Endowment 2010

Today is Pentecost, the feast that commemorates the disciples being "endowed with power from on high" by the Spirit (Luke 24:49). Two Pentecosts ago, in 2010, I announced my intention to start work on a revision of the endowment along liberal theological lines. It's a quixotic project, since I'm creating it for a liberal Mormon worshiping community that doesn't actually exist--but it's a gesture of faith and hope that someday such a community might come into being.

I've been working on "Endowment 2010," as I've been calling it, little by little for the past couple of years. And now I'm ready to unveil it for anyone out there who might be interested in taking a look:

DOWNLOAD ENDOWMENT 2010

Be advised that the PDF download is over 100 pages long. That's because the revision is heavily annotated. In producing this document, I followed the same policy I did for LDSEndowment.org: I do not include descriptions of those portions of the ceremony that are specifically covered by covenants of non-disclosure, namely the signs, tokens, and keywords. I hold the view that those items of ritual information should be communicated only "live," in the context of performing the ceremony.

The document includes an intro that lays out the principles that guided this revision--or "re-visioning," as I prefer to call it. As a sample of what you'll find in the re-visioned ceremony, here are a couple snippets:

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MOTHER: Children, look—go down to that unorganized matter.

FATHER: Organize it into a world like the worlds we have formed previously. Fill it with all kinds of plant and animal life.

MOTHER: Counsel together in each period of your labors, so that all things are done in wisdom and order.

FATHER: When your labors are complete, return and bring us word.

JEHOVAH: It will be done, Elohim. Come, my brothers and sisters, let us go down.

ADAM: We will go down, Jehovah.

EVE and the MESSENGERS: We will go down.

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ADAM: We are looking for the further light and knowledge Mother and Father promised to send us.

LUCIFER: Oh, you want revelation. For that, you must have a prophet. I can provide you one.

(The PROPHET enters, wearing a business suit.)

LUCIFER: Good day! Are you by chance a prophet?

PROPHET: I have been ordained to that office.

LUCIFER: Then you receive revelations?

PROPHET: (Cautiously) I would say I am susceptible to the impressions of the Spirit of the Lord upon my mind, just as any other good church member might be. (Suddenly emphatic) But I am the Lord’s anointed and the mouthpiece of God, and when I speak, the debate is over.

LUCIFER: That last sounds very promising.

First-Friday service

I just realized that last week was the first-Friday service of contemplative song and prayer, and I forgot to post the readings, as I like to do. Because we're in the season between Easter and Pentecost, the theme was "Risen Christ," and the readings focused on the meaning of the resurrection and Jesus' promise to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples.

By coincidence, the first Friday, May 4, was also the anniversary of the administration of the first Nauvoo endowments. So there was special meaning, for me, in Jesus' instruction to the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until he had endowed them with power on high. He's referring, in context, to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the day of Pentecost. But for me, the words double as a reminder of the endowments of heavenly power that occurred at Kirtland and Nauvoo and, for me, in the Provo Temple some . . . well, let's not count how many years ago, shall we?

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PSALM 30 (selection)

I will praise you, Mighty One,

for you have lifted me out of danger.

You rescued my soul from the grave.

The underworld opened to receive me,

but you restored me to life.

There was a time when I looked for you

but could not find you.

I was terrified.

I cried out to you—

I pleaded—

“What good am I to you in the grave?

How can I praise you or proclaim your faithfulness

if I am dust?

Hear me, Merciful One,

and help me!”

Then you turned my grief into dancing.

You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.

For this, I will praise you with my whole being!

I will shout my praises loudly!

I will never stop praising you!

I will give thanks to you, my God, forever!

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EPHESIANS 2: 4-6, 14, 18

Once, through our sins,

we were dead.

 But God,

abounding in mercy

and impelled by a tremendous love for us,

has made us all alive in Christ.

 Because we are in Christ,

when he was raised from death

we were raised with him.

 By bringing us all into himself—

into his body—

Christ has made us into one.

Thus he has broken down the walls that divided us.

 Through Christ,

all of us have access to God,

because all of us have received the same Spirit.

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LUKE 24: 36-51 (selections)

As Jesus’ followers were together, talking,

they were shocked to see Jesus standing among them.

They were terrified, because they thought it was a ghost.

Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid.

It is I, myself—not a ghost.

