The first person I ever baptized in the DR was a young ethnically Haitian man living in La Romana, a town on the eastern peninsula that has a big resort attached to it. We'll call him N. N was a huckster; he used me in various ways that I'm still rather angry about. But at one point he got a job working for the resort. The fact he spoke English was key to this job. The way he explained it to me was that he was supposed to hang out, basically, at the resort, approach vacationers, make small talk... I don't remember if I suspected at the time that he was supposed to make himself available for sexual favors, but I've suspected that for many years now, at least.

God cannot be pleased by this. But I figure God has to be a lot more unhappy with the people who are paying than the ones who are being paid. Caveat emptor.

Westboro Baptist Church

2011-10-25T20:01:00.010-04:00

The Westboro Baptist Church picketed at my university today. Those are the "God hates fags" people, though what seems to set most Americans off about them is not their homophobia but the fact that they've taken lately to picketing funerals of soldiers with the message "God hates America."

In the afternoon, I attended a celebration of love and diversity being held at the same time as the picket as an effort, basically, to draw people away from the protest. The idea, in other words, was that people would attend this alternative event instead of trying to engage with the WBC picketers.

Despite the attempted distraction, there was a huge crowd surrounding the "cattle cage" that the police had set up for the picketers. I was standing at the periphery of the crowd, observing before joining the alternative event, when the three or four picketers showed up, entered their little fenced-off area, and silently held up their signs. Many of the young men in the crowd (perhaps women were doing this, too, but masculine voices dominated) started chanting "USA! USA!" in a hostile fashion. Eventually that was followed by chants of "Fuck this shit!" and "Suck my dick!" and various other heckling catcalls, some cleverer than others.

I have to say that I was more repelled—and unnerved—by the crowd's reaction than by the WBC's signs. The picketers just stood there silently, holding their signs, quite unperturbed (at least visibly) by all the animosity being hurled at them. It takes guts, I'll give them that. They are standing up for what they believe in the face of opposition that would make me shake if not back out.

There were quite a few signs being held up in the observing crowd supportive of LGBT people. However, I was left with the distinct impression that the lion's share of the crowd's anger toward WBC was born of offended patriotism. I say that based on the "USA! USA!" chant, along with the cheering that greeted motorcyclists and pickup truck drivers who kept driving by the scene waving American flags. In other words, the great sin of the WBC in the eyes of the surrounding mob (held back from committing violence by barriers and police officers), was not so much the WBC's strident conviction that God condemns homosexuality. WBC's great sin, rather—their heresy—was suggesting that God doesn't love America.

The LGBT student group that organized the alternative event, eager to establish that they did love America, brought out an American flag and asked us all to sing the national anthem. Not being a fan of obligatory religious practice or loyalty oaths, I silently declined to join that particular act of worship and praise.

Afterward, in the car on the way home, I felt unexpectedly drained by events.

************

I understand why the "God hates..." rhetoric is inflammatory. And I certainly think the WBC tack the wrong object onto that subject and predicate. But here are some endings for that sentence that I believe are true.

God hates homophobia.
God hates racism.
God hates sexism.
God hates sexual assault.
God hates child abuse.
God hates human trafficking.
God hates ethnic cleansing.
God hates violence.
God hates cruelty.
God hates torture.
God hates terrorism.
God hates suffering.
God hates callousness.
God hates greed.
God hates corruption.
God hates fraud.
God hates hypocrisy.
God hates exploitation.
God hates waste.
God hates pollution.
God hates injustice.
God hates inequality.
God hates the rich-poor gap.
God hates empires.
God hates tyranny.
God hates war.

God is love, yes. And I was careful to make all those sentences end with things, not people. But there are things God hates—deplores, is passionately opposed to—and teaches us to hate as well.

Prayer on the death of Muammar Gaddafi

2011-10-23T08:30:00.002-04:00

I'm reblogging here something I wrote for the Mormon Worker. A few people have posted responses over there.

************

Heavenly Father and Mother–

I’m grateful that Gaddafi is no longer in power. I pray that this can be the beginning of a better life for Libyans. I pray for peace, and justice, and democracy in Libya. I pray for an end to the violence.

I’m not grateful that he’s dead. I’m sorry that he’s dead. I mean that in the sense that I take accountability for being complicit in his death. I spoke out in support of the war in Libya. And that makes me–I was about to say “in some small way,” but I take that back; minimizing my guilt is Your judgment to make, not mine. Let’s try this again: I spoke out in support of the war in Libya. And that means I share responsibility for the vigilante actions of the soldiers who killed him instead of bringing him to legal justice.

Gaddafi’s death should not have happened. I don’t know, really, what You would have regarded as the ideal way to end his regime. I know You hate tyrrany, so I assume You hated the violence of Gaddafi’s reign. I know You also hate war, though I operate on the assumption that You recognize it’s necessary at times. But I also know You would not have wanted things to end like this.

As I’m writing this, I’m realizing that I feel guilty about Gaddafi’s death because that’s the one that’s been publicized. But if I share responsibility for Gaddafi’s death, because of my support for the counteroffensive against his regime, then I also share responsibility for I-don’t-know-how-many deaths carried out by the rebel forces and their NATO allies, or for whatever other atrocities the rebels have committed on the way to power. I also share responsibility for whatever injustices the new regime commits from this point forward.

I started off this message feeling repentant, but now I’m actually feeling rather angry at You for putting us in situations where we have to make these impossible choices, while You sit up there and judge us and cry over our failures.

I don’t want to end on that note. I pray that somehow what has happened can lead to good for Libyans. I pray for all those who are suffering, whatever “side” they’re on.

In Christ's name, amen.

************

As a follow-up to the above, let me add this: I favored intervention in Libya because I felt the U.S. ought to support the Arab Spring and because the action, unlike in Iraq, was a defensive, not "preemptive," measure and had international support. I'm not sure how an intervention that began as an effort to enforce a UN-mandated no-fly zone and ceasefire ended up becoming NATO-backed support for a civil war. I also still can't explain in a non-cynical way why there was a political will to intervene militarily in support of rebels against Gaddafi's regime, while there is apparently no will to intervene militarily on behalf of protesters in Syria, or Yemen, or in Darfur.

The bottom line is that I feel used by my government. I'm also humiliated to realize how uninformed I am about rigorous thinking on non-violence. I don't know enough to be entitled to an opinion about how the situation in Libya, or any of the places I've mentioned above, could have been handled in a different way that might have minimized violence and avoided civil war.

What I do feel opinionated about is this: I want to live in a society where articulate, pragmatic voices for non-violence are more prominent in the media and in government. When I've heard proposals for a "Department of Peace" in the past, I've smiled at them as admirable but utopian wishing. I'm prepared now to seriously advocate the creation of some version of such an entity.

************

I pray for Libya.
I pray for Syria.
I pray for the Arab Spring generally.
I pray for the Occupy Wall Street movement and the similar movements it has inspired.
I pray for a better government, which means I pray for an electorate inspired by a spirit of wisdom.

10/9/91 - Entered the MTC

2011-10-09T08:03:00.004-04:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of my entering the Missionary Training Center. Since there are now approaching 20 MTCs, including one in Santo Domingo, I should specify that I attended the MTC in Provo.

Being historically minded, I'm intrigued to realize that I am the first person in my family to enter the MTC. My father served a mission in 1969-71, if I'm not mistaken about those dates. That means he probably attended the LTM (Language Training Mission), which would have been recently established at BYU. The MTC I attended—the big complex west of BYU, across the street from the Provo Temple, didn't start operating until 1978.

I see the Provo MTC has a website now. That shouldn't surprise me, but I wasn't expecting it.

I've been poking around a little online for info about the Santo Domingo MTC. The Deseret News has a photo. I believe it's located adjacent to the Santo Domingo temple, which I've never seen.

According to the folks at Cumorah.com, Dominicans now account for half of the missionary force in the Dominican Republic. When I served, 1991-1993, they were about a third of the missionary force in my mission. I never had a Dominican companion, though I shared apartments with a couple. They had a reputation among the Americans for being difficult—for having sullen or arrogant attitudes—which based on my own observations, I would be inclined to chalk up to:

Resentment over how often the Americans excluded them by speaking English around them (even though we weren't supposed to).
Resentment over the way the mission was dominated by foreigners and generations-long church members who thought they knew best. (As the child of converts, I experienced a similar kind of marginalization in the States.)
In at least one case I know of, a sense of dismay over the American missionaries' First-World lifestyle and expectations. The Dominican elder I'm thinking of resented the way missionaries spent what to him were exorbitant sums of money on recreation; he was trying to save money for attending the temple after his mission.

When I served, the Santo Domingo MTC didn't exist, nor did the temple. Dominican missionaries were supposed to go to Guatemala to be endowed and trained. Partway through my mission, the office began having difficulties obtaining visas to send new missionaries to Guatemala, so we had missionaries serving who were unendowed. That was a very problematic symbol of the American-Dominican differential.

Another symbolic status differential that I'm glad was later removed is that at zone conferences the mission president would give his closing "pep talk" in English on the premise that this was the first language of the majority of missionaries, and he wanted to be sure even the American greenies would benefit. This meant the Dominican missionaries received simultaneous translation from someone sitting behind or beside them. Eventually the mission president shifted to Spanish, which I'm glad of: however defensible his intentions, privileging English had the effect of converting Dominican missionaries into a second-class minority in their own country—and, no less, in an institution where all missionaries were supposed to know or be learning Spanish.

These are the kinds of signals by which American Mormons unthinkingly advertise their privileged status in the church—and in the world more generally. (It's a hell of a lot easier for an American to travel wherever they want than for a Dominican.)

I think there was one Dominican AP (assistant to the mission president) the whole time I served.

My mission (Santo Domingo East) is currently led, the church newsroom tells me, by a Puerto Rican, Heriberto Hernandez.

I'm floored to discover that in 2010, my mission was combined with the Puerto Rico San Juan East Mission, essentially bringing that part of Puerto Rico under my mission's jurisdiction. Not much must have been happening in Puerto Rico. That's ironic since immediately after the lifting of the priesthood ban in 1978, missionary work in the Dominican Republic began under the auspices of Puerto Rico.

UPDATE: I realized after writing this that the merger of the Dominican and Puerto Rican missions reduces the likelihood that the missions will be led by a Dominican in the future, since the mission president needs to be able to travel to both countries. It's easier for a Puerto Rican to travel to the DR than for a Dominican to travel to Puerto Rico. :(

Enough. I need to wrap this up.

**********

Heavenly Father—

I'm grateful for the experience of my mission,
for the way it immersed me in a different society and culture,
for the way it brought me into close contact with poverty,
for the way it opened my eyes and softened my heart to forms of suffering, discrimination, and exploitation.

I'm grateful for the people who allowed me to enter their lives while I was in their country.
I hope I brought them something worthwhile.
During this two-year meditation on my mission experience,
show me what else you would like me to do by way of serving individuals in the Dominican Republic,
whether that's people I already know or people I don't.

In Christ's name, amen.

Contemplative prayer - October

2011-10-07T21:44:00.002-04:00

This evening I led a first-Friday contemplative prayer service. The readings and prayers are pasted below. I've used the readings before, at a similar service, but the intercessions are new, based on language and themes from the readings.

************

PSALM 63

O God, my God,
you are the One I seek.
My soul thirsts for you;
my body longs for you
as in a dry, weary land
where there is no water.

Your love is better than life;
therefore my lips will speak your praise.
I will bless you as long as I live.
I will lift up my hands in your name.
You fill my soul as with a banquet;
my mouth praises you with joy.

On my bed, I remember you—
through sleepless nights, my thoughts turn to you—
for you have been my help;
you shelter me beneath your wing.
My soul clings to you.
With your mighty hand, you bear me up.

************

ACTS 2:42-47

Those who believed
devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
God performed many wonders and signs in the community,
which filled them all with awe.

Living together, they had all things in common.
They sold their property and goods
and distributed the proceeds to all,
according to their needs.

Every day, they spent time in the Temple
and broke bread at home.
They ate with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and winning the goodwill of all around them.
And the Lord added to their numbers daily.

************

MARK 6:34-44

When Jesus reached shore,
there was a large crowd waiting for him.
Moved with compassion, he began to teach them.

When it grew late, his disciples said to him,
“Send the people away to the villages
so they can buy themselves something to eat.”

But Jesus said, “Feed them yourselves.”

They replied, “Where are we supposed to get enough money
to buy bread for all these people?”

He said, “See how many loaves you have.”

They came back and told him, “Five loaves, and two fish.”

Then he told them to have all the people sit down in groups on the grass.
Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish.
He looked up to heaven,
blessed and broke the loaves,
and gave them to his disciples to set before the people.
He also divided up the two fish to share among them.

Everyone ate their fill.
There were enough leftover pieces of bread and fish to fill twelve baskets.
Over five thousand people were fed from that meal.

************

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION

Jesus Christ, you are the One we long for.
You are the bread we share.
You are the water that quenches our thirst.

We pray for all who hunger for your love.
May they be filled.

We pray for all who are in want—
who lack food, water, or shelter,
employment, education, or health care,
comfort, safety, freedom, or hope.
Bear them up with your hand; shelter them under your wing.

We offer you our energy, our abilities, our possessions.
Show us how you would have us use our gifts for the benefit of others.

We pray for all your church.
Give us grace to live in fellowship with all whom you are drawing to yourself,
including those whom we would prefer went away.

We thank you for all the ways you have nourished and sustained us.
We praise you for your love.

Kirtland pilgrimage

2011-09-18T21:15:00.004-04:00

I just returned from the Affirmation conference, which was held this year in Kirtland and Cleveland, and I want to "debrief." This was the first Affirmation conference I've attended in something like seven years.

The highlight for me was the Sunday morning events held at the Kirtland Temple, which Community of Christ very hospitably made available to us. I went early in the morning, sat in the garden on the temple grounds, and chanted most of D&C 109, the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer (minus some petitions to which I can't say "Amen" in good conscience). Then I attended a testimony meeting in the lower court of the temple, which was rather raw, as you might imagine. I gave the closing prayer, which went like this:

Holy God,
our spiritual forebears built this place to be a sanctuary of your holiness.
They built it in the faith and hope
that here you would endow them with power from on high,
so that they could go forth from this place in the power of your Spirit,
to carry out your work in the world.

Send us out in the power of your Spirit
to do your work,
to love and to serve,
to magnify our talents,
to be a blessing in the lives of others.
In Christ's name we pray, amen.

The testimony meeting was followed by a devotional, near the end of which everyone stood to sing "The Spirit of God."

When we had toured the temple the day before, I'd felt underwhelmed by the building, which didn't look as "polished" and elegant as it does in photographs. (I suspect it's a trick of how the photos are lit.) But sitting in the temple this morning, during the devotional, I felt I better appreciated what a lovely building it is, white and full of sunlight. The pulpits are quite distinctive. And it was weird to think that Joseph and Emma and others actually sat in those pulpits or in these pews.

************

On a more sour note:

The devotional was attended by at least one LDS missionary couple from the historic Kirtland village, down the hill from the temple. I was surprised to see them there, and the more I think about it, the less pleasant I find that surprise. Their presence casts a shadow on the conference experience for me. A positive reading of their presence is that we're building bridges. A more suspicious reading is that this, like the Tabernacle invite to gay activists last Christmas, was a cheap way for the church to build goodwill. It was a cheap way to try to prevent further embarrassing protests outside their temples.

Unfortunately, I've seen too many people get screwed by church officials, myself included, not to be suspicious. The LDS Church is going to have to work a hell of a lot harder to win my trust. I feel like Prior in Angels in America: "Answer me: Inside. Bruises? . . . Come back to me when they're visible. I want to see black and blue, . . . , I want to see blood. Because I can't believe you even have blood in your veins till you show it to me."

I'm a little surprised to realize how angry I feel about this.

************

And then a sad, wistful note:

At the temple gift shop, I bought a lovely little illustrated history of Community of Christ whose coauthors included David Howlett and John Hamer, two young scholars I know. It made me feel jealous. David and John are doing work for Community of Christ that I would love to be doing for a liberal LDS Church, which of course doesn't exist. I've known for a decade that this is what I want; I accept that like most people who have lived and do live in this world, I can't have what I want. But I still feel jealous and sad and self-pitying about it.

9/11 Anniversary

2011-09-11T20:30:00.002-04:00

Creator, Sustainer, Peacegiver,
Crucified and Risen One,

Dona nobis pacem. Grant us peace.

Grief for the loss of all who died on 9/11 and for all who have died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Prayers for all those who have lost loved ones during this decade of violence.

Prayers for all who have been wounded in body or spirit.

Prayers for all who are trying to rebuild lives broken by terrorism and war.

I mean all. Not just "ours." All.

Including my enemies, whatever that means. I add that part because you told me to. I don't really understand what I'm supposed to be thinking or feeling or asking for, exactly, when I pray for them.

God bless America. God bless Afghanistan. God bless Iraq. God bless Iran. God bless Libya. God bless Syria. God bless Saudi Arabia. God bless Israel. God bless Palestine.

Risen One, I pray that destruction may somehow be transformed into genuine lasting good.

Give a spirit of wisdom to the leaders of the nations, if in fact that prayer corresponds to anything you can actually do. Give them a spirit of respect for justice and the rule of law.

In Christ's name, amen.

9/4/91 - Waiting to serve

2011-09-04T18:06:00.004-04:00

I don't remember exactly what I was doing twenty years ago in early September. I was in the holding period between my mission call (early August) and actually departing for my mission (early October). I'm annoyed that I can't remember what I was doing that period. I assume I was living at home? Was this the brief period when I worked as a bagger at the supermarket?

I do remember I attended the temple rather frequently. Loved the endowment. In the year leading up to my mission call, I attended the temple every Thursday afternoon using a baptisms-only recommend. Since I wasn't endowed, I could only be baptized, not baptize—though I remember being the voice for confirmations once. The baptistry director told me they'd put me to work officiating as soon as I was endowed. But once I'd been endowed, I never went back to the basement; all I did after that were endowments and the occasional session of initiatories and sealings. I feel a little bad about that.

Anyway, I attended the temple pretty frequently in the two months before my mission. What I didn't do during those two months, and wish I had, was learn more about the Dominican Republic. The problem was, my parents were encouraging me to do that, and since the mission was supposed to be my transition to adulthood and independence, I resisted doing what they wanted.

So here are the kinds of facts I wish I'd read up on.

First, a map of the DR—or rather, of the island of Hispaniola. I've made a point of including Haiti, though it usually gets cut off the left-hand side of most maps of the DR, and what little of it you see is often left blank. Out of sight, out of mind. A good number of Dominicans would like it that way. Actually, finding a map online that included both countries was harder than I expected.

Quick history: Inhabited by Tainos before Columbus; they get wiped out pretty quick after 1492. The Spaniards' first New World settlements are here. In the late 1700s, the island passes to French control and after the Haitian Revolution becomes the site of the world's first independent black republic. The Spanish-speaking population declare independence from Haiti in 1844 (a few months before Joseph Smith's death). Subsequently, the Dominican Republic's political history is tumultuous until the efficient but brutal dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, 1930s-1950s. At the time I served my mission, one of Trujillo's cronies, Joaquin Balaguer, was president. The DR was invaded by the US twice, both times to quell political instability perceived as incompatible with US interests. The first time was in 1916, the second was 1965.

