From One Father to Another

From One Father to Another

This isn’t the way I planned it, God. Not at all. My child being born in a stable? This isn’t the way I thought it would be. A cave with sheep and donkeys, hay and straw? My wife giving birth with only the stars to hear her pain?

This isn’t at all what I imagined. No, I imagined family. I imagined grandmothers. I imagined neighbors clustered outside the door and friends standing at my side. I imagined the house erupting with the first cry of the infant. Slaps on the back. Loud laughter. Jubilation.

That’s how I thought it would be.

But now…Who will celebrate with us? The sheep? The shepherds?

The stars?

This doesn’t seem right. What kind of husband am I? I provide no midwife to aid my wife. No bed to rest her back. Her pillow is a blanket from my donkey.

Did I miss something? Did I, God?

When you sent the angel and spoke of the son being born—this isn’t what I pictured. I envisioned Jerusalem, the temple, the priests, and the people gathered to watch. A pageant perhaps. A parade. A banquet at least. I mean, this is the Messiah!

Or, if not born in Jerusalem, how about Nazareth? Wouldn’t Nazareth have been better? At least there I have my house and my business. Out here, what do I have? A weary mule, a stack of firewood, and a pot of warm water. This is not the way I wanted it to be!... Forgive me for asking but … is this how God enters the world? The coming of the angel, I’ve accepted. The questions people asked about the pregnancy, I can tolerate. The trip to Bethlehem, fine. But why a birth in a stable, God?

Any minute now Mary will give birth. Not to a child, but to the Messiah. Not to an infant, but to God. That’s what the angel said. That’s what Mary believes. And, God, my God, that’s what I want to believe. But surely you can understand; it’s not easy. It seems so … so … so … bizarre.

I’m unaccustomed to such strangeness, God. I’m a carpenter. I make things fit. I square off the edges. I follow the plumb line. I measure twice before I cut once. Surprises are not the friend of a builder. I like to know the plan. I like to see the plan before I begin.

But this time I’m not the builder, am I? This time I’m a tool. A hammer in your grip. A nail between your fingers. A chisel in your hands. This project is yours, not mine.

I guess it’s foolish of me to question you. Forgive my struggling. Trust doesn’t come easy to me, God. But you never said it would be easy, did you?

One final thing, Father. The angel you sent? Any chance you could send another? If not an angel, maybe a person? I don’t know anyone around here and some company would be nice. Maybe the innkeeper or a traveler? Even a shepherd would do.

One Incredible Savior: Celebrating the Majesty of the Manger
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 2011) Max Lucado

on the song of friendship

"A friend is someone 

who knows the song in your heart 

and can sing it back to you 

when you have forgotten the words."

- Bernard Meltzer

Calvin and Hobbes: Math Is a Religion

http://blog.onbeing.org/post/250746172/calvin-and-hobbes-math-is-a-religion

On Schrodinger's cat

On aging and family

"We often write seldomest to those whom we love the most.  The distance to which I am removed has given a new value to all I valued before in my country, and the day of my return will be the  happiest I expect to see in this life……

I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.”  

 [Thomas Jefferson writing from Paris France to his sister, Mary Jefferson Bolling, July 23, 1787]

 (Thomas Jefferson: and intimate history, Fawn Brody)

A Queen's Prayer

O  Lord God Father everlasting, which reignest over over the Kingdom of men,

and givest them of thy pleasure: which of thy great mercy hast chosen thy servant and handmaid to feed thy people and thine inheritance: so teach me, I humbly beseech thee, thy word, and so strengthen me with thy grace, that I may feed thy people with a faithful and a true heart;  and rule them prudently with power.

O Lord, thou hast set me on high, my flesh is frail and weak.  If I therefore anytime forget thee, touch my heart O Lord that I may again remember thee.  If I swell against thee, pluck me down in my own conceit.

Create therefore in me O Lord a new heart and so renew my spirit within me that thy law may be study,  thy truth my delight; thy church my care:  thy people my crown. 

(Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England)

[O Book of Devotions Composed by Her Majesty, with translations by Adam Fox (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghampshire, 1970),  pp 41-42

From the Life of George Albert Smith

When he was 34 years old, George Albert Smith made a list of resolutions that he called his “personal creed”—11 ideals that he committed to live by:

• “I would be a friend to the friendless and find joy in ministering to the needs of the poor.
• “I would visit the sick and afflicted and inspire in them a desire for faith to be healed.
• “I would teach the truth to the understanding and blessing of all mankind.
• “I would seek out the erring one and try to win him back to a righteous and a happy life.
• “I would not seek to force people to live up to my ideals but rather love them into doing the thing that is right.
• “I would live with the masses and help to solve their problems that their earth life may be happy.
• “I would avoid the publicity of high positions and discourage the flattery of thoughtless friends.
• “I would not knowingly wound the feelings of any, not even one who may have wronged me, but would seek to do him good and make him my friend.
• “I would overcome the tendency to selfishness and jealousy and rejoice in the successes of all the children of my Heavenly Father.
• “I would not be an enemy to any living soul.

(Teachings of Presidents of the Church: George Albert Smith, 2010, Chapter 1.)

