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.