The CIA World Factbook (if you can't trust them to know, who will?) tells me that 70% of the Dominican population is urban. This is part of a global trend toward urbanization. Considering that Mormon tradition has a special focus on God as a city planner—as Someone who has definite ideas about the kind of city human beings ought to create—I'd love to see Mormons talking more about urbanization and the gospel. How can we contribute to building up cities that come closer to the pattern of Zion?

The population of the DR is currently just under 10 million. For comparison, that's about half a million more than the population of North Carolina, the last state I lived in, and about two million less than Ohio, where I now live. The DR is five times as populous as Utah. That's a lot of people on a small island. About a third of them live in the capital, Santo Domingo.

Over 40% of Dominicans live below the poverty line. The comparable figure for the U.S. is a little over 10%, but I understand that the measure of poverty isn't the same: I suspect that the DR starts out with a lower standard of poverty than the U.S. It's a poor country, is what I'm saying. However, in Haiti, on the other side of the island, the population living below the poverty line is 80%.

Does this all seem dry? I have mental pictures to go with these statistics. Neighborhoods. Homes. Families. Individuals.

There may be a million Haitians living illegally in the DR. Note that's about a tenth of the figure I gave for the DR's population. They work shit jobs, sometimes (e.g., in the sugar fields) as virtual slaves.

Meanwhile, there are over a million Dominicans and Dominican Americans in the U.S., with New York being the biggest population center.

Internet service is apparently widely available in the DR now. Electricity, I understand, is still irregular (i.e., frequent outages) but improving. UNICEF tells me that 86% of the population has access to safe drinking water, but I don't know if that means you can drink tap water yet or not. You couldn't when I was there—safe water meant bottled water.

There's a subway now in Santo Domingo—I was blown away to learn that. It's been operating since 2009. The pictures I've seen online look so . . . contemporary. Which is strange because of how it clashes with my memories of the run-down taxis and buses we used to ride in.

Enough. I'm having doubts about the utility of this exercise. What do these facts really tell you about the place? Maybe you do just have to get there and see these realities before they become meaningful.

************

ADDENDUM: Rising into consciousness this morning as the dog demanded her walk, I had an epiphany: Part of what bothers me about this exercise is that I don't have a good sense of the historical "Why's." Why do 40% of Dominicans live below the poverty line? Why did the public transportation system consist of run-down taxis and buses? Why hadn't the government created drinkable tap water? Why does electricity remain intermittently available? How did all these realities come to be?

The answer would be complex, I presume, and would involve slavery, Spanish feudalism, colonialism, perhaps the terrain and the difficulties it presented for creating a stronger central government, corruption, foreign debt, the power dynamics of international commerce. I have this vague sense that my country, and other First World countries, are largely to blame—we're indifferent, or we're interested in the DR for the wrong, selfish, exploitative reasons. But I don't carry in my head a succinct historical account for the origins of Dominican poverty—or Haitian poverty. I wish I did. I presume economic historians could give me an answer, or multiple competing answers, to that question. Is there somewhere I could find that readily, as close to my fingertips as Wikipedia? There ought to be.

8/1/91 - Mission call

2011-09-01T20:06:00.003-04:00

Twenty years and one month ago today, a letter was signed by a machine replicating the signature of Ezra Taft Benson, calling me to serve in the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo East Mission.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around how much time has passed since then. More time has passed between that mission call and today than passed between my birth and my mission call. My God, I'm middle-aged.

I don't feel it because I don't have kids. I probably have mission companions who are within just a couple years of sending their first sons on missions.

Or let's put this another way: Almost as much time has passed between my mission and now as had passed for my father between the time he served his mission and I served mine.

That's weird to think about because, of course, my father served his mission before I was born, and anything that happened before I was born is ancient history. But 1991—that feels like just a decade ago.

A real decade ago, 2001-2003, I "relived" my mission over that two-year period by rereading every day the journal entry I had written exactly ten years previously. (I kept a voluminous missionary journal. Which no one will ever see if I have anything to say about it.) Then, every Sunday, 2000s me would write a letter to 1990s me commenting on what had happened to 1990s me during that past week—offering advice, consolation, etc.

Weird as it might sound, I found it a fruitful spiritual discipline. It helped me see how I had changed over those ten years. It helped me get clear about what I valued from my past Mormon experience and what I was glad I had left behind.

I've decided that I want to do a similar kind of extended observance of the 20th anniversary of my mission. But this time around, I don't want it to be so much about me. I want this to be an occasion to reconnect with the Dominican Republic. Hell, maybe I'll even move past the computer screen and try to reconnect with some actual people. That should be feasible with missionary companions at least, even if it's tougher with Dominicans.

This will be a fast Sunday discipline. Once a month, I'll blog about where I was and who I was with 20 years ago. And with the continuing democratization of technology, it's easier now than it was 10 years ago to do things like find satellite images, and even YouTube videos, of the places I lived 20 years ago. So you'll be getting that kind of thing.

It should be as interesting to readers as missionary slide shows have ever been. (Which is to say: it won't be.) But let's be frank, this blog has always been a pretty selfish endeavor—I do this mostly for me—so that won't be new.

Why reconnect with the past like this? Because my mission remains the spiritual highpoint of my life. Or to use a different metaphor (at the risk of getting rococco or New Agey or something), my mission is a well of spiritual energies that I've drawn from in the past and would like to draw on again. It was the time in my life when I was most intensely focused on other people and their needs. It was the closest I ever came, and ever will come, to full-time ministry. It was the time in my life when the LDS Church came closest to working for me—when I came closest to experiencing the kind of Christ-infused community that the church can be at its best. It was the time in my life when my testimony was formed—when I became convinced that the Spirit works through Mormonism.

So I keep looking back to my mission. But I don't want the next two years to be so much about looking back as looking back out. Back out at the Dominican Republic, not as it is in my memories, but as it is now. Back out at the people I knew then, who have gone on living outside my memories, with their own transformations and challenges and joys.

That's the idea, anyway. It will be what it will be. Whatever it ends up being, I ask God to consecrate this performance for the welfare of my soul.

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-28T08:22:00.002-04:00

There shall be a tabernacle
providing shade from the heat in the daytime
and a place of refuge and shelter from storm and rain.
(2 Nephi 14:6)

I'm praying for those in the path of Irene, especially in North Carolina.

New school year

2011-08-21T22:54:00.005-04:00

I teach my first classes of Fall 2011 tomorrow. It's been a crazy few days, finishing up syllabi. With the last-minute dissertation defense and the out-of-state move, I haven't had as much time as I normally do to put my classes together, so it's been an unusually hectic process this time around. I still have to finish getting the online components of the course in place.

It's very late, and I need to get some sleep. But I want to do a virtual version of my old custom of dedicating my classrooms. I used to do this back when I taught at the University of Utah: I would go into each of my classrooms a couple days before the beginning of the semester, while there was no one around, and pray. Then the custodians tightened up security and started locking the classrooms, so I couldn't do it anymore, at least not as physically present.

So here's a "distance" version. If we can have distance learning, why not a distant classroom dedication?

God of Light, Master Teacher, Spirit of Truth—

You have taught your children to seek learning by study.
You have urged us to seek words of wisdom from the best books.
You have urged us to gain a knowledge of history and of countries; things which have been and are; things at home and abroad; the conflicts and perplexities of the nations.
You have taught us to magnify our talents and to use our gifts in the service of our fellow beings.

I pray for the students I will serve this semester as their teacher.
I pray that I can inspire them with enthusiasm for the subjects we study; that I will be guided to discern clearly the connections that will make this material relevant and useful for them.
I pray that I can help them develop their intellectual gifts, their critical acumen. I pray that I can help them pursue their interests in ways that they find fruitful.
I pray that I will be inspired to provide them with effective feedback.
I pray that I will be led to be appropriately demanding and supportive.
I pray for the gifts of effective communication and discerning judgment.

I dedicate the classrooms in which I will teach this semester to be temples of the Spirit of knowledge.
I pray these rooms be filled with the Light that illuminates the mind and enlarges the understanding.
I pray these rooms be dwelling places of the Spirit that reasons and edifies.
I pray that here there be no influence maintained except by persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, and love unfeigned, without hypocrisy.

May my performance this semester be consecrated for the welfare of my students.
May their performance this semester make some lasting difference in the magnifying of their talents and in their ongoing progress into their full potential.

In Christ's name, amen.

Catching up

2011-08-07T21:02:00.004-04:00

The past couple of weeks have been crazy—we just moved out of North Carolina to Ohio, where I'll be teaching for the next year. I haven't been online in several days as a result, so let me do some catching up.

First, gratitude for a safely completed move: "Eternity was our covering, and our rock, and our salvation, as we journeyed" (Abr. 2:16).

On our last night in North Carolina, I fed the cats for the last time, then stood there in the dark and prayed for them in the most powerful way I know, making the signs of the holy priesthood, as in a temple prayer circle. I named the cats individually, I thanked God that my friend Jill put me in touch with the organization that's going to take over feeding them . . . and then I really didn't know what to say beyond that except to commend the cats into God's hands. But that's already where they are, so that prayer makes no practical difference in their lives. The prayer left me feeling powerless: this was the most potent kind of prayer in my tradition's repertoire, and it still doesn't change anything. I do it because I can no longer do anything else for these animals. And then I sat on my steps and blubbered for a little while as one of the cats, Huga, stood a couple feet away, staring at me with those enormous yellow eyes of hers, mewing plaintively and waiting for me to do for her whatever it is she's always hoping I'll do.

And speaking of grief and loss, I read this morning that Marion D. Hanks and Chieko Okazaki have both died. Why is it the liberals die young while decrepit conservative patriarchs just go on and on? Bargains with the devil, I assume.

I once had the opportunity to have dinner with Chieko, at the home of a friend who had served his mission in Japan under the leadership of Chieko and her husband. I couldn't figure out if she was savvily resisting the church's dominant conservative ethos, or if she was naively doing her thing without recognizing that people in high places would find it problematic. It's hard to imagine that she could advance as high as she did in church leadership if she were simply naive rather than savvy—but then again, maybe a liberal needs to be naive to function in the system. I really don't know. Of course, she wasn't all that liberal—neither was Marion Hanks—but she was about as liberal as you can probably be in the LDS Church without having your faithfulness become suspect. I hope there are great things for both these individuals to do beyond the veil.

Thanks for the Advocate

2011-07-24T19:55:00.003-04:00

Today the Church of the Advocate bid a liturgical farewell to Hugo and me in anticipation of our impending move. Some of the songs that were chosen for today's service were related to the two of us in different ways, including the new lyrics Hugo and I wrote for the hymn "Earth and All Stars" (which I don't think I've ever posted to this blog, have I? I'll have to do that sometime). Since today was Pioneer Day, and since I was cantor, I also slipped "Come, Come Ye Saints" into the service—it appears in the Episcopal hymnal, but the lyrics have been revised to make it less pioneer-y and more generically Christian.

At the end of the service, everyone gathered in close to lay hands on Hugo and I (or to lay hands on someone laying hands on us, like a big net), and there was a final blessing to send us forth. (Hugo and I had had the vicar's family to our home for dinner a week or so before, during which he and I had given her a Mormon-style blessing as gratitude for her ministry.)

The Advocate has been our spiritual home while we've been in North Carolina. I'd been quite active in a Hispanic Episcopal congregation back in Salt Lake City, but then that ended in a contentious way, and when we came out to North Carolina, I wasn't looking for a new church. But Hugo found the Advocate's website, and we liked what we saw. They were a new mission—just completing their first year—and they talked on the website about their commitment to "radical hospitality," which both attracted me and made me nervous: I anticipated we'd be worshiping alongside schizophrenic homeless people. It wasn't quite like that. But the congregation has been rather eclectic, with all kinds of people passing through: young families, seniors, graduate students, gay/lesbian couples, interfaith marriages, multiracial families, Obama zealots, quiet Republicans, prisoners on furlough, a very vocal young adult with autism. Plus a pair of Mormons in exile.

I don't have time right now to gush about the Advocate the way I'd like to. It's been a welcoming community for us during our time here. The Advocate was happy to be my home even when I didn't want to claim it as my home. For the first four or five years, I was standoffish: I was a Mormon in exile, not an Episcopalian, and I guarded that barrier by abstaining from communion. Eventually, I started communing because I didn't feel right holding people at arm's length who were making a point of welcoming me, though in my head I always recited the LDS sacrament prayers at the same time the priest was blessing the bread and wine. When I was being excommunicated, a member of the Advocate's liturgical community, who was also a pretty close friend, called me at home to say that the Advocate was available to help me ritually mark this transition in my life in some way if I'd like that. I didn't take them up on that offer, but I appreciated it.

The Advocate has given me opportunities to use my gifts to serve others and to glorify God in worship. I'm grateful for that. I've been surprised and moved by what a big deal has been made of our moving away. Hugo and I were hardly pillars of this community (certainly not financially: we could have done more on that front than we did, I'm ashamed to say). But people have evidently valued what contributions we've made to the community's life. As I'm writing these words, I'm realizing this can be read as calculated modesty. And I won't deny that my ego derives gratification from the discovery that we're valued. But it has been a genuinely surprising discovery, which leaves me feeling more grateful and embarrassed and sad and ashamed than anything else.

Blessed be the name of my God,
who has been mindful of us,
wanderers in a strange land.
(Alma 26:36)

Blessed, honored pioneers!

2011-07-24T08:11:00.002-04:00

Pioneer Day, and the first day that same-sex marriages are being performed in New York state. As if that weren't already queerly appropriate (get it, get it?), one of the very first people to be married under the new law, Kitty Lambert, is apparently from a Mormon background.

I love it.

I think I hear the sound of gnashing of teeth in Salt Lake City.

But let's end this post on a more positive note than that:

They, the builders of the nation,
blazing trails along the way;
stepping stones for generations
were their deeds of every day.
Building new and firm foundations,
pushing on the wild frontier,
forging onward, ever onward,
blessed, honored Pioneer!

As an ensign to the nation,
they unfurled the flag of truth,
pillar, guide, and inspiration
to the hosts of waiting youth.
Honor, praise, and veneration
to the founders we revere!
List our song of adoration,
blessed, honored Pioneer!

Lame poetry, but it's the sentiment that counts.

God's word for job creators

2011-07-23T18:39:00.006-04:00

In line with the Republicans' new strategy of referring to the rich as "job creators"—as in, "Don't raise taxes on the job creators"—here are some things the scriptures have to say to that group:

God has pulled the mighty down from their seats
and has raised up the lowly.
God has filled the hungry with good things
and has turned the job creators away empty-handed.
(Luke 1:52-53)

Congratulations to the poor: God has named you heirs to his fortune!
Congratulations to the hungry: you will eat your fill!
Tough luck for the job creators: you already received your compensation package!
Tough luck for the well-fed: it will be your turn to go hungry!
(Luke 6:20-21, 24-25)

Note that the poor inherit the kingdom simply because God deeds it to them—like when someone leaves you an inheritance in their will. The poor don't earn the kingdom through their ingenuity and enterprising spirit and hard work. To those who do get ahead in life through their ingenuity and enterprising spirit and hard work, God says, "Well then, since you've already made your fortune, I don't need to include you in my will. I'll leave the kingdom and its riches to those who don't have so much." That's the way Jesus' God works. He doesn't buy into Ben Franklin's "God helps those who help themselves" philosophy.

Wo to the job creators,
who are rich as to the things of the world.
For because they are convinced
that they earned their wealth through their effort,
they despise the poor and persecute the lowly.
And their hearts are upon their treasures;
therefore their treasure is their god.
And with their treasure, they will perish.
(2 Nephi 9:30)

And it came to pass
that the people were all converted to the Lord.
They had all things common among them;
therefore, there were neither job creators nor poor.
(4 Nephi 1:2-3)

Capitalism—the economic system of an unconverted people.

And then there's this classic story from the New Testament:

A certain job creator said to Jesus,
"Good Master, what should I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus said to him,
"You know the Ten Commandments."
The job creator said,
"Yes, and I have kept all of them since I was young."
Jesus said,
"Then all that remains for you to do is this:
Restructure your business as a co-op
and deed it to the workers, with no compensation to yourself.
Then liquidate all your other assets
and donate everything to programs helping low-income people—
all your wealth will be in heaven!—
and come follow me."
When the job creator heard this,
he was bitterly disappointed,
for his business was very profitable,
and despite the validating capitalist mythology that says profits go back into the company,
he had become filthy rich.
When Jesus saw how disappointed the job creator was, he said,
"How hard it is for a job creator to enter God's kingdom!"

I'm aware that because I'm a First Worlder, all the scriptures' warnings to the rich apply to me by default.

Consummatum est

2011-07-20T22:30:00.002-04:00

Today I turned my completed dissertation over to my committee. The past several weeks have been hectic: Finishing the last chapter. Writing the intro and the conclusion and various prefatory matter. Cleaning up the footnotes—a big operation: there were over 700 of them, and I'd just been sketching them really roughly as I drafted. Compiling the bibliography—which I still do by hand, rather than with these newfangled automatic programs, which strike me as more bother than help (though check back in for a second opinion as soon as a publisher makes me reformat all my citations).

It's a relief to be done. I wrapped up around the same time as the four-year anniversary of my excommunication (July 17), whatever significance that has. I celebrated (the dissertation, not the excommunication) by buying myself a bottle of merengue, this Dominican cream soda I liked on my mission, which is now available in the Mexican foods aisle at my local Food Lion.

And now I wait for the defense and start working on revising the manuscript and shopping around for a publisher. Oh, and finalizing the classes I teach in the fall and gearing up for another round on the job market.

I owe thanks to—and for—a whole lot of people and institutions who helped me get to this point. In my mind, I'm placing the acknowledgments section of my dissertation on the altar and praying on behalf of the persons whose names are listed there.

July Taize service

2011-07-20T22:19:00.002-04:00

This post is weeks late, but here are the readings and prayers I created (adapting, as usual, from other sources) for the first-Friday Taize service earlier this month. That was the last Taize service I will lead in North Carolina since we move to Ohio at the beginning of August.

I was drawn to an oceanic theme.

**********

JONAH 2:2-7, 9

Out of my distress, Holy One, I called to you,
and you answered me;
out of the abyss I cried,
and you heard my voice.
When I had been hurled into the ocean,
into the middle of the open sea,
the floods engulfed me;
breakers and billows swept over me.

I thought I was far from your sight.
I thought I would never again see your holy temple!
The waters closed in over me,
the depths swallowed me up.
I sank to the roots of the earth,
seaweed twined around my head.
I descended to that land from which no one returns—
yet you brought me up again, alive, from the pit!

When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered the Holy One.
From your holy temple, far away,
you heard my prayer.
And so, with shouts of thanksgiving,
I bring you a sacrificial offering!
What I have vowed, I will perform,
for the Holy One has delivered me!

************

ROMANS 8:35, 37-39

Can anything separate us from Christ’s love?
Hardship?
Distress?
Persecution?
Famine?
Poverty?
Peril?
Violence?

No!
Over all these things, we are victorious
through the One who loved us.

I am convinced
that neither death nor life,
no power in the heavens or on the earth,
nothing present or future,
in the heights or in the depths—
I say, absolutely nothing
can ever separate us
from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

************

MARK 4:35-40

When evening came,
Jesus said to his disciples,
“Let us sail over to the other side.”

So they left the crowd
and got into the boat.

A terrible storm arose.
The waves crashed over the boat
and began to swamp it.

Yet Jesus was in the stern,
sound asleep on a pillow.

The disciples shook him awake.
They cried, “Rabbi!
Don’t you care that we are about to die?”

Jesus got up.
He rebuked the wind and the sea.
"Enough!" he commanded. "Quiet down!"