On the tears of a woman

A little boy asked his mother, "Why are you crying?" 

"Because I'm a woman," she told him.

"I don't understand," he said.

His Mom just hugged him and said,

"And you never will."

Later the little boy asked his father,

"Why does mother seem to cry for no reason?"

"All women cry for no reason,"

was all his dad could say.

The little boy grew up and became a man,
still wondering why women cry.

Finally he put in a call to God. 
When God got on the phone, he asked,
"God, why do women cry so easily?"

God said,

"When I made the woman she had to be special.

• I made her shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world,
• yet gentle enough to give comfort.
• I gave her an inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection that many times comes from her children.
• I gave her a hardness that allows her to keep going when everyone else gives up, and take care of her family through sickness and fatigue without complaining.
• I gave her the sensitivity to love her children under any and all circumstances, even when her child has hurt her very badly.
• I gave her strength to carry her husband through his faults and fashioned her from his rib to protect his heart.
• I gave her wisdom to know that a good husband never hurts his wife, but sometimes tests her strengths and her resolve to stand beside him unfaltering.

And finally,  

I gave her a tear to shed. 

This is hers exclusively to use whenever it is needed."



  
"You see my son," said God,

• "the beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears,
• the figure that she carries, 
• or the way she combs her hair.

The beauty of a woman must be 

seen in her eyes, 

because that is the doorway to her heart 

- the place where love resides."

on the foolish and the dead

The imputation of inconsistency is one to which ... every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion. 

( and essay on "Abraham Lincoln", 

published 1864–1865, by James Russell Lowell)

Thomas Mores final prayer

Give me the grace, Good Lord

• To set the world at naught.
• To set the mind firmly on You and not to hang upon the words of men's mouths.
• To be content to be solitary. Not to long for worldly pleasures. Little by little utterly to cast off the world and rid my mind of all its business. Not to long to hear of earthly things, but that the hearing of worldly fancies may be displeasing to me.

Gladly to be thinking of God, piteously to call for His help.

• To lean into the comfort of God. Busily to labor to love Him.
• To know my own vileness and wretchedness.
• To humble myself under the mighty hand of God.
• To bewail my sins and, for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.

Margaret's Final Farewell to More

Painting at Tyburn Convent, London

Gladly to bear my purgatory here.

• To be joyful in tribulations.
• To walk the narrow way that leads to life.
• To have the last thing in remembrance.
• To have ever before my eyes my death that is ever at hand.
• To make death no stranger to me.
• To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of Hell.
• To pray for pardon before the judge comes.
• To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me. For His benefits unceasingly to give Him thanks.
• To buy the time again that I have lost.
• To abstain from vain conversations.
• To shun foolish mirth and gladness.
• To cut off unnecessary recreations.

Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all, to set the loss at naught, for the winning of Christ.


To think my worst enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.


These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasures of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all in one heap.


Amen

(http://www.catholicprimer.org/home/prayer/Prayer_of_St_Thomas_More, November 11, 2011)

William Tyndale's final letter

"I believe, right worshipful, that you are not ignorant of what has been determined concerning me [by the Council of Brabant]; therefore I entreat your lordship and that by the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here [in Vilvorde] during the winter, you will request the Procureur  [public prosecutor] to be kind enough to send me from my goods which he has in his possession, 

• a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely from cold in the head, being afflicted with a perpetual catarrh [ inflammation of a mucous membrane] , which is considerably increased in this cell. 
• A warmer coat also, for that which I have is very thin: 
• also a piece of cloth to patch my leggings:
•  my overcoat is worn out; my shirts are also worn out. 
• He has a woollen shirt of mine, if he will be kind enough to send it. 
• I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth for putting on above;
•  he also has warmer caps for wearing at night. 
• I wish also his permission to have a lamp in the evening, for it is wearisome to sit alone in the dark.

 But above all, I entreat and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the Procureur that he may kindly permit me to have my 

• Hebrew Bible, 
• Hebrew Grammar,
• and Hebrew Dictionary,

that I may spend my time with that study.


And in return, may you obtain your dearest wish, provided always it be consistent with the salvation of your soul,  but if, before the end of the winter, a different decision be reached concerning me, I shall be patient, abiding the will of God to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ, whose Spirit, I pray, may ever direct your heart. Amen."

Tittle Page Great Bible 1538-1540

Even in looking towards his own death William's last thought's were to souls of the men who was seeking to take his life. 


These are not the thoughts of a martyr. 


If the King of England would authorize an English edition of the Bible,  William  would come home, to cease his Bible translation, and live a quiet, private life. 


His last words, were a prayer to his Maker.  "God please open the eyes of the King of England".


He was martyred on or near 6 October 1536 in the castle of Vilvoorde near Brussels.  Within four years, at the Kings request,  four English editions were published based upon his work.

ON Mommas’ Afghan.

Momma loved to knit afghan’s.  They helped her to pass the time when she was watching television.  Her Momma taught her how to crochet as a young child.  I can remember many hours watching her crochet.  She had crocheted so long she no longer watched her stitching, it was a mechanical motion more like walking or chewing gum.  I wonder if it helped her to think.

