Mormons and Film

I received the special "Mormons and Film" issue of BYU Studies this week and was thrilled with what I found there. Randy Astle and Gideon Burton, the issue's editors, have done a great thing and deserve a lot of thanks from people like me. Every page of it seems packed with with useful information and wise insight into the relationship between Latter-Day Saints and the movies. For what I'm interested in doing in my PhD work, the book might as well be made of gold or platinum or really, really good chocolate. I haven't read the whole thing yet but I can already tell it's going to be invaluable to my school work.

Terryl L. Givens' essay, "There Is Room for Both: Mormon Cinema and the Paradoxes of Mormon Culture," explores some issues and questions that have been on my mind for a long time. Givens writes about the "dynamic tensions" present in the LDS culture and how they relate to Mormon stories being told on film. On the second page of the essay is this passage:

"The first tension emerges from a fundamental paradox in Joseph Smith's religion making: a perennial but uneasy coexistence of searching and certainty. The Prophet emphasized in his religious thinking the right to epistemological assurance even as he outlined a vision of salvation that is endlessly, frustratingly, at times dishearteningly deferred. For many observers, the supreme confidence and amplitude of Mormon pronouncements upon their own faith smack of spiritual arrogance and self-complacency. But these tendencies operate in tandem with a powerful countercurrent: salvation is for Mormons an endless project, not an event, and is therefore never complete, never fully attained. It is not an object of secure possession in this life. It is, in a word, agonistic -- predicated on a process of ceaseless struggle. Like Faust in his dispute with Mephistopheles, who insisted, 'Once come to rest, I am enslaved,' Joseph saw dynamic transformation, not static bliss, as the existential condition of humanity and the destination of the righteous.

"Joseph's crowned Saints are no angelic choirs passively basking the glory of their God, but Faustian strivers endlessly seeking to shape themselves into progressively better beings, fashioning worlds and creating endless posterity, eternally working to impose order on an infinitely malleable cosmos, 'learning' salvation and 'beyond the grave' at that. Perpetual, painful self-revelation and inadequacies ameliorated only through eons of schooling, standing in stark contrast with confidently expressed certainties about theological truths and spiritual realities, certainly result in one of Mormonism's most dynamic paradoxes. Latter-Day Saints presume to positively know where they came from, why they are here, and where they are headed. But such confidence is paired with the sometimes disheartening personal recognition that salvation itself must wait upon the laborious acquisition of an unfathomable scope of knowledge and the complete personal transformation into a godly individual. Mormons are sure of what they know, and personally and institutionally it is beyond compromise or negotiation. But that which they do not know will occupy them in the schoolrooms or the life beyond, says Joseph, for 'a great while after [they] have passed through the veil.' It is no wonder that Mormon culture expresses itself in inconsistent bursts of the pat and the provocative, the cliched, and the astonished, the complacent and the yearning" (190-91).

This passage sums up what has seemed so schitzo to me about my religion for a long time. We are all so sure the church is true and the Gospel is the way to peace and happiness and that it's the right thing for everybody. And yet we are all so messed up. Our lives are riddled with pain and tragedy, which is to be expected, but also with much self-doubt, secret questioning, fear, and resentment. We know and yet we know that we don't know much at all. We're certain but we're also unsure what that certainty can do for us at his moment.

How do those two things gel?

I don't know the answer and I don't know that the essay goes on to offer anything definitive (I haven't finished it yet). But just the fact that someone articulated that particular dynamic in the way my people think and act really meant something to me. And it isn't often that academic writing means anything to me other than hours of trying to stay awake through some jackass performing word gymastics for pages and pages. So it was much appreciated and I'm excited to get through the rest of the essay and the rest of the whole issue. (I'm also excited to read that Randy Astle is expanding his history of Mormon Cinema to book length. Yee haw!)

Cookie Monster vs Martha Stewart

Quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen. "Me no care. Me no feel pain. Cookies like novocaine!"

They're Playing "Our" Song

The idea of having "our" song has always been simultaneously appealing and repellent to me. (There's a word for that sensation --does anyone know what it is?) On the one hand, it's like claiming a badge of membership or hanging a sign that says, "Members only." Couples establish themselves as a unified entity by creating things that are unique to them -- experiences and memories, favorites and mutual dislikes, treasured material objects, shared rituals, goals, etc. By choosing a song that somehow represents something important about them as a couple, they further solidify their joint identity. Having "our" song establishes that there's an "our," an "us."