The wind stopped.
A dead calm came over the sea.

Jesus said to the disciples,
"Why were you afraid?"

************

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION

Jesus Christ, holy and mighty—
by your Spirit, give courage to all who face adversity.

To all who face illness, disability, or death—
give them courage, Mighty One.

To all who face financial distress or uncertainty—
give them courage, Mighty One.

To all who are reorganizing their lives
after the loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship—
give them courage, Mighty One.

To all who face new challenges they are not confident they can handle—
give them courage, Mighty One.

To all who feel trapped in circumstances they are afraid to try to change—
give them courage, Mighty One.

To all who stand against injustice or oppression—
give them courage, Mighty One.

To all who are afraid of the new world that you are bringing into being—
a world of broken barriers and overturned traditions—
give them courage, Mighty One.

************

CONCLUDING PRAYER

Jesus—
We live in the midst of uncertainty and danger.
At times our fears and anxieties overwhelm us.
Yet we know that we are never outside of your loving embrace.
You say to us: "Do not be afraid."
And we trust you.

Cats

2011-06-26T23:21:00.010-04:00

"Adam, Eve—we have caused this earth to be filled with all kinds of plant and animal life. We give all these things into your care and charge you to be wise and faithful stewards of them." (Endowment 2010)

The photo (click to enlarge) shows most of the feral cats I've been feeding. From left to right: Leo, Tiger, Chaplin, Hugolino, Tom, Huga, Cinnamon, Sam, Scampers, Grouchy Mama. Not pictured: Lucifer and her three kittens: Spunky, Leopard, and Oscar.

Tonight some folks from Independent Animal Rescue came out to trap several of the cats; they'll be back in a couple nights for the rest. Jill, a friend of mine, who's a cat lover, put me in touch with IAR. They'll spay or neuter the cats and return them. There's talk of setting up a feeding station (!) which the organization will tend once we've moved away. It's what they call a "managed colony."

Tonight they trapped Lucifer and all three of her kittens, as well as Hugolino, Grouchy Mama, and Scampers, plus Tom, who didn't really need to be trapped since he's a domestic stray: they just picked him up and put him in the carrier. Hugolino will be neutered and returned, but Lucifer's kittens are young enough that IAR is going to try to get them adopted.

Hugolino, by the way, appears to be a sibling of the kitten Hugo and I tended for a day about a month ago. That kitten, Hugolina (note the feminine ending), has disappeared. I don't know if that means she didn't make it, or if she managed to win over some other human.

Various news

2011-06-25T17:05:00.002-04:00

Same-sex marriage is legal in New York state. The stone may not be rolling forward, but it's at least creaking forward.

I watch footage of gay and lesbian people talking about how excited they are now to be able to marry in their home state, and I think: How can LDS leaders and other conservative Mormons not be moved by this? I get, cerebrally, all your arguments against homosexuality and gay marriage: I understand your world view. But I really don't get how you can not be touched by the joy of people talking about how they want to formalize their intimate relationships. "How is it that ye are so hard in your hearts?" (1 Nephi 7:8).

************

Continuing prayers for the Saudi women drivers. Prayers of thanks for the expressions of support they've received from world leaders, Hillary Clinton and the EU's Catherine Ashton among others.

Continuing prayers for those fighting oppressive regimes in Yemen, Syria, Libya. I pray that despite being conscious that some of the people that prayer covers may not represent great alternatives. But I have faith, or at least hope, in change.

Saudi women protest driving ban

2011-06-17T20:47:00.004-04:00

Read the story

Since hearing a story about this protest on NPR last night, I've been thinking about the protesters and the men (e.g., husbands) who support them. It's mind-boggling that there's still a country where women are legally banned from driving. And of course that ban is just symbolic of a host of restrictions to which Saudi women are subject.

As a lefty-ish academic, I hear that voice in my head chastising me for being a cultural imperialist who presumes to judge other societies by my values. But no. "Male and female are alike to God," say my scriptures, and that's the standard by which I'm going to judge. If the Gods will gender equity—and I believe They do—then They are on the side of the protesters. Which means that the clerics who legislate female inequality and the government officials who enforce it are on the wrong side of heaven, as are the supermajority of Saudi women who reportedly support these inequalities. On this subject, I am not going to subordinate my ethical judgments to majority rule in the name of cultural pluralism. The little minority of troublemaking women drivers are doing what's right.

God be with them as they take the risk of pushing the envelope. Historically, the character arc for that role involves things like ridicule and imprisonment and beatings and even martrydom—so say my scriptures again. Hopefully, the situation in Saudi society is "thawing" enough already that this story can end more happily.

Pentecost

2011-06-12T22:12:00.004-04:00

The Church of the Advocate held its Pentecost service as a picnic, so I went to church in a t-shirt today. I chose the "Kirtland 1836" t-shirt Hugo brought for me from a visit he made a little while back to the Kirtland Temple. I chose it for two reasons: (1) It was burgundy, which was the closest thing I had in my wardrobe to red, the liturgical color for Pentecost. (2) The Kirtland Temple dedication was Mormonism's reenactment of the Pentecost outpouring.

A couple Sundays ago, I had the opportunity to preach at the Advocate. The Gospel reading for the day was John 14:15-21. It's a passage particularly relevant to this worshipping community because it's the first passage in which Jesus promises to send the Paraclete, a word that the KJV translates as "Comforter" but the NRSV translates as "Advocate." In my sermon, I pointed out that Pentecost is the feast that celebrates the fulfillment of that promise. The Spirit dwells in Jesus' disciples—in all who love him. How richly we experience the Spirit's indwelling depends on how fully and conscientiously and whole-heartedly we keep Jesus' commandments, especially his command to love and serve. But from the moment we said "Yes" to Jesus' call, we became part of the Christian community, the community in which the Spirit dwells by definition.

That means the Spirit dwells in me, even if it isn't always readily apparent from my behavior. The Spirit dwells in all who have come to Christ by coming to the Church of the Advocate. And while I didn't say this in my sermon, the Spirit also dwells in all who have come to Christ by coming to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Have received that same Spirit, we have become Christ's body—all of us together. That's a mystery I don't understand.

Gay marriage drama--plus kittens

2011-05-31T21:47:00.004-04:00

There's a rally planned at our state capitol in a couple days to protest a proposed amendment to the state constitution that, depending on the final language, could not only define marriage as "the union of one man and one woman at one time" (hmm... would Mormons in this state even blink before voting in favor of that definition?) but could also rule out any kind of legal recognition for domestic partnerships. The state university I've been attending here has allowed me to purchase health insurance for my domestic partner as if he were a spouse: would the university be able to keep allowing that if this amendment passes? I can certainly see how the proposed language could be cited in court to squash it.

I probably won't be able to attend the rally, so I've spent part of this evening sending the following letter to my state representatives and senator:

Dear ------ :

I'm writing to urge you to vote against HB 777/SB 106.

North Carolina has been my home for the past seven years, since I moved here accompanied by my partner of over ten years. Last year, the two of us were legally married in Washington DC. If we were an opposite-sex couple, our marriage would be recognized by the state of North Carolina; because we are a same-sex couple, it is not. Consequently, we live without a host of benefits--and obligations--that accrue under the law to married couples in this state. We've had to go to lengths that heterosexual married couples don't have to go to in order, for example, to try to secure the legal right to make life-or-death decisions for one another in the case of incapacitation.

HB 777/SB 106 reinforces prejudice against same-sex couples in this state. Underneath whatever positive spin its supporters put on it, this proposed constitutional amendment is prejudicial, plain and simple. I plead with you--please say no to this attempt to perpetuate discrimination against couples like my husband and me.

Yes, we're legally married--or as legal as we can get at this point in time. It happened just before New Year's. I didn't post anything about it at the time because my mother was still alive, and I didn't want her to know, since I suspected it wouldn't please her. I was planning to formally announce it to cyberspace in a blog post on our 6-month anniversary. But--cat's out of the bag now.

************

Also this evening, I signed an online petition for people of faith against LGBT discrimination. When it came time to identify my religious tradition, I put "Latter Day Saint." No hyphen, capital D. It seemed like the most precise way to identify. I think it's the first time I've formally claimed that label.

************

On a different subject: kitten drama. Another litter was born recently. A couple days ago, some neighborhood kids found them, took them home, parents wouldn't let them keep them--so they just turned them loose again, but not back where they found them. Two have now disappeared as far as I know. A third found its way to our downstairs neighbors. I took it off their hands and kept in the apartment through the rest of the day, with the idea that when I went out to feed the cats in the evening, I'd try to return it to the mother. The kitten was sociable and cute. She spent a good part of the day sleeping wrapped up in a towel, which she evidently enjoyed--she would burrow deep inside it.

That evening I returned her to mom, who after some uncertainty was ready to take her back. But then the kitten didn't seem to want to go back. I'd set her down in front of mom, and she'd turn around and toddle right back to me. It was like a damn Disney movie, and the cussing is because, yes, I admit it, I got misty. Finally, mom got a hold of the nape of her neck and carried her off to their hiding place under the sidewalk. The next morning, as I was walking the dog, the kitten popped right out to say hello, and I beat a hasty retreat. I haven't seen her since; mom seems to have moved her.

However, this afternoon I stepped out of the apartment and found mom standing on the steps, staring at me. Since she's never done that before, I take it to mean she thinks I have her other kittens, which is heart-wrenching. Damn meddling neighborhood kids.

Why is there blood on your skirts, Sharon Slater?

2011-05-27T21:29:00.005-04:00

If you don't get the title of this post, read Helaman 9:26-35 and this news story.

I'm so angry, I find it hard to talk about this coherently.

It was not unpredictable, but it's still appalling, to see Mormons forging an alliance with a paranoid, violence-inflaming homophobe like Martin Ssempa.

I can empathize right now with the anger that produces a prayer like this:

Have mercy, O Lord,
on the wicked mob who have driven your people,
that they may cease to spoil,
that they may repent of their sins
if repentance is to be found.

But if they will not, . . .
and if it cannot be otherwise,
that the cause of your people may not fail before you,
may your anger be kindled,
and your indignation fall upon them,
that they may be wasted away,
both root and branch, from under heaven.

(D&C 109:50-52)

The problem is: God doesn't answer prayers like this. He doesn't intervene like this. That's the price we pay for agency. If we don't keep the Sharon Slaters and Martin Ssempas of the world from having their way with gay and lesbian people, no deus ex machina is going to save the day.

But if I thought God answers prayers like this, I would be praying it right now.

Of course, people on their side are praying right now that God will do these things to people like me.

Courage Campaign's "Testimony Video Contest"

2011-05-25T08:23:00.006-04:00

The Courage Campaign, a progressive organization in California that's been prominent in the anti-Prop 8 movement, has launched a "testimony video contest" in partnership with Dustin Lance Black, a former Mormon who is one of a handful of gay rights activists to whom the LDS Church has recently made symbolic friendly overtures. They're asking people to submit homemade videos of themselves telling their personal stories, which Black will then review to find the "new face" of the marriage equality movement.

That particular public relations aim pretty much rigs the contest in favor of affluent professionals who are conventionally masculine and feminine (no gender transgressiveness or ambiguity, please!), since despite the horror it generates on the right, the LGBT movement has become quite conservative in its understanding of what counts as "respectability." But that's not the main point I wanted to make here.

What intrigued me about this initiative is the way that Black overtly invokes the LDS practice of bearing testimony. In a video promoting the initiative, he describes how growing up Mormon, he was encouraged to bear his testimony in front of the congregation, which, he explains, means "getting up in front of everybody you know and saying what it is you know to be true."

One of the aspects of Mormonism that has always made me proud of the faith is this practice--this very democratic notion (at least in theory) that everyone is entitled to stand at the pulpit and declare the truth as they have come to understand it. When I first started speaking at rallies back in the run-up to the Iraq war, I was conscious that I was doing the same thing I had done back in my days as a missionary: publicly proclaiming the truth as I knew it. Whatever radical critique there is to be made of the LGBT movement today, it tickles me to see this Mormon ideal being placed in the service of progressive politics.

Thanksgiving

2011-05-22T21:08:00.003-04:00

Your Heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things.
(Matt. 6:32)

It's not that I believe in providential intervention—that would absurdly, even atrociously, presumptuous in a world where so many people don't get what they need. I'm fortunate, in the sense of lucky, and my soul's natural response is a feeling of grateful relief. So I give thanks.

Thanksgiving for Community House

2011-05-15T08:22:00.002-04:00

Earlier this week, the Chapel Hill town council passed a vote that allows Community House, a transitional housing facility, to proceed with plans to build a new location. The Episcopal church that Hugo and I attend has been part of the interfaith coalition supporting the move, which has been opposed by some residents of the neighborhood where the new facility will be built.

I give thanks that the vote passed, and I pray that residents' continuing concerns can be effectively addressed as the project moves forward. I pray for those in my community who have lost their homes or are in danger of losing their homes.

The lowly will thrive and progress,
and the Lord will give them joy;
the poor will rejoice in the Holy One.
(2 Nephi 27:30, adapted)

Osama bin Laden is dead

2011-05-02T08:44:00.005-04:00

Rejoice not when your enemy falls,
lest the Lord see it and it displease him.
(Prov. 24:17-18)

I say this as someone who has fantasized perfectly seriously about celebrating the (hopefully imminent) death of a certain apostle with champagne and a rousing chorus of "Ding, dong, the witch is dead."

That's a shameful thing to admit—and that's precisely my point.

I had mixed feelings when I heard that bin Laden was dead. Relief, of course. But also regret that the justice administered was vigilante justice, not legal justice in an international court.

But then I saw footage on the news of people basically dancing in the streets outside the White House, and I thought: This is perverse.

This is not an occasion for celebration. It's not an occasion to be waving our flag and chanting, "USA! USA!"

This man's death doesn't end jihadism. His death doesn't bring back the dead—in this country and others; all the dead on all sides of the conflicts unleashed by and leading up to 9/11. His death doesn't undo the abridgment of civil liberties or the outright atrocities that agents of this country have committed, and in some ways are still committing, as the fallout of 9/11.

People are cheering and chanting the death of Osama bin Laden because they feel avenged. I can empathize. There are people whose deaths I will be tempted to cheer and chant. And it's wrong.

I'm speaking here of Americans in general. I'm not going to presume to speak to the pain of individuals who lost loved ones at 9/11 or in the wars.

************

God of justice, God of life—

This was far from an ideal ending, though maybe it was the best that could be had.

If I pray that good may be brought out of this, does that make me complicit in what was done? I'd like to be clean from the blood, but maybe that's wishful thinking. Maybe it's supercilious.

I pray for all who have suffered, all who have lost loved ones, or homes, or limbs, or have been tortured, or imprisoned without due process, or suffered any kind of loss, because of 9/11, and the wars that followed, and the further terrorist attacks that followed.

I pray for all the dead, including your son, Osama bin Laden, whom you love and who has gone home to you. I have faith that's true, but I'm also sensing the cost required to make that statement true.

I pray for my enemies, though I don't know what to say more concretely than that.

In Christ's name, amen.

SLC March for Immigrants' Rights

2011-05-01T15:44:00.003-04:00

March For Immigrants’ and Workers’ Rights Tomorrow May 1 In Down Town SLC
(God bless the Mormon Worker!)

If I have my time zones correct, this march is just about to begin. What a great way to observe May Day—and, may I say, the Lord's day. I mean that seriously.

"Inasmuch as you do it to the least of these,
you do it to me."
(D&C 42:38)

For the Callejas family

2011-04-30T22:39:00.003-04:00

Immigration officials may deport Mormon branch president and family

Remember all your church, O Lord,
with all their families,
and all their immediate connections,
with all their sick and afflicted ones,
with all the poor and meek of the earth. (D&C 109:72)

Especially:
Felix Joaquin Callejas-Hernandez
Luca Margarita Castillo de Callejas
Jose Moroni Callejas-Castillo
Margarita Concepcion Callejas-Castillo

In Christ's name, amen.

************

I'm reminded also of these passages. Okay, granted, the Callejas family's situation isn't as drastic as the situations to which these texts allude; but when it comes to the pain this family's experiencing, the difference is more of degree than kind.

We owe an imperative duty
to ourselves, to our wives and children,
who have been made to bow down
with grief, sorrow, and care,
under the damning hand of oppression . . .
It is an iron yoke. (D&C 123:7)

[As usual, oppression is defended with pious claims about obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.]

Although you will be cast into trouble,
and into bars and walls,
your God will stand by you forever.
If your enemies fall upon you,
and tear you from the bosom of your wife,
and of your own offspring,
and your oldest son clings to your clothing,
saying, "My father, my father,
what can't you stay with us?"
and if then he be thrust from you,
and you be dragged to prison—
know this my son:
the Son of Man has descended below them all.
Hold on your way,
for God will be with you forever. (D&C 122:4, 6-9)

Easter Sunday

2011-04-24T08:31:00.002-04:00

The Omnipotent Lord,
who was and is from all eternity,
will come down from heaven
among the children of Adam and Eve
and dwell in a tabernacle of clay.

He will suffer temptations
and pain of body—
hunger and thirst and fatigue.

They will scourge him
and crucify him.

On the third day
he will rise from the dead,
and look! he stands to judge the world.

All these things are done
so that a righteous judgment
may come upon the children of Adam and Eve.

(Mosiah 3:5-10)

************

He will be led, crucified, and killed,
the Flesh becoming subject to death.
Thus God breaks the bands of death,
having gained victory over death,
giving the Flesh power
to make intercession for mortals—

having ascended into heaven
with the bowels of mercy,
being filled with compassion for mortals,
standing between them and condemnation,
having broken the bands of death
and purchased their freedom.

(Mosiah 15:7-9)

Good Friday

2011-04-23T00:43:00.004-04:00

Strictly speaking, it's Saturday now; but I forgot to post earlier. No Way of the Cross this year. It was cancelled at the last minute—evidently we'll walk under heat but not rain. In the evening I attended a Taize service at which I read part of John's passion narrative.

I encountered this icon online a few days ago. No information was available regarding the painter.

************

I looked and saw that the Lamb of God
was taken by the people;
the Son of the everlasting God
was judged of the world.
I saw and bear record.

I saw that he was lifted up on the cross
and killed...

After he was killed,
I saw that the great and spacious building,
which was the pride of the world, fell,
and its fall was exceedingly great.

(1 Nephi 11:32-34, 36)

************

He becomes the victim of empire to destroy empire.

Earth Day and green garments

2011-04-22T09:35:00.004-04:00

Okay, a little break from the somber tone of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I want to do my bit to promote the Green Garment Campaign, which was conceived by "Tophat" over at the blog "It's All About the Hat." The campaign is encouraging environmentally minded Latter-day Saints to send messages to the feedback link at Church Distribution (feedback@store.lds.org)proposing that the church expand the range of garment fabrics to include "green" options like wool or a cotton/hemp blend.

In a more literal sense, "green" garments are already available, i.e., in the color green, for LDS folks in the armed services. So, let's see... What are the odds that the church will be as solicitous toward members with environmental concerns as it has been to the needs of its members in the military?

That was a snarky question—and I will sincerely repent for that, in a spirit of humbled thanksgiving, if events prove that my snarkiness was unfair. But speaking seriously, it's hard to predict how church leadership might react to this campaign, assuming it gets off the ground enough to attract their notice. On the one hand, now that "going green" has become a respectable part of the corporate culture from which church administration often takes its cues, the church recently developed a "green"-certified model for meetinghouses. On the other hand, given the predominance of conservative Republicans in Mormonism and therefore in church administration, I really do suspect the campaign will tend to elicit within the bureaucracy a kneejerk reaction of, "Silly tree-huggers." Of course, even if there's sympathy for the proposal, the corporate machinery could decide it's not cost-effective, too little demand, etc.