Mom decided each of her children needed a good heavy afghan.  She had collected many small balls of yarn from previous project’s  The afghan’s were heavy.  They had a heavy double stitch, one color on each side.  The afghan were so heavy they were best used in the winter.

Each afghan required a year to complete. She worked on those afghans for  four years.  Each year one of her children received an afghan for Christmas.  I wonder if she thought about her children as she was knitting each one of them their afghan.  One child could not read well and had difficulty in school.   He was color blind and had trouble telling his colors apart.   One children read well but had difficulty speaking to people his own age.  He never dated much, but was fortunate to find a good woman who understood him.  One child never ate enough and had to be reminded when it was time to eat.  This child still struggles with her  weight and is now developing M.S.  One child struggled with her first marriage and lived with Mom for a couple years.  Mom helped her to raise her sons until a man came along who loved her boys and adopted them as his own.  They now have five more children and how do they keep her busy.

Momma married young and grew up with her children.  Her husband was a challenge.  Signs of high functioning Autism and hyperactivity are present in the male line of his family.  Momma would never have understood these words she just knew Dad had a tough time filtering his thoughts. He spoke out in inappropriate times and in inappropriate places.  My Dad and his Father were forbidden to be in the Smith Brother Lumber Company together.  One of them at a time was more then a handful.

Each fall my wife pulls the afghan out of the closet and puts is on our bed.  I love to fell warm and comforted by it’s weight.

The afghan reminds of my mother and her life.  The afghan is no longer perfect like it was when my mother gave it to me.  A few years ago I snagged it on a piece of furniture.  Their is a small stitch torn out of one side.  My mamma's life was like this afghan.  It was no loner perfect like it had been when her Momma gave life to her.  Even though this afghan is no longer perfect it is still functional and fulfills its purpose.  I have ask my wife to repair the snagged.  My wife is skilled in the art of crochet.   She tells me it is not possible to repair the snag.  Even if she did repair the afghan it would no longer be the afghan my mother crocheted.  As the year go by I learn to appreciate the afghan for it beauty and its flaw.  It becomes more real with time like Margery Williams Velveteen rabbit (see. The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real )

Now my Mom is gone now and all I have is the afghan.  My Mom, like her quilt became more real with time.  She was deeply flawed.  She loved her children and she loved her husband.  And now all I have is the afghan.  I longer have the hate and bitterness and enmity, all I have is the afghan and it still warms.

If  you have the opportunity to live and love, to forgive and to forget, please do.  And leave some memories and if possible something that is real like Mommas afghan.

A Meditation upon a Broomstick (1703)

by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest. It was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs, but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. It is now at best but the reverse of what it was: a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and by a capricious kind of fate destined to make other things clean and be nasty itself. At length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to its last use of kindling a fire. When I beheld this, I sighed and said within myself, surely mortal man is a broomstick: nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head. But now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity, partial judges that we are of our own excellencies and other men's defaults.

But a broomstick, perhaps, you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head. And pray, what is man, but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, groveling on the earth? And yet with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances; rakes into every slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden corruption to the light; and raises a mighty dust where there was none before, sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away. His last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving, till, worn out to the stumps, like his brother bezom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by.

Two Trains and a Dream

Et in Arcadia Ego.
Virgil

("And I (death) am even in Arcadia."
 "Arcadia" is another word for a pastoral paradise.)

The ways of God are unknowable to man.

Saint Augustine

The bow of God's wrath is bent,
 and justice bends the arrow at your heart.

Jonathan Edwards

All the minds and spirits God ever sent into the world
are susceptible
of enlargement and improvement.

Joseph Smith

I. OCTOBER 8, 1908: A TRAIN

Pulled out of Green River, Wyoming, heading
West toward Salt Lake City. The Mormon prophet,
Joseph F. Smith, was going home from a visit
to Boston, with his traveling companion.
He saw the flash of white butts as a herd
Of antelope, coming in from the north, turned
Away from the train and bounced through the sage,
And he thought how sixty years before, aged twelve, he had
Watched such plenitude of beasts on this same route,
Then on a wagon seat next to his mother
As she managed their team on the pioneer trek
After his father, Hyrum, was shot
With Joseph at Carthage. The car was hot,
So he walked to the back, out onto
A polished wood platform with a wrought iron rail—
And heard a voice say, “Go in and sit down.”
He turned back but then stopped, wondering if he had
Imagined the voice, when it came again: “Sit down.”
Just as he reached his seat, the train hit
A broken rail and the engine and most
Of the cars (not his) went off the tracks.
The companion later wrote that the prophet
Would have been badly hurt if he hadn't sat down,
Because all of the cars were “jammed up bad.”

II. MAY 25, 1999: A TRAIN OUT OF BOSTON

Boston, leaving Providence, Rhode Island,

Struck Julia Toledo, from a

Mormon family in Ecuador

And her four sons, walking on the tracks.

