Round Table

According to legend, the central feature of King Arthur's court was the Round Table.  The king placed his knights around the Table so none could boast of a higher position than any other ― (and here's the important part) not even the king.

Is it really possible for the king to be equal with others?  Has the king any peer?

Is it really possible in the Kingdom of God for his children to be "equal in power, and in might, and in dominion" (D&C 76:95)?

What you may not know is that, according to legend, Merlin himself fashioned the Round Table in similitude of the table of the Last Supper.

And at the Table there was always one seat left empty (no, not for Elijah), awaiting the coming of the knight who would return with the Holy Grail.

Ever since my childhood I have loved the lore of the Arthurian legends, but as I have grown older I have come to love even more the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. 

And I have long wondered what it means to be given "the keys" to the Kingdom.  But the kingdom is not a car to be driven, but a door to be unlocked.

As everyone knows, the keys of the kingdom are held by its king.  But what everyone forgets is that Jesus refused to be king.

   When Jesus therefore
   perceived that they would
   come and take him by force,
   to make him a king,
   he departed again
   into a mountain.

(John 6:15)

Ever since, the misguided have been trying to turn Jesus into a king like the ones we see on earth, a monarch fit for heaven.

But Jesus had no desire to play Nebuchadnezzar's part.   He sought no status.  He conspicuously avoided being "made a king."

After all, his kingdom was not of this world.

And so I want to explore what kind of king, exactly, is Jesus?

Uncle Sam Needs YOU

Who belongs to God's kingdom?  How are its citizens chosen?  Well, quite shockingly Jesus told us:

   Verily I say unto you,
   That the publicans 
   and the harlots
   go into the kingdom of God
   before you.

(Matthew 21:31)

In just one sentence, Jesus flipped all our religious notions on their heads, didn't he, leaving us speechless!

It must have taken hours for the Jews to lift their jaws from the Temple's Outer-Court-floor.

With this simple statement, the Lord dashed thousands of years of religious sensibilities straight to the pit.

And the fact that thieves and sex workers get to cut in line at the Pearly Gates in front of the law-abiding Pharisees, it highlights the fact that we, sadly, do not understand his kingdom at all.

No wonder Jesus' disciples were confused, and asked, "Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18:1)?  I'm sure they hoped it would be someone sensible.

But no, Jesus threw them another curve ball when he said the greatest in the kingdom were little children.

Kids?  What do they know about management and taxation and armies?  How in the world could a kingdom run by children ever survive?  The whole idea is preposterous.

Humble, meek, mind-your-own-business types?  Not exactly what we think of when we think "Executive material."  We're searching for a strong, mighty king, right?  As in, almighty?

Listening to preachers, we might believe that "sovereignty" is top dog.  The desire for God to knock some sense into everybody is a common theme in Christianity, where churches thrive on eschatology, feasting on a theology of God's judgment and Armageddon.

So what business had Christ going around, telling us the Kingdom of God is a crazy assortment of lost things and souls, full of misplaced coins and wandering sheep and prodigals?  What a curious thing, this Kingdom!

Having turned things inside-out, we can safely assume that every convention we have about what a proper "king" should be like, Jesus will throw out window.

Chances are, we're in for a surprise.

"Can I see some identification, please?"

We're told to teach one another "the doctrine of the kingdom" (D&C 88:77).  What is this doctrine, exactly?  Is it the same as the Doctrine of Christ?

Well, although I am a poor teacher, if the Lord wants us to teach the doctrine, let's take a stab.

The first thing we encounter, quite bizarrely, is that we cannot migrate to the Kingdom, thinking to leave our homeland and cross over the border to God's country, as if we had a passport.

Because the Kingdom must be inherited.  What is that all about?  We have to be "born again" into this Kingdom.

​   And the Lord said unto me:
   Marvel not that all mankind,
   yea, men and women . . . 
   must be born again,
   being redeemed of God,
   becoming his sons
   and daughters;

   and thus they become new
   creatures; and unless
   they do this, they can
   in nowise INHERIT
   the kingdom of God.

(Mosiah 27:25-26)

So the Kingdom, let's pretend, is not a geographical destination but a matter of lineage.

Which makes sense, in a way, because everyone in the Kingdom is, in fact, royalty.  Everyone in it possesses the King's blood.

This explains, perhaps, the deeper meaning of Jesus' statement that "the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21) ― because the Kingdom and its keys are an heritage of lineage and birth, which is to say, a matter of blood.

But how do we "seek ye first the kingdom of God" if the thing we're seeking is within us?  Do I buy leeches and let the blood out?  Do I cut myself like the priests of Ba'al?

   And Moses took the blood,
   and sprinkled it
   on the people,
   and said, Behold the blood
   of the covenant,
   which the Lord hath made
   with you.

(Exodus 24:8)

How do we "build the kingdom of God" if the kingdom is constituted from blood?  How do we magnify blood, or propagate God's spiritual DNA?

Take a Second Look!

Why are the citizens of the kingdom so vulnerable?  I mean, Jesus said they're persecuted  (it's awful they don't stand up for themselves but turn the other cheek) ― "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:10).

Well, the more we dig into this Kingdom, the more perplexing things get.  Why can't God's kingdom be more like the Holy Roman Empire, strong and impressively rich?

Well, yes, I think that is what we have sort of done in making the priesthood about governance: turning deacons into miniature dukes, and elders acting like earls, and apostles regarded as the princes of the Church, and so on.

You get the idea, okay.  All this management structure makes more and more bosses.  But that's what we seem to want, deep down: someone to really get a move on, and make things happen in an orderly fashion.  That's what a kingdom needs, people to take charge, issue orders, and make the trains run on time.

So why was Jesus such a terrible administrator?  Goodness, he let his treasurer embezzle, gave no thought to the morrow, and implemented no sensible logistics for the feeding of thousands.  Why didn't he care about all the practical stuff?  Why does his kingdom "toil not" (Matt. 6:28)?

I've never met a single person who lives the Sermon on the Mount's counsel:  "Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" (Matt. 6:31).

That's no way to operate a kingdom.  The economy would sink!  Without regimented ranks, how would anyone know what to do, without spiritual sergeants to assign them latrine duty and push-ups and to minister to Sister So-and-so?

And yet this fellow, this man they called Joshua, son of Joseph, is somehow a King of Kings?

Now here's my point: Jesus' kingdom is a reflection of his character.  He exercises no compulsion.  He is like a gardener who doesn't pull weeds (allowing them to grow together with the wheat).

If you want a king to boss you around, and take charge, then Satan is more than willing to suit your desire.

Christ's kingdom is unseemly because it observes the seasons rather than trying to control them.  The celestial only harvests what is freely offered.

Thus in the celestial kingdom, kings do not have subjects so much as students.  Celestial kings inspire as teachers of the Way, but they do not impose their views (for the first law of heaven appears to be the free flowing of intelligent will).  God's nature is to nurture soil so it produces good fruit through persuasion and love unfeigned, just by providing sunlight and rain (Matt. 5:45).

Now, that's no way to run a business, is it?  Yet Jesus showed no desire to rule and reign, or govern, as Herod Antipas.  

Jesus never sat upon a throne in his lifetime, so why would that change now?  Shall Christ ascend to heaven to take upon himself the guise of Pontius Pilate?  Shall Jesus don Caesar's robes when he eschewed titles on earth?

No one believes it!  How crazy I sound, suggesting the idea that Jesus actually meant what He said.

No, we know better than He.  We think the Kingdom needs a Constantine more than a Christ (and this is why our churches resemble the world instead of the Kingdom).

​Never mind this notion of letting the people govern themselves.   No, we insist on a monarchy ― and have been trying to foist God into the role of monarch-of-the-universe ever since.

And yet, I am here to tell you, if you can believe it, that just as Jesus refused to be the king people wanted him to be back in John 6, so likewise, today he refuses to assume the role we expect him to play of Supreme Ruler and Master of the Universe.

I will not try to prove it, or convince you.  I will simply make some observations.  See what you think.

No Multi-Level-Marketing?  How Will the Kingdom Pay its Bills?

The first thing I think we should explore is the fact that God's Kingdom is numinous.

Numinous means "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring."

The coming of God’s kingdom is not as a crusader expanding the borders of his dominion, gaining territory and tribute, but refers to the mutual in-dwelling of the Father in every kingdom.

Joseph Smith said in the King Follett discourse, "What did Jesus do? ... When I get my kingdom, I shall present it to My Father, so that He may obtain kingdom upon kingdom, and it will exalt Him in glory.  He will then take a higher exaltation, and I will take His place."

Now, I understand where Joseph Smith was coming from, but I do not see things quite the same way; heaven is not a Ponzi scheme with a downline.

Instead of conceptualizing the Father's kingdom as being "above" or "greater" than others, think of the Father’s kingdom as abiding in them all.

When the whole is increased and integrated into a new creation, to whom does it belong?  It belongs to all whom God has made “equal in power, and in might, and in dominion” (D&C 76:95).
 
God then does not preside over his kingdom, for God is the kingdom, the collective intelligence of all his parts, as the head crowns the body.

But the body does not belong to the head, though the head unifies and inspires the members to act, as when we tell our hand to blow each other kisses.

For the head and members are one Being, a living organism whose glory is one. 

There are many exalted beings and Fathers in heaven, but there is one God.  This is the doctrine of the kingdom, as well as, coincidentally, the Doctrine of Christ (2 Nephi 31:21).

Walking on Water

It is easy to walk on water when the lake surface is frozen.

We consider it miraculous only when the water moves beneath our feet.

Listen: God’s kingdom is not frozen or static ― it flows freely upon the celestial tide, for God walks upon the waves of eternity as Jesus did upon the Sea of Galilee.
 
To enter the Kingdom is like walking on spiritual water.  Those who are unwise will attempt to devise ways to make the water hard, like unto a hierarchy, crystalized and rigid, as a pyramid (Pharaoh's at it again).

But those who are wise have learned to walk by faith upon currents constantly reforming and changing, creating newness of life as joint-heirs.
 
In his mortal ministry, Jesus modeled a reality the world has rejected ― that is, that heaven is a self-organizing organism:

   For intelligence cleaveth
   unto intelligence;
   wisdom receiveth wisdom;
   truth embraceth truth;
   virtue loveth virtue;
   light cleaveth unto light.

(D&C 88:40)

The Kingdom is a cooperative woven together by faith and hope and charity.

Love is the Constitution of the kingdom, for God is a living, relational Being, not a machine.

Flow with whatever edifies you (D&C 50:23).  If it does not edify, let it go with your blessing.  Do not allow anyone's doctrine to become quicksand upon your path, tethering your soul as a yoke, a noose for your faith.

Christ transcends the precepts of men; the atonement refers to a reality far greater than we have imagined, for it is infinite: do we comprehend infinity?
 
Now, between alpha and omega exists all of creation, and so Christ can be seen as many things.  But for me, when I consider my relationship with the Lord, I do not think of him as a king: for Jesus told us plainly who He is, and what role He wants to play, by His own word, and that is:

   Our Friend (John 15:15).

If our Friend also happens to be a king, then fealty is merely the love owed to a friend, which loyalty is reciprocated in kind.

It was friendship, even more than priesthood, that served as the great hope of Zion, according to Joseph Smith:

    It was my endeavor
    to so organize the Church
    that the brethren
    might eventually
    be [brought into]
    the celestial kingdom
    by bonds and covenants
    of mutual friendship
    and mutual love.

(Joseph Smith, History of the Church, vol 1, p. 269)

As the song says, what a friend we have in Jesus!

Sleep Over and Dream with Me

If you don't mind, I am going to write freely today without worrying too much about how my words fall.

My thoughts are raw, like runny eggs that threaten salmonella.  I usually try to pretty myself up for you, but today I don't feel like putting on makeup or brushing my teeth.

​So this will be fun!  I have no idea what's going to come out of my cluttered mind.  We'll be reckless and drink straight from the milk carton; we will forget to flush; we will run around the house and turn on all the lights, wasting electricity like irresponsible millionaires.

So come on over.  We will microwave smores; with our chocolate-covered fingers we will spin the bottle, and play truth-or-dare in pajamas, and tell each other secrets, not wanting the night to end.

So brace yourselves!  Let us dive into this spiritual stream-of-consciousness, and see if there's any reason to randomness.

   Double-dog-dare you!

"So they chanted in the darkness, and there cometh a victory now"

Recently I was wrapped in a blanket in my basement study, reading about early British history during the time of Roman occupation.  I was captivated by the uprising of the British Queen Boudica who defied Caesar and marched on Londinium.  She became a symbol for future generations of justice and freedom.

According to the Roman historian Tacitus, after Boudica's husband died, Rome made a show of power by flogging her and raping her two daughters and emptying her treasury.  In response, Boudica led the British tribes in revolt and burned the countryside in her grief and rage.

Boudica had brief success before being subdued by the Roman general Suetonius Paulinus, who famously massacred the druids at Anglesey.

Here's a poem that describes the Celtic prophecy a druid sage spoke to Boudica when she sought divine favor:

Rome shall perish—write that word
   In the blood that she has spilt;
Perish, hopeless and abhorr’d,
   Deep in ruin as in guilt.
 
Rome, for empire far renown’d,
   Tramples on a thousand states;
Soon her pride shall kiss the ground―
   Hark! the Gaul is at her gates!
 
(William Cowper, excerpts from "Boadicea")
 
Well, that sounds quite noble.  But then Alfred Lord Tennyson took up his pen and his portrayal of Boudica, half-mad and raving for vengeance, was not well received by the public.

Published in 1864 while England was still a colonial superpower, Tennyson's poem did not reflect Britain's imperial glory in a flattering light.

You see, Tennyson subversively used Boudica as an image of Britain, her bloodthirstiness and violence an indictment of the Empire's wrongs.

   Burst the gates, and burn the palaces, break the works of the statuary,
   Take the hoary Roman head and shatter it, hold it abominable,
   Cut the Roman boy to pieces in his lust and voluptuousness,
   Lash the maiden into swooning, me they lash'd and humiliated,
   Chop the breasts from off the mother, dash the brains of the little one out,
   Up my Britons, on my chariot, on my chargers, trample them under us.

(Excerpts from Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Boadicea")

It didn't help that Tennyson's version is a mouthful, written in galliambic meter (it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue). 

But in this Tennyson was a true prophet, for empire-building (such as see in churches) requires patriotic pride, or what we call in a religious context, sectarianism.

Usually the more a person attests to the truth of what they are saying, the less true it is.  So it is with religion.  Truth has its own appeal, and needs no adornment.  But falsehood?  She lawyers up, hires a PR team, sends out the calvary.  The adulteress, not the virgin, hires others to vouch for her chastity. 

But there is no honor in slaughter.  There is no pride in priestcraft.  There is no glory in the gleaming gem-encrusted walls of a temple built with spiritual blood diamonds.

Step 1: Know Thyself

Has the children's meat gone to the dogs (Matt. 15:26)?

Ilia Delio said:

"Social media ensures constant exposure to global suffering. The result is 'compassion fatigue' — the inability to continue feeling and responding to endless emergencies. This exhaustion manifests as numbing—people shut down, stop paying attention, focus on private concerns because the public sphere has become overwhelming.

"Institutional inertia [in the Church] is powerful; vested interests resist change; genuine reform threatens comfortable arrangements. But the alternative—institutional Christianity that fails to feed humanity’s zest when that zest is most desperately needed—is unacceptable. The stakes are too high, the mission too urgent, the gospel too important to allow institutional dysfunction to continue unchallenged.

"Christians are sent into the world to enkindle collective will for evolutionary advance, to channel energies of love that drive cosmic convergence. But we cannot fulfill this mission through institutions that betray it."

Where can we find creative solutions?  I watched General Conference and was disappointed, as if the messages had been poured from old bottles, even brittle wineskins.

The Family Proclamation and declining birthrate?  Hmm.  Where are new bottles to be found?  Where are the visionaries?

Where is the spiritual creativity in the Church? We are not assembly-line workers, but artists.  We are not machinists, but living, growing, organisms.

If we want to be like God, then let's be creative like Him.  And what, exactly, is at the heart of divine creativity?

    Play.

The way to become a Creator is to play around with the universe in new ways.  Perhaps this is why the kingdom of heaven is filled with little children, playing ― whereas hell is comprised of TV reruns and stale root beer that has lost its fizz.

​Saida Mirsadri, a Muslim woman drawing upon the teachings of the Quran, calls God "the Poet of the world."  I loved how she said, "[God’s] divine creative power, far from being unilateral, is relational and interactive, with God and creation intertwined, cooperating in the ongoing process of brining the universe into being."

We have this idea of God creating the universe long ago, way back when, by knocking planets around.  But God does not create that way.  He is creating the universe now, as we speak, with us.  He creates by putting Himself into the creation, as a co-Participant, so that everything is an expression of Him.

Step 2: Accept Thyself

Maps clutter our lives.  We surround ourselves with directions, making life dull.  Better to explore uncharted territory than to follow the maps of other men.  All begins and ends in mystery.  That is the magic!  What I have learned is there are aspects and faces of God that cannot be depicted on maps, that we will miss if our nose is stuck to paper.

Now it's true that maps help us get to our destination quicker.  But what's the hurry?  

If we sat down at the computer and typed out 20 pages on what we think heaven is like (make it double-spaced if you want), we will find we have little idea.  We have maybe one-or-two-pages-worth of material.  Heaven is half-baked in our hearts. 

Let us dream, and then create, the heaven waiting to be born.

Anything that remains the same, and static, becomes a bore.  The first principle of creation, then, is change.  Change is heavenly.

Are we footnotes in our own story?  Is our life a mere endnote found at the back of the appendix, in a book no one will ever read?  Do our lives matter?

Yes!  For we are part of the greatest story, the main story, the only story that truly means anything: the story of love being co-authored by us and God, weaving a new world into Being.

Tamara explained that creation is messy, so relax (it's not going to be 'perfect' and 'tidy'):

"Human relationships are not spreadsheets where cells line up neatly once the formula is right. They spill over margins, they miscalculate, they resist tidy balancing. They demand something that feels embarrassing in our age of self-management and curated composure: vulnerability. The willingness to say, I need you! And forget the generic Hallmark sense, think of the terrifyingly specific sense that without your presence, my world contracts. 

​"I cannot promise your need will be fulfilled. Most of the time, it won’t. But I can promise that denying it will turn you into a ghost inside your own life. Better to risk the embarrassment of hunger than the sterile pride of starvation. Better to admit you want, yes, too much, too soon, too raw than to live embalmed in cool detachment. Need is not weakness. It is the pulse that proves you are still alive."

You see, we need each other.  We are caught in God's web, and as a fishing net being drawn, the web is being gathered.

The world is exploding with spiritual seekers; the potential overwhelms me.  The web is coalescing into something remarkable.  We are seeing, I think, the sheepfold of God materialize as never before.

I look for God working at the frontier of things, where light and outer darkness collide.  Where do we find God working among us, now?  In our churches?  Well, um, yes, He's there.  He is everywhere.  But where is His Spirit really active, hot as red coal in the refiner's fire?

Actually, on Substack.  You think I'm joking, but I witness more spiritual voltage being channeled and poured out from some of these unlikely spaces, where people are reaching across the globe and connecting in a deeply spiritual way, forming something we've rarely seen before, getting away from their computers and church-labels, and meeting up in person, in the flesh, to dissolve boundaries in love, erasing the doctrines of separation ― it almost feels paradisiacal.

Step 3: Become the Creator

We've found each other . . . so now what?  What does God want us to do?  Better yet, what do we want to do?