Still, despite my natural pessimism, it's heartening to see folks anxiously engaged in a good cause, so I wish the Green Garment Campaign well. "O Lord, give them success" (Alma 31:32).

Maundy Thursday

2011-04-21T21:44:00.002-04:00

Just got back from the Maundy Thursday service. We meet in a lodge at a church camp outside town for a dinner featuring Mediterranean foods. Then there's footwashing and communion. Then the altar is stripped for Good Friday, the crucifix is wrapped in black cloth, all the tables and chairs are cleared away, and everyone gathers on the dark porch to sing a song based on Jesus' plea to the disciples to watch with him in Gethsemane and to hear Psalm 22 read by flashlight.

During dinner, Hugo and I were chatting with someone at our table, who we learned had lived in Congon during the 1970s as a Peace Corps volunteer. After that, he did a stint with USAID in Mali. He said that in Mali he deliberately didn't open himself up so much because he had opened himself in Congo and then found it painful to leave.

A little later, as supper was ending and I could hear the sounds of conviviality all around me, I thought that we're supposed to imagine Jesus experiencing a similar pain at gathering for what he knows is his last supper with his friends before he is taken from them. It's the sadness I'll feel when I walk out of the last Sunday service I attend here at the Advocate before I move away. Or the sadness I felt leaving the Dominican Republic at the end of my LDS mission. Even if you know that you'll get together again someday—still, something is ending. Your relationship, even if it's resumed in the future, will never quite be the same again. Jesus may break bread with his friends again in the future, but they'll do so on the far side of a rupture from which they have to look back on this last supper as part of something that was lost.

What does this mean for the Mormon dream of "together forever"?

Palm Sunday

2011-04-17T21:44:00.003-04:00

I cantored at the Palm Sunday service today. It was held outdoors at a park not far from my apartment. Began with a procession down the street with palms. A different species of palm than usual: these were "eco-palms." Apparently the people who harvest them are committed to not overharvesting and destroying bird habitats, plus there's no middleman.

Oh, I almost forgot. I also read the part of Judas in the passion narrative. I've been Caiphas in the past. Something about me must seem appropriate to the villains' roles.

Palm Sunday is about disillusion, false hopes, shattered expectations. You think the longed-for day has come, the kingdom is here, you're marching forward in triumph... And then it all falls apart. The authorities swoop in, everyone's running scattered, hiding out in windowless rooms. The peg you'd hung your hopes on has collapsed. You were duped. Nothing's turned out the way you thought it was going to. You put your faith in the wrong people.

Thank God! Glenn Beck

2011-04-07T22:17:00.005-04:00

And as long as I'm online, I have to post briefly a prayer of thanks at the news that Glenn Beck's television show is coming to an end. I'm not being ironic when I say that I'm offering a prayer of thanks. I wondered how long it would take even the people at Fox to decide he had gone too far. I will be disappointed if they decided he had gone too far only because he was losing viewers (not because they have the scruples they ought to).

I also have to pray that this move isn't just the prelude to his doing something worse.

A recurring figure in the Book of Mormon is a man who uses "flattering" or "cunning" words to stir people up to anger for unrighteous purposes. These figures function, literarily, as the anti-type of the prophets, who also use the power of speech to stir people up—in their case, of course, for righteous purposes. Glenn Beck thinks of himself as a prophet, who proclaims the truth and stirs people up to do good. I think he's the anti-type. And so I'm grateful that he will no longer have the high-profile platform he's enjoyed for the past couple of years.

This is not my doctrine:
to stir people's hearts up to anger
one against another.
But this is my doctrine:
that such things should be done away.
(3 Nephi 11:30)

I hear the rebuke that verse gives to me, too.

An acrostic psalm

2011-04-07T22:08:00.003-04:00

This is the psalm I prepared for the April Taize service. I'm posting it separately because it needs a little explanation. It's the first few verses of Psalm 34. Psalm 34 is an acrostic psalm in Hebrew, meaning that the first letter of each verse spells out the alphabet. I wanted to see if I could replicate the effect in English translation, but that proved very difficult to do. So instead, I approximated the effect of the acrostic by using alliteration within each verse—lots of initial A's in the first verse, lots of B's in the second, etc. I aimed to use enough alliteration to make the effect noticeable but not to the point of absurdity.

I have no idea if anyone listening to the psalm as it was being read actually noticed the alliteration—or even if the person reading it from the page noticed. But I thought it was fun. It introduced a playful element into the worship—or more precisely, it tried to preserve the playful element that's present in the Hebrew original.

************

PSALM 34:1-8

At all times, I will acclaim the Lord.
Adoration will be always on my lips.

I will boast of the Lord’s blessings,
to buoy up those who have been brought low.

Come, let us combine our voices in praise,
for the name of the Lord is without compare!

In the day of distress, I appealed to the Lord,
who delivered me from all danger.

Lift your eyes to the Lord, and you will be enveloped in glory;
no enemy will ever shame you.

The prayers of the afflicted fly to the Lord,
who will not fail to free them from misfortune.

A garrison of angels encircles the God-fearing,
to safeguard them from all foes.

Taste and see how good is the Lord!
How happy are those who take the Lord to be their haven!

April Taize service

2011-04-07T22:02:00.002-04:00

I just realized I didn't post the readings for the first-Friday Taize service, as I like to do. I attended the service this time as a regular participant, rather than as a musician. That was nice—it had been a stressful week, and I appreciated the chance to get spiritually recharged. I did prepare the readings and intercessions, though. I worked with the theme, "Christ, our reconciliation."

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2 CORINTHIANS 5:17-19

Those who enter into Christ
become a new creation.
The old passes away—
and look, everything becomes new!

This is the work of God,
who has been reconciled with us through Christ
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

Let me express it in different words:
In Christ, God was reconciled with the world,
absolving them of their offenses.
And God has entrusted to us the task
of announcing to the world this reconciliation.

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LUKE 15:11-24

Jesus said: A man had two sons.
The younger of them said to their father,
"Give me now the share of the estate
that is appointed for my inheritance."

So the father divided the estate between his sons.
Not long after this, the younger son gathered up his belongings
and went off to a distant country.
There he squandered his inheritance in self-indulgence.

After everything was spent,
that country was struck by famine,
and the son found himself in desperate need.
No one would give him anything.
At last he begged for work from a local landowner,
who sent him out to tend pigs.
He received little to eat and was so hungry
that he would have been glad to eat the pigs' fodder.

Finally, he knew what he must do.
He said, "My father’s hired hands have plenty to eat,
while here I am starving!
I will go back home and say to my father:
I have sinned against God and against you.
I do not deserve to be recognized as your son;
but please, take me in as a hired hand."

So he set off for home.
As he approached,
his father recognized him from the distance
and was overjoyed.
His father ran to meet him,
threw his arms around him,
and kissed him.

The son said,
"I have sinned against God and against you.
I do not deserve to be recognized as your son."

But his father called to the house: "Quickly!
Bring out the finest robe, and put it on him!
Get a ring for his finger and shoes for his feet!
Prepare a feast to celebrate the return of my son!
He was dead, but now he is alive!
He was lost, but now he is found!"

And so the celebration began.

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PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION

Holy God—
we pray for the work of reconciliation that you are bringing to pass through Jesus Christ.

For all who are estranged from you because of anger, despair, disillusionment, or self-hatred:
that they may encounter your love.

For all who are lonely in this world—neglected, rejected, abandoned, or bereft:
that they may find companionship and community.

For all who are unhappy in relationships with family, lovers, friends:
that they may find a way to be reconciled.

For all who wage conflict, and for all who find themselves in the middle of conflict:
that there may be peace.

For all who have been hurt or wronged by others:
that they may find safety, justice, and healing, and that the grace to forgive may grow within them.

For all who carry burdens of guilt:
that in Christ they may find absolution and rest.

The Book of Mormon Musical

2011-03-30T21:41:00.008-04:00

I just read the New Yorker's review of "The Book of Mormon." It was nice to see a review that wasn't gushing, since that's all that's crossed my desk so far. The reviewer, John Lahr, acknowledged its popularity but was also critical of that popularity.

I'm really not happy about the fact that this musical is turning out to be popular. From what little I know of the plot, it sounds like it's just waiting to be eviscerated from the left, and I hope that when that happens, it happens in a way that can temper some of the public enthusiasm—i.e., make the play controversial in a way that forces Parker and Stone and their fans to put real effort into shrugging off the play's unintended political incorrectnesses.

But I'm really unhappy because of the way this musical will reinforce the trivialization of a religion—let's say, a spiritual tradition—that to me is decidedly not trivial. I say this as someone who laughed uproariously at the South Park episode where it turned out that the Mormons were the ones who had the right religion and went to heaven. I say it as someone who was impressed with the effort to accurately depict Book of Mormon origins in "All About the Mormons" and thought that they treated us with uncustomary respect at the end. Think about how South Park has depicted Judaism, or Catholicism, or Scientology. In their way, Parker and Stone like us. That's why they were so passionate about making this musical.

And I hope that Mormons will have the good sense to either go to the musical and laugh along with it or just keep away and keep quiet. No sanctimonious letters to the editor—or worse, sanctimonious press releases out of Salt Lake. The best way LDS Public Affairs can respond to this musical is to keep their damn mouths shut so they don't put their feet into them.

With all those caveats out of the way, it pains me that this musical is going to further enshrine Mormonism in American popular culture as a sign of Christian fundamentalism that, viewed in the most positive light, is quirky in its teachings and quaintly if endearingly earnest. But, of course, that's not really Parker and Stone's fault. It's the fault of the fundamentalists who dominate Mormonism—who insist on the literal truth of incredible doctrinal claims and pride themselves on their allegiance to 1950s-era (if not earlier) mores. They're the ones who've generated the Mormon image that Parker and Stone are now taking over for their own comedic purposes.

It pains me that the images of Mormons and Mormonism that have greatest currency in American culture are missionaries who want you to join their church because it's the only true one; Proposition 8; the black priesthood ban. (I'm actually not so bothered that polygamy's on that list, but I'll have to analyze that later.) I wish that in that mix there were a Mormon equivalent to Mother Teresa, or Desmond Tutu, or Oscar Romero, or the nuns marching for black civil rights. Our religion would be taken more seriously if that were the case—still made fun of and criticized, too, to be sure, and for perfectly good reasons. But people would know that this religion is capable of spiritual greatness, too.

This is not, I hasten to clarify, a public relations problem. It's not something that will be fixed by LDS Public Affairs working harder to publicize Mormon humanitarian initiatives. You don't earn the kind of respect I'm wishing we had through calculated publicity. You earn it by just being out there, doing good, so consistently and regularly that you just become a familiar part of the social landscape—the way Mormon missionaries are now simply by virtue of the fact that there are so many out there, all the time, knocking on doors and passing out pamphlets on streets. That's what people know Mormons for because that's what Mormons have decided to dedicate premium energy and resources to. If we dedicated that much energy to other causes—building schools and clinics in developing countries, or showing up to peace rallies, or whatever—if those were our top priorities—then we'd be known for that. And depending on what we established as our priorities, we could command more respect.

Not that commanding respect is the most important thing. The most important thing is to do God's work. But the Spirit that is given to everyone who comes into the world helps people recognize God's work when they see it. There's a reason that outsiders as a rule aren't all that impressed with Mormons trying to stop them on the street to tell them about the one true church, or setting out to vicariously baptize all the dead, or evading conversations about the black priesthood ban. Like fundamentalists of all stripes, the fundamentalists who dominate Mormonism haven't figured out what God's work is really fundamentally about.

Prophets at the Daily Show

2011-03-21T23:22:00.005-04:00

The Daily Show just did one of the best bits I've seen from them: "Freedom Packages." UPDATE: Watch it here.

It stabbed at my conscience. It made me feel ashamed for my sense of self-congratulation: "We're doing the right thing in Libya: we're backing up people who are putting their lives on the line to resist dictatorship, and we're doing it the right way, as part of an international coalition," etc.

Now everything's more complicated for me. Not that I'm turning against the intervention in Libya. But I'm more inclined now to pray that this is the right thing with fear and trembling, not to pray for its success on the confident assumption that it is the right thing. And I'm feeling my complicity in the hypocrisies that are being enacted here, whatever good may come from it.

What I watched tonight was prophetic. It was a voice in the wilderness, criticizing the powers, calling for justice, using theater to drive home truths people don't want to see. God bless the Daily Show staff.

Libya and closer to home

2011-03-19T02:00:00.002-04:00

I give thanks that the UN agreed to call for a no-fly zone in Libya, though I wish that decision had been made sooner.

I give thanks that this isn't being done unilaterally by the U.S. but in tandem with other nations, including especially Arab countries.

I pray that somehow a just peace and an effective democratic government can be established in Libya.

May the stone roll forward.

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Much closer to home, and on a much smaller scale, I'm praying for Grouchy Mama. I've finally buckled under to sentimentality and named the dozen-or-so feral cats we're now feeding each night. Grouchy Mama, unfortunately, had the epithet attached to her back when I was still just working by descriptions instead of names. Anyway, she's been hugely pregnant, then she disappeared for a few days, and now she's back—not pregnant. This is not a good situation, demographically, and everyone might be better off if most of the litter doesn't survive. But I'm praying for them anyway. I'm too sentimental not to.

Mormons in Japan

2011-03-14T19:24:00.002-04:00

An update at LDS.org says that "approximately 95% of the Latter-day Saints in the affected areas have been contacted, and initial reports indicate there are no confirmed deaths." I have to say that while my own experience of the church's record-keeping, member-monitoring machine has been decisively negative, this is certainly a time when the church's ability to contact, and account for, and provide support for individuals is a good thing. The church can become a safety net for people at times like this.

(I also have to say, though, that I wonder exactly what it means when the church says it's accounted for 95% of its members in these areas. I'm inclined to assume that this means 95% of currently active members. I think about the branch I served in as a missionary in the Dominican Republic, where our membership rosters showed 200+ members, of whom maybe a couple dozen were active. If a disaster had struck, and we'd had to account for "our members," I imagine that we would have gone accounting for the two dozen members we thought of as active. What I guess I'm saying is, I'm glad the church safety net is there, but I'm also wondering how many people are falling through holes in that net. It could be a lot.)

I looked up some data on Latter-day Saints in Japan. While my prayers are with all those affected, of course, my prayers are especially with Latter-day Saints because that's the closest I come to having a personal connection with Japan. These data help to make that concrete for me. I'd like to have more data about the Sendai region particularly, but this is the best I have. Sources are a combination of the LDS online newsroom and the 2007 Church Almanac.

125,000 Latter-day Saints in Japan
29 stakes, including a Sendai stake
7 missions, including a Sendai mission
2 temples, one in Tokyo and one in Fukuoka (which is at opposite end of Japan from Sendai)

Boyd K. Packer was a soldier in Japan, where he performed at least one of the first baptisms since the church had abandoned missionary work in Japan during the 1920s. I assume that because of that connection, he feels particularly troubled by this disaster. Thinking that humanizes for me somewhat a man I'm generally inclined to despise.

Damaged nuclear reactors

2011-03-12T21:21:00.002-05:00

O God—

You have made the earth tremble; you have broken it.
Heal the breaches thereof, for it shakes.

You have shown your people hard things;
you have made us drink the wine of astonishment.

That your beloved may be delivered,
save with your right hand!

Give us help from trouble,
for human help alone is vain.

In Christ's name, amen.

(Psalm 60)

Earthquake in Japan

2011-03-11T21:46:00.002-05:00

God of restoration—

Provide comfort where now there is grief.
Restore beauty where now there are ashes.

To those who mourn, give reason for joy.
To those with a spirit of heaviness, give reason for praise.

May they rebuild what has been left in ruins.
May they raise back up what has been felled.
May they repair the desolate cities.

In Christ's name, amen.

(Isaiah 61:3-4)

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I, the Lord your God,
have created all people,
and I remember those who live
on the isles of the sea.

(2 Nephi 29:7)

Peter King and Wisconsin Republicans

2011-03-10T23:34:00.003-05:00

For Peter King:

Have mercy, O Lord, upon the rulers of our land.
May their prejudices give way before the truth.
(D&C 109:54, 56)

For Wisconsin Republicans:

I will come near to you to judgment;
I will be a swift witness against those
who oppress the hireling in his wages,
says the Lord of Hosts.
(3 Ne. 24:5)

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T21:00:00.002-05:00

Attended an Ash Wednesday service—I'm sitting at the computer with the little ash cross still marked on my forehead. Until this year, the church we attend had always had the custom of wiping the cross off when you went up to commune, because the Gospel reading for the service is the passage from the Sermon on the Mount about not showing off your piety to be seen of others. This year, they announced that we could wipe the cross off or keep it, according to our own discernment; they put out towels by the basin of holy water for people to use if they wanted. It looked to me like most people left after the service with their crosses still on their foreheads.

During the Eucharistic prayer that they like to use for Lent (there's a variety to choose from), there's a passage about "God of our fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." These days, I usually hear that read as "God of our fathers and mothers," or "God of our forebears," and then sometimes the priest will start plugging in the names of wives: "God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and..." And then things get tricky. "Jacob, Leah, and Rachel," is how I seem to remember hearing it done. (One year I heard a priest take an entirely different tack: "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God of Deborah, Ruth, and Mary.")

Last year, I was teasing the priest here, who adds the names of the wives, by daring her to add the concubines as well. So she did, much to my surprise. All through Lent last year, she read, "God of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah; God of Isaac and Rebekah; God of Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah." That's one name short of being able to constitute a new Quorum of the Twelve. She did it again tonight. Afterwards I told her, "You know, you don't need to keep doing the polygamous thing on my account." She laughed and said, "But it's so much fun—all those Hebrew women."

Tim DeChristopher

2011-03-04T20:04:00.002-05:00

I've been hearing in the news about Tim DeChristopher. My prayers are with him. What he did was courageous or foolhardy or some combination of the two. But he was fighting the good fight. And now he's suffering the legal consequences, which is the risk you take on when you undertake civil disobedience.

Comparing him to Jesus sounds unbearably pretentious. But the comparison is perfectly valid, and not really all that aggrandizing, if it's understood that lots of people have performed this kind of Christlike action—disrupting the powers of this world in some small but dramatic way (you remember that incident with the moneychangers, yes?) and then being crushed by those same powers as the price of their witness.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting to see people go to prison for criminal negligence in the Deepwater Horizon spill, or the housing crash, not to mention the architects of the last administration's policies on torture.

There are times when the conspiratorial populism of the Book of Mormon speaks to me, and this is one of them.

Those Gadianton robbers had filled the judgment seats,
having usurped the power and authority of the land,
condemning the righteous because of their righteousness,
letting the wicked go unpunished because of their money—
to be held in office at the head of government,
that they might get gain,
and do according to their own wills.
(Helaman 7:4-5)

Taize service: Christ the Living Water

2011-03-04T19:58:00.002-05:00

I'm back from the first-Friday Taize service. I chose as the theme for this month's service "Christ, the Living Water." In addition to the usual icons and candles, the focus of meditation included a little fountain Hugo bought for me to have running near my desk as I work on my dissertation.

Here are the readings and intercessions I prepared.