On the other hand, that kind of members-only mentality can be really off-putting. If there is an "us" there must be a "them." It's especially obnoxious if the couple chooses some really terrible, tacky, saccharine tune that gets overplayed on the radio to the point of America's collective ears bleeding at the sound.

Now that I think about it, maybe it's not the exclusionary nature of "our" song that bugs me at all-- maybe it's just people's bad taste. It occurs to me that I like it when people pick cool tunes to be their "ours."

For instance, my in-laws, the Griswolds, have an "our" song: "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds. It's this tender, weird love song that celebrates how lucky people are to find each other despite the mistakes they make and despite the changing fortunes of life. It's a great song but part of what makes it great is that not many people have heard it and it isn't a top 40 Casey Kasem hit.

Also, Tony and Cassie (both of whom I've mentioned before), while not locked into one "our" song, got engaged to the tune of Sting's "When We Dance." It's another classy, intelligent, beautiful song that didn't get dragged through the mud of mass popularity.

So maybe I'm the one being exclusionary here. Maybe I'm just a music snob who doesn't have enough tolerance for people who dance to Disney cartoon theme songs at their weddings ("Beauty and the Beast," "A Whole New World") or anthemic power ballads by Bryan Adams. Exclusionary or not, I have to admit certain songs from the late 80's and early 90's (Bryan Adams included) give me intestinal cramps simply because they were someone's "our" song in high school.

What I'm wondering about now is, after high school/college/courtship, do people continue to have songs like that? Do married, adult couples with children continue to have "our" song? If so, is it anything other than a nostalgic memento of the past? Do people get new songs? Who out there (thousands and thousands of you reading this blog at this very moment) has an "our" song? What is it? Why is it "yours?"

(If you did dance to a Disney theme song or anything by Bryan Adams at your wedding, I apologize.)

Three More

Maryn in her "Nancy Drew" dress.

Avery and Suzanne looking lovely.

Maryn and me.

Da Girls

Sadly, if you look closely, you can see that Maryn ate Chef Boyardee ravioli for lunch before church and didn't get her face properly wiped by her otherwise attentive father.

Avery looking hip and sophisticated for church.

Maryn the free spirit.

Avery and Maryn miraculously both looking at the camera at the same time.

Maryn and father posing for the 2008 update of the FHE manual. (Except for the goatee. The church still doesn't officially recognize the existence of facial hair.)

The Arms of (snicker) Orion

You know the Zen question about a tree falling in the woods and does it make a sound if no one is around to hear it? My adolescence provided a similarly Zen question: If you pack hundreds of Mormon kids in a rural town with brutal winters, will there be anything to do?

Unlike the tree question, the Rexburg question does have an answer: You bet, school dances.

I don't know if everyone's existence at Madison High School revolved with such force and gravity around school dances as mine did. It might have been that Tony and I invested the Junior Prom, the Sweetheart's Ball, Graduation, and the various girl's choice dances with a lot more importance than other people did. But then again, there were people occasionally coming to these things in limousines and clothes that cost hundreds of dollars -- so maybe it wasn't just us.

Tony and I both acknowledge now that our so-called "superdates" were more or less just ego-feeding machines for us. Having a good time with our dates was important but only inasmuch as it meant impressing them and getting them to thinking highly of us. The whole point was to go so all-out in creativity, romance, and early 90's cool that every date the girls would go on after that would pale in comparison.

Sometimes the dates went great and, despite our selfish ends, provided wonderful memories for everyone involved. Other dates felt bloated, overlong, and far too orchestrated.

Still, for better or for worse, school dances provided a schedule and social structure for me and gave me something to look forward to besides play performances and drama teacher Val Johnson's super-cool zipper boots.

So I have this embarrassing memory from one of these aforementioned events. I think it was the graduation dance of 1990 and I went with Alisa Millar.