That's the big question, isn't it?  I have always been a bit of a spiritual stray, a surf bum, waiting for someone to come and adopt me, giving me a name like I was a three-legged cat, or Cabbage Patch doll, and dress me and love me, take me home with them.

Not anymore.  While the angels serve an important role in performing divine investiture, they cannot save us.  I am no longer waiting for Enoch's City to start the party.   

Remember, by being who we are (who we truly are), we evoke all we-are-not by implication.  If we wish to do good, our shadow will spread over evil.

Matt Segall said:

"If we remember that possibilities require the agential decisions of actualities to enter into history, then we preserve the creative tension driving cosmic evolution.

"Organisms do not unfold according to rigid templates; they dip into a structured but evolving open field of potential, actualizing new patterns through their own activity."

Are you seeking a Utopia?  Zion?  The New Jerusalem?  Then stop trying to escape the world that we have!  You know, the one right here in front of us.  For heaven is now; the Kingdom is here.

All we need to do is love purely, universally, unconditionally.  It's that simple!

The thing I care very much about is not imposing upon the agency of others.  The reasons organizations crumble, and communities fall apart, and churches become corrupt, is because people want to be in charge, thinking they know "best."  When such people get a little money, and a little authority, how much worse things become.  

It's like at some point the tonsils, thrilled in their tonsilhood, incorrectly assumed that because they felt the fruits of the Spirit, doing as tonsils do, then all of us should be tonsils, too.

And so the tonsils tried to convert the liver and lungs to behave like tonsils. The liver and lung were convinced, and deceived, and stopped acting like the liver and lungs they were, doing as the tonsils counseled.

And the body died, for where was the liver?  What of the lungs?

Jesus’s gospel is His own.  He did the will of His Father.  But I am not going to be crucified.  The Father's will for me is not the same as for you. 

In this way, we must each embody our own gospel, for in following Christ we pursue the path our spiritual DNA was divinely encoded to express.  The greatest error is trying to get someone to act against their divine DNA code, rewriting their guanine and thymine genes to look more like, well, wolves in sheep's clothing.

This is why I love to encourage others, even when their walk with God does not resemble my own.  What unites us is not what we believe (my beliefs continue to evolve, and I hope yours are, too) or how we behave — what unites us is faith, hope, and charity. 

We are creatures of concreteness, and yet faith draws us towards the Unseen.

And so what is on my mind?  Shall we burn and wage war like Boudica?  Shall we pull down the pillars of priestcraft?  Shall we retreat to our hermitages and retire from the world? 

How strange, isn't it, that everyone seems to be bursting at the seams, wanting to do something, but what that is, they do not know.​

Wrestle with God
a poem

​​     And the hollow of Jacob's thigh
     was out of joint as he wrestled
     with God.
 
     And Jacob called the place ‘Peniel’:
     for I have seen God face to face.
 
          ― Genesis 32:25, 30
 
              "The pelvis is a bony girdle
fused from the ilium, ischium,    and
pubis bones"             They call Latin
a dead language    but here we are
                  Where was I
the grocery store is a     summation
of civilization                   the sacrum
temple                 my PIN wont work
oh bananas                remembering
the pelvis holds              the bladder
a reservoir of memories     flooding
memories descended           pooled
inward                between hip bones
the coccyx is                     in the end
the thing we outgrew           no one
                     remembers
bones are full of holes               
yesterdays                            nerves
need    .   .   .   .                      somewhere to go
sacral foramina                 for veins
           congregate in the groin
          
 
     Jacob wrestled          with
     hollow heart     wrenched
     thigh         Thy          Israel
     wrestled                  socket
                       hole
     looked within   ―the hole
     the whole                 holds             
                       Peniel

The "Talk"

"Dad, how do I know what church is true?" my fourteen-year-old daughter asked me recently, out of the blue.

It was Sunday afternoon and I was reading in my study.  I put my book down.  As a father, I live for moments such as this (Esther 4:14)!

I looked at her and my heart swelled with pride.  No need to cherry-coat things for her, not at her age ― when she was wanting the truth, and wanting it straight.

There she was, blossoming as a jewel of a daughter, full of spiritual yearning, burning hot as the sun (as adolescents do) ― the same age as Joseph Smith when he posed the identical question, "What church is true?"

I could have given her the answer the Lord gave Joseph, "they were all wrong" (JS-H 1:19), but I chose a different angle.  After all, the world is not the same as it was in 1820; we're not in our great-great-great-great grandmother's Second Great Awakening anymore. 

​"Honey," I said.  "Just follow your bliss; it will lead you to God."

She looked at me quizzically.  "Huh?"

"Sweetie, truth fills all of creation; it is not the possession of churches, let alone a single church, for truth outshines them all.  Our best teacher is love, for 'God is love.'  Let the love God has planted in your heart guide you."

I think she found my response less-than-satisfactory, and wanted something more black-and-white (kids are so literal!).  And there I was, thinking I showed such restraint, not even quoting, "The way that can be named is not the Way."

"Do you think the Church is true?" she asked.

She was really putting me on the spot.  "Yes and no," I said.  "I love the Church and am grateful for it.  There are beautiful things about the Church, but it also has a lot of problems.  Like any religion, really, we have to sort the good from the bad.  That's what our agency is for."

She nodded, seeing it was not so simple.  I had no worries, knowing the Lord would shepherd her personal discernment in the coming years.  Each generation must seek His wisdom for the challenges of their day.

I smiled and leaned closer.  "I'll tell you my secret," I said in a conspiratorial whisper.  "My guiding star.  If there's anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, (Phil. 4:8), I treasure it.  Like you."  I gave her a big hug.  "That's how we stay sane in this crazy world."

The Story of the Stone Cutters

In 1666, the Great Fire of London burned for four days, reducing the world's third largest city to ash.

The fire began in a bakery on the aptly-named Pudding Lane (talk about 'hotcakes').  As people fled the flames, they retreated behind the thick stone walls of St. Paul's Cathedral, which was built on Ludgate Hill ― the highest point of the city.

The frightened townspeople believed God would protect them within the walls of their magnificent Church, and they stockpiled their belongings and books in its crypts.

But fire, like the curiosity of children, has a mind to grow and roam free.  It wasn't long before the flames reached the Cathedral, enveloping the building, making a complete ruin.  (Don't worry, the cathedral had burned before in 1087, so they knew the drill ― and it would later receive bombardment during WWII's Blitz).

Our lives are cathedrals undergoing constant demolition and rebuilding, as we are the temple of God.  We work so hard to stack the stones of our righteousness, our identity, only to see God knock them over.  "There shall not be left here one stone upon the other, that shall not be thrown down" (Matt. 24:2).

We're so busy building ourselves that we often get in God's way, who has a quite different idea about the sort of thing we're becoming.

Architect Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to oversee the reconstruction of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1666.  One day, about five years into the project, he observed several hardworking stonecutters and stopped to speak to them.

"Excuse me," Sir Wren said to the men, "Can you tell me what you are doing?"

The first stonecutter wiped his forehead.  "As you can see, Sir, I am carrying stones."

Sir Wren turned to the second worker.  "And you?  What are you doing?"

The second stonecutter bowed.  "I am working to feed my family."

Sir Christopher Wren nodded, and faced the third man.  "And you, my good man?"

The last stonecutter's eyes shone brightly.  He replied, "Sir, I am building God a cathedral."  

"Follow Your Bliss"

The stonecutters all performed the same task, but they each had a different purpose.  It was their purpose that defined their labor, not vice versa.

What is our purpose?  Let's not overthink this; the answer is so simple, I think.  Our purpose is to express the gifts of God.

For the way we experience God is through expressing His nature.  And how do we do that?  Through exercising the gifts of the Spirit.

When we share our spiritual gifts, we feel Him in us, working through us ― and in those moments we sense we are one: our hands are His hands, our hearts in sync.

On Sundays we pray to "always have His Spirit" to be with us (Moroni 4:3), but we often forget the way we have His Spirit is through sharing it.

How do we share His Spirit?  Through offering our gifts "according to the gifts and callings of God unto him" (D&C 20:60).  I think the finest way to love others is by freely sharing our gifts with them and the world.  "And all these gifts come by the Spirit of Christ" (Moroni 10:17).
​
If we've been feeling down, and are seeking to jumpstart our hearts, then let us connect our jumper cables to our divine gifts (rather than placing them in the back seat instead of the driver seat where they belong).

For it is through sharing our gifts that we experience the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22).  The fruits are merely a happy side-effect of the gifts being shared.

The reason we're all so starved, walking around like spiritual skeletons, just skin-and-bone, is because we're not "profiting" from each other's gifts (D&C 46:12).

Leadership put the kibosh on White Elephant parties at Church a long time ago.  Now we all have to purchase gifts from an authorized gift registry at Target.

And so we've "quenched the Spirit" (1 Thess. 5:19) in various ways I've tried to expound over the years. 

"But Tim," someone says, "I don't know what my spiritual gifts are.  How do I find my unique, divine purpose?"

That's a good question.  Let me ask: what brings you joy?  What energizes your mind?  What makes you leap out of bed in the morning?  These are signs God has given you.

My favorite cinematic line is from the movie Chariots of Fire, when Eric Liddell (who ran in the 1924 Paris Olympics) told his family (who didn't support his pursuits in athletics, since they were Christian missionaries and thought Eric should do more important work) ― Eric said in defense of his dream:

"I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast.  And when I run, I feel His pleasure."

​Joseph Campbell said, "If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

   So follow your bliss!

Carpe Diem

​If there’s one thing I wish we’d understand, it's that life is a glorious game of hopscotch in which we condescended to ascend.

The universe is nothing but a playground, for the Kingdom of heaven is comprised of little children at recess, full of rubber balls and swing sets and, most terrifyingly, tag.

In this sandbox we never play alone.  We must learn to socialize and get along.  Little Mary has her ponytail pulled; Sam gets knocked down; Billy feels hot-faced at not being picked for the kickball team.

Life is an exploration of thrills and indignities, a cosmological round of Red Rover.  All of this interaction forges friendships stronger than the cords of death.  The most important thing we're doing is making friends for eternity.  

So many of us seem to be loitering around the Four Square, not playing, shuffling our feet, waiting for the school bell to ring so we can return to the classroom (the Spirit World) where we will sit at desks and trace cursive, learning our letters and doing abstract sums.  But listen!  Now is the time for play, here in mortality.  We've spent eternity studying textbooks and reciting theory.  Now it is recess!

Now is a time to run and trip, be bruised and to shed hot tears, and also to slide and swing and laugh and dance to Ring Around the Rosie.  It is a place for our imaginations to soar without limits, to experience the sun on our cheek and work up a sweat (Gen. 3:19) while living it up.

Nothing on the blacktop stays the same.  Today all-the-rage is Duck, Duck, Goose.  Soon we shall tire of it and make Capture the Flag the hot-ticket.  The dynamics (and drama) are real.  Our mettle is tested as we stand up to schoolyard bullies.  

But remember, the movement of play is sideways, spontaneous, through whirling jump-ropes, skipping to songs, "Benjamin Franklin went to France, To teach the ladies how to dance; First the heel, then the toe, Spin around and out you go!"

Shall we despair whenever the jump-rope becomes entangled about our ankles, endlessly, frustratingly?  No, we keep returning, keep practicing, keep reaching for that once-in-a-lifetime jump.  "I like coffee, I like tea; I like the boys and the boys like me; Tell your mother to hold her tongue; She had a fellow when she was young."

Watch: every-so-often, when the wind is right and the rhythm just-so, we fall into a cadence so beautiful we could skip stars to its beat, entering the flow, feeling a freedom that burns beneath our skin, when the whirling ropes guide us beyond anything we've experienced before, towards something greater than we thought ourselves capable.  "I asked my mother for fifty cents, To see the elephant jump the fence; He jumped so high he touched the sky, and never came back till the Fourth of July."

Each time we enter the fray, dancing between the ropes, we are crafting our story, a destiny that weaves itself into our DNA.  Maybe this jump will be the one students in the future will whisper about in the hallways, in hushed tones as if we were urban legends.

And so we flew out of heaven like eagles, we flooded onto the playground at the sound of the bell, joining the game, glad to get outdoors into the open, beneath a blue sky.  We raised our hands high, eager, stepping up to the plate hoping for a homerun.

Because in this moment, for this brief sliver of eternity we've been given on earth, in this life, we can shout with a delight no one taught us, that cannot be schooled ― a joy that rises unbidden, bliss beyond words ― as we twirl for a fleeting heartbeat, slipping into God's arms, cradled in an ecstasy our bodies were fashioned for.

Here, here, here we ride the merry-go-round.  And even when we become motion sick we shout, "Faster!  Faster!"  We whip our legs on the swings and laugh beside our friends, "Higher!  Higher!"  We did not just come to experience the world: we came to embody it. 

Here we become one with the wheel, with creation, with the Creator.  We feel God's untamed energy rushing through our lungs as we carry the flag home to safety to the shouts and embraces of our teammates.

And so the next time we fall on the pavement and bleed, or become cross with our playmates, or cry over the unfairness of things, losing our place in the tetherball line ― remember, it took billions of years to birth this moment, for the universe to conspire to bring about our joy, here, now, like this.

Generations of time it took, across countless lineages of love, for all of creation to be prepared for this: our bliss.

My Purpose

What is my purpose?  Where do I find my bliss?

Well, that's easy.  God called me to perform spiritual CPR upon a world fallen in unbelief, to attempt to breathe faith into hearts that have failed, applying chest compressions to a love grown cold (Matt. 24:12).

More than 20 years ago, on August 3, 2004, when I was still in law school, I cried out one afternoon in my off-campus apartment and pled with the Lord, asking Him for the gift of Charity.  Among spiritual gifts, love was the one I most desperately desired (boy, if I had only known what I was getting into).

According to Paul, love is the greatest of God's gifts.  I don't think love is great because it sits at the top, but because it supports from beneath, and beside, and within: love abides in all of God's gifts.

It is not "our" love anymore than the air we breathe is "our" oxygen.  Love is the oxygen that saturates our blood and allows for spiritual cellular respiration, God breathing life into our limbs and saying, "Arise."

God's affection flows through us, and indwells His creation like blood coursing through our body, circulating and giving life to all things.

"But Tim," someone says, "God doesn't have blood in His body, does He?"

   And he was clothed
   with a vestiture
   dipped in blood

(Rev. 19:13)

Here we are given a glimpse of Jesus' blood-soaked garment.  But I like to think that Christ's garment ― that is, the flesh ― is the bodies we possess, yours and mine.

​We dress Christ in our mortality, just as He drapes us in immortality.

Love, by itself, is nothing.  For love requires a story.  A love story.

I quoted earlier, "God is love" (1 John 4:8) ― but that is incomplete.  For actually, "God is [a] love [story]."  The love story.

   Our love story.

That's what I wish my fourteen-year-old daughter will understand someday, after she has harvested the fruits of love: the story of God is not the story of a church.

   It is the story of children.

Like the Nile
a poem

Too long our love
has channeled
between berms

like water
in an irrigation ditch.
I want to love

like the Nile
overflowing its banks
in summertime

flooding all things.
Then we shall become
life-giving

​   fertile crescents.

Where's the Manna?

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out

   ― Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

When I was younger I would follow spiritual spoor like a hunter (Jer. 16:16), seeking truth across valleys and hills, climes and crags.

The exploration was exhilarating.  There was something magical about stalking heavenly prey in the early morning mists.

But as I increase in age and arthritis (if not wisdom), I often find it better to wait and watch, allowing the frightened animal to approach of its own accord in the quietude and calmness of eventide.

How surprised I was to learn that the truth I always sought was also seeking me.

But I am impatient with my impatience.  It's hard to "be still" (Psalm 46:10) and at the same time to "be anxiously engaged" (D&C 58:27).

I wish my walk with God were more wu-wei.  Funny, isn't it, how we have so much living to do, if only life didn't get in the way!

When I feel like I am not doing enough, the thing that helps the most is remembering the most precious treasure we have is each other, and the greatest gift is our time together.

So let us set aside the cares of the day for just a moment as we enjoy each other's company.  I would like us to open our hearts to the mystery of the Sacrament.

Jesus taught the Nephites that partaking of His body and blood indicated we were "built upon [His] rock" (3 Nephi 18:12).

Since we know "the rock" refers to Christ and His Doctrine (the sure foundation, the Stone of Israel), the Sacrament must somehow be integral to the Father's plan for His children.

The Doctrine is the most central tenet of Christianity, beautifully expressed through the ordinance of the Lord's Supper:

   That I may be in them
   as thou, Father, art in me,
   that we may be one.

(3 Nephi 19:23)

Sometimes I struggle to feel this "oneness" at Church on Sundays.  You may have sensed a subtle change in the wind.  The season is turning; something momentous is stirring, and it isn't all good.

When I take the spiritual temperature of the world right now, things are getting chilly out there (Matt. 24:12).  It is spiritual cold/flu season and people are calling in sick by droves.  This is impacting the Church.

I cannot be the only one who has noticed how the spiritual landscape is changing.  People are growing weary.  Our worship is becoming anemic.  There's a lethargy creeping into our creativity (a sign the Spirit is ceasing to strive with us as a people, as a society).  It is all quite alarming, witnessing in real-time what Mormon experienced in his day (Mormon 5:16).

All around us people are pulling the plug, communities dwindling, folks stepping away from the action, withdrawing, retreating (even as A.I. content and spiritual infotainment proliferate).

Meanwhile, this week I received in my email inbox the Church's newsletter, which proffered a solution:

"If you've been feeling spiritually distant or overwhelmed, or are simply in need of renewal, the house of the Lord offers a path back to clarity and connection ― with God, with your purpose, and with your eternal family."

Headquarters senses the same thing we do: there's a growing malaise among the membership.  Its answer is to spend more time in the temple.

I can't criticize that; we all need to recharge ― and the temple is a lovely, air conditioned place to do it (as I've written about in "Sifting").

​But after we spend a couple hours in the temple . . . then what?

Poor Wheat

For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known
I am a part of all that I have met

  ― Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

​​Imagine yourself as a stalk of wheat.  Think of all the things the wheat must endure before it becomes bread to be offered at the Lord's table.

The wheat must be planted, it must grow tall beneath the sun, and then be cut.  Ouch, that's gotta hurt.  Then the wheat must be gathered in sheaves, harvested in bundles for threshing.

Where heaven and hell meet is the threshing floor of God.

And then the wheat must be ground to flour under the weight of the miller's stone ― all before baking.  The wheat undergoes successive transformations as it loses its form, its body, even its recognizable identity (until it hardly recognizes itself), becoming flour.

Then the Baker takes the humbled wheat, now flour (flour that is the collection of many, many grains of wheat, combined and mixed into one), and he mixes it with salt and water.  But we're not done!  For the hot oven awaits.

The flour (now dough) must be shaped lovingly by calloused hands, and placed within a refiner's fire, baked to golden brown.

From wheat to loaf, the wheat bears no resemblance to its former self, but has dissolved and been recreated into something fit for the Lord's table.

Only then ― after all that! ― only then will the bread be blessed . . . and then it is broken.  After all that!  All that preparation and then this, to break?  Watch: God became God to become other-than-God, so that He could return to God.

   And then the broken bread is consumed.

   *****

As I pondered this post, I went back and re-read several General Conference talks from the past few years that talk about the Sacrament.  There's actually quite a bit of material, and yet, from the pews where I sit, it seems like the quality of our Sacrament worship is only worsening.

If I were to sum up what the Brethren are teaching about the Sacrament, it is: "We take the sacrament to renew our covenants" (see, e.g., "Covenants and Responsibilities," Pres. Dallin H. Oaks, April 2024; "Accessing God's Power through Covenants," Elder Dale G. Renlund, April 2023; "The Covenant Path: The Way of Eternal Life," Elder Ojediran, April 2022).