Touch me and see!”

Then he taught them how to interpret the scriptures.

He said: “It is written that the Messiah must suffer,

and rise from death on the third day.

It is also written that repentance and forgiveness of sins

will be proclaimed to all nations,

in the name of the Messiah,

beginning at Jerusalem.

“You are witnesses of the fulfillment of these prophecies—

you will proclaim these things to the nations.

But wait here, in Jerusalem,

until I have endowed you with heavenly power.”

Then he led them out of the city almost to the village of Bethany.

He lifted his hands and pronounced a blessing on them,

and as he did this, he was lifted away from them into the sky.

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PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION

Risen Christ—

in you

all are made alive.

Lift up all who are in danger.

Bring healing and joy to all who grieve.

Risen Christ—

you descended into death

and rose from death.

Be with all who are sick

and all who are dying.

Risen Christ—

in a mysterious way,

you have united us in yourself.

Teach us how to overcome

the walls that divide us.

Risen Christ—

through the Holy Spirit,

you have endowed us with heavenly power.

Show us how to effectively proclaim your message.

Show us how to carry out your work.

5/6/1992 - Guaricano

As I said I would do in last month's mission retrospective post, I'm posting this month some photos of what Guaricano looked like twenty years ago. Within five years of these photos being taken, this rural-looking barrio had become much more urban. The "multis"--apartments built by the government for public housing--had turned into a dark, scary-looking slum: I drove through on the bus during a return visit. That was my first sign that Guaricano was not going to be what I remembered.

This is what Guaricano used to look like as you approached it from the capital. You can see the multis, still under construction, off to the right.

This is a view from the opposite edge of town, where the cane fields began. The beanpole with the white shirt and the bad posture is me.

The house my companion and I lived in. Relatively nice lodgings as our options went. A fancier house would have been two stories--as this one had become when I returned five years later. The little boy off to the side, with the white plastic jug, is on his way to the house behind ours, where he can buy water from their cistern. During rainstorms, he and other neighbor kids would catch the run-off from our flat roof in jugs.

This is the view looking across the street from our house, during an aguacero (rainstorm). Five years, later, the street was paved (and elevated several feet), the wood houses had become block houses, and the vegetation was gone. The transformation was stunning.

Electrical power was pirated--and therefore even more sporadic than usual for Santo Domingo at that time. You can see how all the surrounding houses have plugged themselves into this dangerously leaning power pole. When we moved in, we paid a neighbor to shimmy up the pole nearest to us and plug us in.

I have to keep reminding myself not to romanticize the simple conditions at my comfortable remove in time and space.

Oh No Ross and Carrie

By way of Mr. Deity (one of my secret vices), I recently learned about a podcast series called "Oh No Ross and Carrie," whose co-hosts took the missionary discussions and were baptized into the LDS Church for the purposes of investigating Mormon claims from their position as rationalist skeptics. The podcast describes itself as "the show where we don’t just report on spirituality, fringe science and the paranormal (from a scientific, evidence-based standpoint), but dive right in by joining religions, attending spiritual events, undergoing 'alternative' treatments, partaking in paranormal investigations, and more."

There are two Mormon-themed podcasts, each about an hour long, which you can access here: Part 1, Part 2. Listening to Ross and Carrie's account from the vantage point of a returned missionary, I ached for the missionaries, who sound as if they were thrilled to find people who engaged with their message so seriously, who were happy to show up to church, and--joy of joys!--accepted a baptismal commitment with very little pushing. (Podcaster Carrie records her end of the phone conversation in which she calls the elders to say that she and Ross would like to set a baptismal date. What she and Ross don't know is how much elated hugging and grateful praying occurred in the missionaries' apartment as soon as they got off the phone.)