All were killed instantly, except Jose, ten,

Who died in two days. They had just left a

Transition shelter where they stuffed their packs

With clothes, coloring books, tiny dolls—all found

Along the tracks, with shoes, torn packs, a bloody

Bible. Julia had led them through a break

In the fence for a shortcut to someplace,

Fleeing, some said, an abusive husband

Who had tried to steal his sons. But he,

Located in Ecuador, heart-broken, said no,

There was trouble with his in-laws because he was

Still Catholic. Others said it was

Julia's sister, tired of baby-sitting,

Had driven them out to homelessness.

They had climbed a short trail up the traprock

Of the railbed, walked two miles before Jose

Got separated, to the north side.

Julia, carrying Pedro, pulling Angel

And Carlos, was just lunging across

To reach him when the train struck them all.

III. IN MY DREAM GOD IS LISTENING, CAREFULLY,

As I tell him these stories and ask him,

“Which of these trains, children, was in your hands?”

We are both seated, quite comfortably,

On a green satin French provincial

Couch, in a room painted by Watteau—

The transition room in Kubrick's 2001.

God asks me if I am proud or rebellious.

I notice that he is luminous under his robe,

And his face is serene beyond all description,

His skin young, downy, but full of pores.

I can see small white scars across his forehead.

Then tears gather in his eyes, and slowly

Tears begin to drop like blood from every pore.

I ask again, “Which train is on your hands?”

And he sets his face toward me like flint: “Both. All.”

EUGENE ENGLAND
JANUARY 2000

© 2010 Eugene England Foundation. All rights reserved.

http://www.eugeneengland.org/selected-writings/poetry 

Douglas Adams, On why the Earth was Created

Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer, Deep Thought, .... When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, the computer says that it cannot; however, it can help to design an even more powerful computer, the Earth, that can. .....


It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. The Ultimate Question itself is unknown.

• "Six by nine. Forty two."
• "That's it. That's all there is."
• "I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe"

“Narrator: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. 

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

6*9=54

6₁₃ × 9₁₃ = 42₁₃  (using base 13).

(see, Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy

on improper times of complaint, see avoidance of cavil

“Never complain of that of which it is 

• at all times 
• in your power 
• to rid yourself.”

― Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

SMITH, Adam. Holograph letter signed to Thomas Cadell. Dated
[Edinburgh, 15 March 1788] MS Gen 1297

On Liahona's and Iron Rods

What the Church Means to People Like Me
by Richard D. Poll

Liahona; a ball of curious workmanship

A natural reaction to my title--since this is not a testimony meeting in which each speaker is his own subject--might be, "Who cares?" For who in this congregation, with the possible exception of my brother, Carl, are "people like me?" I have a wife and daughter present who find me in some respects unique. And I am sure there are students at Brigham Young University who hope that I am unique. By the time I have finished there may be some among you who will share that hope. 

Yet I have chosen the topic because I believe that in some important respects I represent a type of Latter-day Saint which is found in almost every ward and branch in the Church. By characterizing myself and explaining the nature of my commitment to the Gospel, I hope to contribute a little sont to the Gospel, I hope to contribute a little something of value of each of you, whether it turns out that you are "people like me" or not. 

My thesis is that there are two distinct types of active and dedicated Latter-day Saints. I am not talking about "good Mormons" and "Jack Mormons," or about Saints in white hats and pseudo-Saints in black. No, I am talking about two types of involved Church members who are here tonight, each deeply committed to the Gospel but also prone toward misgivings about the legitimacy, adequacy, or serviceability of the commitment of the other. 

The purpose of my inquiry is not to support either set of misgivings, but to describe each type as dispassionately as I can, to identify myself with one of the types, and then to bear witness concerning some of the blessings which the Church offers to the type I identify with. My prayer is that this effort will help us all to look beyond the things which obviously differentiate us toward that "unity of faith" which Christ set as our common goal. 

For convenience of reference, let me propose symbols for my two types of Mormons. They have necessarily to be affirmative images, because I am talking only about "good" members. I found them in the Book of Mormon, a natural place for a Latter-day Saint to find good symbols as well as good counsel. 

The figure for the first type comes from Lehi's dream--the Iron Rod. The figure for the second comes also from Lehi's experience--the Liahona. So similar they are as manifestations of God's concern for his children, yet just different enough to suit my purposes tonight. 

The Iron Rod, as the hymn reminds us, was the Word of God. To the person with his hand on the rod, each step of the journey to the tree of life was plainly defined; he had only to hold on as he moved forward. In Lehi's dream the way was not easy, but it was clear. 

The Liahona, in contrast, was a compass. It pointed to the destination but did not fully mark the path; indeed, the clarity of its directions varied with the circumstances of the user. For Lehi's family the sacred instrument was a reminder of their temporal and eternal goals, but it was no infallible delineator of their course. 

Even as the Iron Rod and the Liahona were both approaches to the word of God and to the kingdom of God, so our two types of members seek the word and the kingdom. The fundamental difference between them lies in their concept of the relation of man to the "word of God." Put another way, it is a difference in the meaning assigned to the concept "the fullness of the Gospel." Do the revelations of our Heavenly Father give us a handrail to the kingdom, or a compass only? 