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PSALM 63

O God, my God, how eagerly I watch for you!
My soul thirsts for you,
my body is weak for want of you,
as in a dry, barren land without water.

Your loving-kindness is better than life itself!
I will sing your praise.
I will bless you as long as I live.
I will call on your name with uplifted hands.

As I lie in my bed, you are the focus of my thoughts.
Late into the night, I lie awake thinking of you.
For you have been my help:
I rejoice under the shadow of your wings.

My soul clings to you.
Your strong hand holds me close.
Keep me safe! Let me live without fear
of those who would do me harm.

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ISAIAH 35: 4-7

Say to those whose hearts are sinking,
“Be strong! Do not be afraid!
Here is your God!
God is coming to administer justice.
God is coming to rescue you.”

Then darkened eyes will see.
Closed ears will hear.
Enfeebled legs will leap like the gazelle.
Muted tongues will sing for joy.

Fountains will gush forth in the wasteland.
Streams will flow in the desert.
The burning sands will be transformed into a pool;
the parched ground, into springs of water.
The arid habitat of jackals will become a marsh.
Desert grasses will give way to reeds and rushes.

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JOHN 4: 6-11, 13-14

As Jesus rested by the well,
a Samaritan woman came to draw water.
Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”

The woman replied,
“How is it that you, a Jew,
are asking me, a Samaritan, for a drink?”
(She said this because Jews would not use vessels
that Samaritans had used.)

Jesus answered,
“If you knew who I am,
you would have asked me for a drink,
and I would have given you living water.”

The woman said,
“You have no bucket, and the well is deep.
Where do you get this living water?”

Jesus said,
“Water from this well
will quench your thirst for a time.
But the water I give
will quench your thirst forever.”

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INTERCESSIONS

Jesus Christ—you are the source of living water.
You alone can satisfy our souls’ thirst.

Refresh all who are weary, sad, or suffering.
Immerse them in your loving-kindness.
Wipe away all tears.

Rain down gifts of grace on every person.
Nourish them in their needs.
Cultivate their possibilities.

Teach us to love others as you love us.
Make compassion well up in us like an overflowing fountain.

Make all that is barren, fruitful.
Make all that has been laid waste, flourish.

Make justice flow like a river.
Sweep away prejudice and oppression as with a flood.

Fill the earth with knowledge of your goodness
like water fills the seas.

A prayer of thanks

2011-02-26T21:01:00.004-05:00

I learned tonight that a friend of mine—a fellow student in my graduate program—has been offered, and has accepted, a faculty position at an institution in another state. In a terrible job market, it's very, very good news for her. She's going to make a fine scholar and teacher.

I express gratitude for this opportunity for her, and I pray that all will go well as she finishes her dissertation, prepares to move, and settles into her new career. I'm thankful for the friendship we've had during our time together in the program, and I'm going to miss her when she's gone, though I hope we'll be able to collaborate in ways as colleagues in the same field.

Protests in the Arab world

2011-02-21T09:39:00.002-05:00

So much could still go wrong, and yet it's so hopeful to see the democratic protests that have been springing up across the Arab world. God of justice, Liberator of the oppressed, be with them.

That law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind and is justifiable before me. (D&C 98:5)

Laws and [a] constitution of the people . . . should be maintained for the rights and protection of all fliesh, according to just and holy principles. (D&C 101:77)

Post-mortem for a funeral

2011-02-07T23:25:00.002-05:00

Live together in such love
that you weep for the loss of those who die.
(D&C 42:45)

I'm nearly 40 years old, and I have no experience with funerals. Until attending my mother's funeral this last weekend, I can remember attending one other funeral—that of a teenaged peer from one of my wards. I didn't attend the funerals for any of the three grandparents I've lost so far. I've been to a handful of memorial services, but never a viewing or a graveside service.

I found the viewing disconcerting. I had gone in wanting to touch the body. But then when I saw her, she looked like a wax doll—like something you'd see in Madame Tussauds. I presume that the viewing is supposed to help reconcile us to her death by giving us an image of her in peaceful repose, but I found the artificiality of it alienating. I couldn't touch her. All I could keep thinking was: This is a wax shell pumped full of formaldehyde.

On the other hand, I suppose I would rather have had that last sight of her than a closed casked without a viewing.

Once they closed the casket, she was gone for me psychologically. The casket became a sign standing in for her; I wasn't thinking of it as a container with her inside. When it came time for me to help carry the casket to the hearse, I just thought of it as carrying the casket. It didn't dawn on me until the next day, as we were revisiting the burial site, that I was actually carrying her body. And it didn't dawn on me until even later that night that as I was carrying the casket, I was positioned right by her head. Again, I find this all alienating. I was inches away from her face, but I had no consciousness of her being there.

The funeral was... I don't know what adjective to use. Nice? People spoke well. It was good to hear takes on her life that are less tragic than mine. I'd been gloomily anticipating the "prettification" of her life—the same process that turns church history into hagiography. But I respect the representation- and meaning-making that was done there.

A theological reflection that rolled around my head during the weekend: If we take seriously the statement that "the spirit and the body are the soul" (D&C 88:15), then my mother's disembodied spirit (assuming it exists, which is my operating assumption) is no more fully and truly her than her inanimate body is. We use the idea of the immortal spirit to tell ourselves that the dead continue as we knew them. But it seems to me that our doctrine actually works against that idea. The same sense of false or incomplete identity I had when I looked at her body—this isn't really her—I should also have if I were able to see her spirit. Her spirit isn't really her, because it's missing the body, just as her body isn't really her because it's missing the spirit. What reason do I have to think that I would even recognize her spirit if I encountered it? Why would it look like her body? Why would it have her personality? It doesn't have her genes. It doesn't have her brain.

More alienation.

Alma 40 tells me that my mother has gone home to the God who gave her life. I want that to be true. I want her to be in a state of rest, as that passage says. But D&C 88 and 138 tell me that she's in a profound dissociative state. Her soul has been broken in two. And now she waits to be fixed—restored. "For the dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage" (D&C 138:50).

I believe that ensoulment is embodiment—I'm firmly decided on that point. Which I guess means that I also have to hope for a physical resurrection if I want to hope for the immortality of my mother's soul. I'm not really thrilled about that: physical resurrection is so problematic, philosophically. I'd prefer to be much more agnostic and noncomittal about the afterlife—just trust that we're in God's hands. But that's not going to be enough to let me maintain my beliefs and hopes consistently. Bodily resurrection it is, I guess. Not the most enthusiastic profession of faith.

I'm tired. And I'm not in the right emotional state to be getting philosophical about these subjects.

Music

2011-02-03T22:11:00.003-05:00

I fly out to Utah tomorrow for my mother's funeral.

Music has long been an important part of my spirituality: the song of the heart really has been a major form of prayer for me, as the scripture says. Ever since I was young, I've been composing—really amateur stuff, since I'm mostly self-taught as a musician. Mostly religious songs. Won an Honorable Mention or two in the New Era music contest, actually, in my young teens. Between 1997 and 2004, I did quite a bit of composing for the guitar, which was important to me as a way to keep engaging with texts from LDS scripture after coming out.

I've composed hardly anything since I've been in graduate school, until just recently. I'm posting here two things I've composed in the past couple of months, as a way to cope with my mother's decline and death. Just sheet music, I'm afraid (PDF files), no recordings—I don't know how to do that. The songs are inspired by the Taize style of music: a simple verse, often taken from scripture, sung over and over as a kind of meditation.

Take her home (Alma 40:11-12) - PDF
We shall declare (D&C 133:52-53) - PDF

In remembrance

2011-01-30T10:18:00.003-05:00

A book of remembrance was written before the Lord
for those who thought on his name.
They will be mine, says the Lord,
in the day that I make up my jewels.
(3 Nephi 24:16-17)

This is my mother’s story, based on my memories of her experiences as I heard her recount them and based on my own observations. This is the “truth wherein [I] know [it]” (D&C 123:13).

Her father was physically abusive and was periodically in jail. I’ll skip those stories: it’s enough to say that she cut him out of her life as an adult. I'm told that I and my next youngest brother met him, but I have no memories of those visits, and they ended within a few years. We phoned my maternal grandmother regularly on holidays, but not my grandfather. I know him only from photos and a tape recording of a visit to him when I was an infant.

My mother joined the LDS Church as a teenager. She hoped that the rest of her family would follow and that they would become the happy family portrayed in church literature. Instead there were fights with pans being thrown around. My impression is that her ward wasn’t very welcoming—a girl from the wrong side of the railroad tracks, so to speak—but she stuck with it.

At a youth fireside, she heard the speaker say that those born in the church were special spirits whom God had sent into LDS families so they would be equipped to build the kingdom. My mother carried from that talk the idea that she was a lesser spirit, a conviction that I imagine her marginalization within her church community must have a reinforced—on top of the abuse she suffered at home, of course. She told me once that she thought she might be the spirit child of one of God’s polygamous wives, not the first, favored wife.

She went to BYU. At one point her mother cut off her funds, and she went a month without eating. She ended up in the hospital and spent time living with a local LDS family while she recovered. She met my father, who was also a teenaged convert. He courted her before and after his mission. She intended to turn him down, but after fasting about it at my father’s request, she heard an audible voice instruct her to marry him, so she did.

She threw herself into raising the privileged spirits God had entrusted to her. She had read the manual Gospel Principles with me by the time I was baptized at age eight, and by the time I was ordained a deacon at age 12, she had worked with me to memorize all the seminary mastery scriptures. We held family home evening regularly, family scripture study, family prayer. For family prayer, we knelt in a circle holding hands and repeated together the words of the person saying the prayer; she wanted us to feel at home when we finally reached the temple. (Her own first temple experience had been very alienating.) We held sunrise services in cemeteries for Easter. We observed the four weeks of Advent. Christmas was the occasion for amazing outputs of creativity on the part of my parents. My continued attachment to Mormonism has much to do with the positive memories—and spiritual experiences—created for me at home.

My mother's aspirations to a model Mormon family unravelled as her sons got older. In different ways we all deviated from the path she had mapped for us, though in the end most of her sons remained active in the church and gave her grandchildren. When I was in high school, one betrayal caused her to break down into a debilitating depression. (Bitter irony: When no one would tell me what was going on, I concluded she must have cancer.) She clawed her way back out, fragile but iron-willed, determined to put her household back in order. She reacted similarly when she discovered I was gay, telling me to leave graduate school and move back home so she could “fix this problem.” I had to put a lot of distance between us in order to have the room to let my life grow in the way I wanted it to. I formally cut off contact in 2001—a big dramatic production—aware of the irony that I was doing to her what she had done to her father, though I don’t know if she ever recognized that irony.

Her cancer prompted a slow, cautious reconciliation, the unspoken terms of which were that big parts of my life remained un-talked about while I expressed more sympathetic interest than I really felt in the church activities that were at the center of her life. This meant that our relationship was constantly feeding an element of dishonesty—like the body feeding a tumor, I suppose—but I consented as a gift to her. And I recognize the concessions she was making to me. On my last visit to her, this past November, we sat on the couch, embracing, and she said that she hoped she hadn’t said anything to make me uncomfortable while I was there. She asked my forgiveness. A decade earlier that would probably have made me feel vindicated, but by that point my thought was simply, “You don’t need to do this.”

Earlier in the visit, as we did the five-kernels-of-corn tradition before Thanksgiving dinner (you say five things you’re grateful for), I had said that while there were things about the church that made me very angry—I could feel the ice cracking under my feet as I said that—I was grateful for the ways it had supported my parents and for the positive influences it had on my upbringing. Even that wasn’t the full truth, though. I don’t know if I could ever have articulated my relationship with Mormonism to my mother in a language she would understand, given her basically fundamentalist way of seeing the world. I don’t intend that to sound pejorative; it’s just the reality of how she was raised as someone who passed through a succession of evangelically oriented Protestant churches growing up.

She approached cancer the same dogged way she approached “fixing” her wayward family. It was not the life she had hoped for; it was not the life she had trusted God to give her; and she hoped at first she would be able to wrestle it back onto the track she wanted it to run on. In the end, she had to reconcile herself to being carried whither she would not.

I hope she was met by her Heavenly Parents, and I hope they made her know she was acceptable and had been all along.

************

I assume the guilt driving this narrative screams loud and clear.

My mother's death

2011-01-28T20:50:00.003-05:00

My mother died last night—I got the call around 11:30 p.m., and I knew as soon as the phone rang, "This is it." It was the end of a long fight (but I detest that metaphor) with cancer that first began several years ago when I was still living in Salt Lake City.

I feel an impulse to talk about this, but I don't know what to say. I'll say at least this for now: It was a shitty way to die. She was peaceful at the end, I'm told—spiritually as well as physically. But it's been a terrible, terrible process of her body going haywire and devouring itself. I've spent months wishing she would just let go already so she wouldn't suffer anymore. She was on hospice for a year. I hope she accomplished or obtained whatever she wanted with that time. And I hope that I provided what she wanted from me during that time.

As usual with me, I'm more angry than sad, though I'm both.

************

Now the time of liberation has come;
and my redeemed will declare
the loving-kindness of their Lord,
and all that he has bestowed upon them
according to his everlasting goodness.

In all their afflictions, he was afflicted.
The angel of his presence intervened for them.
And in his love, he bore them
and carried them all their days.

(Adapted from D&C 133:52-53)

************

The gaping chasm between those words and the lived reality of my mother's horrible decline is faith.

It is finished

2011-01-27T23:43:00.002-05:00

It has been made known to me by an angel
that the spirits of all people
as soon as they have departed from this mortal body
are taken home to that God who gave them life

a state of rest
a state of peace
where they shall rest
from all their troubles
and from all care
and sorrow

all things shall be restored
to their proper and perfect frame

Watching

2011-01-26T00:04:00.003-05:00

People keep assuring me that she is at peace, comfortable, calm, etc.
I have to hope that's true.

Last week I called; she'd just finished dinner,
sitting at the kitchen table, which surprised me.
(It had surprised everyone.)
But as we talked, it seemed like it was going to be one of those conversations
where I end up talking as if to a child.
"What did you have for dinner?" I asked,
and I could hear them in the background prompting her what to answer.
Finally she said, "Stroganoff."
And then she kept repeating that as her answer to my next two questions,
which had nothing to do with her dinner.
"Stroganoff." "Stroganoff."
I had reconciled myself to the fact
that we weren't going to have meaningful conversation this time.
And that actually emboldened me
to drop the "talking-to-a-preschooler" voice and
to say something frank I probably would have been hesitant to say otherwise,
since I assumed she wasn't going to understand.
"I hope you're not in pain," I said.
And suddenly, for a moment, it seemed—
seemed, I say, because I don't really know—
that she was lucid.
"No. I'm afraid I am, actually," she said.
It was her regular voice, clear and with all its usual nuances.
I don't remember what I said after that.
Probably nothing. I wouldn't have known what to say.

Watching

2011-01-24T22:19:00.002-05:00

Power will rest upon you.
I will be with you
and go before your face.
(D&C 39:12)

You are Christ's,
and Christ is God's,
and you will overcome all things.
(D&C 76:60)

Sermon on immigration

2011-01-23T19:26:00.004-05:00

Today Hugo and I gave a guest sermon on the issue of immigration. This was my portion of our remarks.

************

In 2008, there were an estimated 11 million people living in the United States without authorization—illegally. The majority of these, probably over three-fourths, are from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. About three million children living in the U.S. are citizens by virtue of having been born here but live in families where one or both parents is an unauthorized immigrant and therefore liable to deportation. Unauthorized immigrants are believed to make up 5 percent of the country's labor force, working mostly in farming, cleaning, construction, and food preparation. The economic impact of unauthorized immigrants—whether their contributions outweigh the social services they receive—is disputed.

Opposition to illegal immigration has become a more prominent element of American political discourse over the past several years. Concerns have been voiced about drug trafficking and violent crime, identity theft, citizens being crowded out of jobs, and potential threats to national security in a post-9/11 world. Efforts to reduce illegal immigration include constructing a high-tech barrier along much of the U.S.-Mexico border; enlisting police and the National Guard to assist with enforcement; more strictly penalizing employers; firing or deporting undocumented workers; and requiring proof of citizenship for access to social services such as obtaining a driver's license. Recent polls show that a majority of respondents support these efforts.

How should Christians respond to this reality?

Hugo and I aren't here to promote specific policy proposals that we think the people of the Advocate, or the Episcopal diocese of North Carolina, should rally behind. That needs to be the subject of conversation, not a sermon. But we do want to identify the principles that it seems to us ought to guide that conversation for Christians: Compassion. Generosity to people in need. Respect for the dignity of every human being. Loving our neighbor as ourselves.

When someone asks Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?", he replies with a parable about a Samaritan who goes out of his way to help a stranger—and not just a stranger, a foreigner, a Jew, which in that context means someone who probably despises Samaritans. This parable shows us that when Jesus talks about loving "our neighbor," he means what philosophers would call loving "the Other": the stranger, the foreigner, the enemy. Jesus' teaching is not primarily concerned with our relationships with those who are close to us; he's focused on raising the bar. Where is the virtue, he asks at one point, in loving people who love you? If you open your arms to your kin, how are you doing anything more than what anyone does? But I want you to do more, he tells his followers. I want you to love even your enemies. I want you to be like God, who showers the gifts of sun and rain on everyone, without distinctions (Matt. 5:43-47).

In the ongoing immigration debate, it's easy for Americans to advocate for the interests of American citizens—and certainly those interests are part of the moral and political algorithm we have to apply to this issue. But Jesus calls us to do more: to advocate for the Other, the unpopular or feared foreigner; the "illegals." Again, what that advocacy should look like in terms of specific policy proposals is another conversation to be had. But I think I'm on safe ground in asserting that the crucial task of Christians in the immigration debate is to pull the conversation in the direction of compassion and generosity and safeguarding the human dignity of unauthorized immigrants.

Haiti one year later

2011-01-13T22:29:00.006-05:00

Yesterday Hugo and I attended a prayer circle (not the Mormon kind) held in remembrance of the earthquake in Haiti last year. We gathered on a lawn in the center of town, and at 4:53, people rang bells for 35 seconds, the duration of the first tremor.

Patches and Hugo ended up in the local paper. You probably can't see it well, but there's a conch on the ground between Hugo's right knee and the Haitian flag. I brought that with me from Haiti in 2007.

Read the news story.

************

Where are you, God?
Where are you hiding?
How long must your people cry out
before you will hear
and take action?

Mighty Creator—
open your eyes;
bend your ear;
be moved with compassion;
stretch out your hand;
show yourself.

(adapted from D&C 121:1-2, 4)

Announcing an Episcopal-Mormon liturgy

2011-01-09T19:35:00.003-05:00

I'm putting out a shout-out to any liberal Mormon types in the Chapel Hill-Durham area of North Carolina. During the Epiphany season, the Episcopal Church of the Advocate, which Hugo and I have been attending for the past several years, will be using during its Sunday services a formula for the Prayers of the People which I've composed using language adapted from the "Olive Leaf" (D&C 88). I'm excited that they're using it. They used it for the first time in their morning service today; but during the evening service, which is what Hugo and I attend, they had a baptism, so they used a different formula for the prayers as part of the baptismal rite. So I won't actually get to hear the "Olive Leaf" Prayers of the People used until this coming Sunday, January 16.

If you're intrigued to see an ecumenical use of a Latter Day Saint text, I'd encourage you to come by. I understand we'll be using this formula for the Prayers of the People all through the Epiphany season, which runs through the beginning of Lent—so from now until early March. Evening services are held at 5:00 p.m. Directions here.