Ross and Carrie maintain that they were mostly honest with the missionaries and other LDS authorities they engaged with, short of announcing that they were investigating the church for the purpose of doing a skeptical podcast about the experience. (They maintain, though, that they would have come clean about that if asked.) Not unexpectedly, the skeptics aren't very impressed with the evidence the missionaries offer them to support LDS claims. On this matter, my liberalism makes me ambivalent. On the one hand, I too am not moved by orthodox LDS apologetics (of which the missionaries offer an unsophisticated version anyway). On the other hand, as a religious liberal I would find it very tiring to engage with Ross and Carrie's hard-core Enlightenment rationalism: I'd end up rubbing my temples a lot and saying, "You guys are missing the point here." They lack the poetic sensibilities that would allow them to appreciate myth and ritual as sources of meaning-making. And they're not as self-critical as they think they are when it comes to recognizing their own unfounded beliefs: they could benefit from a healthy dose of postmodern antifoundationalism. (Example: They refer in the podcast to evolution as a proven truth. Ehhhh... I'm prepared, for political reasons, to take my stand with evolutionists over against creationists, but I'm too much a historicist by training to elevate evolutionary theory to the status of an article of faith.)

Ross and Carrie's ability to pass a baptismal interview while acknowledging that they have only a "mustard seed's" amount of faith in Mormonism and are, in fact, still waiting for spiritual confirmation is a sign of what's wrong with the LDS Church's missionary system. Someone should have intervened at some point in that process and said: "You know, you're rushing into a commitment that you really shouldn't make until you feel greater certainty that this is what God wants you to do. Let's hold off on baptism until you've spent more time studying, and praying, and attending church, and engaging with the members, and seeing how you still feel several months from now about becoming members of this faith community." The reason no one intervened that way is that the system craves conversions for the sake of impressive statistics. And yet the people at the helm can't seem to get it into their MBA-trained heads that rushing people into baptism is a big reason why the church's retention rates are such a joke.

The most painful moment in the podcast for me was an exchange Carrie described having with one of the missionaries at a meeting a week or so after their baptism (if I recall the time frame correctly). At the meeting, Ross and Carrie fessed up about the podcast and announced that they hadn't experienced the empirical evidence--i.e., the spiritual confirmation--they'd been waiting for. "Elder Johnson" (not his real name, apparently), a greenie who had been so nervous at their first meetings that he had been physically trembling, gave an impassioned speech in which he said that he too had shared many of the doubts Ross and Carrie had expressed, but that he was staking his faith on the church because (this is my paraphrase of Carrie's paraphrase) the doctrine of the Atonement allowed him to confront the existence of evil and suffering in the world. According to Carrie, he gave as an example the fact that in Los Angeles, even the air you breathe is terrible for you. Belief in the Atonement is how he goes on having faith in the possibility of something better.

Carrie and Ross understood this speech as an example of how religions teach you to see the world as more problematic than it really is in order to sell you their solution. They explained to podcast listeners that back when they had been involved in religion (they both seem to have had evangelical backgrounds, judging from what they said), they too had seen the world as a terrible place--but once they were liberated from religion, they realized the world wasn't so bad. Yes, well, perhaps it doesn't look so bad from your social location, my dear pampered fellow middle-class probably college-educated white Americans. I'm with Elder Johnson on this one, and I'm impressed that at age 19 (I'm assuming) he's developed a faith that has that much of an existential core to it. I'm impressed, too, that he found his voice and was able to bear witness to that testimony.  I hope he felt edified and strengthened by this encounter, because he should have been.

I find myself feeling more hostile to the podcasters at the end of writing this post then I did when I started out.

Easter

Last night, Hugo and I attended the Easter vigil at a church in downtown Cincinnati. This morning, I attended the Easter service of a Community of Christ congregation.

At Community of Christ, they used a confessional liturgy based on a passage from 2 Nephi 2. When I went on my mission, part of that same passage appeared as my favorite scripture on the plaque they put up for me in my ward meetinghouse back at home. I liked it because it affirmed a doctrine of divine grace--this was just before Stephen Robinson popularized the concept.

How important it is to make these things known to the inhabitants of the earth:
that no flesh can dwell in the presence of God
except through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the holy Messiah,
who lays down his life, in the way of all flesh,
then takes it up again by the power of the Spirit,
so that he may bring about the resurrection of the dead.

Being himself the first to rise--
the firstfruits to God--
he will make intercession for the whole human family.
And because of his intercession,
all people will come to God,
to stand in God's presence
and be judged in truth and holiness.

(2 Nephi 2:8-10)

Good Friday

A beautiful full moon--white last night, yellow this morning.

Through the day, I wore under my clothes a crucifix that was given to me by a Catholic friend back in Utah in 1997, as I was leaving for what I think of as my "second mission" to the Dominican Republic.