Elder Bednar said it well, "We abide in Him by preparing earnestly to participate in the ordinance of the sacrament, reviewing and reflecting on our covenant promises, and repenting sincerely."  ("Abide in Me, and I in You," April 2023).

I like that sentiment.  But for all the talk about "covenants" by leadership (employed as a spiritual MacGuffin), for some reason, I just am not "feeling" it.

Are our covenants really so fragile they need constant renewal?  Do covenants rust so easily that they need regular new coats of paint?

Or does the Church treat covenants as part of a subscription plan that needs installment payments, and updating whenever we receive a new credit card expiration date?

A Beautiful Body

Tho’ much is taken, much abides
​
   ― Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

When Christ instructed us to take the Sacrament "in remembrance of my body" (3 Nephi 18:7), we usually think of His personal physical body, the one that was crucified and resurrected.

But what if we didn't stop there?  For isn't Christ's body the entire creation?

The broken bread represents the shattering of stars, the separation of suns and planets, the loneliness of love that stretches to the ends of the universe.

It is not just our broken hearts that need healing, but the entire embryological universe. 

Thank heavens the Sacrament promises reunification ― not just of reuniting ourselves to God, but to the entire creation, everywhere, throughout all generations of time (and that includes you <+> me, past-present-and-future).

   Christ IS all
   and IN all.

(Colossians 3:11)

   I live no longer, not I;
   but Christ lives in me.

(Galatians 2:20)

By way of analogy, in the womb a baby is fed oxygen and nutrients from the mother through the umbilical cord.

As little children, imagine a spiritual umbilical cord connecting us to God, and through Him, to all parts of the creation, as well as to the uncreated potential of the Void.

Are you familiar with fetal microchimerism?  You see, the umbilical cord flows both ways.  Fetal microchimerism is a phenomenon where the baby's cells (FMCs) enter the mother's bloodstream during pregnancy.

It's kind of like the child's 'alien' DNA persists in the mother's body for decades after childbirth, and the baby's cells become incorporated into the mother's own nature.

This produces a variety of biological effects for the mother (approximately 90% of them), including helping repair damaged tissue and protecting against cancer (and sometimes more deleterious effects).

I want to suggest that the Sacrament typifies divine fetal chimerism whereby we (as God's children) become part of His body, thereby transforming Him just as He transforms us.

"Where Two or Three Are Gathered in My Name"

  We primeval forests felling,
  We the rivers stemming,
  We the surface broad surveying,
  We the virgin soil upheaving

   ― Walt Whitman, "Pioneers, O Pioneers"

​As far as I can tell, Jesus only administered the Sacrament in group settings.  To the Twelve, for example, and to the Nephites.  This was prefigured by His feeding of the 5,000.

Why is this significant?  Why is Christ's Body best shared in communal contexts?  At no time are we more perfectly "gathered in His name" than when we circle the Lord's 'comm-union.'

For me this shows that the debate over Transubstantiation is beside the point: the bread doesn't become the literal Body of Christ when it passes our lips ― WE do.

The bread represents the outer, the material, the transmissive principle.

The blood represents the inner, the hidden, the receptive principle.

​I often reflect on the fact that Jesus, after He was resurrected and appeared to His disciples (who thought He was a ghost), proved His corporeality by eating honeycomb (Luke 24:42).

How is honey symbolic of the Sacrament?  My goodness, have we forgotten so soon that manna tasted "like wafers made with honey" (Exodus 16:31)?

Honey is the wine that flows from celestial community, the fruit of a thousand flowers gathered by bees and offered to their queen.  It represents the distilled experience, and pain, and healing, of Eden.
 
I never liked Brigham Young’s take on the honey bee; he focused on the industry of worker drones.  That 19th century industrialized, production-focused sensibility never appealed to me.
 
But the bee is associated with alchemy.  Its honey is symbolic of spiritual gold.  And to be clear, the Sacrament is, at its very heart, a work of spiritual alchemy.

Honey is gathered from the pollen of many, many flowers.  It is a gathering and synthesis of the entire Garden, distilled into a new essence.  It represents the celestial coalescing from the many.
 
Yes, just like Zion is gathered from every kindred, people, and tongue, into "one fold."

Com-passion

"The world is not a collection of objects; it is a communion of subjects."
 
     ― Thomas Berry

​The word "compassion" is derived from the Latin compati, meaning "suffer with."

The "passion of Christ" means Christ suffered.  Christ's 'com-passion' means He suffers with us.

Compassion is the mature form of love.  You see, love is not the answer ― love is the question.  "Whose burden can I lighten?  Whose suffering can I share?  Who needs my companionship today?"

Love needs wisdom desperately (see, "Wisdom in Winter"). 

When we refine our love in the temperance of divine wisdom, what is produced?  Pure love.

What does the "the pure love of Christ" mean?  What is charity?  What does it actually mean for God to "love" us?

   It means com-passion.

The fact that God suffers WITH us is why the Sacrament is shared, experienced together in family, in groups, in gatherings.

The Sacrament is meant to open our hearts in COM-munity to experience not just love, but more especially, COM-passion.

The way we "repent" in taking the Sacrament is through restoring relationships, by forgiving each other, and by repairing rifts in our community.

Jay McDaniel wrote, "[Sin is] the distortion of relational life.  It is the breaking of bonds ― between self and neighbor, self and world, self and God. It is the rejection, however subtle or overt, of the call to beauty, truth, compassion, and justice. 

"And yet, even here, in the thick of violence and violation, God is not absent.  The divine lure continues to call us ― not in blame, but in invitation: to turn, to begin again, to repair. There is no undoing what has been done, but there is always a fresh becoming, a next moment that carries with it the possibility of repentance, restitution, and reconciliation. 

"[Thus sin can be seen] as sacred wound.  God is not the author of harm but the companion to it: a transforming presence who does not erase the wound but works from within it, luring us toward beauty out of brokenness.

"What we have harmed, we may help heal. What we have lost, we may reimagine. What we have broken, we may mend—not perfectly, but with compassion."

Let us remember that the only way to express COM-passion is to become a COM-panion to those who are wounded, hurt, and broken.

"Hidden Manna"
 
Now we come to the crux the matter.  Jesus promised:

   To him that overcometh
   will I give to eat
   of the hidden manna

   and will give him
   a white stone

   and in the stone
   a new name written,
   which no man knoweth
   saving he that receiveth it.

(Rev. 2:17)

So we have a trinity of symbols: hidden manna, a white stone, and a new name.  How are they related?

In the Ark of the Covenant, the Israelites placed a pot of manna alongside Aaron’s staff and the tablets of testimony.  The manna was preserved with a promise it would never spoil (Exodus 16:32-33).
 
We are the Ark of God, carrying His hidden manna.  Our bodies are the athanor through which God manifests His face; we are the seeds carrying eternal lives into the nethermost reaches of the vineyard.

The Sacrament typifies the cosmological transformation (actually, transmutation) of our minds into the Mind of God (Rom. 12:2).
 
Jesus said He was the manna sent from heaven, and so are we.  We are the hidden manna, as Paul hinted, "hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3).

This unlocks the mystery of life (and death), even the coincidentia oppositorum, the genius of God’s Plan for us here in mortality, made bare at last.

As Heraclitus revealed, "The road up and the road down are the same thing."

Unity is achieved through wholeness, and wholeness is arrived at only through the harmonization of all things ― including opposition, as Lehi knew.

Christ is the Bread of Life, the Manna-made-man, the Son (Ah)man(na), because He represents the material incarnation of Spirit, the Logos-cum-flesh, the Father-and-Son joined as one Being-ness (3 Ne. 1:14).
 
So He said, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (John 6:56).
 
In other words, Christ was saying, "Take my body, because it’s also yours" (or more accurately, "it’s Ours").
 
Do you see?  Christ feeds Himself to Himself so He may become Himself.
 
The new name we receive "which no one knows except him who receives it" represents the unique, particular way Christ manifests through us ― through our individualization of God's nature.
 
This is why the white stone is, according to Peter, alive.  Christ is (we are) a "Living Stone" (1 Pet. 2:4), the philosopher’s stone that transmutes base material into celestial gold, even the light of the Sun.
 
This is what the manna of the Sacrament typifies ― our direct participation in the Incarnation of God through which new divine life is extended and returned, worlds without end.

​White Stone
 
There will be time,
there will be time
To prepare a face to meet
the faces that you meet

― T.S Eliot, "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
 
How fascinating that we find in Revelation Chapter 2 the celestial foodstuff beside the philosopher’s stone!  No, I am not talking about Harry Potter, but rather the Lapis Philosophorum.  The death and resurrection of Christ was indeed the Great Work.
 
Like Christ, when we attain unto the resurrection of the dead we will have power to reproduce our nature, generating our own sustenance (the hidden manna) to perpetuate our Personhood across eternal lives.
 
You see, this is what I’ve been trying to say for some time: the mystery of God is the ability to participate in one’s own Creation.
 
This is difficult to express because it involves a temporal loop, as we are drawn by a future-pull that shapes our past.  This spiritual spiral is represented by God’s "one eternal round."

​   Listen to the voice of the Lord
   your God, even Alpha
   and Omega, the beginning
   and the end, whose course
   is one eternal round,
   the same today as yesterday,
   and forever.

(D&C 35:1)
 
Once we understand the Path, we will appreciate that when we are presented to the Father it is not "me" and "you" standing there, but God, the Godhead, the One God.  You can count the feet and hands and hairs on our heads, but there will only ever be One of us.

This speaks to the paradox of God: How do you become what you already are?
 
In Christian terms, we call it being "reconciled" to God.  This is symbolized by Christ being the Bridegroom and Zion the bride in the sacred marriage of the Hieros Gamos ― King and Queen, Sol and Luna, Athanor (Manna) and Lapis (White Stone), Father and Son.
 
This is what Paul was so emphatic about when He spoke about the "Church."  It wasn’t an institution.  Christ gave His blood and body to the Church, which becomes His Body and Blood.
 
Thus we find the Hidden Manna kept in the wedding chamber.

A Sacrament of Blood

But on my death day―
for the briefest flicker of flame―
this world will unspin
all my days and all I was

   and all I wished

("This Day")
​
I have written before about the Baptism of Fire but is there a Baptism of Blood?

There is an allusion to it in Moses 6:59 where Enoch (yes, the fellow who walked with God) taught:

   Inasmuch as ye were born
   into the world by:
     (1) water,
     (2) blood, and
     (3) the spirit
   and so became a living soul

Here we see the way physical childbirth prefigures our creation into the higher heavens:

   even so ye must be born again
   into the kingdom of heaven,
     (1) of water,
     (2) and of the Spirit,
     (3) and be cleansed by blood,
   even the blood of mine
   Only Begotten

So this is curious: the order changed.  Did you catch that?  Water tops both lists, but Spirit precedes the baptism of blood when we enter into the spiritual rebirth.

   For by the water
   ye keep the commandment;
   by the Spirit ye are justified,
   and by the blood
   ye are sanctified.

(Moses 6:60)

Perhaps the baptism of blood is meant to remain a mystery.  I have never heard anybody preach on it.  I guess someone could argue the Baptism of Fire is the same thing as the Baptism of Blood (both are kind of red).

We live in interesting times, when the instreaming currents from celestial realms are met with uncommon challenges, as darkness spreads even as the light intensifies.  It is a great and dreadful day.

We are entering times when "the Lord shall reveal all things ― things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew" (D&C 101:32-33).

We are experiencing spiritual birthing pangs as our spirits dilate, undergoing metaphysical contractions.  We shall not be the same afterward: Parenthood transforms us all.

We will emerge as new creatures (I am going to miss the old you).

Matt Segall said, "Authentic spiritual experiences often don’t leave us with a neat and tidy ideology. Instead, they undo our certainties, reshaping us in ways that remain hard to explain. Spirituality is a continual process of humbling oneself in the face of the unknown."

If I may hold the light steady for a moment without fumbling the forceps, capturing the bright rays of the sun through Christ's crystalline heart (which we call charity) on this sensitive subject, I will try.

Please be patient; we're breaking new ground.  This may be a fool's errand, but, being a fool, what else can I do?  If you have read this far, for this long, then you really are a glutton for punishment.  Bless you.

One year ago, on September 11, 2024, I was pondering and praying in my study at home.  It was 7:00 p.m. and I closed my books and tried to clear my head.  My mind by nature is overactive so I have to work at slowing down my thoughts and being "still" (D&C 101:16).

I found myself nursing a terrible grief, filled with a spiritual longing I cannot begin to describe, wishing to be freed from the pains that plague us here below as we grope at shadows, seeking the light.

As I sat there, processing personal and planetary pain (if such a thing is possible), the Lord offered comfort (He is, after all, the Comforter) ― but, being the consummate spiritual drama queen I am, I refused to be consoled.  It was as Jeremiah said, I was Rachel weeping for her children because they were not (Jer. 31:15), my bones aching for the loss of the daughters of Zion.

When I saw the Lord I was unmade, as wheat ground to flour, I became dust.  I wanted to hold him, to envelope every part of Him, to be enraptured by Him, and it was as though the universe had too few points of contact between us, as if fusion itself could not produce the intimacy I craved of becoming of one flesh and of one mind with Him.  I leaned into Him and felt the tide of the ocean within His breast, carried upon galrazim.

​I sank into the Living Water of His embrace and found Him unplumbable, immeasurably deep.  I shall delight forever in tracing the veins of His love throughout the fathomless expanse of time and space.  I shall never tire of following His blood into the extremities of eternity.

This was my baptism of blood, I instinctively knew at the time, as He buried me in Himself, and brought me back again.

I was dripping, not with blood, but with tears, my face wet, as He placed His hand upon my forehead and I listened to the Logos share His love in a language unique to the two of us, and yet, universal.

I returned to my physical senses and the clock showed 7:45 p.m.  

"The Glory of God is Intelligence"

​​​Last week Elder Gerrit W. Gong made headlines when he told attendees at BYU Education Week to NOT use artificial intelligence to write their Sacrament Meeting talks.

I chuckled because members in my ward have been using A.I. for some time.

You might not have noticed because for years our talks have sounded artificial (rather than authentic), summarizing and quoting the Brethren as if the membership were itself a Large Language Model (LLM), soulless.

Church culture has done a good job of conditioning us to think like an A.I. already (so when Skynet takes over the world, it'll just be same-O).

The fact that Elder Gong is worried about A.I.'s ability to "generate truth from God," when for years we've been told to stick to the teachings of the Brethren, sort of misses the mark.

What has truth got to do with it when everything's focused on General Conference talks?  Who is fact-checking the Brethren?  No one; that's why it's all just cut-and-paste.

They even tell us how to bear a "proper" testimony; it's all pre-scripted.  There's no revelatory improv allowed.  Our meetings are performance art, and we are actors in the theater of the absurd.

So I find it ironic that the Brethren are concerned about A.I. when they've trained us over generations to act like robots, without autonomy. 

Is it any wonder our meetings are as exciting as molded plastic, composed of correlated programming, hard-wired to the Mothership?

Artificial Faith

Now, please don't misunderstand: I agree with Elder Gong!

Like him, I believe A.I. "cannot replace revelation . . . from God."  I would point out, as philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) brilliantly did, that emotions are a critical component of consciousness ("prehensions").

The nature of divine intelligence ― we're talking godlike, glorious intelligence ― is replete with emotion (despite what the creeds say about God being without parts or passions).  Intelligence sheds itself in joy, grace, love, and sorrow.  The gospel is something that must be felt.

Now A.I. is everywhere, and I've developed a nose to sniff it out.  It's easy to tell if something is A.I.-generated, from pictures to talks to blog posts (not this one).

A.I. content has a certain smell, an unmistakable signature, like a horse stable of oiled leather mixed with straw and manure.  Workable, yes, but lacking in refinement and subtext and beauty.  You don't serve dinner to company in the stables.

The output of artificial intelligence reads like a picture hanging on the wall askew, not quite right.  

Personally, I choose to not use A.I. in my writing because I want my words to be an expression of my spirit (and perhaps, even, the Lord's).

But A.I. is beside the point.  Artificial Intelligence is not the problem: artificial faith is.

How can we restore intelligence ― actual intelligence (D&C 93:36) ― into our worship?

A.I. is the bogeyman, but the underlying problem is the way we've sandwiched the body and blood of Christ between boring meetings, under the weight of hierarchy.

My patriarchal blessing warns me to not mock God (D&C 63:58), yet every Sunday I see the emblems of the Sacrament surrounded by lifelessness, with people reaching for the bread and water checked-out mentally, on their phones.

Who can blame them?  It's not kosher for members to go off-script, to burst into prophecy or tongues, or exercise the gifts of the Spirit in this controlled environment outlined in the Handbook.  So why not open Facebook in the face of such spiritually-choreographed inanity?  ("The Patriots won!")

The Book of Mormon tells us to conduct our meetings by "the workings of the Spirit" (Moroni 6:9), but we've instead "quenched the Spirit" (1 Thess. 5:19) in order to appease orthodoxy.  In the process we've turned doctrine into dogmatism, and meetings into mutual surveillance (if you haven't had the pleasure of being ratted-out to leadership, then you're missing out!).

So I wonder what truly mocks God.  Could it be the way we've organized a Church in the image of artificial righteousness?

​What can be done?

"I Call to the Stand, Claude" (an A.I.)
​
Recently I decided to pay for an A.I. subscription to get access to the latest and brightest A.I. has to offer (look, I am not a Luddite).

After researching all of my options (such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Copilot, etc.), I ended up choosing Claude Pro by Anthropic because of its ethical model and privacy.

Today I asked Claude the million dollar question, the one we have all shouted into our pillows, wondering what happened to the Restoration, which began with such promise!

God shall give unto you knowledge by his Holy Spirit, yea, by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, that has not been revealed since the world was until now;

A time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest.

. . . and all their glories, laws, and set times, shall be revealed in the days of the dispensation of the fulness of times.

(D&C 121:26, 28, 31)

Me:  Claude, what unique or new doctrines has a president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints revealed during the past 100 years?

Claude:  Over the past 100 years, LDS Church presidents have primarily focused on clarifying, emphasizing, and applying existing doctrines.

The era of major new doctrinal revelations (like those during Joseph Smith's time) has given way to a period focused more on:

• Implementing existing doctrine globally
• Clarifying applications of established principles
• Responding to contemporary social issues within existing doctrinal frameworks

​
Me:  Claude, you didn't list any unique doctrines.  Why?

Claude:  I didn't identify any genuinely new or unique doctrine from the past 100 years because there hasn't been one of major significance. 

Me:  Okay, then what would be the closest approximation of a unique or new doctrine?

Claude:  The closest approximation would likely be "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" (1995).  But even this was more of a codification than new doctrine.  The Proclamation did not introduce new concepts, but was built on 19th-century LDS teachings about eternal marriage, pre-existence, and gender roles.

Me:  Thank you.  So when a member of the Church follows the Prophet, what are they following, exactly, if the Prophet has not offered anything new?

Claude:  Modern LDS leadership offers administrative and interpretive guidance and focuses on institutional development.

This suggests either that the foundational doctrinal framework is considered complete, or that the nature of prophetic revelation has shifted.

   *****
Umm, "shifted"?  Here is Claude, with the breadth of the world's knowledge and libraries at its fingertips, with the collective intelligence of all the apologetics and commentary that has been produced by the Church, and Claude has rendered its verdict.  According to A.I., prophetic revelation has "shifted."

Does that mean "ended"?