About these prayers: In Episcopal liturgical practice, the Prayers of the People come in the Sunday liturgy after the sermon. There are certain things that the Book of Common Prayer specifies should be prayed for—the universal church, the leaders of the nations, the needs of the local community, people in all kinds of trouble, the dead—but otherwise congregations have a lot of leeway about how exactly they conduct the prayers. At the Advocate, there are typically biddings followed by silences in which people can voice their petitions.

During the Epiphany season, the liturgy often invokes images of light. So I had the idea a few weeks ago, originally with the first-Friday Taize service in mind, of developing a text for prayers that used language from the "Olive Leaf," which talks a lot about the light of Christ. I didn't realize until later that the Olive Leaf was composed between Christmas 1832 and Epiphany 1833, a fact which makes that text all the more appropriate as a resource for an Epiphany liturgy.

After I composed a version of the prayers, I passed them on to the vicar because she's interested in innovative liturgies, and I wanted to show off some of the liturgical resources I see in the Latter Day Saint tradition. A couple of months ago, she and I were having a conversation about my religious identity, in the course of which I was surprised to realize that she didn't know Mormons consider themselves Christian. So I wanted her to see what this Latter Day Saint text had to say about the light of Christ.

She liked the text and asked if it might be possible to rework it in order to include all the biddings that the Book of Common Prayer prescribes for the Prayers of the People. So I did, and the results are below.

The stanzas that begin "Jesus Christ..." contain language from the "Olive Leaf." I drew from the following verses (though not in this order): D&C 88:5-13, 41, 49-50, 63. The stanzas that begin "Christ our light..." contain the biddings required by the Book of Common Prayer. There's one difference between the text I've pasted below and the text the Advocate is using: the "Olive Leaf" uses the word "abound" in a way that sounds ungrammatical to modern ears, so they've substituted "flourish."

************

Leader One:
Jesus Christ,
you are the light that is in us,
and we are in you.
In you and by you, we are quickened;
without you, we cannot abound.

Leader Two:
Christ our light, make your church grow in grace and truth.
Pour out your blessings on all who seek after righteousness.

The people add their own petitions.

Leader One:
Jesus Christ,
you are the light that proceeds from the presence of God
to fill the immensity of space—
the light which is in all things,
which gives life to all things,
which is the law by which all things are governed.

Leader Two:
Christ our light, make peace and justice prevail on this earth you have created.
Breathe a spirit of wisdom over the nations and all in authority.

The people add their own petitions.

Leader One:
Jesus Christ,
you are the light of truth.
You are the light of the sun,
the light of the moon,
the light of the stars,
and the power by which they were made.
You are the light that illuminates our eyes
and the light that enlivens our understanding.

Leader Two:
Christ our light, give us eyes to see the needs of our neighbors,
and give us hearts moved to act.
Lift up all who labor in service to others.

The people add their own petitions.

Leader One:
Jesus Christ,
you have ascended above all things,
and you have descended below all things,
so that you might be in all and through all.

Leader Two:
Christ our light, comfort all who suffer and are in trouble.
Wherever there is darkness, make your presence known.

The people add their own petitions.

Leader One:
Jesus Christ,
all things are before you,
and all things are round about you.
You are above all things,
and in all things,
and through all things,
and round about all things;
all things are by you, and of you,
forever and ever.

Leader Two:
Christ our light, we are yours in death as well as in life.
We pray for our dead: may eternal light shine upon them.

The people add their own petitions.

Leader One:
Jesus Christ,
you have promised
that if we seek you, we will find you;
that if we ask, we will receive;
that if we knock, the door will be opened to us.

Leader Two:
Christ our light, we live awash in an ocean of graces.
We thank you for all your gifts.

The people offer their thanksgivings.
The celebrant adds a concluding collect.

Taize service, Epiphany

2011-01-07T22:07:00.003-05:00

I led the first-Friday Taize service tonight. Because we've just entered the season of Epiphany, the theme was "Christ our Light." Most of the readings I recycled from previous services: Psalm 67; Isaiah 60:16-20; John 1:1-5, 9-11. I composed new intercessions, though, to go with the theme of light.

************

Jesus Christ, light of all nations—
make your salvation shine to the ends of the earth.

Jesus Christ, bright morning star—
hasten the day of justice for the poor and the oppressed.

Jesus Christ, dayspring from on high—
renew the earth and restore the waste places.

Jesus Christ, lamp to our feet—
lead us into ways of peace and safety.

Jesus Christ, light of our hearts—
fill us with the love that makes us your true disciples.

Jesus Christ, light in our darkness—
comfort all who are in pain or despair.

Jesus Christ, glorious beyond all we can imagine—
all thanks and praise to you forever.

Little Miss Sunshine

2011-01-01T20:22:00.002-05:00

Recovering this evening from a week-long miserable cold (the price to be paid for my winter wonderland Christmas gift), I caught the end of Little Miss Sunshine on cable. I loved this film when I first saw it on DVD a few years back—it reminded me why I miss not being able to attend the Sundance Film Festival like we used to when we lived in Salt Lake. A funny, touching fable about a family supporting one another in their crazy aspirations, even when it hurts, and hobbling to keep things together.

I'm weepy because of the headcold; but Olive's "perp walk" down the corridor to her big dance routine, with her mother calling out the family's support for her, and then the haunting Devotchka song that accompanies their final push-start of the van before the closing credits would probably have been enough to make me cry even without being sick.

This is what "forever families" look like.

Snow for Christmas

2010-12-26T15:11:00.003-05:00

So in addition to an imprisoned former dictator, I also received the gift of snow for Christmas—how thoughtful of God! It really was amazing waking up this morning, the day after Christmas, to find that the dusting of snow that had started to fall last night had turned into several inches.

I've probably posted this before, but it's worth repeating:

Soon, this . . . ruination will be blanketed white. You can smell it—can you smell it? . . . Softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace. (Tony Kushner, Angels in America)

A glimmer of justice

2010-12-25T23:43:00.003-05:00

The great pit that has been dug for the destruction of human beings will be filled by those who dug it . . . according to the justice of God upon all those who will work wickedness. (1 Ne. 14:3)

I saw online today that Jorge Videla, head of the military government that waged the dirty war in Argentina, has been sentenced to life in prison—a real prison, not house arrest. He deserves death, of course—he deserves torture, actually—but that's not a kind of justice a civilized state should administer, even when it's so richly deserved.

Christmas

2010-12-25T13:31:00.002-05:00

I come into the world, to show the world that I will fulfill all that I have caused to be spoken by my prophets. (3 Ne. 1:13)

Of course, the Christmas story shows us that the fulfillment of the promises doesn't necessarily look like you think it's going to.

I'm not sure what the mood of that last sentence is. A little bitchy, I guess. But there's a hopefulness in the bitchiness, I suppose.

Over the past few nights, Hugo and I attended the tail end of a series of nine posadas that Latino families staged in different apartments here in Abbey Court. It was nice to see residents organizing themselves in that way, preserving traditions. Watching the children sit more or less patiently through the rosary so they could get their aguinaldos afterward (little bags with candies and peanuts and cookies and usually a tangerine—as Hugo remarked, it's like Halloween nine nights in a row), or watching the older ones play video games on whatever these new-fangled little handheld devices are called, I wondered how invested the Americanizing generation will be in this tradition when they have kids of their own. Will they want to organize posadas for them? I hope so.

For that matter, might we get to a point, multiculturally, where the posadas are integrated into the broadly held American sense of how Christmas is celebrated? Might the posadas become, in other words as conventionally "American" a Christmas tradition as Christmas tree lightings, caroling, or department store Santas? I'd like to see that.

If we're still here next year, Hugo and I have offered our apartment as the site for a posada. Or perhaps we could revive the celebration of the posada as a community event, as the Church of the Advocate attempted our first two years here. We have the networks now, perhaps, to pull that off as a genuinely joint endeavor between gringos and Latinos.

Anyway. A nostalgic, daydreamy stream-of-consciousness for Christmas.

Beware LDS PR reps bearing gifts

2010-12-22T15:18:00.004-05:00

Let's start with a little history: In 1834, Joseph Smith leads a little ragtag would-be militia called Zion's Camp to Missouri, apparently convinced that God is going to empower them to rout the Saints' persecutors there. Once they arrive, it becomes clear that's not going to happen, at which point Smith receives a revelation (now LDS D&C 105) in which the Lord says: Oh, guess what, I can't redeem the Missouri Saints right now, they've been too wicked, you'll have to wait a season. Meanwhile, the Lord says, he has a secret plan, which the Saints should not reveal "until it is wisdom in me that [these things] should be revealed."

Talk not of judgments, neither boast of faith nor of mighty works, but carefully gather together, as much in one region as can be, consistently with the feelings of the people;

And behold, I will give unto you favor and grace in their eyes, that you may rest in peace and safety, while you are saying unto the people: Execute judgment and justice for us, according to law, and redress us our wrongs.

Now behold, I say unto you, my friends, in this way you may find favor in the eyes of the people, until the army of Israel becomes very great. (D&C 105:23-26)

The Lord also tells the Saints they should keep buying up all the land in Jackson County that they can. Once they've done that, and once "my army [has] become very great" (D&C 105:31), then the Saints can stop all this mealy-mouthed pleading for redress according to the law and strike at their enemies with force—administering the judgments they've prudently been keeping their mouths shut about in the meantime:

And after these lands are purchased, I will hold the armies of Israel guiltless in taking possession of their own lands, which they have previously purchased with their moneys, and of throwing down the towers of mine enemies that may be upon them, and scattering the watchmen, and avenging me of mine enemies unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. (D&C 105:30)

I recount that little history lesson as a caution for the present: A facade of friendliness may conceal more aggressive power ploys. Which is how we ought to interpret the recent report about the LDS Church inviting Bruce Bastian, Dustin Lance Black, Troy Williams, and other gay activists to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert. According to the news report from ABC4, this appears to be part of a larger effort at outreach to the gay community that might include getting involved with the problem of gay homeless teens.

I'm going to sound cynical and ungrateful when I criticize the church for this—which is precisely what troubles me about this latest p.r. move, as I'll explain below. So let me start by saying that it's a pleasant surprise to see the church reacting to its gay critics in a way that departs from the more customary "circling of the wagons." It will be wonderful if the church starts taking seriously the gay homeless teen problem and directing some of its resources to addressing it. Something similar needs to be said for the church's official support some months back of a nondiscrimination ordinance in Salt Lake City based on sexual orientation.

These shifts in the church's response to gay activism should be understood as a political victory. This is what protests outside LDS temples can accomplish.

But Mormon liberals need to resist our (note I said "our") propensity to get overly optimistic about what shifts like this mean. If the church is engaging in outreach to the gay community, this almost certainly isn't because church leaders' hearts are being softened (with perhaps the occasional decent exception like Marlin K. Jensen). The church is making these moves for self-interested, political reasons.

As support for gay rights, up to and including same-sex marriage, increases in the United States, religious conservatives have been working hard to revamp their public image. Gay activists have gotten used to characterizing the opposition as hateful, prejudiced, trying to impose their beliefs on the rest of the country. Now religious conservatives are trying to turn the tables: It's gay activists who are bigoted, threatening people with boycotts if they don't vote the way the gays want. It's gay activists who are using judicial activism to impose their beliefs on the rest of the country in spite of democratic referendums. It's gay activists who are hateful, standing outside Mormon temples screaming and flipping the bird.

Religious conservatives have taken to presenting themselves as people who want civil conversation; who want to make sure all viewpoints get heard, not just the politically correct ones; who are trying to preserve the freedoms—especially the religious freedoms—of people who disagree with the gay activists.

The LDS Church's latest p.r. moves need to be understood in that context. Inviting your gay critics to a Motab concert is a brilliant response, actually: whoever came up with that one over at LDS Public Affairs is definitely earning their salary. It's brilliant because it doesn't really cost you much symbolically—they're just guests at a public concert, after all—but it lets the church cast itself as the good guy. While gay activists are staging protests outside temples with signs accusing the church of "H8" and homophobia, the church is quietly rebutting the accusation by extending a hand of friendship.

I hope that Troy Williams, Bruce Bastian, and others are savvy enough to recognize that by inviting gay critics into the Tabernacle, or opening up lines of communication with gay activists, or speaking out on issues like discrimination, bullying, and homeless youth, the church is making it harder for activists to stage protests in the future without looking like belligerent assholes. And I respect the intelligence of the folks at LDS Public Affairs enough to assume that this is exactly what they intend.

Embarrassing the church publicly is one of the few ways activists have of placing any kind of pressure on the church. By playing the nice guy, and thereby making it harder for us to stage protests without looking like the bad guy ourselves, the church neutralizes one of the few effective political weapons in our quiver. Maybe these new attempts at outreach, these new channels of communication, will prove politically useful in a different way—one has to hope that, at least. A more pessimistic view (and recent LDS history provides ample reason to take a more pessimistic view) is that these new channels of communication will let the church give the impression that it's hearing our people out, while it then continues to propound its fundamentally heterosexist doctrines and works to prevent gay/lesbian equality in whatever ways it finds feasible. The church gets to look and feel like it's being civil and compassionate and open; and if the strategy is particularly successful, the gay activists with whom they've opened lines of communication will turn around and urge the rest of us not to raise any public criticisms of the church that might threaten the new openness.

You know what they say about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Bottom line: Mormon liberals, don't get too excited about this new development. And for heaven's sake, gay community, don't stop thinking of the LDS Church as an opponent, even if on some issues that opponent can be pressured (let's say it, "shamed") into acting as an ally. Stay vigilant. Stay political.

The church has a history of using shows of friendship to advance its interests—to improve its public image and win over its critics. They were doing it in Missouri back in 1834. They've been doing it for the past decade or so with evangelicals. Now they're applying the same tactics to the gays. Yes, in some ways this is an improvement. But it needs to be approached as the ploy that it is. Don't be too trusting. As Jesus says, be wise as serpents.

Guadalupe

2010-12-13T07:35:00.002-05:00

Yesterday (Sunday) was the feast day for the Virgin of Guadalupe. On Saturday, while I was doing my laundry, I saw that someone in the apartment complex had posted an announcement for a novena in honor of the Virgin, with a list of which apartments they'd be meeting in on which nights and a general invitation to attend. So I attended the Saturday night devotional—the only gringo present, of course, and one of just a handful of men (all of whom had accompanied wives). They recited the rosary, followed by a litany, interspersed with various songs to the Virgin, some of which I knew.

At one point in the litany, they referred to Mary as "la Esposa de Dios el Espiritu Santo"—the wife (or spouse) of God the Holy Spirit. I dimly remember having heard that title before on some other occasion, but it struck me.

Remember the greatness of the Holy One,
who opens to whomever knocks.
(2 Ne. 9:40, 42)

Taize service--and snow

2010-12-05T23:36:00.002-05:00

An unexpected snowfall yesterday. It fell fast and thick and beautiful in the darkening afternoon. The dog and I went romping a little. By noon today, it was largely melted.

I led the monthly Taize service this past Friday. Because we're in Advent, I chose the theme "Christ, the Son of Mary." I'd invited people to bring images or statues of Mary or the Madonna and Child—we ended up with a nice, eclectic collection on the icon table. Here are the readings and prayers.

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THE SONG OF MARY (Luke 1:46-55)

My soul proclaims your greatness, O God!
My heart rejoices in you, my Savior,
because you have showered your servant with blessing!
From now to the end of time,
all generations will know the great things you have done for me,
O Mighty One!

Your name is holy!
From age to age, your mercy flows to those who honor you!
With the strength of your arm,
you have blasted the presumptions of the proud.
You have deposed the mighty from their thrones,
and have raised the lowly to high places.
You have filled the hungry with good things
and have turned the rich away empty-handed.

You have come to the aid of Israel your servant,
in fulfillment of the promise you made to our ancestors,
when you spoke blessing to Sarah and Hagar
and all their descendents, to the utmost generation!

GALATIANS 4:3-7

Once we were slaves to the powers of this world—
to the elemental forces that impel and restrict mortal beings.

But when the time had waxed full,
God sent the Begotten One,
born of a human mother—
born, like us, in subjection to the law,
yet with power to set us free.

Through him, we have been emancipated!
We have been adopted into God’s family!
God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of the Begotten One,
so that we, like him, may call God, “Abba! Father!”

Once you were slaves;
now you have become God’s children.
And because you are God’s children,
you are also God’s heirs.

LUKE 1:26-45

God sent the angel Gabriel
to a Galilean village called Nazareth,
to a young woman named Mary,
who was engaged to a man named Joseph, a descendent of David.

The angel came to Mary and said,
“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you!”
Mary was perplexed and troubled by this greeting.

The angel said, “Do not be afraid, Mary.
God’s blessing is upon you!
You will conceive and give birth to a son.
You will name him: ‘God liberates.’
He is destined for greatness!
He will be called the Son of God.
God will set him in the judgment seat
promised to David’s line,
to govern the descendents of Jacob forever.
His reign will never end!”

Mary said, “How can this be? I am a virgin.”

The angel said to her,
“The Holy Spirit will rest upon you;
the power of God will overshadow you.
For this reason, your child will be holy
and will be called the Son of God.

“Does it seem hard to believe?
Listen: your kinswoman Elizabeth
has conceived a son in her old age.
She who was called barren is now six months pregnant!
You see—with God, nothing is impossible!”

Mary said, “I am God’s servant.
I accept what you have said—may it be.”
Then the angel left her.

As soon as she could,
Mary traveled to the house of Elizabeth
in the hill country of Judea.
As she arrived, Mary called out to greet Elizabeth,
and Elizabeth felt the fetus kick inside her.

Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
She exclaimed to Mary,
“Blessed are you among women!
Blessed is the child you will bear!
And what have I done to deserve to be blessed
by a visit from the mother of my Lord?
I knew it without your telling me,
for as soon as I heard you calling,
the child inside me leaped for joy.
Blessed is she who believed
that the Lord’s promise to her would be fulfilled!”

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION

Abba, Father—
you sent your Son to free us from all that limits us,
and to reconcile in himself all things.

Son of Mary—
you shared our humanity
and gave your life for the salvation of the world.

Jesus of Nazareth—
you shared our suffering,
so that you would know how to succor your people.

Promised Advocate—
by the indwelling of your Spirit in our hearts,
you have transformed us into God’s children;
teach us to love our human condition.

Emmanuel, God-with-us—
you came into the world
through the courage of the one who agreed to be your mother;
give us the courage to say “yes” to your call.

Word made flesh—
we encounter your image in every person we meet;
by your grace, equip us
to minister to them on your behalf.

Watching 11

2010-11-29T18:27:00.004-05:00

More watching over Thanksgiving weekend—in person this time, not long distance. Miscellaneous reflections:

On asking for forgiveness: Romans 3:23. We're all assholes.

Our tragedy is the hospice nurses' job. What is for us a massive disruption, a giant rip in the fabric of our lives, is for them one stop in their daily routine.

I hate the metaphor of "fighting." Terminal illness isn't a war to be won; it's a natural process taking its course. Why should she be made to feel that she needs to be "a fighter"? That she needs to "be brave"?

You stay up watching because it makes you feel like you're doing something when you know in fact there's nothing you can do.

Watching makes me a witness—the connection is right there, in the visual metaphor. But to whom am I witnessing? And what for?