The Iron Rod Saint does not look for questions, but for answers, and in the Gospel--as he understands it--he finds or is confident that he can find the answer to every important question. The Liahona Saint, on the other hand, is preoccupied with questions and skeptical of answers; he finds in the Gospel--as he understands it--answers to enough important questions so that he can function purposefully without answers to the rest. This last sentence holds the key to the question posed by my title, but before pursuing its implications let us explore our scheme of classification more fully. 

As I suggested at the outset, I find Iron Rods and Liahonas in almost every L.D.S. congregation, discernible by the kinds of comments they make in Gospel Doctrine classes and the very language in which they phrase their testimonies. What gives them their original bent is difficult to identify. The Iron Rods may be somewhat more common among converts, but many nowadays are attracted to the Church by those reasons more appropriate to Liahonas which I will mention later on. Liahona testimonies may be more prevalent among born members who have not had an emotional conversion experience, but many such have developed Iron Rod commitments in the home, the Sunday School, the mission field, or some other conditioning environment. Social and economic status appear to have nothing to do with type, and the rather widely-held notion that education tends to produce Liahonas has so many exceptions that one may plausibly argue that education only makes Liahonas more articulate. Parenthetically, some of the most prominent Iron Rods in the Church are on the BYU faculty. 

Pre-existence may, I suppose, have something to do with placement in this classification, even as it may account for other life circumstances, but heredity obviously does not. The irritation of the Iron Rod father confronted by an iconoclastic son is about as commonplace as the embarrassment of the Liahona parent who discovers that his teen-age daughter has found comfortable answers in seminary to some of the questions that have perplexed him all his life. 

The picture is complicated by the fact that changes of type do occur, often in response to profoundly unsettling personal experiences. The Liahona member who, in a context of despair or repentance, makes the "leap of faith" to Iron Rod commitment is rather rare, I think, but the investigator of Liahona temperament who becomes an Iron Rod convert is almost typical. The Iron Rod member who responds to personal tragedy or intellectual shock by becoming a Liahona is known to us all: this transition may be but is not necessarily a stage in a migration toward inactivity or even apostasy. 

My present opinion is that one's identification with the Iron Rods or the Liahonas is more a function of basic temperament and of accidents than of pre-mortal accomplishments or mortal choices, but that opinion--like many other views expressed in this sermon--has neither scriptural nor scientific validation. 

A point to underscore in terms of our objective of "unity of the faith" is that Iron Rods and Liahonas have great difficulty understanding each other--not at the level of intellectual acceptance of the right to peaceful co-existence, but at the level of personal communion, of empathy. To the Iron Rod a questioning attitude suggests an imperfect faith; to the Liahona an unquestioning spirit betokens a closed mind. Neither frequent association nor even prior personal involvement with the other group guarantees empathy. Indeed, the person who has crossed the line is likely to be least sympathetic and tolerant toward his erstwhile kindred spirits. 

I have suggested that the essential difference between the Liahonas and the Iron Rods is in their approach to the concept "the word of God." Let us investigate that now a little the Iron Rod is confident that, on any question, the mind and will of the Lord may be obtained. His sources are threefold: Scripture, Prophetic Authority, and the Holy Spirit. In the Standard Works of the Church the Iron Rod member finds far more answers than does his Liahona brother, because he accepts them as God's word in a far more literal sense.

In them he finds answers to questions as diverse as the age and origin of the earth, the justification for capital punishment, the proper diet, the proper role of government, the nature and functions of sex, and the nature of man. To the Liahona, he sometimes seems to be reading things into the printed words, but to himself the meaning is clear. 


In the pronouncements of the General Authorities, living and dead, the Iron Rod finds many answers, because he accepts and gives comprehensive application to that language of the Doctrine and Covenants which declares: "And whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord, shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation" (68:4). This reliance extends to every facet of life. On birth control and family planning, labor relations and race relations, the meaning of the Constitution and prospects for the United Nations, the laws of health and the signs of the times, the counsel of the "living oracles" suffices. Where answers are not found in the published record, they are sought in correspondence and interviews, and once received, they are accepted as definitive. 

Third among the sources for the Iron Rod member is the Holy Spirit. As Joseph Smith found answers in the counsel, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God . . . ," so any Latter-day Saint may do so. Whether it be the choice of a vocation or the choice of a mate, help on a college examination or in finding "Golden Prospects" in the mission field, healing the sick or averting a divorce--in prayer is the answer. The response may not be what was expected, but it will come, and it will be a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Implicit in all this is the confidence of the Iron Rod Latter-day Saint that our Heavenly Father is intimately involved in the day-to-day business of His children. As no sparrow falls without the Father, so nothing befalls man without His will. God knows the answers to all questions and has the solutions to all problems, and the only thing which denies man access to this reservoir is his own stubbornness. Truly, then, the person who opens his mind and heart to the channels of revelation, past and present, has the iron rod which leads unerringly to the Kingdom. 


The Liahona Latter-day Saint lacks this certain confidence. Not that he rejects the concepts upon which it rests--that God lives, that He loves His children, that His knowledge and power are efficacious for salvation, and that He does reveal His will as the Ninth Article of Faith affirms. Nor does he reserve the right of selective obedience to the will of God as he understands it. No, the problem for the Liahona involves the adequacy of the sources on which the Iron Rod testimony depends. 