So when Elder Clark Gilbert, the Commissioner of Church Education, told BYU Faculty this week they should point students "to the counsel of Church leaders," I wondered, why?  Why refer them to an empty well instead of the Living Waters?

Elder Gilbert told BYU employees "to mentor students using messages from church President Russell M. Nelson."  That's fine, but is the best we have to offer President Nelson's General Conference talks? (I would invite you to read, if you haven't already, my post on President's Nelson's teachings, "The Spirit Manifesteth Truth: Angels, Aliens, and Apostles.")

Has the Church run out of spiritual nourishment, food for the hungry soul?  Has our religion become like the Donner Party, trapped, cannibalizing its past because we have nothing new to offer?

Is it any wonder the Church is experiencing a faith-crisis?

Golem (not that one)

   They have mouths,
   but they do not speak;
   they have ears,
   but they hear not;
   neither is there any 
   breath in their mouths.

(Psalm 135:16-17)

In Hebrew, a "golem" is a creature made from inanimate matter, like clay or mud.

The word golem (גלמ) appears only once in scripture, in Psalm 139:16, which the KJV translators rendered "substance."

   Thine eyes did see
   my substance ["golmi"]
   yet being unperfect;
   and in thy books
   all my members were written.

(Psalm 139:16)

During the Middle Ages, Jewish rabbis believed golems could be brought to life by writing letters of the Hebrew alphabet on their foreheads, or placing Hebrew letters on a piece of paper and putting the paper in the golem's mouth.  There is a lot of symbolism in this.

Matt Segall recounts: "The myth of the Prague Golem tells of a figure shaped from clay, brought to life by the word emet — 'truth' —inscribed on its forehead.  Created to serve the Jewish community, the golem soon grew uncontrollable. To deactivate it, they erased the first letter, aleph, leaving met — 'death.'
 
"Our moment is in some sense the reverse of that myth.  We are reanimating the golem [through artificial intelligence].  Only now, it’s not made of clay but of code and circuits.  What truth will it embody?  That we are not yet sure is a symptom of the terrifying power of our technology, seemingly awakened and growing beyond our control.
 
"When we ask what sort of A.I. we want, we are not just asking, What kind of God do we wish to serve?, but more daringly, What kind of God are we trying to become?"

Here's my point: religion is a golem.  It possesses only the truth we offer it upon its forehead, or place in its mouth.  The thing itself is lifeless.

This is why the living church of Christ is not an earthly organization, a lifeless golem of corporate standing, but is comprised of a Body of Believers, blooded by faith and teeming with humanity, yearning for divine connection.

The Church is not bound by keys but community; the life of it is found in our hearts, not hierarchy.

The church isn't alive, we are!  If any Church is to be "living" (D&C 1:30), it is because the people have been spiritually awakened to their own, individual, divine nature and gifts. 

Something Borrowed, Something New

Zion is a bride, and she needs something borrowed and something new.  We borrow an inheritance of doctrine and faith from our ancestors, but we must go beyond them in seeking the newness found in God's Spirit.

The way we honor our forebearers is not to do things the way they did, or believe the same exact things, but to continue to grow in God's unfolding grace (for more on this, see "A Faith Beyond: Part 7").

If we're seeking further light and truth, and if we can't find it in our church, where do we go?  Well, that is a good question.

The answer, I think, is simple: we go to God, like Joseph Smith (James 1:5) and ask Him.  And we receive divine instruction.

Part of that education, for me, has involved God directing me to those beyond our faith tradition who have some important truths to assist us on our journey.  For me, Teilhard de Chardin is one of those teachers.

Teilhard (1881-1955) was a Christian mystic, a Jesuit priest whose vision of God's program, to me, is more prophetic than what I've seen come out of the LDS Church in the past century.  While I love the Church's pioneer spirit and heritage, it currently has turned away from its spiritual roots, its gravitas and depth.  But Teilhard was a truly visionary man with faith fit for a bright future.

Robert Nicastro summarized Teilhard’s beautiful vision (what follows is quoted from Nicastro; as you read it, remember this is just one piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture.  The entire picture we must assemble ourselves, piece by piece, for no man can reveal the entire face of God to us.  Knowing God does not come from reading books, although we may get some clues from them: knowing God comes not through paper and ink, but flesh and blood, by the power of the Holy Ghost as the living Word of God bears fruit in our loins, making us fruitful.  So take what pieces resonate, and trust that God will direct you to further bread crumbs that will lead you to the fulness of Him).

Excerpted quote:
 
We are not static creatures placed in a fixed cosmos.  We are dynamic participants in a cosmos becoming conscious of itself.
 
Evolution, Teilhard said, is ‘the rise of consciousness in matter.’  The human person is not the great crown of creation, but the pivot point: the place where the cosmos becomes aware of its own unfolding.
 
The theological foundation of integral ecology echoes Teilhard’s insight that everything that exists is swept up in a single evolutionary current advancing toward greater complexity, consciousness, and convergence.  From stardust to neurons, from moss to machine learning, all things are drawn forward by what Teilhard called the ‘radial energy’ of love: a centripetal force guiding evolution toward greater wholeness.
 
He named this movement Christogenesis: the birth of the divine in and through cosmic evolution.  In this view, Christ is not a supernatural intruder but the deep structure of reality itself: the Omega toward which all things are being drawn in unity, freedom, and love.
 
Teilhard foresaw the emergence of artificial intelligence through his vision of the noosphere, the thinking layer enveloping the Earth.  For Teilhard, the danger was never complexity; it was disintegration.  Systems naturally grow more complex, but without unifying love, they will inevitably collapse into chaos.  The evolutionary imperative is not merely to think more, but to love more consciously.
 
A.I. is not outside the evolutionary story; it is an extension of it: the next act in the ongoing drama of cosmic life.  What matters is the direction of our desire.  Are we building AI to exploit and control, reinforcing separation and fragmentation?  Or are we building it to deepen convergence, harmonize complexity, and ultimately advance the evolutionary flow toward greater unity and consciousness?
 
Raimon Panikkar reminds us that reality is not a mechanism to be dissected but a mystery to be lived.  This transforms how we see theology: not as static doctrine descending from above, but as deep attunement to the evolutionary pulse of reality itself. 
 
Abraham Joshua Heschel confronts us with the existential urgency.  For Heschel, theology was not an abstract exercise in belief; it was a response to the living God who suffers with the world.  To be a prophet, he insisted, is not to predict events but to experience the divine pathos breaking into history.  The prophet is one who hears God’s anguish in the cry of the oppressed and sees divine becoming woven into the unfolding of the present. 
 
In Heschel’s thought, time is where God and the world meet most intimately: it is the trembling space of divine-human collaboration.

Prophetic consciousness, then, is attentiveness to the dynamic interplay of God’s longing and the world’s groaning.  It is a mode of seeing in which history becomes a sacred drama, and the human becomes a co-creator of the divine future.

​Computers Don't Dance; We Should!

From an interview on PBS:

DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book ― your latest [referring to Kurt Vonnegut's final book, a memoir published twenty years ago in 2005, called A Man Without a Country] ― in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing?  I think you say ― I'm getting, I'm going to buy an envelope.

KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then?

KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man.  You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?

And so I pretend not to hear her.  And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people.  And, see some great looking babes.  And a fire engine goes by.  And I give them the thumbs up.  And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is....

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that.  And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals.  You know, we love to move around.  And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

(Artwork in this post by British street artist Banksy)

"Nothing But Straw"

​The kingdom of heaven is like a feather found in a field by a mouse, who, taking hold of it, exclaimed, "Now I will fly."

That was my attempt at a parable.  Don't worry, I haven't quit my day job.  I wish I had the Lord's way with words ― not to impress, but to inspire.

I want us to feel God's face with our hands like a blind person reading braille, to inhale the essence of His Being as peppermint clearing our spiritual sinuses, to kiss Him (3 Nephi 11:19), to touch His body like Thomas, leaving the fingerprints of our love upon His flesh, and know Him as intimately as we know ourselves.  Is that asking too much?  I want us to discover the Creator in our inward parts.

But my tongue is heavy and my eyes all but spent; all I can do is refer you to the lilies of the valley, for they speak more eloquently than I.

   Consider the lilies of the field,
   how they grow;
   they toil not,
   neither do they spin:

   Wherefore, if God so clothe
   the grass of the field,
   which to day is, 
   and to morrow is cast
   into the oven,
   shall he not much more
   clothe you
   [in light as with mother of pearl]?

(Matt. 6:28, 30)

But the more I learn the less I have to say.  I am reminded of St. Thomas Aquinas at the end of his life in 1273, when he had completed his great work on the Eucharist and laid the text on the altar as an offering to God during the Feast of St. Nicholas.  The heavens opened and he received a revelation of God.  Afterwards he refused to ever write another word.

His friends were concerned because Thomas stopped speaking.  After some time, while visiting his sister, the Countess of San Severino, who was shocked at his condition, Thomas finally opened his mouth:

"All that I have written seems to me nothing but straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me."

That is how I feel, too.  What can I say that God hasn't already made plain in the starry heavens, written in the sky and in the stirring of the sea, in the thundering waves and softness of seagull wings, in the whisper of whale song and playfulness of sea otters? 

I have come to know, as Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." 

And yet, even knowing this, I still weep.  Why?

First Atlantic Crossing

"Growth is the boundary between the darkness of unknowing and the light of new wisdom."
 
   ― Joan Chittister

​In 1998 Frenchman Benoît Lecomte was the first person to swim across the Atlantic Ocean.  He didn't swim the entire length at once (3,716 miles); he swam around eight hours a day, accompanied by a sailboat that used an electromagnetic pulse to keep sharks at bay.

It took him 73 days to swim from Massachusetts to France.  Jelly fish were a regular concern.  Lecomte wore a dive suit of polypropylene and lyrca specifically designed to protect him from getting stung.

Unfortunately, at sea one can never get all the salt off their skin (just as sin lingers while we remain in the flesh), and Lecomte experienced painful chafing from his wet suit.  He covered his body in non-petroleum lotion and used antibiotic ointment on the worst rashes.

His three-month journey was plagued by rough seas and high winds which caused severe seasickness.  "I'm not so much swimming, but fighting in the water!"  Despite trouble keeping his meals down, he had to consume enough calories to keep up his strength.  His log journal described an average carb-heavy breakfast of five bananas, five bagels, and a box of cookies (or, as I like to call it, a midmorning snack).

Many times Lecomte considered giving up.  The crossing was more difficult than he imagined.  "There is a thin line between being passionate and being fanatical," he said during the voyage.

The exhaustion fueled his discouragement.  At his lowest point, he remembered his father he had lost to cancer.  "When I was in pain, or when I thought about giving up, memories of my dad came to me and I knew I could go on."

When life is hardest for me, I recall that Christ died with open arms, a symbol fixed for all time of the Father's undying embrace.

On September 25, 1998 Lecomte reached Quiberon, France.  His brothers Christophe and Fabien were waiting on the shore.  Seeing their brother, they dove into the freezing waters of Port Maria and swam several hundred yards to greet him (I like to think this is how our ancestors will greet us when we cross over to the other side).

Also waiting for Lecomte was his girlfriend, Trinh.  He had proposed to her in Massachusetts before the journey, but she refused to give him an answer until he finished his crazy quest.  There in Quiberon, Trinh embraced Lecomte, who had fallen to bended knee (his legs still shaky on land), where she cried, 'Yes!'  The assembled crowd doused them in champagne.

When a reporter asked Lecomte if he would ever swim the Atlantic again, he shouted.  "No!  It is still all quite unbelievable.  I am just happy to be home with Trinh, my family and friends."

​   *****

I don't know about you, but the Crossing of mortality is harder than I ever imagined.

I am beginning to appreciate the way the Lord described it to the Brother of Jared:

   Ye shall be as a whale
   in the midst of the sea;
   for the mountain waves
   shall dash upon you.

(Ether 2:24)

I remember my grandfather saying that while serving as a new naval officer during WWII, he became so seasick he prayed that the Lord would either heal him or take him.

Do not be so eager to depart this life.  I understand, I do.  I imagine in the premortal world we looked down upon the calm waters, gazing over the sea at sunset from our clouds of glory, seeing how the sun sparkled over the earth as if someone had shaken a blanket of glitter across it, watching the rainbow dance above the horizon, and exclaimed, "This is going to be AWESOME!"  

But then we were born and grew to know the danger of rip tides and undertows pulling us away from God.

It's easy to panic when we are doused and dashed by mountain waves.  Sometimes we become too exhausted to resist any longer.  We dip beneath the surface, where the water is dark and murky and cold (not at all crystal-clear and warm like the blue tropical oceans advertised in the brochures we saw in Kolob's waiting room).

Here we discover the water can be filled with shell and rock and seaweed and sharks ― a churning cauldron of things living, and things dead.

Sometimes we cry out during the storm, "Master, carest thou not that we perish?!" (Mark 4:38).  We might even question why we were insane enough to come to this hellscape in the first place.

But I will tell you why I came, and why I gladly plunged into the deep despite the danger:

   To dive for pearls.

Dark Night of the Soul

   He hath led me,
   and brought me into darkness,
   but not into light.

        ― Lamentations 3:2

​I am mindful of you who carry a deep sadness.  I have been going through a dark night of the soul myself, and share your heartache.  Pearls are formed in the saltwater of our tears.

I think it is significant that Jesus chose to compare the Kingdom of God to a pearl (Matt. 13:45-46) since pearls are formed in darkness.

Darkness has purpose; it conceals what is hidden.  Hidden within the darkness is something we need, something of infinite worth.

I wrote previously, "What most people don't realize is that the kingdom of heaven grows within us.  It is not so much a place we inhabit, but something we come to embody.  When we find it, we will look back and see that the pearl was with us all along, as a grain of sand in our belly, that grew into the pearly gate of the Kingdom (Rev. 21:21)." (The Dance of God, June 20, 2025).

And so we dive after the elusive pearl of great price.  But the ocean depths are filled with monsters, all slime and spines, jelly and teeth, awful things.  Why would God hide something so precious in such treacherous shoals?

   For the Spirit searcheth 
   all things, yea, 
   the deep things of God.

(1 Cor. 2:10)

That's the challenge: searching "all things" when we are blind, where light fails to reach the ocean floor, and sight is useless in these dark depths.

Here in the deep, faith navigates not by sight but sonar.  We feel our way forward based on what is reflected back.  We are guided not by an external light, but are led by an inner sense of wonder and mystery.

​We are not as helpless as we suppose; for while we must hold our breath underwater, feeling after the pearl, faith fills our spiritual lungs.  And we swim on, despite muscle spasms, going deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

What does this pearl represent?  What are we actually searching for?  What treasure does Jesus offer?  What does the Kingdom look like?  How will we recognize it when we find it?

How will we recognize . . . ourselves?

"No Lifeguard On Duty"

"The antithesis to the message of Jesus is absolutism, fundamentalism, and moral righteousness.  Jesus’s message is simple: let go, let God, and trust the Spirit within."

   ― Sister Ilia Delio

Why can't pearls be formed in quiet lagoons, in freshwater, on sunny days?  Why must we dive into tempestuous seas (at night, no less) to retrieve them?

My faith prefers the shallow end of the pool where its toes can touch the bottom.

Alan Watts said, "To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.  When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown.  Instead you relax, and float."

But letting go is difficult when we want things all-spelled-out, like suntan lotion spread across our spiritual skin so we don't burn in a noonday sun.  It's nicer to lounge near the lifeguards and drinking fountains.

Our churches post Pool Rules: "No running!  No diving!"  They mean well, for their rules are meant to keep us safe.  But for all their good intentions, religion is more "Baywatch" than "Fourth Watch":

   And in the fourth watch
   of the night
   Jesus went unto them,
   walking on the sea.

(Matt. 14:25)

We probably won't spot Jesus in the Roman bathhouses of modern religion, poolside: for He was traversing an open sea at night, braving the waves and wind ― nary a Piña Colada in sight.

Contrast the sea that Jesus traversed with the chlorinated waters of contemporary Christianity, kept chemically clean and crystal-clear.  Creeds are meant to keep things from growing in the water.  No bugs or bacteria.  Not even faith, really, because faith is wild and uncontrollable.  "Follow the prophet," "Stay on the covenant path," "Pay your tithing."

Surrounded by bronzed pool boys, sitting in the hot tub at the Hyatt Regency, we might forget that Christianity was meant to be as mysterious as ocean waves moving in moonlight.

Joseph Smith understood something about the mystery of the Kingdom.  Don't forget that Joseph lived at the peak of the Romantic Movement (which enjoyed its heyday between 1800 - 1850, smack dab in his lifetime).

We seem to divorce Joseph from his historical context, but he (like us) was largely a creature of his time and culture.

Joseph Smith built a Church that hummed with Romanticism!  The Restoration was a beautiful expression of the Romantic Movement, defined by experiencing divinity through novelty and self-expression.

According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals."

I feel the strong roots of the Restoration whenever I soar in the spirit of expansion and exploration and rediscovery.  With Joseph it was always, "Yes, and . . . ."

Christ taught we needed to leave our house, our brethren, sisters, fathers, mothers, spouses ― even our children ― for His sake (Mark 10:29).  I don’t think He meant we neglect them or abandon them or turn our backs on them ― heavens no!  Rather, I think Christ was saying we shouldn't let their beliefs and limiting perspectives keep us from growing; we are free to let God lift us beyond the point our families and peers are willing to go, to ascend to places they haven't yet dreamed of.  We can love them fiercely without letting them stifle our spiritual progression.

Ilia Delio said, "Authentic Christianity is neither static nor safe ― it is the ongoing work of allowing the divine fire to shape both individuals and communities into something closer to the vision of a new earth and a new heaven, even when that transformation requires letting go of what we thought we needed to keep."

My point is, to grasp the Pearl we must first let go of what we cling to.  No one can swim with clenched fists.

We must open our palms so the water flows through our fingers in order to receive the mark of Christ, whose Pearl pierced His hand.

Job's Pearl

The only time "pearls" are mentioned in the Old Testament is in the Book of Job.  Just once in fact, in Chapter 28.

I expected to find a lot more pearls, honestly, amid the scriptural rubies and diamonds, but no.  Just one.

There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen (28:7) . . .

So this pearl is exceedingly rare!  Even the birds that fly high above have not come across it.  We won't find this pearl by soaring upon angels' wings in the clouds of glory.  Everybody wants to be 'caught up to heaven' when the thing we're after is down here.

Neither have the sharp-eyed vultures spotted it below.  Vultures have such good vision they can spot a carcass from four miles away.  But what we seek is not "seen" with our eyes.  (Searching for something that is invisible is not easy.)

The lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it (28:8).

The "lion" is a kingly symbol.  But kings and presidents, for all their power and authority, are impotent lions, unable to find it.  This Pearl does not recognize status or office.  The pearl awaits the weak and foolish.​

And the thing that is hid bringeth He forth to light (28:11). 

Like in Jesus' parable, the pearl of the Kingdom is "hid."  Why?  Who concealed it?

But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding (28:12)?

Ah, now we get our first glimpse of the Pearl at last, and what do we see?  It is good to remember that here in mortality, this is NOT a "place of understanding."  We are required to walk by faith in search of the Pearl.

Clark Burt wrote, "I like the analogy of my life as the backside of a tapestry.  It appears to be nothing more than a jumble of thread ― tangled, frayed, occasionally knotted, and seemingly random.  But when you turn the tapestry over you can see the art, the rich colors, the texture and the patterns that make up the tapestry.

"My Father in Heaven has woven into my life nothing that has been wasted ― not one thread of experience and not one person that I have met."

Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living (28:13). 