As I wrote a few days ago, Alisa was my first date, first kiss, first girlfriend-in-all-but-name. Actually, it was more of a girlfriend-by-default thing. Don't get me wrong, Alisa was a lovely person --charming, kind, really smart, and very sweet. But the reason I kept asking her out was because I just figured that was the polite thing to do. Someone asks you out, you return the favor by asking them back out, right? She asked me out first so I took her to the next dance. She then invited me to the next girl's choice and then I was obligated to ask her out to graduation, right? Looking back now, it seems remarkably naive. But that's appropriate because that's what I was.

Anyway, she and I were in the commons of Madison High School amid the disco ball fireflies, the construction paper decor, and the hundreds of other couples slow dancing in really impractical clothing. On the ceiling were mounted two mini-spotlights each shining on and then past the mirror ball. We ended up in the bright beam of one which effectively blacked out the rest of the world. It was like being onstage and the lights washing out your ability to see the audience. It was just the two of us slow dancing in the dark. Romantic, right? One would think.


So the Prince/Sheena Easton duet "The Arms of Orion" comes on. (This is 1990. The song appeared on the 1989 Batman soundtrack.) Alisa was an amateur astronomer and had even been to Space Camp so the star theme made the song one of her favorites. Which means she. knew. the. words. So there, amid the darkness, she stares up at me, looks fixedly into my eyes, and starts singing along, singing to me.

The initial lyrics to the song are:

"Orion's arms are wide enough
2 hold us both together
Although we're worlds apart
I'd cross the stars 4 U

"In the heart of a sleepless moon
I'll be with U 4 ever
This is my destiny
'Till my life is through"

Can you see how this sort of intensity might make a 16 year old boy a little unsure of what to do? Maybe there are circumstances in the world that would enable this situation to be something other than uncomfortable and awkward -- but whatever those circumstances are, they weren't in place that night. I appreciated the gesture and all but, more than anything, more than a million dollars, more than world peace or a clear complexion, I just wanted her to stop singing.

Sadly, that's not as bad as it gets. See, a few days before the dance I'd watched a movie on TV called Hollywood Shuffle. It's Robert Townsend's first film and is a parodic comedy about the trials of trying to make it in Hollywood when you're black. Townsend, who wrote, directed, and produced the film, stars as "Bobby" the protagonist who just wants a break doing something other than playing slaves, drug dealers, or "Eddie Murphy-types." He daydreams about different things he could do in movies and, at one point, envisions himself as a hardboiled detective complete with the fedora, trench coat, and feet dangling off the edge of his desk. The beautiful but treacherous femme fatale comes in, asks for his help, and then comes onto him. She starts making out with him on top of his desk and then his world-weary voice-over comes on: "Her breath was stinkin' but it was alright. You don't throw away a Mercedes Benz just because it has a dent in the fender." The line gave me a mild chuckle when I saw it and then I forgot about it.

But then, as Alisa is singing to me and I feel her breath on my face, the line comes back and suddenly it's the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life. The guilty smirk set in, then the burning in the cheeks that happens when you really need to laugh but won't allow it. Finally, I just started laughing and snorting in a herky jerky, trying-but-failing-to-stop sort of way. She looked at me quizzically and kept singing off and on until the song finally, mercifully came to an end.

It's important to point out that Alisa's breath was fine. There was nothing wrong with it all but the awkwardness of the situation and my immaturity just sort of took control. The harder I tried to suppress the laugh, the more insistent it became. After the song, we sat down for a minute and I discretely (yeah right) excused myself to go to the bathroom and compose myself a little. I got the giggles out, splashed some cold water on my face, and went back out into the loud, humid darkness of the commons.

I don't remember much else about that particular date. (She wore blue satin. I wore a matching tie and cummerbund. Is there a dumber article of clothing than a cummerbund? Is there a worse idea than wearing one to match a frilly prom dress?) We dated a few more times over the summer and then, when my junior year rolled around, I had the "let's see other people" discussion so I could ask out the much hotter and much less interested in me Megan Gage for Homecoming. High school is an ugly, painful, cutthroat time. I don't think anyone comes out of it saying, "Man, that was awesome for my self-esteem. I wish I could do that for the rest of my life."

This was all leading to a discussion about the idea of a couple having "our song." I mean, had Alisa and I stayed together and eventually gotten married and had kids, we undoubtedly would have thought of the Orion tune as "our song." But this post is already stretching the limits of web readability as it is so the "our song" discussion will have to wait for another day.

