Catching up

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.