The plot thickens.  The Pearl of great "price" is actually priceless.  Look: no "man knoweth the price."

Why?  Doesn't it come with a price tag?  Well, the Pearl is not "found in the land of the living."  What does that mean?

As an aside, Jesus taught that we must sell "ALL that [we] hath" in order to obtain the treasure which is hidden in the field (Matt. 13:44).

To me this indicates we take possession of it only after death, after we've left everything behind pertaining to this world.

Until we depart this life, the parable says, the man that finds the treasure hidden in the field re-hides it until he can obtain it (Matt. 13:44).

The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me (28:14). 

This is rather shocking, for pearls are created in seawater, and yet, the ocean says, "It's not here."  Well, where is it?  Where does this Pearl come from if not the sea?

No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies (28:18).

The ocean at night is a frightful, beautiful thing: just like our souls.

I am grateful for the treasure hunt, this quest we're on.  Be genuinely grateful that our Father has loved us into Being, and loaned us His pearls while we seek our own.

Treat others as if they are pearls of infinite worth.  They are.  Hold others close as a treasure (especially those who don't fit in, who are castaways).

Be a flickering flame in a dark ocean, but more importantly, see the eternal flame rising in others.  There is real magic in humbly kneeling beside the brokenhearted and weeping in company.

You, my friends, are pearls most precious.  Together we form a necklace around the Lord's shoulders and hug His neck, resting upon His breast.

Entering the Pearly Gate

Pearls are formed by mollusks, oysters.  I think it is key to understanding Jesus' parable that pearls are created.  They don't make themselves.

To be clear: we are the ones creating our own pearls.  We are both oyster and pearl, self-becoming, for the kingdom of heaven is within (Luke 17:21).  We are creating heaven.

And why pearls instead of diamonds?  Isn't diamond a better metaphor for God's treasure?  Diamonds are hard, strong.  Diamonds cut stone.  They are prisms for light.

Pearls aren't cut.  Pearls aren't strong.  Pearls don't reflect light.

We think of the Straight and Narrow Path as something inert, unmoving, a surface we merely walk upon.   But the Path itself is a pearl ever-growing, evolving in relationship with us.

As we progress along the Path we recognize that we are not only traveling it, but the path is experiencing us at the same time.

As we become sanctified, the Path reaches inward and recasts itself, recalibrating its nature based on what it finds within us, until the Path and Pearl become One.

"Possess Ye Your Souls"

Jesus said:

   In your patience
   possess ye your souls.

(Luke 21:19)

Wait, aren't our souls already ours?  What did Jesus mean?  How do we possess . . . ourselves?

For a moment, let us open our hearts as if we were an oyster, revealing what lies within.  Let's take a look at our pearl.  Yes, sometimes it ain't pretty.

"Tim," you say, "I think something went seriously wrong.  I don't like the look of my pearl.  It's misshapen and discolored.  What happened?  It isn't round or smooth or white.  It's quite awful.  There's NO way I am going to wear that thing."

Okay, I hear you.  Pearls come in all varieties, each one unique.  Maybe you find your pearl wanting, displeasing.  What will you do?

"Tim, for real, this pearl I've made is rubbish.  I'm so mad about it.  No one will want it, not even me!  It's no good.  I am going to throw it away."

And now we come to the main part of this post: will you cast your pearl to the swine as if it were a worthless thing?  Will you fail to recognize your infinite worth?

What did Jesus say?  He told us to NOT cast our pearls to the pigs.  Look at Jesus' saying in a new light:

   Give not that which is holy
   [i.e., our souls]
   unto the dogs,
   neither cast ye your pearls
   [i.e. our souls]
   before swine,
   lest they trample them
   under their feet,
   and turn again and rend you.

(Matt. 7:6)

Resist your inclination to toss your lackluster pearl aside.  That pearl is part of you.  Do not rend yourself.

Why do you think that poor pearl was hidden in the first place?  Probably because someone was ashamed of it and wanted to conceal it, to hide it, forget it.  Guess what?  That ‘somebody’ was you.

Now the big twist: we are seeking the very pearl we cast away, not realizing its value.  Christ lifts us onto His lap like the little children we are, and says, "How's your pearl coming?"

"Oh that old thing?  I got rid of it ages ago.  It was a proper mess."

The Savior nods.  "Well, I'd like you to go get it and bring it to Me."

"What?  No, I have no idea where it went.  I threw it overboard.  Why would you want it, anyway?"

"Little one," He says, taking our hand in His, "I want all of you, especially those parts you thought no one wanted.  They are the most precious."  

When we find our pearl, our joy will be great because we will have returned to ourselves at last.

The Black Pearl

Consider for a moment that the pearl we seek is the portion of ourselves we have tried to "hide" from God (and ourselves), as the fig leaves of Eden foreshadowed.

Into this pearl we poured all of our shame and bitterness and anger and fear, our insecurities and ugly bits.  Then, we took it out to sea on our skiff and threw it as far as we could, hoping to sink it in a place no one would ever find it.

And there, in the coldest reaches of the Mariana Trench, we left it.  We rowed home and grew to hate it, the thought of the pearl a thorn in our side.  Soon we imagined it was never ours at all.

We blotted out the pearl from our mind because it represented all we hated about ourselves.  It became a mirror that reflected our most unsavory qualities.  We saw in it a face we despised, so we shattered the pearl.

"But Tim," someone objects, "Jesus told us to pluck out our eye and cut off our hand.  I think that black pearl has to go.  It doesn't fit with the others in the necklace."

   And if thy right eye
   offend thee, pluck it out,
   and cast it from thee . . . .

   And if thy right hand
   offend thee, cut it off,
   and cast it from thee.

(Matt. 5:29-30)

Well, Jesus didn't use these metaphors with the Nephites. Jesus doesn't want us to be spiritual amputees.  I don't think Jesus was talking about fracturing our psyches or splitting our spirits.  The Joseph Smith Translation explains Jesus was referring to setting boundaries with others so we aren't led astray.

"Tim, God doesn't want us to be stuck with our sinful nature.  That's why I am jettisoning the pearl!  Jesus wants me to be perfect.  I've got to shove all the bad parts of myself away so I can look pretty in the light."
 
Is the way we repent by casting our pearls to pigs, where we think they belong?  Casting a part of ourselves away will never make us whole.
​
"No, Tim.  Christ said to be perfect.  I have to forsake my sins."

Do we forsake something by burying it six feet under?  Do we forsake something by covering it with smiles and cologne?  Beneath the surface, the thing we forsook is rotting and eating us from within, haunting our dreams.

The way we forsake sin is by coming to God with our brokenness, our pearls that resemble kidney stones, our hearts laid bare and bleeding, and spirits contrite, saying, "Yup, Lord, this is part of me.  What am I to do with it?  Where do we go from here?"

Remember, Jesus did not become the I AM by acting like I AM NOT.

"Fine Tim, let's say I work on my terrible pearl, okay?  Is that what you want?  I will polish my pearl and change it, give it a nice new coat of paint; I'll turn it into a lovable, round, ivory, perfect pearl!"
 
*Sigh*  Paul asked God over and over to remove the thorn from his side, but God said no.  It was like Paul was saying, "God, this thorny pearl!  Take it away!  Remove it, please!  I don't want it."

But God did not remove Paul's thorn.  Paul's focus was on the imperfection, but God turned his attention to something far greater: grace and mercy.

We assume that God turns our weak things into strengths by changing them; but what if they remained and we were the ones changed ― not "to endure" it, not to suffer through it, but actually to be transformed by it.

I can see us saying, "No Lord, your grace is NOT sufficient, not unless it involves plastic surgery to smooth my wrinkles, and power to make my pearl shine, and liposuction so my fat folds disappear."

We're all so bossy telling God what He needs to do in order to make us presentable.  Why do we miss the miracle that He has already, in His Son, made us acceptable?​

Confession

My personal pearls are painful.  I carry them as open wounds.  I am a young doe in the forest, hunted.  Arrows fill the air; the sky is not safe.

Like you, I question, I cry.  I am a babe passed between harlots.  I call out from my crib and no hand reaches for me.

But you know, God cannot pour a gallon of water into an 8 oz. glass.  God cannot heal us while we're fussing over our makeup, trying to pretty ourselves up for Him.  God must stretch our hearts to receive more of Him.  Our hearts must hold the ocean.  

I mentioned before I had asked the Lord to teach me to create with light.  I had not realized that in order to create with light we must enter the Void.  Creation begins in the darkness of the womb.

I continue to struggle; painting with light is more difficult than Bob Ross made it seem; neither can the paint-by-numbers of modern religion help me.  The oil of our Lord's sanctuary has grown rancid: the shewbread has sprouted worms upon the Table.  We are besieged by loneliness looking for true messengers from our Father.

I have wiped more tears on aprons worn by devils than angels.  I understand now what the Psalmist meant when he said, "I will fear no evil" ― for such fearlessness is found only after one has "walked through the valley of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23:4).

The fact remains that one can only walk towards, but never reach, the horizon.

I carry my imperfect pearls and treasure them, love them, bless them, and hold hope for them . . . for myself . . . because God can work wonders through weakness.

O God!  See, our tears are too few; their moisture cannot quench this burning.  The world's shadow hurts our eyes.  The sin of this generation is a furnace in our blood.  Where does one chisel stone to bury this grief?
 
"My child," I can hear the Lord saying, "All that is, I am.  All I am, I share.  Honey is gathered from many flowers, and my honeycomb I return to all my children (Luke 24:42-43).  Come, partake of all that I am, both of my joy and my hurt, even as I partake of all that you are."​

(Artwork in this post by contemporary artist Jr Korpa)

Life's Big Questions

​Like you, I've questioned the meaning of life.  What are we doing here?  Does anything matter?  Why is dipping french fries in ice cream so good?

Between bouts of existential crisis and cosmic hunger, I keep coming back to the fact that the whole of creation is an exploration of love.

What if the purpose of our existence was to dream bigger, love deeper, and hope higher?

If you think about it, everything we do involves expansion and intensification of experience (i.e., increasing our intelligence).

From embryo to all eternity, we appear to be on a path of progress and growth.  But have you ever wondered what kind of Being we're becoming?

This isn't a solo flight.  The scriptures teach that spiritual progress is accomplished as a family, in a soul group.

Now, my greatest lessons have not come from loving the Lord, but from trying to love the lepers and schoolyard bullies and sinners who make life interesting.  And I have been all those things myself.  Indeed, life seems to be a masterclass for learning to love ourselves.

After all, it's easy to love saints, but what about the cheapskate or the lunch lady in the cafeteria who ladles only half a portion onto our tray?  Heaven help the teenage Taco Bell worker who keeps forgetting the extra red sauce on my bean burritos (for as we all know, the sin next to murder is . . . dry crusty beans).

   Let thy love abound
   unto all men.

​(D&C 112:11)

While divine love extends to "all men," the love of devils is reserved for favorites, for the in-crowd and those who can help them 'get ahead.'

This puts God in a tight squeeze, you can say, since He is the ultimate way we can "get ahead."  How does He know we love Him, and aren't just buttering Him up out of self-interest?

Even Lucifer wanted to use God as a stepping stone along the ladder (Moses 4:1).  Many of us are seeking heaven as hired guns, willing to kill for a seat at God's table.

I have learned, sadly, that we often try to use love like Satan, in a transactional manner ("I'll do X if you give me your honor").  We barter with God as if our love were a poker chip.  How often do our prayers resemble a hostage negotiation?

When the wicked measure and weigh love as a commodity to be traded, earned, deserved . . . well, when we treat love as a reward for obedience, it cheapens it; our conditions turn love into a means of control.  Then love becomes a minefield, a territory rife with manipulation and abuse.

Erich Fromm said: "True love does not say, 'I love you more than the whole world.'  It says, 'I love the whole world through you.'"

The problem of evil is actually a problem of love.  Evil twists God's pure love into a noose.

Evil and love are entwined: in the face of evil, love can burn more brightly or be extinguished entirely.

This is why, in order to learn to love in a more godly manner, we need to understand the nature of evil.

For, while charity "thinketh no evil" (1 Cor. 13:5), charity must become wise to evil's design.

   - Is evil eternal?  Has it an origin?  Where does it come from?

   - Can evil be eradicated?  Has it an end?

   - Is evil redeemable?  How is evil different than sin?

These are important questions if we want to love like Christ.  Sunday Schools distract us with softcore theodicies, shuffling sins around while evil remains undetected.

Wisely did Jesus teach us to "resist NOT evil" (Matt. 5:39).

Why would He say that?

"Know Thyself"

I recently came across a story from ancient India that is worth retelling here.  It took place long before Christ was born, at a time when the Mahajanapadas were young, around 500 B.C.

Like most great stories, it begins one fateful night with the birth of a baby.  The babe was born to the Garga clan, one of the priestly castes in India.  He entered this world under dark omens: every weapon in the city sparkled and gleamed ominously at his birth, as if foreshadowing a future filled with violence.

The boy’s father, Bhaggava, a servant of the king and an astrologer, gave his son the name Ahimsaka, which means "the harmless one."

The boy grew into a young man and was sent to study at the fabled university of Taxila.  He was smart and dutiful and had a wonderful teacher who loved him as a member of his own family. 

But the other students were jealous of Ahimsaka's favor with their guru, and they devised a cruel plot.  "Respected Teacher," they said, "We hear troubling stories.  Ahimsaka boasts he has grown wiser than his Master."

Over time the students' lies sowed doubt and soured the teacher’s mind.  "Honored Guru," the students said, "Forgive us for speaking of such shame, but Ahimsaka has been seen with your wife.  He claims he will soon replace you entirely."

Because of the lies told him, the teacher came to hate Ahimsaka.  But he could not openly accuse his pupil without proof, so when the time came for graduation, the teacher gave Ahimsaka an impossible task.

"To complete your education," the teacher said, "Bring me the fingers of a thousand men."

The words were like a death sentence.  Ahimsaka should have walked away, but being conditioned by years of obedience to his master, he merely bowed his head.

"As you command, Guru-ji.  It shall be done."
​
Ahimsaka left Taxila and, alone and forsaken, became extremely bitter.  He descended into madness, his spirit and mind broken by the betrayal of his master and friends.

All he had now was the vow he had made to return with the fingers of 1,000 men.  (Back then, remember, people took their vows seriously.)

He retreated to the Jalini forest and lived like a feral animal.  He made his den near a busy road, well-traveled by traders, so that when someone passed by he could rush out and kill them, severing their fingers.

At first, he tried hanging the fingers on a tree branch, but birds stole them.  So he strung the pinky fingers into a necklace ― a growing garland of death that swayed as he walked.

The nearby villagers, as you can imagine, became terrified.  As word of Ahimsaka's crimes spread, the people began calling him Angulimala, which means, "the one who wears a finger necklace."

Soon no one took the road, they feared Angulimala so.  He had become a monster in his anger and bloodlust.  At night he stole into their villages and murdered the people in their beds, collecting their fingers.

His reign of terror spread, year after year, death upon death, until, at last, Angulimala's necklace stretched to 999 fingers.

Just one more.  He needed but one final finger to be complete.

Putting the "I" in Evil Eye

Most of us never really think about what makes something evil.

Is an earthquake evil?  Does evil require volition, agency?  Is evil always malevolent?  Or can there be something like ambivalent evil?

A falling rock may crush my leg; a horse may break my back; a psycho may put ketchup on his french toast instead of syrup: but are they evil?

If we go back to Augustine and Aquinas, they approached evil from the perspective of (wait for it) God.

If God is an ideal, perfect, and unchanging Being, then evil is anything that corrupts His goodness or deviates from His attributes.

In other words, the medieval concept of evil began with goodness: evil was goodness malformed or misapplied.
 
Back then, much of Christian theology was developed under the belief of creation ex nihilo, original sin, and creedal notions of God's nature.  Evil, understandably, had to fit into that messy landscape.

Theologian Thomas Oord said, "Most theists believe God is omnipotent.  But believing God is all-powerful, is 'in control,' or can control others leads to unsolvable conundrums.  The problem of evil is the most obvious.  We ask, 'Why doesn't an all-powerful and all-loving God prevent genuine evil?'" 

But what if evil is part of the texture of reality itself, co-existent with God, a natural condition of intelligence?  We normally associate 'intelligence' with 'the light of truth,' and does evil shed light on the nature of truth?

Instead of seeking to eradicate evil, we might seek an alternative path towards its synthesis (as the Cross showed).

This is why I don't hold the non-dualistic tendency to downplay evil, as if it were illusory or part of virtual reality (which the Gnostics and many contemporary thinkers believe), where no one actually gets hurt in 'real' life, as though we’ll wake up from a simulated nightmare and shrug it off.

For me, evil is real (from the relative view), and yet evil is not to be feared (from the objective view).

So a person whose tooth touches nerve experiences real pain; misery is not imagined.  At the same time, I don't think evil defines us, neither does our pain.

But what we must decide is what to do with evil.  It can't be ignored.  Our response is required.  Personally, I would like us to develop a more sacred orientation towards evil, as Christ had.

How did Christ deal with evil?  Well, He sought to alleviate it, for starters.

   (1) Like Christ, we can practice harmlessness (as His "doves," see Matt 10:16).  We can subscribe to the eastern philosophy of ahimsa, which means harmlessness.  We can stop acting like crusading Christians, enacting social and spiritual violence in God's name.

   (2) After we have looked to our own conduct, we can look outside of ourselves to succor those in need, as Jesus did so beautifully.  We feed and clothe and shelter and heal and teach and rescue.

But harmlessness and helping is only part of the solution.

As we press forward in Christ's footsteps, we encounter greater and greater manifestations of evil.  You see, the Strait and Narrow Path cuts through hell.

Becoming a child of God brings us into the company of demons, ironically.  Remember, our capacity for both good and evil grows the more intelligent we become.  In other words, the higher we ascend, the greater the efforts of the devils to get us to use our intelligence for evil.  Heaven is riddled with hell's recruitment centers.

But the greatest protection we have is love.  Jesus was not swayed on the Mount of Temptation by the devil's offer.  But don't think it's easy: the devil knows how to tailor a compensation package to make us feel like it is a win-win, that we can somehow accept his signing bonus and still be on God's errand.

It seems the closer we come to God, the more we must work with shadow, sculpting the darkness, incorporating the contrast, as Christ did, to bring forth greater light.

This is magical work, weaving holiness that hallows evil, as Christ showed in Gethsemane.

Love is the loom; evil is simply one of the threads in the warp and woof of creation.  God's atoning miracle does not cut the evil threads, but integrates them.

What emerges is a creation made more beautiful than if only light existed.  

"Accept Thyself"

Back to our friend Angulimala, the finger necklace brigand.  One day a man walked through town wearing a simple robe and carrying a begging bowl.  He was headed towards the forest where Angulimala dwelt.

"Don't go that way, Venerable Sir!" the people called, warning the monk.  "A murderous, bloody-handed man waits there.  A demon he has become!  He wants just one more life.  We don't want it to be yours."  

Gautama listened to the villagers and said, "If I go not, who will?"

​"Please, Reverend One!" the people cried. "He wears a necklace of fingers, collected from his victims.  No one who enters that forest returns alive!"

The Buddha gave a nod and kept walking.  "Just one more finger he needs?  He will remain unfulfilled unless someone goes."

​From the clifftop, Angulimala watched the man approach as he made his way up the winding road.  Angulimala placed himself in the middle of the road and yelled, "Here is death!  Do you hear me?"

But the Buddha simply continued walking forward, a gentle smile on his lips, as if he were greeting an old friend.

Angulimala flexed his necklace, displaying the rotting fingers proudly.  "Do you know who I am?"