The problem is in perceiving the will of God when it is mediated--as it is for almost all mortals--by "the arm of flesh." The Liahona is convinced by logic and experience that no human instrument, even a prophet, is capable of transmitting the word of God so clearly and comprehensively that it can be universally understood and easily appropriated by man. 

Because the Liahona finds it impossible to accept the literal verbal inspiration of the Standard Words, the sufficience of scriptural answers to questions automatically comes into question. If Eve was not made from Adam's rib, how much of the Bible is historic truth? If geology and anthropology have undermined Bishop Ussher's chronology, which places creation at 4000 B.C., how much of the Bible is scientific truth? And if our latter-day scriptures have been significantly revised since their original publication, can it be assumed that they are now infallibly authoritative? To the Liahona these volumes are sources of inspiration and moral truth, but they leave many specific questions unanswered, or uncertainly answered. 


As for the authority of the Latter-day prophets, the Liahona Saint finds consensus among them on Gospel fundamentals but far-ranging diversity on many important issues. The record shows error, as in Brigham Young's statements about the continuation of slavery, and it shows change of counsel, as in the matter of gathering to Zion. It shows differences of opinion--Heber J. Grant and Reed Smoot on the League of Nations, and David O. McKay and Joseph Fielding Smith on the process of creation. To the Liahonas, the "living oracles" are God's special witnesses of the Gospel of Christ and His agents in directing the affairs of the Church, but like the scriptures, they leave many important questions unanswered, or uncertainly answered. 


The Iron Rod proposition that the Spirit will supply what the prophets have not gives difficulty on both philosophical and experimental grounds. Claims that prayer is an infallible, almost contractual, link between God and man through the Holy Spirit find Liahona Mormons perplexed by the nature of the evidence. As a method of confirming truth, the witness of the Spirit demonstrably has not produced uniformity of Gospel interpretation even among Iron Rod Saints, and it is allegedly by the witness of that same Spirit--by the burning within--that many apostates pronounce the whole Church in error. As a method of influencing the course of events, it seems unpredictable and some of the miracles claimed for it seem almost whimsical. By the prayer of faith one man recovers his lost eyeglasses; in spite of such prayer, another man goes blind.


All of which leaves the Liahona Mormon with a somewhat tenuous connection with the Holy Spirit. He may take comfort in his imperfect knowledge from that portion of the Article of Faith which says that "God will yet reveal many great and important things . . . ." And he may reconcile his conviction of God's love and his observation of the uncertain earthly outcomes of faith by emphasizing the divine commitment to the principle of free agency, as I shall presently do. In any case, it seems to the Liahona Mormon that God's involvement in day-to-day affairs must be less active and intimate than the Iron Rod Mormon believes, because there are so many unsolved problems and unanswered prayers. 


Is the Iron Rod member unaware of these considerations which loom so large in the Liahona member's definition of his relationship to the word of God? In some instances, I believe, the answer is yes. For in our activity-centered Church it is quite possible to be deeply and satisfyingly involved without looking seriously at the philosophical implications of some Gospel propositions which are professed. 


In many instances, however, the Iron Rod saint has found sufficient answers to the Liahona questions. He sees so much basic consistency in the scriptures and the teachings of the latter-day prophets that the apparent errors and incongruities can be handled by interpretation. He finds so much evidence of the immanence of God in human affairs that the apparently pointless evil and injustice in the world can be handled by the valid assertion that God's ways are not man's ways. He is likely to credit his Liahona contemporaries with becoming so preoccupied with certain problems that they cannot see the Gospel forest for the trees, and he may even attribute that preoccupation to an insufficiency of faith.

As a Liahona, I must resist the attribution, though I cannot deny the preoccupation. 

Both kinds of Mormons have problems. Not just the ordinary personal problems to which all flesh is heir, but problems growing out of the nature of their Church commitment. 

The Iron Rod has a natural tendency to develop answers where none may, in fact, have been revealed. He may find arguments against social security in the Book of Mormon; he may discover in esoteric prophetic utterances a timetable for that Second Coming of which "that day and hour knoweth no man . . . ." His dogmatism may become offensive to his peers in the Church and a barrier to communication with his own family; his confidence in his own insights may make him impatient with those whom he publicly sustains. He may also cling to cherished answers in the face of new revelation, or be so shaken by innovation that he forms new "fundamentalist" sects.  The Iron Rod concept holds many firm in the Church, but it leads some out. 

The Liahona, on the other hand, has the temptation to broaden the scope of his questioning until even the most clearly defined Church doctrines and policies are included. His resistance to statistics on principle may deteriorate into a carping criticism of programs and leaders. His ties to the Church may become so nebulous that he cannot communicate them to his children. His testimony may become so selective as to exclude him from some forms of Church activity or to make him a hypocrite in his own eyes as he participates in them. His persistence in doubting may alienate his brethren and eventually destroy the substance of his Gospel commitment. Then he, too, is out--without fireworks, but not without pain. 