I led the first-Friday service of contemplative song and prayer this evening. These were the scripture readings I prepared.

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PSALM 22 (selections)

Where are you, God?
Why have you abandoned me?
Again and again, I cry out to you—
but you do not answer.

Everyone mocks me.
They make faces and pretend to be concerned.
“Look to God,” they say. “He will help you.
He cares so much about you!”

I have been poured out like water;
all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like melted wax.
My mouth is parched with thirst.
I lie in the dust, waiting to die.
The dogs are closing in.

A gang of ruffians surrounds me.
They stare and gloat.
I am so starved, they can see the bones under my skin.
They seize my hands and feet.
They strip me of my clothes
and cast lots to decide who keeps what.

Come help me, God!
Hurry!
Save me from the sword!
Save me from the dogs!

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HEBREWS 4:14-16

My friends, let us not lose faith!
For we have a great high priest,
Jesus, God’s Begotten,
who has passed through the veil of heaven
to plead on our behalf.

He is not a stern priest,
aloof or unsympathetic to our struggles.
On the contrary—
for though Jesus was without sin,
yet in every respect
he experienced our human weakness.

Therefore, let us approach God boldly,
so that we may receive mercy
and grace
to assist us in time of need.

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JOHN 19:16-30 (selections)

They took Jesus,
and made him carry his cross
to what is called the Place of the Skull.
There they crucified him,
along with two others.

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus,
they took his clothes
and divided them up among themselves.

Standing near Jesus’ cross
were his mother,
his mother’s sister,
Mary, whose husband was Clopas,
and Mary Magdalene.

When Jesus saw his mother
and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her,
he said to his mother,
“There is your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“There is your mother.”
And from that hour, the disciple took her into his home.

After this, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”
A jar full of sour wine was standing there.
They put a sponge dipped in the wine on a branch
and held it up to his mouth.

When Jesus had received the wine,
he said, “It is finished.”
Then his head fell forward
and he died.

Maundy Thursday

I attended a Maundy Thursday liturgy this evening, which left me feeling homesick for the Advocate, the community we worshiped with when we lived in North Carolina. For Maundy Thursday, the Advocate met in a lodge at a church camp outside town for a Mediterranean-style dinner and "table Eucharist" (meaning the priest blessed bread and wine there at our tables to use for communion). As part of the service, we washed one another's feet. Then, at the end, the crucifix was wrapped in black, the tables were stripped, everything was cleared away in silence; then we gathered on the porch in the dark to sing "Stay with me" (a song taken from Jesus' words to his sleepy disciples in Gethsemane), to read Psalm 22, and then to disperse.

The service I attended tonight was a simple in-the-church kind of liturgy, which couldn't begin to provide the same kind of conviviality and drama. I was disappointed, though, that they didn't wash feet. On the other hand, there was a moving, and surprising, rite afterward: after folks had helped to strip the altars for Good Friday, they gathered outside the church, where there's a garden where people's ashes are interred. There they scattered crushed communion wafers over the ground and poured out the remaining communion wine. I thought: It's a libation for the ancestors. And then I realized: They're offering communion to the ancestors; they're sharing their communion service with the ancestors.

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The Maundy Thursday service centers on the reading from the Gospel of John where Jesus washes the disciples' feet as an example of how they should serve one another as he has served them. This morning I was looking for an equivalent passage in the D&C--"thus you should serve one another," "whoever would be greatest must be servant of all," etc.--to post to this blog in observance of the day. I thought I would find it at the end of D&C 88, where the rite of washing of feet is described. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that the D&C says nothing about service in its discussion of the washing of feet.

We do get this in D&C 50:26--

He that is ordained of God and sent forth,
the same is appointed to be the greatest,
notwithstanding he is the least
and the servant of all.

Joseph Smith has the point of Jesus' teaching completely backwards. For Joseph, the emphasis is on being the greatest--on being "possessor of all things," having "all things . . . subject unto [you], both in heaven and on the earth" (v. 27). It's dismaying, but it makes sense: for Joseph, the gospel is about empowerment, authority, exaltation, deification. Whatever truth there is in that vision--and I believe there's truth in it; those themes are part of what I prize about Mormon tradition--that vision is liable to losing sight of the crucial gospel themes of servanthood, of emulating a God who steps down from high station, who empties himself on behalf of others.