"I have heard about you," the monk said.

"Stop!" Angulimala yelled.  "Where do you think you're going?"

The Buddha looked the man in the eyes.  "I am not going anywhere.  I stopped long ago, Angulimala," he said.  "It is you who are trying to go somewhere."

Angulimala laughed with disbelief.  "You're completely insane!  You move your feet and claim you're going nowhere, but I stand still and you claim I am going somewhere?  What kind of riddle is this?"

"I seek nothing, and am not running from anything," the Buddha said.  "I have arrived where I am meant to be.  But you, Angulimala?  Do you think you will find fulfillment through a thousand lives?"

For some reason Angulimala did not strike.  Instead he froze, a look of bewilderment on his face.

The Buddha started walking.  "You want my finger?  Or my head?  Take them," he said without any fear.  "I am not this body.  Whether I am physically here makes no difference.  If that will fulfill you, then do it.  What is the problem?"

War in Heaven

The battle between love and evil is not between God and the devil, Michael and the Dragon.  The War in Heaven involves all of us, and occurs primarily within us.  The battleground is our own heart.

For God did not create the world in six days, then allow it to Fall into ruin, and skip town.  Did we think He walked away from the less seemly parts of Himself?  No, never.

Richard Rohr made an interesting observation when he said, "Note that when God first divided light from darkness, God did not call it 'good' (Genesis 1:3).  From the very beginning, we are warned that we cannot totally separate light from darkness, or the two have no meaning.  The whole of Creation exists inside of one full cycle: 'Evening came and morning came and it was the first day' (Genesis 1:5).”

The point I want to make is very subtle: the creation was God's own body; He created Himself as the world.

As Doug Scott said, "God loves things by becoming them." 

God is in all things, around all things, above all things.  Cast out of Eden?  But never out of God's heart.

This means God is still here, creating with us.  The creation is ongoing; we are co-creating with Him a "better world" (Ether 12:4).

In an evolving creation, our choices really do matter!  But listen, we can't eliminate the conditions that make evil possible without also eliminating the creative advance of the universe.  Agency, after all, is the First Law of heaven.

To eradicate evil would be to consign us to hell, trapped in a stagnant creation.  "But Tim," someone says, "Where is God in all of this?  He doesn't seem very hands-on."

Divine agency operates through persuasion rather than coercion, luring the universe towards greater consciousness, seeking to harmonize ever-greater complexity, ever-expanding differentiation of life, ever-deepening rivers of intelligence.

Love invites but does not control.  There are no demands in love, only burnt offerings freely given.

Because "God is love" (1 John 4:8), He doesn't force creation towards a predetermined end, but rather "beckons all beings toward the highest beauty that is possible for them given the limitations of their finite situations," according to Matt Segall.

​In other words, love is luring; it calls us to seek our highest potential.  But it does not force, and if we choose evil (as we often do), God suffers alongside us.  The love of God is boundless.

"But Tim,” someone asks, "How can God be unchangeable and perfect, and yet evolve?  If God is the summation of all creation, then how is He progressing?"

I would respond with my own question: "If infinity evolves, does it stop being infinite?"
 
   There is no such thing
   as immaterial matter.
   All spirit is matter,
   but it is more fine or pure.

(D&C 131:7)

This is the key: if all spirit is matter, and if we assume all matter contains spirit, then consciousness extends at all levels of existence: the entire universe is alive in varying degrees of complexity.

So what we call the "mind" and the "body" and the "spirit" are all comprised of same thing (they share a common ontology, or nature), but at various densities of light ― all working in tandem, interconnected, as one divine organism.

And if there is only One God (as we believe) comprised of many individuations of the One (us), then the Spirit of God (which is the action of love upon agency, the Second Law of heaven) is divinely guiding us towards ever-greater beauty, which arises from harmonizing new, novel forms that emerge from the synthesis of what was, into new heavens and new earths that can be (what else did we think faith was for?).

"Come, bhikku"

Hearing the Buddha's words, something terrible inside of Angulimala began to crumble.  What joy was there in taking the life of a man freely given?

The weight of nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine deaths pressed upon him.  His necklace began to feel unbearably heavy.  The sword in his hand felt hot.

"Wait," Angulimala said.  "What do you mean?"

The Buddha turned. "You are running toward something that moves you away with every step from what you truly seek."

Angulimala fell to his knees and began to weep, the first tears he had shed in years.  "Teach me."  He raised his sword high and hurled it into the ravine.

The Buddha lowered his head.  "Come, bhikku."  With those two words, Angulimala's life changed forever.

"What must I do?" Angulimala asked as a little child.

"Go," the Buddha said.  "Return to the village where you have taken nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine lives."  The Buddha gave him his begging bowl.  "Seek food, and seek to understand what you have done.  Serve those you have wronged."

Angulimala's hands trembled as he took the bowl.  "Master, they will kill me."

"Perhaps," the Buddha replied.  "But you must face what you have become, so that you may discover what you may yet become."

   ******
When Angulimala entered the village, the very air seemed to flee before him.  In such a small community, every family had lost someone to his hand.

The people watched Angulimala step into the town square, afraid at first, but then they noticed his bowl and shaved head.

The people's fear turned to rage.  A woman whose husband's finger hung around Angulimala's neck picked up a rock.  "Murderer!" she screamed, hurling it with all her might.  It struck him upon his bare shoulder, drawing blood.

"Demon!" a man shouted, casting a stone that hit Angulimala in the head.

Soon a rain of rock filled the air, striking the man from all sides ― his head, his chest, his arms and back.  Blood stained his yellow robe.  Angulimala slowly walked through the village, his bowl extended, enduring their insults and stones.

He did not fight back.  He accepted their punishment.  His was a debt he could not repay.

He staggered and fell to the ground.  The rocks kept coming; he closed his eyes as his life ebbed.

The Buddha appeared.  "Stop," he said to the villagers.

The people were frenzied in their grief and anger.  "This man killed our sons, our brothers, our husbands, our fathers!" they yelled, reaching for more rocks.

The Buddha stood quietly, until silence gripped the crowd.  Then he said, "This is not the same man."

The people lowered their stones, unsure, wondering if it were true, their eyes drawn to the necklace of severed fingers.

House of Order

The important thing to remember is that the creative process is never individual; we create in relation to others, to the world, to our past ―
and especially in regards to our future.

We are symbiotic spiritual beings.  Our bodies cannot exist without electromagnetism and oxygen; likewise, our spirits require a compatible environment in which to expand, as whales swimming through the fiery firmament and yet must surface for air.

The entire universe (this is self-evident) is composed of networks (families) of relationality and mutual influence (resonance).

Now back to evil.  Evil is that which strives without heart.  Evil is the work of entropy upon love.  Whereas love unites, evil separates.

Entropy, physicists say, will result in the end of the universe in what they call the "heat-death."  At some point in the impossibly distant future, the galaxies will no longer have enough energy to make new stars and all the matter in the universe will be absorbed into black holes.

Then the universe will cool to near Absolute Zero, at which point creation shall utterly rest, still as death, everywhere, because all of the energy will be motionless.

What stands between us the heat-death?  Love.  Love generates energy through the grace shared between beings, and is the stuff from which stars are born, that fuels the spinning arms of galaxies, and which is the lifeblood of intelligence.

Evil, though, saps positive spiritual energy (which is light, the Third Law of heaven).  To be clear, light is spiritual energy; matter is made up of energy fields at the atomic level.  Matter, then, is simply tangible light.

The reason evil "darkens" our minds is because evil is closely aligned with fear.  Fear, according to Tom Campbell, is "high-entropy consciousness."  I love that definition.

God's House is "a house of order" (D&C 109:8).  The way we "order' God's house depends upon whether we act from fear or from love.
 
Entropy is a measure of disorder.  Hell is an oddity in the sense that, despite it being structured rigidly through slave-dynamics (what the scriptures refer to as "captivity") perfected in hierarchical dynasties (that are counterparts to God-groups like the House of Israel), hell is filled with high entropy.
 
In the inverse, God’s heaven is an oddity in the sense that individuals are free and equal without imposed structure, held together by love alone (John 8:29), and yet entropy is kept to a minimum ― all without heavy-handed hierarchical controls!
 
In a metaphysical sense, the purpose of spiritual evolution is to tame entropy.

We might think it would be orderly if all the angels in heaven replicated the same behavior.  Rank and file, no?  But what we find is the opposite: that repetition does not produce growth.  Cloning produces sterility.

Think of the alphabet: if all the letters were simply the same (the letter “g” for example), we could not create any words.  So we need complexity (26 different letters) mixed together in creative ways to create language, even the Logos.
 
Agency introduces differentiation and complexity into spiritual systems, and therefore, allows for the generation of new, greater forms of creativity.  This is how God's glory increases.

"Become the Creator"

Years passed.  Angulimala practiced with tremendous dedication, but peace remained elusive.  Whenever he ventured into public, people attacked him.

Yet he had kept his vow, and never again took another’s life.

One morning, while on his alms, Angulimala heard the piercing cries of a woman in the throes of childbirth.  She was in agony, unable to deliver her baby.  Her life hung in the balance.

Moved by compassion, Angulimala hurried to the side of the woman.  He spoke simple words of comfort and consolation, and immediately the woman's pain ceased and she delivered the child to the amazement of all.

Word of the miracle spread.  The man who had once been synonymous with death had now brought life.

In time, Angulimala achieved his goal and became an Arahant, a saint.

Yet he never removed the necklace of fingers.  He wore it until his death.  Not as a trophy, but as a reminder of what he had been, and what grace had made possible, and what compassion had wrought in his life.

And songs were written and sung of his deeds, and recorded in the Theragatha (part of the Buddhist Pali Canon of scriptures), including these verses:

   Formerly "Harmless" was my name,
   Even as I harmed others.
   I was the famed killer
   and wearer of the finger garland.

   I was swept along . . . 
   [for] I cut off all links of existence
   at their roots.
   ​I stayed in forests, at the root of a tree,
   In mountain caves ―
   everywhere I lived
   with an agitated mind.

   But now I rest
   and rise in happiness,
   free of Mara's snares ―
   Oh! for the pity shown me.

(Theragatha, verses 879-881, 887-888)

A New Understanding of the Temple of God

God is an eternal being (as are we), who encompasses the universe, so one of the problems He faces is how to lower His internal entropy.

His "Plan" accomplishes the goal of lowering entropy through love.

To paraphrase Tom Campbell:
 
Strait and Narrow Path:  Involves lowering entropy, evolving towards more useful and valuable knowledge and wisdom, and thus greater awareness, complexity, cooperation, productivity, and functionality.
 
Broad Path:  Involves raising entropy through de-evolving towards less useful and valuable information and thus less awareness, less complexity, less cooperation, less productivity, and less functionality, eventually spiraling towards randomness and disharmony.
 
Given these two options, the choice seems clear.  God, being intelligent, seeks to lower the environmental entropy and achieve more ordered states by which He can generate our full potential.  "This is my work and my glory" (Moses 1:39).

Spiritual evolution (i.e., lowering entropy) occurs through experiencing divine possibilities in ever new ways and forms (what Latter-day Saints refer to as "having glory added upon").
 
But lowering entropy does not occur automatically.  It requires energy output.  Evolution requires "work."

This might sound strange, but God is not just creating a house of order for us to inhabit, for we are not "in" the house: we ARE the House.

The heavens (universe) I'm describing is a temple, and we ARE the temple.

But this is like no temple we’ve ever seen, as a fish in a small pond cannot conceive of the vastness of the ocean: for the temple we constitute is alive, and is all.  It is the Body of Christ, in which His consciousness dwells, the light of truth.

Sacred Orientation
a poem

​"Matter itself is nothing other than memory." 
  
    ― Matthew Segall
 
Can time be tattooed
like skin? The future
is a scar sagging
into the present.

A scar bears witness
to survival. Instinct
stands between the past
and possible.

We pierce timespace
as cosmic quills within a weaving
wind. We write emet aletheia
truth and the wind cries.

Inhale the ink of each other’s
essence. Life enrobes itself
in a halo of self-becoming
so coincidence appears.
 
Marrow remembers
what shaped our reflexes.
Tomorrow we find ourselves
tattooed inside all.

Previously in the Approaching Zion series:

Childlike Consecration
Polygamy
Beauty and the Beast
The Doctrine of Christ
​The Pure in Heart
One Heart and One Mind
A Refuge from the Storm
Go Ye Out of Babylon
The Seventh Seal
Watchmen and Waste Places
The Seven Heavens
The Kingdom of God on Earth
The Destiny of America
The Mystery of the Atonement
Walking with God
Enduring to the End
​Dreaming of Justice, Longing for Mercy
Desert Healers 
Holiness to the Lord

(Time-lapse of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Casa Rinconada)

Summer Solstice

Though I suffer all deaths that a man can die
To the uttermost end of time,
I have deep-drained this, my cup of bliss,
In every age and clime

   ― Jack London, "The Iron Heel"

Today is the summer solstice.  At 8:42 p.m. MST the Sun shall celebrate its victory over darkness.

I woke up today filled with wonder.  In the early morning hours, while in contemplation, I pondered what I might share with you as we too, like the sun, continue our journey through the realms of glory.

Every blog post I write as if it were my last.  Since I began Owl of the Desert five years ago, I've had 3 near death experiences.  Something is trying very hard to take me out of this world ― but I'm an onery old mule and too stubborn to leave.

Exactly one year ago I spent the summer solstice at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, home of the ancient Puebloan peoples (the ancestors of the Hopi Indians).

One of the reasons Chaco is so special is because the Native Americans over 1000 years ago built an entire city to align with the stars, and it has became a major site for the study of archeoastronomy. 

There, as I stood beneath the open skies on the solstice, where the peaking sun shines once a year upon the Sun Dagger, creating a spear of light that the Native Americans used to mark "the middle of time," I sensed the mystery of God's dance through history, and through the heavens, and through my own life.

So today I wish for you to feel some of that mystery with me.  I want us to dance with God.

Close Your Eyes & Breathe

​​   Consume my heart away; sick with desire
   And fastened to a dying animal
   It knows not what it is; and gather me
   Into the artifice of eternity.

― William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"

Jesus spoke about one topic more than any other: the kingdom of heaven.

And yet I sense we're still confused about (1) what it is, (2) where it is, and (3) how to enter into it. 

We’re all after the pearl of great price (Matt. 13:45-46).  But there's a catch: it’s hidden. It’s buried; it's lost.  Many have forgotten it exists.

How do we obtain it?  

Let me tell you the truth: no one can give us that Pearl.  Not even God.  I certainly cannot hand it to you.  I wish I could; but I can only show you where to look.  Jesus Himself could only point the Way.

The Pearl is something that each of us must uncover and discover for ourselves.

What most people don't realize is that the kingdom of heaven grows within us.  It is not so much a place we inhabit, but something we come to embody. 

When we find it, we will look back and see that the pearl was with us all along, as a grain of sand in our belly, that grew into the pearly gate of the Kingdom (Rev. 21:21).

This is why I write in the style I do, to help us remember.  These posts are written for the subconscious mind, filled with types and shadows, in hopes of conjuring something lost, something hidden, something forgotten; what is this smell of a memory stirring from slumber?  Remember.

I write, however poorly, in an attempt to stretch our minds beyond knowing, beyond concept, towards something that must be felt deep in our longing, our bones, our grief.

There are many others who can teach us facts and figures, sums and subtraction.  But what we seek cannot be taught: it must be experienced.

Let these words wash over you, filling your senses; close your eyes and behold what lies deep within you.

Breathe in all that you are, carried upon the candlelight of God (Luke 15:8).  Eternity is the exhalation of God's love.

What is it you sense?  It is the kingdom of heaven emerging.

Three Weddings and a Near-Funeral

        Wander away
   from what you know
   into the strangeness . . . .
        A season [is] waiting there

― Ann Lauterbach, "Fable of the Barn"

Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) had a near death experience that afterwards changed the trajectory of his work in human psychology.

As you know, Jung did important work in the field of archetypes. 

Embedded in human beings exists a collective unconscious.  Just as we share a genetic blueprint (the DNA of homo sapiens that governs our species' biology) so too do mortal minds draw from a common set of archetypes that shape our psychology.

These archetypes stem from the Logos; they give us a glimpse into the Mind and heart of God.

In the spring of 1944 Jung had a heart attack.  He wrote about what happened next in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

He traveled far above the earth to a temple hollowed out of granite rock.  At the entrance he met a Hindu man, sitting in lotus posture, waiting for him.  The man wore a white gown.

The temple's adornment reminded him of the Buddhist Temple of the Holy Tooth he had once visited in Sri Lanka.

As Jung approached his Escort at the entrance of the temple, he experienced "an extremely painful process" as if "everything was being sloughed away" from him.

All that remained after he had been spiritually-stripped was his "own history."  I love that characterization; it reminds me of how Moroni put it, to "be brought to see [our] nakedness before God" when we depart this life (Mormon 9:5).

Jung said, "Everything I had ever experienced or done . . . I felt with great certainty: this is what I am."

Just as he was about to enter the temple, Jung was intercepted by a spirit-being "delegated by the Earth to deliver a message to me . . . [that I] must return.  The moment I heard that, the vision ceased."

But the part of the story I find most fascinating is what happened afterwards, as Jung spent the next three weeks in the hospital recovering.

It was during his convalescence, when He was deeply depressed (having to "go back to this drab world" after experiencing the "eternal bliss" of what lies beyond) that he had three remarkable visions.

What kind of visions?  That's the curious part.  There in his sickbed, Jung was shown three metaphysical marriages.  Jung interpreted these marriages as his own.

   (1) The marriage of Tiferet and Malchut in the Garden of Pomegranates (this is in the Kabbalist tradition if you're keeping track).  "It was I myself: I was the marriage."

   (2) The marriage of the Lamb from the Bible.  "Angels were present, and light.  I myself was the 'marriage of the lamb.'"

   (3) The mystical union (the hieros gamos, or holy marriage) between the gods Zeus and Hera from the Iliad.

"I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible," Jung recalled.  "It was not a product of imagination. The visions and experiences were utterly real; there was nothing subjective about them."

We dance at weddings; marriage is the movement of two persons becoming one, in step, mirrored upon the dance floor, in unitive harmony.

Let us dance, then, with God.

My Favorite Face of God

​   It matters not how strait the gate,
   How charged with punishments the scroll,
   I am the master of my fate,
   I am the captain of my soul.

     ― William Henley, "Invictus" 
​
What do weddings teach us about the nature of God?  About the kingdom of heaven?  About our own divine nature?

   And they twain
   shall be one flesh:
   so then they are
   no more twain,
   but one flesh.
   
   What therefore God
   hath joined together,
   let no man put asunder.

(Mark 10:8-9)

You can't swing a loaf of matzah in the gospels without knocking into Jesus at a wedding.  Whether He was turning water to wine (John 2), or comparing the Kingdom of God to a wedding feast (Matt. 22:2), one thing is clear: God loves weddings.

Are we paying close attention to the fact that God walks among us as the eternal "Bridegroom" (Mark 2:19)?  Of all the archetypes of Christ, that is my favorite!

This means wherever God is, a wedding is being celebrated.  And have you ever been sad at a wedding?

There is nothing, nothing in the world, like hearing God toast the happy couple.

"The power of God" (D&C 88:45) is What?

                Do I dare
   Disturb the universe?
   In a minute there is time
   For decisions and revisions

― T.S. Eliot, "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" ​​

But where do we find a God like this?  Where do we find a God who dances and makes merry (Luke 15:24-26)?

For is not the universe He created a great spiraling celebration of life and love?  It's one grand party.