Watching 10

2010-11-24T07:35:00.002-05:00

God answered me in the day of my distress,
and was with me in the way I went.
(Genesis 35:3)

Watching 9

2010-11-23T20:56:00.002-05:00

Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I
when my heart is overwhelmed.
From the end of the earth
I will cry to you,
for you have been my shelter.
I will trust in the covert of your wing.
(from Psalm 61)

Watching 8

2010-11-22T19:03:00.001-05:00

I will send you the Comforter,
which shall teach you the way
whither you should go.
Therefore, fear not.
(D&C 79:2, 4)

Watching 7

2010-11-22T06:16:00.002-05:00

Remember the promises that were made to you:
that God would extend his arm and support you,
and be with you in every time of trouble.
(D&C 3:5, 8)

Watching 6

2010-11-21T19:17:00.002-05:00

The life of my servant will be in my hand.
I will go before you, and I will be your rearward.
(3 Nephi 21:10, 29)

************

God of life and death—

It seems that a crisis has passed,
but we are all still waiting for the end.
I don't know whether to ask you to take her,
so that her suffering will end,
or for you to give her the time
to do whatever she still desires to do.

I'm understanding why silence can be prayerful—
real honest-to-God silence,
not talking to you voicelessly in my head and calling it silence.

So I'm silent.
That is my prayer.

In Christ's name, amen.

Watching 5

2010-11-21T12:33:00.001-05:00

I will go before you and be your rearward.
(D&C 49:27)

I will bear you up as on eagle's wings.
(D&C 124:18)

Watching 4

2010-11-21T06:51:00.002-05:00

He is above all things,
and in all things,
and through all things,
and round about all things,
forever and ever.
(D&C 88:41)

Watching 3

2010-11-20T21:52:00.003-05:00

I am the Lord your God
and will be with you
even to the end of the world
and through all eternity.
(D&C 132:49)

I am the same who leads you to all good.
(Ether 4:12)

Watching 2

2010-11-20T18:14:00.002-05:00

O Lord,
according to their faith,
which is in you,
give them strength.
(1 Ne. 7:17)

Watching 1

2010-11-20T14:55:00.002-05:00

He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee.
He began to be sorrowful and very heavy.
He said to them:
My soul is extremely sorrowful,
to the point of death.
Stay here, and watch with me.
(Matt. 26:37-38)

When they came to the place call Calvary,
they crucified him . . .
And the women who followed him from Galilee,
stood at a distance, watching.
(Luke 23:33, 49)

Jesus—

You wanted people to watch with you at the end.
I am watching and praying, from a distance,
because apart from that—
and apart from letting them know that I am doing it—
there is nothing else I can do.

I pray that she will feel your presence accompanying her.
I pray that her pain will be controlled.
I pray that he will have the strength and discernment he needs.

Amen.

Taize service, November

2010-11-07T09:20:00.003-05:00

I led the usual first-Friday Taize service this weekend. Here are the scriptural readings I rendered and the prayers I composed for the occasion. The service was oriented toward the feast of All Saints and therefore toward remembering all those who have served God.

Next month's service will fall in Advent. I'm working on preparing a service that will focus on Christ as the Son of Mary. Christ doesn't just drop out of heaven into the manger: he grows in a womb, he enters the world by way of a birth canal. In other words, Christ enters the world through Mary. I hope this won't prove too abstract a connection, but I want to create a service that will invite reflection on the people and communities through whom Christ enters our lives, and the ways in which God calls us to be instruments through whom Christ enters the lives of others—through whom Christ is born in the lives of others.

************

PSALM 145

All your creatures give thanks to you, Holy One!
All your saints extol you!
They proclaim the glory of your reign
and tell of your power.

Your people make known to all your mighty deeds
and the splendor of your rule.
Your reign is everlasting,
and your dominion endures through all generations.

To all your promises, you are faithful, Holy One,
and all your deeds reveal your kindness.
You catch all who stumble;
you lift all who struggle under heavy loads.

All your creatures look to you
to feed them in due season.
You open your hand,
and their hunger is satisfied.

All your ways are just, Holy One;
all your deeds are done in love.
All who call to you from their hearts
will find you there beside them.

You hear the yearnings of all who worship you;
you hear their cries and take action.
For this I will praise you!
I will join with all your creatures in blessing your holy name forever!

************

EPHESIANS 1:17-23

I pray that God,
by a spirit of wisdom and revelation,
will illuminate your heart
with a vision of the hope to which you are called—
a vision of the abounding glories
which God has promised to the saints.

May you glimpse the immeasurable greatness
of the power with which God works on our behalf!
It is the same power
by which Christ was raised from the dead
and elevated to sit at God’s right hand,
far above every other authority on earth or in heaven.

For our sake,
God has placed Christ above all things.
Christ is the head; we are the body.
Christ fills all—and we are that fullness.

************

LUKE 6:20-23, 27-28

Jesus said:

To be poor is a blessing—
you have God’s kingdom for your inheritance!

To be hungry now is a blessing—
later you will eat your fill!

To grieve now is a blessing—
later you will laugh for joy!

It is a blessing to be hated,
excluded, reviled, or defamed
for the sake of the Promised One.
Be glad when that happens! . . .
They used to treat the prophets the same way.

But listen:
Love your enemies.
Do good to those who hate you.
Bless those who curse you.
Pray for those who mistreat you.

************

PRAYERS

Holy One, we praise you for all your saints—
for all those in whom your righteousness shines.

For all who provide care to others—we praise you.
For all who speak and work for justice—we praise you.
For all who promote peace and break down walls of separation—we praise you.
For all who teach words of life and proclaim good news—we praise you.
For all who provide models of prayer and contemplation—we praise you.
For all who labor in tedious or thankless causes for good—we praise you.
For all who have been instruments of your love in our lives—we praise you.

For the grace to serve you in compassion, courage, and power,
we pray to you, Christ our God.

************

CONCLUDING PRAYER

Christ our light,
your grace shines
in holy lives and holy labors;
and as far as the light reaches,
the flame of your love
is kindled in human hearts.

Protesting Packer's comments

2010-10-04T22:09:00.003-04:00

LGBT Community to Protest Packer's Speech
HRC to Mormon Apostle: Your Statements Are Inaccurate and Dangerous

This certainly isn't the first time that people have protested LDS statements or actions around homosexuality. (I participated in one myself some years back when I lived in Salt Lake, joining other mostly silent protesters standing outside Temple Square during General Conference.) But with the caveat that what I'm about to say reflects perceptions that need to be corroborated by research, the rapidly organized protests in response to Packer's General Conference address strike me as representing something new in the history of the Mormon politics of homosexuality. For one thing, I can't think of a situation where people organized so quickly in response to a specific address. For another, I can't recall off the top of my head a time when a national organization like the HRC weighed in on a LDS sermon.

Here's an adaptation of a familiar parable (D&C 101:81-84; cf. Luke 18:1-5) that reflects, at the moment, my feeling about these protests:

There was in a certain city a small group of self-selected, middle-aged to elderly religious leaders who were highly confident that they understood God's will regarding same-sex relationships. They were men who feared only God and had no regard for the contrary opinions of mere mortals.

There was in that same city a number of people—some gay or lesbian, some straight—who were dismayed by what they saw as the insensitivity and prejudice of the religious leaders' pronouncements.

At first they wrote private letters to the religious leaders, courteously and deferentially worded, expressing their dismay and sharing personal stories of pain and heartache that they hoped might move the leaders to empathy.

Then they began to voice their heartache and dismay more publicly at quiet events such as vigils—still avoiding anything that might be construed as an attack on the religious leaders.

Then they wrote petitions calling for reconciliation and healing, and delivered them to church headquarters, carrying carnations and singing hymns about loving one another. The religious leaders didn't read the petitions, of course, but they sent public relations officers to meet the petitioners at the door, smiling politely for the news cameras.

Then the petitioners organized loud, angry protests outside church headquarters and enlisted the help of national LGBT organizations to publicly criticize the religious leaders' statements.

The most stubbornly pious of the religious leaders still didn't give a fig about critics. But some of their colleagues began to murmur, "Doctrine is doctrine; but all this bad p.r. is getting wearisome." And they began to think that it might be a good idea to back off the subject for a while.

Taize service, October

2010-10-03T20:40:00.003-04:00

I organized the customary first-Friday service, held two days ago. We had cello and flute accompaniment, in addition to the guitar. These were the scriptural readings.

************

PSALM 126

When the Lord delivered us from captivity,
it seemed like a dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter;
on our lips there were songs.

Foreigners said:
“What marvels their God has worked for them!”
What marvels the Lord worked for us indeed!
For this, we were glad.

Deliver us, Lord, from our captivity
like streams rushing forth into a dry land.
Those who now sow their fields in tears
will sing when they reap the harvest.

They go out, they go out, full of tears,
carrying seed for the sowing.
They come back, they come back, full of song,
carrying their sheaves.

************

1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-8, 13

If I speak in tongues—even the language of angels—
but I do not have love,
my speaking is nothing more than noise.

If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries,
and have faith powerful enough to move mountains,
but I do not have love,
I am nothing.

If I give away all my possessions—
if I hand over my very body to be martyred—
but I do not have love,
I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind.
Love is not envious, or boastful, or arrogant, or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way.
Love is not irritable or resentful.
Love takes no pleasure in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.
Prophecies? They will come to an end.
Tongues? They will cease.
Knowledge? It will pass away.
But faith, hope, and love—these three go on forever,
and the greatest of the three is love.

************

JOHN 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.

The Word was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through the Word—
without the Word, not one thing came into being.

In the Word, life came into being—
life and light for all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness could not overcome it.

Book of Mormon anniversary

2010-09-21T19:39:00.004-04:00

Tonight is the anniversary of the Moroni visitations. Last night (Monday, FHE), some Mormon grad students got together with their families at a local park, and I led an interactive telling/reenactment of the story of the angel's appearance. It was good.

************

More than a hundred years ago,
there lived a boy named Joseph Smith, with his family:
his mother, his father,
his sisters Sophronia, Catherine, and Lucy,
and his brothers Alvin, Hyrum, Samuel, William, and Don Carlos.
They were a big family, and they loved each other very much.

Joseph and his family worked hard, but they were poor.
They didn’t have a lot of money.
They lived in a tiny house, and they wore old clothes, and sometimes they didn’t have very much to eat.

In the place where Joseph lived, people liked to tell stories about pirates and buried gold.
Sometimes Joseph thought to himself:
“If I could find buried gold, then I would be rich.
Then I could buy my family a bigger house, and new clothes, and anything we wanted to eat.”

One night, Joseph’s family went to sleep like they always did.
The only person who didn’t go to sleep was Joseph.
He stayed awake, praying.

While he was praying, something amazing happened!
An angel appeared in front of Joseph, floating in the air.
The angel wore a robe that was whiter than snow,
and he shone with a light that was brighter than the sun.

The angel said:
“Joseph, Heavenly Father has sent me to you with a message.
Remember this message:

Near your house, there is a hill.
On the hill, there is a rock.
Under the rock, there is a box.
In the box, there is a book written on golden plates.”

Then the angel disappeared.

After the angel went away, Joseph thought to himself:
“A book written on golden plates must be worth a lot of money!
If I find the golden plates, and sell them, I’ll be rich.
Then I can buy my family a bigger house, and new clothes, and anything we want to eat.”

While Joseph was thinking this,
suddenly the angel appeared a second time, floating in the air.
The angel wore a robe that was whiter than snow,
and he shone with a light that was brighter than the sun.

The angel said:
“Joseph, the golden plates are not to sell.
Heavenly Father wants you to read the book written on the golden plates,
and share what it says with everyone you know.
This book is more valuable than all the money in the world.

Remember the message I gave you:

Near your house, there is a hill.
On the hill, there is a rock.
Under the rock, there is a box.
In the box, there is a book written on golden plates.”

Then the angel disappeared.

After the angel went away, Joseph thought to himself:
“So I can’t sell the golden plates.
I can’t use them to buy a house, or clothes, or food.
What’s so special about this book
that makes it more valuable than all the money in the world?”

While Joseph was thinking this,
suddenly the angel appeared a third time, floating in the air.
The angel wore a robe that was whiter than snow,
and he shone with a light that was brighter than the sun.

The angel said:
“Joseph, the book written on golden plates
is more valuable than all the money in the world
because it teaches about Jesus,
and about loving one another,
and about Heavenly Father’s plan.

Remember the message I gave you:

Near your house, there is a hill.
On the hill, there is a rock.
Under the rock, there is a box.
In the box, there is a book written on golden plates.”

Then the angel disappeared.

By now, it was morning.
Joseph’s family all got up and started their work for the day.
Joseph, and his father, and his brothers went out to work on their farm.
But Joseph was very tired because he hadn’t gotten any sleep.

His father said, “Joseph, what’s wrong with you?”
So Joseph told his father all about the angel,
and Joseph repeated to his father the message the angel had given him:

“Near your house, there is a hill.
On the hill, there is a rock.
Under the rock, there is a box.
In the box, there is a book written on golden plates.”

Joseph’s father said to him:
“If Heavenly Father sent an angel to give you this message,
then you need to go right now to find the book written on golden plates.”

So Joseph went looking for the place where the angel had told him he would find the book.
Near his house, there was a hill.
He climbed the hill, and there he found a rock.
He lifted up the rock, and underneath he found a box.
Inside the box he found the book written on golden plates, just as the angel had said.

Joseph read the book written on the golden plates.
He read what it said about Jesus, and about loving one another, and about Heavenly Father’s plan.
He started sharing what he had read with everyone he knew.
He shared it with his mother, and his father, and his brothers and sisters,
and with his friends;
and they all shared it with their friends;
and those friends shared it with their friends,
so that little by little, people began to learn about the book written on golden plates.

The name of the book written on golden plates is the Book of Mormon.
And that’s the story of how we got the Book of Mormon,
which is more valuable than all the money in the world
because it teaches us about Jesus.

September 11 prayer service

2010-09-11T21:00:00.005-04:00

As I announced in an earlier post, I led a prayer service this evening in observance of the 9/11 anniversary. The initial impetus had been to provide a counterpoint to the much publicized Qur'an burning scheduled in Florida for the same evening. That event was cancelled, of course. (Thank God!—though it's unfortunate that the publicity has raised that man's public profile the way it has, a process in which I have been complicit.) But since that event had been a symbolic focus for a larger set of concerns, we went ahead.

About fifteen people came. I'd selected eleven mostly short Quranic passages to read; people read them aloud, with silence in between for reflection. Then I read a prayer I'd prepared, with periods of silence on the way in which other people added their own petitions. That all lasted half an hour, after which people sat and talked—intensely at first, then gradually the mood lightened and people dispersed.

I'm posting here the Quranic excerpts we read, along with my prayer. The renderings of the passages are my own, based on consultation of several English translations.

************

In the name of God, the All-Gracious, the Merciful—

All praise be to God,
Lord of all creation,
the All-Gracious, the Merciful,
the Sovereign Judge.

You alone we worship;
to you alone we pray for help.

Guide us to the straight path,
the path of those on whom you have bestowed your grace. (1:1-7)

******

God alone is worthy of worship,
the Eternal One, Sustainer and Protector of all that exists.

God revealed the Torah and the Gospel as guidance for humankind.
God revealed the standard for judging between right and wrong.

Surely, Lord, you will gather humankind together
on a day of whose coming there can be no doubt. (3:2-3, 9)

******

Say: “O God! Yours is the kingdom!
You give the kingdom to whom you will,
and you take it from whom you will.
You honor whom you will,
and you humble whom you will.

All that is good is in your hand,
and you are able to do all things.
You cause night to pass into day, and day into night.
You bring the living out of the dead, and the dead out of the living.
To all whom you will, you give sustenance without measure.” (3:26-27)

******

Speak of the wife of Imram, who said:
“My Lord! I vow that the child in my womb
will be consecrated to your service.
Accept this offering from me,
you the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.”

When she delivered, she said:
“My Lord, I have delivered a girl.
I have named her Mary.
In you I seek refuge, for her and for her descendants—
refuge from the Evil One, who was cast out.”
So with grace, her Lord accepted her,
and in grace, he caused her to grow.

Speak of the angels, who said:
“O Mary, God sends you glad tidings of a divine word!
He will be called the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary.
He will be honored in this world and in the world to come.
He will be among those who are near to God.
From cradle to adulthood, he will speak to the people
as one of the righteous.

“God will instruct him in the scriptures and in wisdom,
in the Torah and the Gospel.
God will make him a messenger to the people of Israel.
He will say: ‘I have come to you with a sign from your Lord.
By God’s will, I heal the one who was born blind, and the leper,
and I restore the dead to life.
I confirm the Torah, which was before me,
and I make lawful for you some things that were forbidden to you.
Truly God is my Lord and your Lord;
therefore worship God alone.
This is the straight path.’” (3:35-37, 45-46, 48-51)

******

This is the truth:

Those who believe,
and those who are Jews,
and Sabians,
and Christians—
whoever believes in God and the Day of Judgment
and works righteousness—
all will have their reward with their Lord.

They will have nothing to fear,
nor cause to grieve. (2:62)

******

You will not attain righteousness
until you spend what you love
in the service of God.

Whatever you spend,
God knows it. (3:92)

******

You who have believed:
render to God due reverence,
and live out your days
in perfect submission to God’s will.

Hold fast to the rope that connects you to God,
and do not become divided.

Remember God’s grace—
how when you were enemies to one another,
God joined your hearts together,
so that by his grace you became family. (3:102-103)

******

Have you seen those who live in denial of divine judgment?
These are people who turn away orphans
and who do not advocate for the care of the poor.

Woe to those who perform the motions of prayer
but pray without thought.
Woe to those who make a grand show of good deeds
but withhold simple assistance from people in need. (107:1-7)

******

God, the Supremely Gracious,
the One who taught you to recite these words,
created human beings
and gave them the gift of speech.

Sun and moon follow the courses God calculated for them.
Stars and trees bow down in worship.

God, who built the heavens,
has set the scales of justice
so that you will know the standard
to which you must conform.

Therefore, let your scales be just,
and give the full measure of what is due. (55:1-9)

******

O humankind!
We created you all
as descendents of a single pair.
We made you into multiple peoples and tribes
so that you may know one another.

Who is most highly favored of God?
Those who are most righteous.
God, the All-Knowing and All-Seeing,
makes no other distinction. (49:13)

******

Who knows but that God will forge friendship
between you and those you regard as your enemies?

Surely he has power to do it—
God the Oft-Forgiving,
the Merciful. (60:7)

************

God, the All-Gracious, the Merciful,
God of the whole earth—

It is good to hear your voice.
It is good to be in your presence.

We praise you for the many ways you have revealed yourself to us:
in the words of prophets,
in Jesus,
in the instruction we continue to receive from your Spirit,
in the words and deeds of people—family, friends, strangers—through whom you touch our lives.

We gather tonight in a time of division and fear and anger.
We are mindful that you have called us to be witnesses of your love,
which knows no bounds.

We are grateful and relieved that one hostile act directed against our Muslim neighbors,
which was scheduled to occur tonight, did not occur.

We are mindful of the continuing tensions that currently surround Muslim citizens and residents of our nation.
We are mindful of the terrorist attacks carried out in this country nine years ago today by al-Qaeda.
We are mindful of similar attacks or attempted attacks, here and in other countries.
We are mindful of the wars that our nation waged in the wake of September 11 in predominantly Muslim countries—Afghanistan and Iraq.
We are mindful of actions taken by our government in the name of waging a war on terror.
We are mindful of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of our nation’s relationship with Israel.
We are mindful of tensions inside and around the Islamic Republic of Iran.