Another Book Cover

I saw this cover yesterday in Barnes and Noble at Wayne State. I've never read The Lord of the Flies but, shameless surface-lover that I am, this cover made me want to buy it and read it. Incidentally, it's one of Suzanne's favorite books.

If I Had A Million Dollars. . .

If I had a drop of technical ability, I would embed a You Tube video of Barenaked Ladies singing the classic song. But I don't. So I won't.

Instead, let's go lo-fi. As you read this post, hum the tune to "If I Had A Million Dollars. . ." to yourself. Heck, if you're alone, belt it out: "But not a real green dress, that's cruel!"

Anyway, I imagine most ordinary people think about what they would do if they were suddenly rich -- winning the lottery, inheriting unexpected millions from an obscure relative, discovering major oil deposits in your back yard (black oil, Texas tea), finding Howard Hughes in the desert, etc. Oh, we would quit our jobs, travel the world, invest in retirement, ensure our children's ability to attend college, send our parents on a cruise, and other good and worthy causes.

But what if you couldn't spend the money on yourself or your family or friends? What if you had a boatload of money but had to spend it in some kind of philanthropic manner?

I realize there are millions of people in Africa who don't have access to clean water. So, if we're talking Bill-Gates-style cash, I'd have to pay to have a few thousand wells drilled and installed. And I know there are thousands of people out of work here in my adopted city of Detroit and so I'd think about creating some kind of large scale industry that could support a big chunk of workers. (But what?)

I make those suggestions to offset the narrow, sort of selfish things that I'd really want to use the money for. They're good things to do but there are other, more personal things I'd like to do with the money too.

First, I'd establish writing scholarships at some of the schools I've attended.

I'd name the one at BYUI for my mother, Laurie Brown, and give it to promising incoming freshmen writers. I was mentioning to Suzanne just yesterday how, when I was on my mission and I'd meet kids who were going out west to Ricks for the first time, I always took a lot of pride in being able to direct them to my mom's office on campus. I always assured them that she would be able to help them with anything they needed. So it seems appropriate that a scholarship for incoming freshmen would be in her name.

At Idaho State, I'd set up a creative writing scholarship for married students and name it for Suzanne. She endured many soul-killing hours as the Queen of the Copymax in Pocatello, Idaho in order for me to finish up my education there. Giving some money to some struggling, young couples would be a good way to pay tribute to all that she did for me during those years. (And all that she continues to do.)

Boise State's MFA program would be the home of the Katherine Grow Sheffield poetry scholarship. My Grandma loved to read and write poetry and her influence on my mother, I think, has a lot to do with who and I am and what I do today. I'd probably stipulate that the money go to students who are both poets in the MFA program and teaching assistants in the English department seeing as how Grandma was a poet and a teacher.

I don't feel much affinity for Wayne State in general so I'm not sure how I'd feel about giving it money. Maybe I could establish the "Wayne State's Administrative Policies Are Lamer Than A Hobbled Horse But We Want You To Come Here Anyway" scholarship or perhaps the "Teachers Here Are Good Even If The Campus Bathrooms Have Homeless Guys Living In Them" scholarship.

No, in all seriousness, I would probably buy and refurbish one of the Victorian mansions that surround campus and make it low-cost housing for LDS students who want to attend Wayne full-time. The area around campus (and Detroit in general) will never improve if people continue to treat it as a sinking ship that needs to be abandoned. (Plus, Wayne State doesn't even have an Institute of Religion. What draw is there for nice Mormon kids to come into the big bad city so that they can realize it's not so big or bad?)

So those are some of my ideas. What are yours? If you had a ton of money but had to spend it on somehow making someone else's life better, how would you do it?

Blue Sky Above Detroit

So I can remember what it looks like once the city turns concrete-gray for six months.

My Go-To Words

Suzanne pointed out the other day that I have certain phrases and words that I use and reuse constantly. I realize this of course. A saying or term will enter into my arsenal and I'll use the heck out of it for months until something better comes along or until I realize I'm becoming dull and repetitive.

Suzanne couldn't pinpoint any of my faves when we originally talked about it so I've been keeping an ear out for the last few days trying to identify a couple. Here are a few --

Goo: Everything is goo. Earwax, Gorilla Glue, soup broth, muddy water, etc. It is my catch-all word for anything liquid, viscous, or semi-solid. Usually a pejorative but not always.