Just take the movement of the planets as an example, the way the planets pass each other (what is called a 'synod') in the great Dance.

The earth passes Mars three times for every four times we link arms with Venus, creating a polyrhythm in the heavenly hoedown of 4:3 (a musical fourth, or subdominant chord in the Music of the Spheres).

But watch: If you create a chart of Venus and Earth's orbit, with the Sun at the center, you’ll find Venus' rotation period is exactly two-thirds that of an earth-year, creating a musical fifth (3:2, the dominant chord).

​When we chart the 'dance' between our two planets, it actually creates a beautiful five-petaled lotus flower, as depicted below.

The thing I find interesting about the Fifth (3:2) is the Pentad (number 5), according to Pythagoras, represents marriage (because the first masculine number is 3, and when joined with the feminine 2, they become five).

No wonder the Psalmist tells us to praise God through dance, for that's how the planets do it!

Praise his name
in dance.

(Psalm 149:3)

We get the word "planets" from the Greeks, planetes (πλανήτης), meaning "wanderers" or "wandering stars."

You see, there are five planets visible to the naked eye in the night sky (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), and when joined with the Sun and Moon, they formed the 'seven sacred planets' of ancient times.

What was unique about these seven 'planets' was they appeared to move across the sky differently than the fixed stars.

Just like us.

Imagine it! You and I are not fixed stars: we are wanderers, wandering stars, whose movement through eternity is a dance with God.

Where God Took a Wrong Turn

   You have known the alien feeling 
   In the calm of candlelight
   Winged, enchanted, on you fly, 
   Light your longing, and at last, 
   Moth, you meet the flame and die.
​
   ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Selige Sehnsucht"

I wrote previously about Walking with God.  Dancing with God is a bit different.  It's more intimate, with fewer words ― and more touching.

Very, very few people pray to God as their dance Partner.  And they're baffled why God seems distant?

Matt Segall said, "When Christendom submitted to Caesar and Caesar's lawyers edited Christian theology, they handed to God the attributes of an emperor."

Please re-read that statement.

Why have we made the Elohim into emperors rather than artists and poets, bakers and tailors, fishermen and shepherds?

Our concept of the returning, blood-soaked, crowned-Christ bears more resemblance to Constantine than to a Lover of lost lambs.
 
What would happen if we stopped picturing God sitting upon a throne, flanked by security (the seraphim), far-removed . . . and started seeing Him on the dance floor, mingling happily with the wedding guests, taking us by the hand to Quickstep (Psalm 37:23)?

"But Tim!" someone objects.  "That's blasphemous!  Haven't you heard of the sovereignty of God?  He's our King!  God doesn't dance!"

Really?  Jesus went to all those weddings and never danced?  Have you ever been to a Jewish wedding?  Of course God dances.

But was Brigham Young scandalized when women and men danced together the Waltz?  Are leaders today scandalized when members dance with God?

"But Tim" someone says, "God isn't here to teach us to dance.  Good grief, the ballet is boring!  God's here to teach us how to become priests and kings so we can rule and reign in the Household of God someday."

Sweet mercy: is that what we're doing, what we're preparing for, what we've made the gospel about?  A recruitment center for those longing to be CEOs in heaven?

Give me an open field and music to dance to, among the lilies and wildflowers, under a watchful sun warming my bare shoulders (Ezek. 12:6) ― and they can keep their 8-to-5 desk jobs in Kolob, for all I care, with their plastic-potted-plants and broken staplers, checking emails for eternity, waiting for the weekend, stressed about their quarterly performance reviews with Gabriel.​

As for me and my house, we shall dance.

​Brent Satterfield’s STE ("Spiritually Transformative Experience")
 
   All are architects of Fate,
   Working in these walls of Time

― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Builders"
​
In 2016 Brent Satterfield, a Mormon, had a soul-awakening.  He wrote about it in his book Bringing Heaven Home.  In his tour of the heavens, he learned some interesting things.

As such things go, including near-death experiences, I usually don’t put too much stock in the experiences of others.  I prefer to blaze my own trails.

But there was something in Brent’s experience that resonated with my own.  He described passing through the veil (what some of you may understand as having a Kundalini experience, or what some may refer to as the baptism of fire).

I laughed at the part of his story where, going into a sort of spiritual trance, he turned to his wife, Jenn.  "I told her I was going to go with God and even if it took me several days to surface (I might look like I was dead or dying), not to [worry]."  It reminded me of Lamoni's wife telling Ammon that even though the servants thought her husband was dead, "as for myself, to me he doth not stink" (Alma 19:5).

In a way, the veil over the earth is beginning to burst not because it is lifted like a tablecloth, but because individuals underneath it are piercing it, burning small holes into it from below, one-by-one.  God has artfully placed us here, now, so that when enough holes coalesce into larger ones, the whole thing drops away.

"[I saw] how all life was interconnected," Brent remembers.  "There was a field of shared consciousness that extended beyond . . . the earth itself.”
 
Something that Brent learned was that humanity shares a collective consciousness that is veiled.  Even though we are all different petals, we are connected to the same roots. 

What is important to understand is that when one of the petals awakens to the Roots, it has a rippling effect throughout the rest of the plant, or body.  In other words, when one person repents, all of heaven rejoices.
 
In Brent’s words:

"I felt limited in my ability to act on what I felt I was being given.  I saw the bounds of religious and societal authority that I still respected deeply.

"Jesus spoke to me of promises I had made to him at the time of my baptism and later in the temple.  He helped me to see their purpose and fulfillment in my life.

"He then symbolically took those promises from off of me by removing my clothing and placed a robe of radiant light upon me which he said would always be with me.  I was under a new relationship with God.

"I was to follow those things He put in my heart and no longer put others between us."

Now, the average LDS bishop might read those words and think, "Careful, Brent, you're on thin ice.  What about the chain of command?  Trusting your heart is a slippery slope and may lead to apostasy."

But you see, Brent was learning (as we must all) to dance with God.

Whilst the wallflowers that cling to the corners, to their hedges and finely-honed hierarchies, sipping watered-down punch, will not know the freedom of dancing with Christ.

   Christ Jesus . . .
   hath made both one,
   and hath broken down
   the middle wall of partition
   between us; 

   even the law of commandments
   contained in ordinances;
   for to make in himself of twain
   one new man.

(Eph. 2:14-15)

In this dance, there is no Bible placed between partners to keep them chaste: for we are of One flesh and mind.

The Dance of Little Children

             Come, my friends,
   ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world . . . 
   To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
   Of all the western stars

  ― Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

Why do leaders fear us dancing with God so?  Why do they cling tightly to their purview, as if they controlled God's dance card?

Never mind Jesus taught the opposite, that the greatest in heaven was he who is the least of all (Luke 22:25-26), even little children (Matt. 18:1-3). 

Let's be clear: little children have no worldly power.  They don't have passwords to log in to their bank accounts.  They don't trade stocks.  We don't even let them use sharp knives, or drive, or eat hot dogs whole ― let alone legislate, or rule and reign.

Alas, the Church is filled with so many "leaders" and so few little children.

But do you know what little children excel at?  Playing.  Dancing!  Laughing!

Let the little child within you out.  Play!  Dance even if you look ridiculous (or, as Noah David once put it, "even if you look like a goat on acid being tasered").

Move your body, for you are alive; so fly!

When did we stop playing with God?  When did the gospel become a schoolmarm?

I go to Church and hear people quote Joseph Smith from the pulpit, saying we "need a correct understanding of the character of God," and I wonder why the God I Foxtrot with looks so different from the one they worship.

The God I dance with holds me close; He does not control my steps but gently guides me by the small of my back; the smell of His breath is intoxicating as we turn upon the parquet flooring.

He is absolutely dashing, though plain and unassuming.  He is humble yet self-assured.  He whispers in my ear as the music plays, whispering words of beauty that cause my neck to tingle.  And His eyes!  I cannot tear my gaze from them as we sweep the ballroom floor; they warm me, bathing me in waterfalls and companionhood.  Eternity is to be held in His arms (2 Ne. 1:15).

Listen: the God who sits on yonder throne does not interest me at all.  I am interested in the God who steps away from His throne, who sets aside power and privilege, and who dances with us.

You know the One: the One who entices us with nothing but His beauty and conversation, whose hair falls into our face as He dips us low to the ground and lifts us up again.

And when we stumble in our steps, our clumsy feet failing to keep time with the beat, He catches us because we are (and have always been) enveloped in His loving embrace.  Whereas, a God perched on a throne way up north is of no use, no use at all, to me.

Zion needs the Bridegroom.

​That is why I will worship Him as my dance Partner, but never as an imposing figure, statuesque, seated majestically above me.

But Satan?  Here's the important thing to remember: Satan didn't worship God, he worshipped the throne.

Do we?

A presence bright and beautiful,
With eye of flashing fire,
A lip whose haughty curl bespoke
A sense of inward ire.

My saving plan exception scorns--
Man’s agency unknown.
As recompense, I claim the right
To sit on yonder Throne!”

(Orson F. Whitney, "Immanuel—A Christmas Idyl")

Yes, Lucifer understood the perks of power.  Our religious culture seems to as well.  That is why our churches have fashioned a God that is, in fact, Luciferian.
 
   Leadership is not fellowship. 
   
   Authoritarianism is not communion.

   Hierarchy is not equality. 

   Stewardship is not privilege.

Jesus wasn’t part of the Sanhedrin; we won’t find Him in their counsels.

We will find Christ on the dance floor, dancing.

   Will we join Him?

Participation Time

Okay, get ready.  Since it is the summer solstice, get up.  Yes, you!  Arise, and loosen those limbs.

I want us to dance together.  Yes, really!

As you watch and listen to the song below, I want us to move our bodies.

Move as if your body were praying.  Make movement into a prayer, your hands and feet its words.

Speak praise through your hips and raise your arms high.

Are you still sitting?  Come on, now, I am counting on you: be Little Children with me.

Here we go.  Turn the volume up; I'll be here when you return.  Don't be shy!

Dance.

The Time I Chose to Stay

​Late Sunday night, on March 30, 2025, my liver failed.

It was terrible timing, too, because I was scheduled to fly to Anchorage, Alaska early the next morning, where I was going to spend the week for work.

I had been sick for days, and none of the doctors or tests had diagnosed what was wrong. In my stubbornness, I refused to cancel my trip. "I will get better," I kept telling myself.

I was in bed at home, my bags packed, curled up in a ball, around midnight, when the pain passed the point I could bear. My eyes closed, I tried shutting off my physical senses, floating above it, if you know what I mean.

I prayed. I've mentioned before I have no fear of death, so I wasn't surprised when I found myself looking down and seeing sand beneath my feet.

I recognized immediately where I was, upon a stretch of shoreline that is dear to me from my childhood, where I spent my summers vacationing.

It was evening and the sun had dipped beneath the horizon over the ocean. I was alone. I called out and asked the Lord to walk with me.

He appeared and we walked, hand-in-hand, along the surf as the waves played around our ankles. He led me into a holy-of-holies.

"Why have you brought me here, Father?" I asked.

"So you may choose."

The tide was rising.

"If you wish to return," He said gently, "You must go now while the tide is low and the way remains open."

I sensed His meaning. Until that moment, I had not realized my condition was so serious. I had reached a critical threshold.

For me there was no bright light, no angelic choirs singing, no resounding joy. There was simply peace and calm as I weighed my decision.

"I choose to return," I said.

*****

Afterwards we returned to shore the way we had come, climbing over the mossy rocks, our feet wet, and I found a great bonfire waiting for us. I sensed He had prepared it. "Fire awakens the flesh, whereas water buries it."

We sat down on the sand before the fire and He was utterly at peace, present in the moment, as if eternity had stopped spinning and time had ceased. There seemed to be no urgency.

I watched the fire and all the colors dancing within its flame. We conversed, as Moroni described, "in plain humility" (Ether 12:39).

"It lives in you," He said at the end. And without another word, He vanished, and was not.

I remained alone near the fire until it had burned to embers, and awoke from my dream. I wrote it down while it was fresh and slept.

In the early light of morning my wife awoke and saw me and yelped, "Honey! Look at yourself!"

I sat up in bed and was the brightest yellow, my skin completely jaundiced.

Needless to say, I canceled my trip.

Shemlon's Shore

​​      Now there was a place in Shemlon
      where the daughters of the Lamanites
      did gather themselves together
      to sing and dance
      and to make themselves merry.
 
      And now the priests of king Noah
      laid and watched them;
      and they came forth
      out of their secret places
      and took them and carried them
      into the wilderness as their wives.

          ― As Retold by Mormon

Shemlon’s shore
an embroidered skirt
of dimpled moonlight
 
Shimmering lakeside
upon a taffeta breeze
carried inland from the sea
 
Daughters dancing
among water lilies bathed
in future’s innocence
 
When, from hidden nests,
priests emerge to force their hands
with premeditated fervor
 
Swapping silk for sackcloth―
silencing the music
and stilling the waters
 
     at Shemlon’s shore.

Make a Joyful Noise

Five times in the Book of Psalms we're told to "make a joyful noise."

   Sing unto the Lord . . . .
   With trumpets
   and sound of cornet
   make a joyful noise
   before the Lord.

(Psalm 98:5-6)

Yes, I think we've got the "noise" part down.  There's a lot of noisiness in the news.  But not much of it is "joyful." 

What's there to be happy about?  The sounds we hear across the world are not chipper (more like, wood chipper).

During the past month, in the midst of writing drafts on the sacrament, the will of God, and the path of perdition (an eclectic bunch of topics, I know; I am whetting your appetite for what's in the pipeline), I wanted to pause and say a few things to uplift our spirits.  It's summertime, and the sun is shining, and we need to feel the sand between our toes, spiritually-speaking.

I am aware some of you recently have held the hand of loved ones in their final hours; others have watched their infant in the NICU hooked up to breathing tubes.  Some of you have wondered what to do about abusive relationships, or how to escape soul-crushing jobs.

Everywhere I turn, I sense bitter dregs and dark nights.  The world has become so heavy.

And so I write to apply a spiritual poultice to our aching hearts.  I share these things as someone who, like you, yearns for a better world.  We are made strong in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

I love you and say: "For the hurt of the daughter of my people I am hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold of me" (Jeremiah 8:21).

I feel your hurt and keep you in my prayers.  We are stronger together: our burdens shall not break our backs; God willing, let us square our spiritual shoulders.  God has sent us, His Red Cross, to tend to the wounded on the battlefield.

   Is there no balm in Gilead;
   is there no physician there?

(Jeremiah 8:22)

We have a Healer who has promised that all we've lost shall be found, and all our tears shall water the seeds of celestial fruit.

We have a "High Priest of good things to come" (Heb. 9:11).  I know things are tough, and I expect before the end they shall become tougher.

But tougher than any of them is Jehovah, our jasper, our Jesus.  And don't forget that we, too, are the Lord's onyx and obsidian.

Together we shall see things through.  And along the way, if you're willing to join me, let's make some noise.

   A joyful noise.

Wrong Side of the Tracks

In 1961, the Hollywood Reporter wrote in its review of the film West Side Story that the movie's ending (spoiler alert: Chino shoots Tony after Anita lies to him) was "almost a traumatic experience."

I felt it myself the first time I watched West Side Story in the mid-1980s when I was 8 or 9 years old.

Lying on the family room carpet in front of our old tube TV, I remember when Tony and Maria sang "One Hand, One Heart."  Something stirred within me.

   Make of our hands one hand,
   Make of our hearts one heart.

As a child, I didn't know what I was feeling.  It was bitter-sweet.  The closest thing I can compare it to was homesickness.

When they harmonized at the crescendo, "One hand," and then tenderly, "One heart" . . . the music awakened something in me, a door to a world I didn't know existed, but that I somehow sensed I belonged to.

A world of love.

[Note: I've learned how to share videos!  I am including music clips in this post.  I invite you to listen to these songs I've chosen with the volume turned up.  Put on your headphones; turn on your speakers and allow the Spirit to speak to you through the music.]

The Tongue of Angels

All my life I've sought the lingua franca of the Logos ― a universal language with which to commune with God and His creation.

​That language (the divine tongue) is, of course, love.

But what is love?  Sure, "God is love" ― but what does that really mean?

Love is lyrical: it is Spirit taking shape.  The scriptures compare God's nature to the wind and breath.  All was formless until the light of love entered the void, and spoke.

And that voice! ― the voice that pierced the darkness, even the Word that warmed life into Being, that melted matter in His image, in whose bosom burned the love of the Logos as a pulsar ― that Voice sang!

And what was His song?  How does one describe God's vibrato?  It was as the sound of the rushing of great waters.  His calling was music to our ears.  The Logos, with cupped hands-to-lips, called us to gather round.

And we heard!  And we, His lost lambs, His flickering stars, responded.  We came, bleating and bleeding.  We ran!  We flew; we leapt into His eternal embrace.

And thus we became part of God's Song.  We are part of the symphony sounding His everlasting kindness.  We became His heart-chords, the strings of heaven's harp spreading His love into the nethermost parts of the cosmos, extending His light so that the borders of Outer Darkness recede.

In His love we experience the harmony of heat and wholeness; such is the eternal flame we carry into the coldness of spacetime.  Our Shepherd, the Logos, bears the lodestone of redeeming love, in whose arms all are cradled and rocked and swaddled safely.

Can you hear it?  Can you feel His music wrapping around your spiritual cells?  We are bathed in its love; our DNA spirals towards its light.

God's voice bleeds from our every pore; our bodies resonate to His vocal chords.

What music are we creating with Him?

"A Grief That Can't Be Spoken"

​I will never forget the moment when, at the end of West Side Story, Tony falls into Maria's arms, mortally wounded.

As I watched that scene as a boy, it was if my young heart felt the gunshot itself, and I began to cry.

I was ashamed of my tears, afraid my older sisters would see and mock, so I slid under the coffee table to hide.

There, beneath the table, staring up at the unfinished wood of its underside, trying to conceal the sounds of my sobs, it was as if I had witnessed a side of the world I had not known: the ugly, hurtful, hateful part.

What kind of world was this I had fallen into?  What madness had driven me here, far from the safety of my heavenly home, into a world where people rage and ruin?  What had I gotten myself into?

I pulled my t-shirt over my face as the end credits played (the childlike equivalent, I suppose, of covering my head with ashes), tasting a glimpse of the grief that would grow into adulthood, where, as a pilgrim in this strange land, I sojourn stricken with the sorrow, the memory of Eden a fresh wound.

I long for God's kingdom come.  Where is Zion?  All my life I've wandered, seeking to flee to its peaceful shores, far away from this telestial traffic jam of guns and stock exchanges and human greed.

I often feel like King David who, at a low point in his life, after Nathan censored him for his sins, cried out:

   Deliver me from bloodguiltiness,
   O God, thou God of my salvation:
   and my tongue shall sing aloud
   of thy righteousness.

   O Lord, open thou my lips;
   and my mouth
   shall show forth thy praise.

(Psalm 51:14-15)

What praise have I, here, now ― when the world reeks of inequality and injustice?  What praise, now, when the wicked rule and the faithful mourn?  What praise can we possibly muster when the earth is filled to brim with the stink of mortal sweat staining the Lord's pure creation?

How could God allow it?

O God, I cannot hide my face!  Where is mercy?  Where is jubilee?  Whichever way I turn I behold suffering and heartbreak, poverty and pain.

But this is our lot, to stand as witnesses at the world's ending.

O dear God, how do You hold this pain in Your palms (Isa. 49:16) without clenching your fist?

This is Not a Rehearsal; It's Show Time

God may be the author of love and the giver of light, but it is up to us to articulate His music, to translate His Word, and give phrasing to His voice in sharing His light with those around us ― as we saw from Canadian national treasure, k.d. lang, in the above clip.