Both kinds of Latter-day Saints serve the Church. They talk differently and apparently think and feel differently about the Gospel, but as long as they avoid the extremes just mentioned, they share a love for and commitment to the Church. They cannot therefore be distinguished on the basis of attendance at meetings, or participation on welfare projects, or contributions, or faithfulness in the performance of callings. They may or may not be hundred percenters, but the degree of their activity is not a function of type, insofar as I have been able to observe. (It may be that Iron Rods are a little more faithful in genealogical work, but even this is not certain.) 

Both kinds of members are found at every level of Church responsibility--in bishoprics and Relief Society presidencies, in stake presidencies and high councils, and even among the General Authorities. But whatever their private orientation, the public deportment of the General Authorities seems to me to represent a compromise, which would be natural in the circumstances. They satisfy the Iron Rods by emphasizing the solid core of revealed truth and discouraging speculative inquiry into matters of faith and morals, and they comfort the Liahonas by resisting the pressure to make pronouncements on all subjects and by reminding the Saints that God has not revealed the answer to every question or defined the response to every prayer.

As I have suggested, the Iron Rods and the Liahonas have some difficulty understanding each other. Lacking the patience, wisdom, breadth of experience, or depth of institutional commitment of the General Authorities, we sometimes criticize and judge each other. But usually we live and let live--each finding in the Church what meets his needs and all sharing the Gospel blessings which do not depend on identity of testimony.

Which brings me to the second part of my remarks--the part which gives my talk its title: What the Church Means to People Like Me. Although I have tried to characterize two types of Latter-day Saints with objectivity, I can speak with conviction only about one example from one group. In suggesting--briefly--what the Church offers to a Liahona like me, I hope to provoke all of us to reexamine the nature of our own commitments and to grow in understanding and love for those whose testimonies are defined in different terms. 


By my initial characterization of types, I am the kind of Mormon who is preoccupied with questions and skeptical of answers. I find in the Gospel--as I understand it--answers to enough important questions so that I can function purposefully, and I hope effectively, without present answers to the rest.
The primary question of this generation, it seems to me, is the question of meaning. Does life really add up to anything at all? At least at the popular level, the philosophy of existentialism asks, and tries to answer, the question of how to function significantly in a world which apparently has no meaning. When the philosophy is given a religious context, it becomes an effort to salvage some of the values of traditional religion for support in this meaningless world. 

To the extent that existence is seen as meaningless--even absurd--human experiences have only immediate significance. A psychedelic trip stands on a par will a visit to the Sistine Chapel or a concert of the Tabernacle Choir. What the individual does with himself--or other "freely consenting adults"--is nobody's business, whether it involves pot, perversion, or "making love, not war."
For me, the Gospel answers this question of meaning, and the answer is grandly, challenging. It lies in three revealed propositions: (1) Man is eternal. (2) Man is free. (3) God's work and glory is to exalt this eternal free agent--man. 

The central conception is freedom. With a belief in the doctrine of free agency I can cope with some of the riddles and tragedies which are cited in support of the philosophy of the absurd. In the nature of human freedom--as I understand it--is to be found the reconciliation of the concept of a loving God and the facts of an unlovely world. 

The restored Gospel teaches that the essential stuff of man is eternal, that man is a child of God, and that it is man's destiny to become like his Father. But this destiny can only be achieved as man voluntarily gains the knowledge, the experience, and the discipline which godhood requires and represents. This was the crucial question resolved in the council in heaven--whether man should come into an environment of genuine risk, where he would walk by faith. 

To me, this prerequisite for exaltation explains the apparent remoteness of God from any aspects of the human predicament--my predicament. My range of freedom is left large, and arbitrary divine interference with that freedom is kept minimal, in order that I may grow. Were God's hand always upon my shoulder, or his Iron Rod always in my grasp, my range of free choice would be constricted, and my growth as well.

This view does not rule out miraculous interventions by our Heavenly Father, but it does not permit their being commonplace. What is seen as miracle by the Iron Rod Saints, my type tends to interpret as coincidence, or psychosomatic manifestation, or inaccurately remembered or reported event. The same attitude is even more likely with regard to the Satanic role in human affairs. The conflict between good and evil--with its happy and unhappy outcomes--is seen more often as a derivative of man's nature and environment than as a contest between titanic powers for the capture of human pawns. If God cannot, in the ultimate sense, coerce the eternal intelligences which are embodied in His children, then how much less is Lucifer able to do. We may yield to the promptings of good or evil, but we are not puppets.
There is another aspect of the matter. If, with or without prayer, man is arbitrarily spared the consequences of his own fallibility and the natural consequences of the kind of hazardous world in which he lives, then freedom becomes meaningless and God capricious. If the law that fire burns, that bullets kill, that age deteriorates, and that the rain falls on the just and the unjust is sporadically suspended upon petition of faith, what happens to that reliable connection between cause and consequence which is a condition of knowledge: and what a peril to faith lies in the idea that God can break the causal chain, that he frequently does break it, but that in my individual case he may not choose to do so. This is the dilemma of theodicy, reconciling God's omnipotence with evil and suffering, which is so dramatically phrased: "If God is good, he is not God; if God is God, he is not good." 