We are mindful that you have taught us to pray for our enemies.

We long for peace.
We long for safety.
We long for interreligious understanding.
We long for justice.

We pray for all who suffer because of religious conflict,
and especially for those who suffer because of the conflicts we have named tonight.
We pray for civilians,
for combatants and their loved ones,
for those in authority,
for refugees,
for prisoners,
for the wounded,
for the dead and the loved ones who survive them.

We pray for those who suffer discrimination,
for those who are objects of suspicion and hostility,
for those who are afraid,
for those who act out of prejudice,
for those who act out of rage,
for those who seek to harm others,
for those who are in danger,
for those who feel desperate and oppressed.

God of all wisdom,
we are tangled up in a web of violence, and fear, and complicity,
and it is very hard to see a way out.
We pray to you for help.

Show us how to build bridges.
Show us what we can do to mitigate fear and prejudice and hatred.
Inspire the leaders of the nations to find ways to bring about a just peace.
Plant compassion, and a zeal for peace,
in the hearts of all who speak in your name and desire to serve you.

Among those who call upon you
are people whom we regard as our enemies
or who regard us as their enemies.
Teach us and them—all of us—
how to serve you in truth and love.
Teach us and them
what we need to do differently
so that this world of oppression and violence and terror
can be transformed into your kingdom.

In Christ’s name we pray, amen.

Response to the September 11 Qur'an burning

2010-09-06T22:11:00.004-04:00

The folks at the Dove World Outreach Center (an Orwellian name, that) in Florida are apparently still planning to proceed with their International Burn-a-Koran Day on the evening of September 11. Thanks to the Internet, the plan is known and sparking protests in various parts of the Muslim world; no doubt the folks at Dove World are thrilled by the attention.

As a counterpoint to the Qur'an burning, and to the wider expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. that this event symbolizes to my mind, I'm putting together a Qur'an reading and prayer service to be held Saturday evening in the same church house-office where I lead the monthly Taize service. I originally conceived it as just a personal thing, for myself, but I've announced it to other members of the congregation in case others might want to join in. We'll see. If nothing else, I hope it will reorient my reaction toward the Qur'an burning away from helpless anger toward something more spiritually healthy.

The plan is to sit in a candlelit room, read some ecumenically appropriate selections from the Qur'an, reflect, and then spend some time praying. Afterward, I'll return here and report.

Until then, here's an explanation I've prepared of the philosophy and intentions behind this prayer service:

Dialogue between Christians and Muslims must grapple with difficult issues. Among these is the fact that each group’s scriptures contain passages that make exclusive claims to truth and damn those who reject these claims.

This evening’s gathering does not pretend to resolve such difficulties. Rather, our goal is to lift up points of commonality at a time when voices around us are crying division. This gathering invites us to hear in selections from the Muslim scriptures a Voice that rings familiar and true from our Christian encounter with God—a Voice that calls us to peace, justice, and compassion.

After we have listened, we will speak. In dialogue with the One whose voice we have heard, we will express our longing, our grief, our frustration, our hope. We will pray for peace and understanding. We will pray for people who suffer because of religious conflicts. We will pray for our enemies. As you feel moved, please add aloud your petitions, giving utterance to the groanings of the Spirit in your heart.

Infant baptism--by immersion

2010-08-22T20:06:00.006-04:00

Today at the Episcopal church Hugo and I attend, a couple's baby was baptized. This congregation baptizes infants by immersion, which is quite something to watch. They set up a big tub outside. The baby is entirely undressed and placed in the priest's arms. As the priest says, "I baptize you in the name of the Father..." she sort of sweeps the baby backwards into the water, just enough to immerse the baby's back. At "and of the Son..." she does another pass, this time deeper, usually with the result that water splashes over the baby's face, at which point he or she starts, um, voicing reservations, shall we say. With "and of the Holy Spirit," the baby passes entirely under the water, just for a second, and comes out howling in unknown tongues.

Immersing infants is very important to the priest here in order to preserve the death-and-resurrection symbolism of baptism. In her sermon today, just before the baptism, she talked about how in baptism we plunge into the life of Christ. Actually, she said something about how people "choose" to be baptized when they're ready to plunge into the life of Christ. Nicely put, I thought—and a great argument for why infants shouldn't be baptized. They're not choosing to plunge into anything.

I don't mean to be sanctimonious here. Back when I was at the MTC, they brought in some middle-aged man in a suit to talk to us; and one of maybe two things he said that stuck with me is that when he was on his mission, contacts would sometimes invite him to witness their child's christening, and he could never share their joy because he knew what the Book of Mormon says about infant baptism and the gall of bitterness. Then and now, I thought the guy needed to dislodge the iron rod he had stuck up his _____.

(Well, okay, I wouldn't have phrased it that way at the time I was in the MTC. The J.-Golden-Kimball-esque language and full-on disdain came later.)

Nevertheless, watching today's baptism, I was reminded of how traditionally Mormon my sensibilities are on this question. (Also Baptist—this is a question on which Mormons and their Baptist opponents would see eye to eye.) I understand the liberal theology that reads infant baptism as a way to welcome children into the church, the family of God. I understand that, sociologically, these events are an occasion for families to celebrate the newborn and to pass on tradition. And whenever I witness these events, I always think: A baby blessing could accomplish the same purposes. Save the baptism for when the child is old enough to remember the immersion experience and everything it symbolizes and to perform some modicum of self-conscious identity work and meaning-making.

Anyway. Wanted to get that little soapbox off my chest. In any case, the baby was cute, he got over the shock quickly (they generally do), it was a great moment for the family, and they served a fantastic cake afterwards. Chocolate cream frosting and raspberry filling take the gall of bitterness right out of your mouth.

Islamophobia

2010-08-15T07:33:00.004-04:00

There was a strict command throughout all the churches that there should be no persecutions among them, that there should be an equality among all... (Mosiah 27:3)

As a historian, I should know better than to be surprised. I know that nativism is a recurring phenomenon in this country's history. I know that American Protestants have a history of rallying against religious Others, and I can even give you a sociological theory to explain why contemporary evangelicals do that. (It has to do with the way strong boundaries generate religious vitality.) I know history doesn't roll smoothly forward in Hegelian fashion, though I have faith the Spirit can make it do that if we're willing to bend as it blows.

Despite all that, I am wearily taken aback by the intensity of anti-Muslim sentiment that's been stirred up around the proposed Islamic center near the former World Trade Center. And it's not just that, of course, though the "Ground Zero mosque" has become the cause celebre, partly because opponents find it easiest in that case to squeeze away from the accusation of intolerance. (It's just about being sensitive; they have nothing against Islam in general, it's just that the location of this particular mosque is so provocative, etc.) But protests against the building of mosques and Islamic centers are going on in different places around the country. And now we've got this bigoted minister down in Florida planning a Qur'an-burning for the September 11 anniversary. ("You want religion, do you? I will have preachers here presently.")

I read in the news the other day that over 60% of respondents to one poll opposed the building of a mosque at Ground Zero. Language is key, of course: I've noticed that opponents tend to talk about building a mosque at Ground Zero, which has left me wondering if it's possible that there are people out there who actually imagine that the proposal is to erect a mosque on the site of the Twin Towers? Consider the sign that one person is reported to have been carrying at the meeting where the Manhattan community board voted to approve the project: "You're building over a Christian cemetery!"

If a statement like that reflects "sincere" ignorance, there's a chance of being able to communicate. But if the statement is sheerly an expression of Christian entitlement—I don't know if it's possible to communicate with that.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm prepared to believe that there are people out there who really aren't particularly Islamophobic but who believe that the "Ground Zero mosque" is unwisely provocative. I'm willing to read the ADL's opposition, for example, with that kind of presumptive generosity. (Though I still agree with the New Yorker columnist who called their opposition "shameful.") For me, this isn't even so much about the "Ground Zero mosque." It's about watching how the "Ground Zero mosque" debate is helping to bring out anti-Muslim sentiment all over this country, sentiment that gets expressed in ways which simply cannot be excused in the nuanced way that some people explain their opposition to the Islamic center in Manhattan. And the fact that you have people offering nuanced opposition to the Islamic center in Manhattan emboldens the people who are just plain bigots, because it makes it easier for them to imagine that their position is similarly sophisticated and respectable. It gives them a respectable language behind which to conceal their prejudice.

I am so angry, which does nothing to help. The anger is, rather, a symptom of how helpless I feel.

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God the Compassionate, the Merciful—

Through a latter-day prophet, Jesus says: "Do not be afraid."
I want to see the light of truth dispel ignorance.
I want to see prejudices broken up and swept away as with a flood.

I give thanks for the voices of reason who at this time are speaking up
on behalf of the constitutional principles which must be maintained
for the rights and protection of all.

(I thought my country's president was one of those voices,
but now I'm not so sure.)

Teach me what I can say
that will constructively help to change minds and hearts
of people in my orbit.

In Christ's name, amen.

A prayer of thanksgiving

2010-08-08T15:32:00.003-04:00

Praise the Lord with a prayer of thanksgiving. (D&C 136:28)

I give thanks that the Deepwater Horizon well appears to have been successfully capped—and I pray it holds. I give thanks that the oil appears to be dissipating more rapidly than feared and hasn't spread far as it was originally feared that it might.

I don't mean to be sullen, but I just don't find it in me to feel very grateful about either BP's or the U.S. government's reactions to the spill. I'm sitting here, actually, having an epiphany about how much antipathy I feel toward Congress and the Obama administration, not just over this issue but in general.

I pray for people whose lives are still affected by the spill and its aftermath. I pray for the wildlife living in affected habitats.

I remember the dead. I was thinking of animals when I wrote that, but there are people to remember, too—those killed during the explosion.

************

I give thanks for the federal ruling against the constitutionality of Proposition 8. There's no telling, of course, how this is going to end. But it's one hurdle past. A ray of hope.

I have been surprised—baffled, really, to the point where I would start talking about Providence if I didn't think that were philosophically problematic and prematurely optimistic—by what a poor showing the proponents of Prop 8 made in court. It's weird. I don't know what to make of that. Ineptness? Overconfidence in the strength of their case? (I felt "our side" had made that mistake when Prop 8 was challenged before the California state supreme court.) Possibly resignation? Did they figure they couldn't win before a gay judge, but the Supreme Court would save them? (Which it could.) Or even, perhaps, a sense of fighting a losing battle? Obviously I'd love to think the last, but who knows.

I'm grateful for the very important irony that none of the government officials named in the suit, including Schwarzenegger and the state's attorney general, were willing to defend Prop 8. I'd like to see there a lesson in the limits of populism: groups may be able to get what they want by passing propositions, but if you thrust such things on elected officials, they may not go to bat for you. This case has shown that gay marriage isn't so neatly a Republican vs. Democrat issue anymore, which is a good sign in terms of shifting public opinion. The fact the judge is, evidently, gay is also an encouraging sign of the times: Imagine back in the Sixties trying to defend racial segregation before a black judge. The kind of case that the religious right is accustomed to making against gay/lesbian equality really only works when you're talking about gays and lesbians as the menacing Other. When the person to whom you have to make your case is the Other . . . you've got a problem.

Of course, if/when this case reaches the Supreme Court, we'll be the Other again. No direct representation on the bench. So . . . we'll see. But for the moment, I give thanks.

Feast of the Transfiguration

2010-08-06T22:47:00.004-04:00

Today was the Feast of the Transfiguration in the Western Christian liturgical calendar. Today was also the usual first-Friday Taize service, so I made the Transfiguration our theme. I used the scriptural readings listed for today in the Book of Common Prayer (they included a Gospel account of the Transfiguration, of course), and I wrote prayers that worked with themes from those readings.

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PSALM 99

Mighty are you, God of Zion!
You reign supreme over the nations.
Let all the peoples praise your name.
Holy are you!

Mighty governor, lover of justice,
you rule with equity.
You have executed righteous judgment
and established justice among your people.
You are worthy of worship and praise.
Holy are you!

Moses, Aaron, and Miriam were among those who served you;
Deborah and Samuel were among those who called on your name.
When they cried to you, you answered them;
you spoke to them from a pillar of cloud.
They carried out your instructions
and observed the law you taught them.

You answered them, holy God.
Though you decree judgment for wrongdoing,
yet you showed them you are a God who forgives.
You are worthy to be praised
and worshipped on your holy mountain.
Holy are you!

************

2 PETER 1:16-19

When we told you about the coming of Jesus, the Chosen One,
and his power and majesty,
we spoke from our own experience,
as eyewitnesses.

For we were there when Almighty God gave him honor and glory—
when a Voice from out of dazzling glory said,
“This is my Beloved, on whom my favor rests!”
We ourselves heard this Voice from heaven
when we were with Jesus on the holy mountain.

Because of this experience,
we believe even more firmly in the words of the prophets.
So we urge you to take up their words
like a lamp in the darkness,
until the daybreak comes
and the light of the morning star shines in your own hearts.

************

LUKE 9:28-36

Jesus went up on a mountain to pray.
He took Peter, James, and John with him.

As he prayed, his face began to shine,
and his clothes became dazzling white.
Suddenly two other glorious figures appeared—
the prophets Moses and Elijah.
They talked with Jesus about what was going to happen
when he journeyed to Jerusalem.

Peter and the other two had been dropping off to sleep,
but now they were wide awake.
They saw Jesus, shining in glory,
and the two prophets standing with him.

When the prophets began to leave,
Peter said to Jesus:
“Teacher, it is good that we are here!
Moses and Elijah don’t need to go—
we can set up tents, one for each of you...”
He was babbling.

While Peter was speaking,
a cloud appeared and enveloped them.
They were filled with fear.

From inside the cloud, they heard a Voice say:
“This is my Son. This is my Chosen.
Listen to him!”

As soon as the Voice said this,
they found themselves alone with Jesus.

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PRAYERS

Christ our God—
on the mountaintops of our lives,
in our places of retreat and our times of prayer,
you have revealed yourself to us,
sometimes in glimpses,
sometimes with a force that leaves us babbling or speechless.
We yearn for the experience of sensing your presence.
Open our eyes to recognize you in all the ways you come to us.

Response: Teacher—it is good that we are here!

Christ our light—
you have caused us to hear the voice of God:
through prophetic words and inspired writings,
through the voice of conscience,
through divine light shining in our hearts.
We hear, but at times we cannot see, or we are afraid.
Help us discern our Creator’s will,
and give us faith and courage to do it.

Response: Teacher—it is good that we are here!

Risen Christ—
we are eyewitnesses of your glory.
We know by our own experience
that you give light to those who seek;
that you are a God who forgives, heals, and comforts;
that you are at work in our lives.
Show us how to share your light
and to work blessing in the lives of others.

Response: Teacher—it is good that we are here!

Thanksgiving and remembrance

2010-07-18T07:40:00.002-04:00

This week Argentina became the first Latin American country, and the second country in the Americas (O Canada!), to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. ("Viva!" to Mexico's Distrito Federal for legalizing it locally.) The LDS Church made what strikes me as a token effort to stir up opposition among its members in the vicinity of Buenos Aires. I'm not sure, actually, how to explain why they refrained from organizing a more assertive opposition, something more on the scale of Prop 8. Scared cautious by the Prop 8 backlash? Worried about a backlash from the Argentine government? A largely American leadership just not so invested in what goes on outside the United States? Who knows. Anyway, justice won, though I'd be more encouraged if it had won by a larger margin.

The morning breaks, the shadows flee;
lo, Zion's standard is unfurled!
The dawning of a brighter day,
majestic rises on the world.

The clouds of error disappear
before the rays of truth divine;
the glory bursing from afar,
wide o'er the nations soon will shine.

"Zion's standard" because one of the defining values of Zion is social equality and an end to discrimination (D&C 38:26-27).

Hope flickers on.

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It appears—fingers tightly crossed—that the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has been successfully capped. My feeling about that actually isn't so much gratitude, to be honest, as it is: About frickin' time. I still want to see heads on stakes. Well, no, I don't believe in capital punishment as a matter of principle. So let me revise my vindictive fantasy: I want every BP executive, and anyone else in that company whose job responsibilities make them accountable for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, along with every person at the MMS ever guilty of taking gifts or allowing oil companies to bend the rules, to be compelled to work in oil cleanup for however many years it takes until the job is done.

One can only dream.

The angel brought me again to the door of the temple;
and look! water flowed out from under the threshhold toward the east. . . .

He said to me:
These waters flow down into the desert and into the sea,
and when they come into the sea, the waters will be healed.
Then every living thing that moves will live,
and there will be great schools of fish,
because of these waters.
They will be healed, and everything will live.

(from Ezekiel 47: 1, 8-9)

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Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of my excommunication. I'm sitting here looking at the screen, with absolutely no idea what more to say about it than that. I'm not even sure what kind of scriptural passage to quote at this point. Well, no, this feels right:

I will ask my Father to send you another Advocate,
who will remain with you forever . . .
I will not leave you orphaned:
I will come to you . . .
Then you will know that I am in my Father,
and you are in me, and I in you.

(John 14: 16, 18, 20)

Taize service, July

2010-07-04T22:53:00.004-04:00

I led the first Friday Taize service as usual two days ago. Here are the readings as I re-rendered them (working from the NRSV and the JTS translation of the Hebrew Bible). I took this set of readings from the Taize website; they weren't the readings recommended for this week but for a different week in ordinary time. When I chose them, I recognized that Psalm 103 and Isaiah 40 were being paired together, at least in part, because they both refer to being given power like an eagle's. But it didn't occur to me until we were in the middle of the service that the eagle metaphor resonated weirdly with the iconography of the Fourth of July. Since I'm not thrilled about alliances between American nationalism and Christianity, I think the resonance was unfortunate.

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PSALM 103:1-12

Bless the Lord, my soul!
All that is in me, bless God’s holy name!
Give thanks to the Lord, my soul,
and remember all God’s kindnesses.

Who but the Lord forgives all your sins?
Who but God heals your maladies?
Who pulls you back from the precipice?
Who encircles you with tender arms?
Who fills your life with good things
and gives you power like the eagle’s?

The Lord is a righteous judge,
administering justice to all who are oppressed.
This is the God who spoke to Moses—
who liberated Israel with wondrous deeds.

The Lord is merciful and kind,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
God does not treat us according to our sins
nor repay us according to our faults.
As high as heaven is above the earth,
so deep is God’s compassion for the penitent.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far does the Lord remove from us our sins.

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ISAIAH 40:27-31

My people,
why do you say,
“The Lord does not see me;
God ignores the injustice done to me”?

Don’t you know?
Have you not heard?
The eternal God,
who created the earth from end to end,
is endless in power
and limitless in knowledge.

In God, there is strength for the weary,
power for the powerless.
Beyond the limits at which the energy of youth is depleted—
past the point at which athletes collapse from exhaustion—
those who trust in the Lord will find their strength renewed.
They will soar upward as if with the wings of eagles.
Running, they will not become tired;
marching, they will not grow weary.

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LUKE 6:27-32, 35

Jesus said:
Listen, all of you—

Love your enemies,
do good to those who despise you,
bless those who curse you,
pray for those who mistreat you.

If someone slaps you across one cheek,
offer the other also.
If someone takes away your coat,
turn over your shirt as well.
Give to everyone who begs from you.
If someone takes what is yours,
make no effort to get it back.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

What is so virtuous
about showing love to those who love you?
It hardly takes a saint to do that much.

I am setting for you a higher standard.
Love your enemies;
do good, and lend expecting nothing in return.
That is how you will grow into the image of God,
who showers blessings even on the ungrateful and the wicked.