A Church without miracles is like a symphony without sound.  We need trombones who can prophesy, clarinets that speak in tongues, and harps with the gift of healing.  Most of all, we need flutes with soaring faith and band instruments to play charity's march.

Musical notation is just symbols on paper.  The scriptures contain words on a page.  We must breathe life into them.  No matter how brilliant the composer, or how great the song, until there is a performer it remains lifeless ink.  We may as well be illiterate if we do not embody the words we read.

God needs pure-hearted musicians; He needs artists who, like Christ, can translate for the Logos, instantiating His love into spacetime, here and now.

As any musician knows, it is far easier to play a piece of music after having heard it performed by another.  Christ gifted us with a masterclass on how to love like the Father.  Our heart has been 'tuned' by His example as the Firstchair.

I cannot overstate how important it was for us to see the Word made flesh, so that we, in the flesh, may become the Word.

Now imagine His voice being amplified by ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million singers in unison, all singing the glory of the Creator.

Christ was never meant to be a Soloist (John 14:12).  Even though He walked the winepress alone, He always intended to attract a company of musicians and singers, a folk band that, having heard Him begin the melody, would take it up on their guitars and play with Him in the greatest Concert this universe has ever seen.

Priesthood Keys as Musical Keys

I was a music major at BYU before I switched over to history; in the beginning I wanted to be a high school music teacher.

Music is a system of relationships and we can learn a lot about the Body of Christ through musical theory. 
​
An octave has 12 possible notes (the chromatic scale), but only seven of them are used in a given "key."​

Now, the important thing to understand is that keys can be transposed: keys unlock the fluidity of frequency.

One of the most exciting things, musically, is when, during a piece, the key changes.  It is exhilarating!  The way keys change is through chord progressions, like the way the earth is transitioning into a paradisiacal state.

Just because the hymn "Come, O Thou King of Kings" is written in the key of G Major, doesn't mean it has to always be played that way.  You could modulate the hymn to any key you wanted, making it higher or lower.

So it is with priesthood keys.  Changing the key changes the music, but it is still recognizable; the Composer's mark remains.  Dispensations are transpositions; any song can be transposed, spiritually-speaking.

We are not complete until we've played around with all the chords (for how else could we become co-composers with God, to create new music, until we've experimented with scales and intervals and rhythm in all their variety?).

The way we usually modulate into a new key is to find a common chord, a pivot chord, that is shared by both key signatures.  This pivot chord can be likened to Christ, who is the bridge between old and new, and the catalyst that prompts us to cross it.

Now watch: what does being a "new" creature really mean?  It means, simply, that we graduate from playing someone else's music to composing new music with God.  Instead of rehashing and recycling and repeating, we create something new: new arrangements and new styles and new possibilities.

Christ's ability to transpose from one glory to another is the essence of Intelligence.

The universe is alive, organic and asymmetrical.  This is illustrated by the "Pythagorean Comma."  The ancient Chinese masters discovered long ago that in 31 Octaves you achieve 53 perfect fifths (what they call Lṻ).  The first five fifths create what we call the Pentatonic Scale.
 
Isn’t it strange, that with all of the correspondences and synchronicities in the cosmos, the system is not wholly coherent?  The universe is comprised of broken symmetry and quantum uncertainty.  God did not design a clock; He birthed a living, growing, evolving creation.

And thus the Lord does not require us to swear allegiance to a single modality.  In fact, quite the contrary: the Lord seems to relish diversity of expression and being-ness.  The greater the differentiation, the broader the love grows; and yet, it never ceases to be part of Him.

For, every instrument has a unique voice.  Think of a trumpet versus a violin playing a High C ― as opposed to that same High C being hit by Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti at the climax of "Nessun Dorma" (as you watch the clip below, you will find he earns that standing ovation at the end). 

The mystery of God is found in the diversity of operations.  Creativity is at the heart of Creation.  Spiritual gifts and priesthood keys all stem from God, but in their application they evolve in nuanced and surprising ways, becoming infinitely new.

This is why spiritual discernment is paramount.

"To March Into Hell for a Heavenly Cause"

​When I was a senior in high school, the administration asked me to sing at graduation.

I knew what I wanted to perform: one of my favorite songs, "The Impossible Dream" from Man of La Mancha.

   To dream the impossible dream
   To fight the unbeatable foe
   To bear with unbearable sorrow
   To run where the brave dare not go

My grandmother flew in from Oregon to hear me perform at the graduation ceremony.

I was nervous; it was the biggest audience I had ever performed before.  And nothing destroys a singer's breath support quicker than butterflies in the belly.

   And the world will be better for this,
   That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
   Still strove, with his last ounce of courage
   To reach the unreachable star!

As I sang in that arena, looking over a crowd of several thousand people, I found myself singing to, and for, my grandma, as if it were just the two of us.  I knew she didn't care if my voice was perfect; she loved me no matter what I sounded like, regardless of how my performance went.

So it is with Christ.  We are on the stage.  But God is not watching us from the audience: He is next to us, in us.  In a way I do not comprehend, in Gethsemane when He saw His seed, as time stretched before Him, we became one.  We are Him; our suffering is His own.

I don't know how God does it, experiencing all the awful things happening on earth.  I can barely handle my own set of challenges, let alone what is happening in Gaza and Ukraine and Sudan.

At times it is overwhelming.  We yearn for resolution.  I try to remember what Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount.  He showed us the way.  The way we spiritually resolve tension is by:

   1. Acceptance

Jesus taught us to "resist not evil" (Matt. 5:39).  We cannot change things for the better until we've made peace with things as they are.

Acceptance is the precursor to change, paradoxically.  Only when we truly accept what is, are we able to love it fully.  Then, once love is bestowed unconditionally, can the thing we love grow into something more. 

   2.  Bless the tension

Pray for those who despiteful use us?  Love our enemies?  Yes.  This does not minimize the pain, but hallows it.  It does not erase the wrong, but sanctifies it.  Only from the perspective of blessing (as opposed to judgment and condemnation) can we effect eternal transformation.

   3.  Balance the opposition in oneself

This was Christ's gift, to hold tension in himself without breaking.  He was a healer, yes, but too often we focus on His physical healing ― which was less impressive, really, than the spiritual healing He performed.

We think of Christ curing leprosy as if giving us smooth skin was what mattered: but are we going to be models for Maybelline?

No, the real healing was taking broken minds and hearts and weaving them together with hope and wholeness.

But here's the important part to remember: Christ did not discard the brokenness, or cast aside our heartbreak; instead, He integrated our weakness and imperfection so that our scars become more sacred than unblemished skin.

"Tim," someone says.  "I can forgive them for what they did, but I cannot accept it.  I will not condone it.  I will never bless it."

Okay.  Or, we can try it Christ's way.  How did He reconcile evil?  How did He bring beauty from ashes?  How?  Therein is the solution we seek.

Jesus did not find everlasting peace through animal sacrifice; not by following carnal commandments; certainly not by sacrificing a million bulls or observing a million feasts.

Christ brought peace unlike the world by loving the Father and loving us.  Purely.  Infinitely.  Eternally.

​Zion will not come from converting people away from Islam or by legislating transgender policy or by getting everyone to attend the temple.  Zion will come when we learn to love like Christ.  Period.
​
So if you're crazy enough to love like God, then you just might be crazy enough to dream the impossible dream.

And if you dream the impossible dream with me, and with God, then maybe we just might find there is a place for us, somewhere a place for us, with peace and quiet and open air.

   Somewhere.

Five Years!

Recently I celebrated my birthday and my teenage daughter gave me a handmade birthday card that said, in bold purple marker:

"Congrats!  You're not dead yet!"

That says it all.  I'm not dead!  What can top being alive?  Carpe diem.  I have such dreams for my next chapter.

As we celebrate five years of Owl of the Desert, I thank God for being alive, at this particular time in history, on this journey with you. The horizon holds untold wonders (D&C 133:45).

Owl of the Desert has been my love song to God (Alma 5:26).  Through it I have been blessed to connect with you, my spiritual family, for whom I am eternally grateful.

I feel to exclaim as Ammon, "My heart is brim with joy" (Alma 26:11).  It makes me emotional ― as when Jesus declared His joy was full, and wept (3 Ne. 17:20-21).

Miracles have led us here.  I've learned many lessons over the past five years.  I am not the same man I was when I began blogging.

As Heraclitus said, "No man ever steps in the same river twice: for it's not the same water and he's not the same man."

I could not be the man I am without the love of my family and friends.  I want to take a moment and express my thanks to my wife and children, who in the lottery before this life must have drawn the short-straw to be tasked with rounding my rough edges and tolerating my flights of fancy.  You are Godsent.

Also my thanks to my spiritual mentor and brother, Clark Burt, whose wisdom and advice have kept me grounded while I have been prone to wander in the clouds of God's mysteries.  Bless you and Annie, now and forever.

And to my parents, for gifting me with the heritage of water and earth.  I bear the chromosomes of Christ because of you.  It is an honor to be your son and I will remember your goodness in all the worlds to come.

And finally, thank you, my dear parliament of Owls, who have kept watch with me through the night, and have sat with me upon the rooftops to witness the rising sun: I love you.

   The best is yet to come.

Looking Back: How Far We've Come
​
I was cooking dinner Sunday night (a little Mexican feast of tamales and rice and refried beans) when my 11-year old, who was keeping me company in the kitchen, all of the sudden began quoting from my poem Sign.

                     You keep
    the flock in the thrall
    of apricot authority

I looked up from the cutting board, confused.  What was going on?

            gathered to barns
    locked with priestly seal,
    ensnaring little lambs

My son was reading from his iPod (I didn't know he knew how to look up Owl of the Desert).  But there he was, on the kitchen stool, reading words I wrote years ago.

               fleecing them
    with tarnished shears
    your velvet robes
    cannot conceal

I laughed.  "Do you know what that means?" I asked.

He shook his head.  "No idea."

By then his brother, my teenage son, had wandered into the kitchen in search of a snack and joined us.  I put down my knife.  "Read the last part.  I often put the point of my poems at the end."

He scrolled down, and read Alma's words to Korihor (but really to us):

   I bear no purse, carry no scrip:
   I hold sacred the sign of my apostleship.

   With mine own hands
   I have labored
   for my support
   as God commands.

​​      According to the Holy Order
      to which I am called
      I give you this sign:

          As high priest
          I refused to take
          so much as a single
          senine.

"A 'senine' is money," I explained as he finished reading out loud.  "It's like Alma was saying, 'I've never taken so much as a penny for my service to God.'  It's about priestcraft.  Do you know what that is?"

   *****

Owl of the Desert has evolved over the years.  In the early days I was primarily concerned with contrasting the Church's policies with the scriptures.  I spent a lot of time on topics like priestcraft and authority and tithing, highlighting how the Church had stumbled (Rom. 9:33).

But you may have noticed I don't talk about the Church as much anymore.  Or Mammon or prophet-worship ― or a dozen other things that are still issues, sure ― but do I really need to beat a dead horse?

Along the way, I arrived at a point where, having said what needed saying (at least by me), I found myself drawn toward things of greater consequence, like exploring the mysteries of God, in whose light the chipped nail polish besmirching the Church's bedsheets pales into insignificance.  

And don't worry!  Everything I have written remains available for anyone who is interested, who wishes to read from the beginning and see the good, the bad, and the ugly (referring to myself).

I shall not go back and edit what I have written, because it captures a moment in time, a point in my path, and stands as a record of both my inspiration and imperfection (Ether 12:23).

I am sorry if I offended anyone while finding my sea legs, if my words proved divisive rather than discerning.  At times I was angry and hurt; other times I was heartbroken and depressed.  But mostly, I was hopeful.

For the common thread in everything I have written, no matter the subject, has always been this: faith, hope, and (especially) love.

Fool Me Once
​
The ancient Zen master Zhaozhou (778 A.D. - 897 A.D., known as Joshu in Japanese) had a great sense of humor (a sign of intelligence, I am told).

A story tells of a monk who asked Master Zhaozhou, "What is an imbecile?"

Zhaozhou said, "I’m not as good as you."

The monk said defensively, "I’m not trying to be anything" (for in Buddhism one must not become attached to identity). 

Zhaozhou replied, "Then why are you being an imbecile?"
 
   *****

Paul said:

   We are fools
   for Christ's sake.

(1 Cor. 4:10)

I am happy to be a court jester in Christ's kingdom, for in the world we see all around us "men's hearts failing them for fear" (Luke 21:26).

I have tried to counteract the fear by whispering hope into the shadows.  I hope some of what I've written over the years has made you smile.

Everywhere we turn there is such heaviness.  We wipe our foreheads in the sweltering heat of the times and seasons.  But we mustn't let our hearts succumb to heatstroke.

This is not a dry heat, either, we're experiencing, but a spiritual humidity coming from "the powers of heaven be[ing] shaken" (Luke 21:26).  And this is merely a preamble to what we'll endure when the Lord sets His hand to humble the nations.

Owls, let's please not lose our nerve and humor: not when the sun darkens and the moon withholds her light, her scarred cheeks blushing red at the sight of what the world has become (Rev. 6:12).

If there's one thing the world needs right now, it is for those bearing Christ's light to lighten the mood.

Faith's Flower

"Divine invitations are usually delivered by trouble."

   ― Sufi saying

The spiritual awakening we're witnessing in the Church is happening across the world, in every religion.  We are not unique; these seismic waves ripple everywhere.  We are feeling the effect of the Lord's hand on the plough.

The Lord is gathering laborers from among every people, kindred, and clime: from the islands of the sea to the mountains to the valleys: the world is waking up (even as the powers of darkness combine).
 
I recently read an interview of a Muslim Sufi, Shaykh Burhanuddin, who said, "Especially in the latest years, there is definitely an increase in awakening going on."  In Islam.

"If you have seen the divine power, you know, you have no doubts that everything can happen.  So I would never take hope away from people, but I can say it is urgent, and this is why we are doing what we are doing.  And I'm the smallest particle, you know, but I have to try to do the work, no?"

The Shaykh's words remind me of the Lord's call:
   
   If ye have desires to serve God
   ye are called to the work;

   For behold the field is white
   already to harvest.

(D&C 4:3-4)

The harvest will not happen along denominational lines.  To the angels it makes little difference what religion we claim, but only if our hearts are pure (D&C 97:21).

But make no mistake: the harvest is coming.

We determine, though, the shape the sickle takes (D&C 4:4).  This was implied in the revelation Joseph Smith received in 1831 (now D&C 39) about the coming judgment, which changes how I view things.

   The people in Ohio
   call upon me in much faith,
   thinking I will stay my hand
   in judgment upon the nations,
   but I cannot deny my word.
 
(D&C 39:16)

From this verse, it seems like the future if set: the judgment is inevitable because God "cannot deny [His] word."

But wait: has God given His last and final word?  No, for His words "never cease" (Moses 1:4).

And just because God "has spoken one word, ye need not suppose that [He] cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished" (2 Nephi 29:9).

Look at what the Lord teaches us about the future in what He says next in D&C 39:

   Lay to with your might
   and call faithful laborers
   into my vineyard,
   that it may be pruned
   for the last time.
 
   Inasmuch as they do repent
   and receive the fulness
   of my gospel,
   and become sanctified,
   I WILL STAY MY HAND (!)
   IN JUDGMENT.

(D&C 39:17-18)

The harvest will come, but the road getting there is not predetermined.  The future is always in flux.

Faith, you see, has power to move the mountains of what is to come.

Where We're Headed
​
"Jesus was not an exception to humanity but was the revelation of what humanity is meant to become."

    ― Doug Scott
 
​If you're wondering where I'm headed, personally (and as a result, where my writings will be taking us), the answer is simple: to Christ.

Perhaps not the Christ we expect ― not the Christ of our creeds and false traditions ― but to the living Christ, who is even more wonderful than we can imagine.

​Over the past year you may have sensed a change in my tone and focus in the Approaching Zion series.

In July 2024 I alluded to this change in Approaching Zion: Pure in Heart, when I wrote:

"There is a whole world I have yet to explore.

"The Lord popped my prideful bubble with a pinprick of His Spirit as I contemplated my vast ignorance.  I imagined the vaulted libraries of heaven for which I haven't even been issued a library card yet.

"Zion is so much more than what we have imagined in our Sunday School classes.  Before us lies an infinite University, the likes of which we cannot fathom; there are countless tomes of Creation's courses that lie unopened at our feet.  There are Everest-truths our finite minds have yet to conceive, standing as-we-are at the base camp, near the bottom, looking up at the summit shrouded in the mystery of the Lord's day-cloud.

"How long it will take us to absorb it all, I cannot say; had we ten lifetimes to learn about this earth, it would be but a drop in the ocean.  But I can't wait to gaze beyond the horizon of our faith and witness the wonders of God hidden from the world in Christ Jesus."

​Since that time, I have received my Library Card.  My spiritual education under the Lord's tutelage has taken me in some surprising directions.

I don't speak often about my personal spiritual experiences with the Lord because everyone's encounter with God is unique; I don't want to prejudice anyone or ruin Christ's surprise for you.

I think it's regrettable the Church has given mythical status to Joseph Smith's experiences with the Lord.  I think we often misunderstand the nature of Joseph's experiences, having a eulogized narrative that makes us look beyond the mark, expecting God to treat us as if we were all nineteenth-century farm boys.

God is not found in someone else's experiences.  God can only be found and known through our personal walk with Him.

Whether we find God on the road to Emmaus, or maybe it's on the road to Damascus ― or if we're lucky, to find Him on the road to Jericho (Luke 10:30) ― but wherever we are, on whatever road we travel, at whatever stage we find ourselves, He walks beside us!  Even now, if only we have eyes to see it.

The cosmos is "ensouled."  Just as our spirit mediates between the divine light of Christ and our mind and body (creating a soul) (D&C 88:15), so too does the universe itself express the soul of God.

Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but I have to keep shouting from the rooftops the good news!  Everyone seems to be chasing God as if He were out there, in a pillar of fire or at Father Whitmer's Cabin, or behind special rites, or somewhere "else."  But He is here!  He is within you, and is part of you, and you Him (D&C 88:50). 
 
By this I mean, the soul of God mediates between eternal forms and physical processes.  These forms and processes are creative, and therefore the way God reaches out to you is uniquely based on you.

People in the Church often talk about spiritual milestones which become millstones if they cause us to miss the mark, which is, finding Christ "in all things" (D&C 88:41).

French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) pointed us towards a Christ greater than our Churches, grander than our faith, purer than the doctrines of men.

Teilhard taught that Christ was not just the Creator of the universe, but that Christ was being created by the universe as it evolves.

In other words, the Body of Christ is being co-created with us.  Just as God created us, so too do we participate in the creation of God by becoming part of Him (how else do we explain the Godhead?).

Gird your loins, my friends, for the future is coming faster than we think.  I have faith in the future because I have faith in the Living God.

One of the paradoxes I have learned is that, just as we come to know our true nature through God, so too do we glorify God by God knowing Himself through us.

I leave you with my love in the light of the God of dawn, of first light, of hope found with the rising of the morning Sun.

Let us carry this light into the darkness of days we call 'mortality' so others may feel the warmth upon their cheeks.

Mine Testimony
a poem

​Mine Lamb
mine Advocate I am 
your lamb smiling
Child mine singing Son 
sweet Ahman come joyfully

Tensile your name
Shepherd sound 
carrying our secret 
water rushing
between us unspoken 
mine name
Brokenness
I AM
sorry 
mine Alone
Comforter Newlyborn 

     swaddle me 
     in mine Eyes.