From what has been said, it must be apparent that Liahonas like me do not see prayer as a form of spiritual mechanics, in spite of such scriptural language as "Prove me herewith . . ." and "I, the Lord, am bound . . ." Prayer is rarely for miracles, or even for new answers. It is--or ought to be--an intensely personal exercise in sorting out and weighing the relevant factors in our problems, and looking to God as we consider the alternative solutions. (Many of our problems would solve themselves if we would consider only options on which we could honestly ask God's benediction.) We might pray for a miracle, especially in time of deep personal frustration or tragedy, but we would think it presumptuous to command God and would not suspend the future on the outcome of the petition. 


This is not to say that Liahonas cannot verbalize prayer as proficiently as their Iron Rod contemporaries. One cannot be significantly involved in the Church without mastering the conventional prayer forms and learning to fit the petition to the proportions of the occasion. But even in the public prayers it is possible, I believe, for the attentive ear to detect those differences which I have tried to describe. To oppose evil as we can, to bear adversity as we must, and to do our jobs well--these are the petitions in Liahona prayers. They invoke God's blessings, but they require man's answering. 

To this Liahona Latter-day Saint, God is powerful to save. He is pledged to keep the way of salvation open to man and to do, through the example and sacrifice of His Son and the ordinances and teachings of His Church, what man cannot do for himself. But beyond this, He has left things pretty much up to me--a free agent, a god in embryo who must learn by experience as well as direction how to be like God.
In this circumstance the Church of Jesus Christ performs three special functions for me. Without them, my freedom might well become unbearable: 

In the first place, the Church reminds me--almost incessantly--that what I do makes a difference. It matters to my fellow men because most of what I do or fail to do affects their progress toward salvation. And it matters to me, even if it has no discernible influence upon others. I reject the "hippie" stance, not because there is something intrinsically wrong with beards and sandals, but with estrangement and aimlessness. Even though life is eternal, time is short and I have none to waste. 

In the second place, the Church suggests and sometimes prescribes guidelines for the use of freedom. The deportment standards of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, the rules for mental and physical well being in the Doctrine and Covenants, the reminders and challenges in the temple ceremony--these are examples, and they harmonize with free agency because even those which are prescribed are not coerced. 

There is a difference here, I think, between the way Iron Rods and Liahonas look at the guidelines. Answer-oriented, the Iron Rods tend to spell things out; Sabbath observance becomes no TV or movies, or TV but no movies, or uplifting TV and no other, or no studying, or studying for religion classes but no others. For Liahonas like me, the Sabbath commandment is a reminder of the kinship of free men and a concerned and loving Father. 

What is fitting, not what is conventional, becomes the question. On a lovely autumn evening I may even, with quiet conscience, pass up an M.I.A. fireside for a drive in the canyon. But the thankfulness for guidelines is nonetheless strong. 


In final place comes the contribution of the Church in giving me something to relate to--to belong to--to feel a part of. 

Contemporary psychology has much to say about the awful predicament of alienation. "The Lonely Crowd" is the way one expert describes it. Ex-Mormons often feel it; a good friend who somehow migrated out of the Church put it this way the other day: "I don't belong anywhere." 

For the active Latter-day Saint such alienation is impossible. The Church is an association of kindred spirits, a sub-culture, a "folk"--and this is the tie which binds Iron Rods and Liahonas together as strongly as the shared testimony of Joseph Smith. It is as fundamental to the solidarity of L.D.S. families--almost--as the doctrine of eternal marriage itself. It makes brothers and sisters of the convert and the Daughter of the Utah Pioneers, of the Hong Kong branch president and the missionary from Cedar City. It unites this congregation--the genealogists and the procrastinators, the old-fashioned patriarchs and the family planners, the eggheads and the doubters of "the wisdom of men." 

This sense of belonging is what makes me feel at home in the Palo Alto Ward. Liahonas and Iron Rods together, we are products of a great historic experience, laborers in a great enterprise, and sharers of a commitment to the proposition that life is important because God is real and we are His children--free agents with the opportunity to become heirs of his kingdom. 

This is the witness of the Spirit to this Liahona Latter-day Saint. When the returning missionary warms his homecoming with a narrative of a remarkable conversion, I may note the inconsistency or naivete of some of his analysis, but I am moved nevertheless by the picture of lives transformed--made meaningful--by the Gospel. When the Home Teachers call, I am sometimes self-conscious about the "role playing" in which we all seem to be engaged, yet I ask my wife often--in our times of deepest concern and warmest parental satisfaction--what might our daughters have become without the Church. When a dear friend passes, an accident victim, I may recoil from the well-meant suggestion that God's need for him was greater than his family's, but my lamentation is sweetened by the realization of what the temporal support of the Saints and the eternal promises of the Lord mean to those who mourn.
For this testimony, the Church which inspires and feeds it, and fellowship in the Church with the Iron Rods and Liahonas who share it, I express my thanks to my Heavenly Father in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.

---

RICHARD POLL is Professor of History at Western Illinois University. Formerly Vice-President of Administration there and Chairman of History at BYU. Dr. Poll has published extensively and recently co-authored a biography of Hugh B. Brown.