Freak: Sometimes a noun ("Don't act like a freak, Maryn"), sometimes an intensifier ("It is freaking hot in here!"), sometimes a verb ("I'm totally freaking here!"). It's so all-purpose it almost equals the versatility of "smurf" from the old cartoon. ("Hey Brainy Smurf, would you like a cold, frosty mug of smurf?" "I feel so smurfy right now.")

Ka-jillion: A lot. More than a billion, less than a google. ("It's like a ka-jillion degrees in here! Freak!")

-Tastic: It's a suffix I attach to things I like. My friend, Clark Draney, (also known as my other best friend), is rarely just "Clark." More often than not, he is Clark-tastic. The food at Casey's, the Irish pub down the road, is burger-tastic. And, of course, things can occasionally be described as freak-tastic.


I'll be sure to add to the list as others make themselves apparent.

If they made your life into a movie. . .

I finished teaching for the day (for the week!) about twenty minutes ago and so I spent a few aimless moments looking at "This Week In Celebrity Sightings" on MSNBC. There were a bunch of Matt Damon and other cast members as they were hawking The Bourne Ultimatum. (What was the ultimatum exactly? "Tell me my true identity or I'll make you watch hand-held footage for an hour and a half?")

Anyway, there were pictures of Julia Stiles and it occurred to me that she reminds me of Cassie Mosier, my best friend's wife. There's physical resemblance in their cheekbones and mouths but there's also a calmness and a wisdom that seem similar to me. Cassie is one of my favorite people in the world and I enjoy Julia Stiles in everything I've seen her in. (Admittedly, I've avoided turd-fests like the remake of The Omen and Down to You but even when I see substandard fare like Save the Last Dance, I still like her.)

So this made me think of a game I play in my classes at Wayne. I imagine who would be cast if they made a movie of the class I'm in. I pick out different actors for different people and just feel generally satisfied with myself for being so secretly smart and clever. There's a girl in my Comp class this semester who could easily be played by Selma Blair. My friend Mike would be portrayed by a young Pruitt Taylor Vince. I had an entire ensemble assembled in my head for my first grad class last year. It was interesting how everyone sort of lent themselves to a particular "type."

So who would be cast in the movie of my life? I don't have people for everyone but here are a few --

Suzanne: A younger Jodie Foster. Same razor sharp cheekbones, same inherent intelligence.
Rowland (my boss): Tavis Smiley. The physical resemblance is weird.
Indira (coworker): Natalie Portman. A very tan Natalie Portman.
Bishop Medley (Bishop): An older Matthew Fox.
Michelle Payne (former professor, mentor): Amanda Peet.
Martin Corless-Smith (former professor, mentor): A blonde Hugh Grant with a strong sense of existential angst.
Shauna (sister-in-law): Meg Ryan before the duck-face plastic surgery.

I know there are more but it's one of those things where, as soon as you want the information, it crawls back into some forgotten recess of your brain and refuses to come out.

There's the obvious question of who would I cast as myself and I think the only satisfying answer is that I'd have to take Todd Haynes' approach with his new Bob Dylan movie and cast different actors for different parts of my life. During my junior high years, for instance, I would be played by Napoleon Dynamite. Not Jon Heder, but Napoleon Dynamite. Early college would have to be Christian Slater's character from Heathers only less cool and balanced. With as old and fat as I feel these days, my current self would have to be played by, like, Jim Belushi or someone like that.

Who would play you?

Firsts

As I was driving home from class last night, the song "Land Down Under" by Men At Work came on the radio and I remembered that their album, Cargo, was the first music I bought with my own money. It was on cassette, of course, and I bought it at Ken's Food Market in American Falls, Idaho. I remember the cartoony cover with a crate with a parachute being dropped from a plane. It struck me as funny that I remembered that particular first and I started thinking of other important firsts that I could identify.

First Best Friend: Gavin Mikesell in Blackfoot, Idaho. We were in Mrs. VanEpps' kindergarten class together and would rush over to my house after school to catch episodes of Specterman. I remember he slept in an old school hospital bed because his mom was a nurse and she got it on sale.

First Comic Book: It's an issue of the Justice League of America. I still have it even though the cover is falling off. They battle the Star-Tsar and Green Arrow quits the League. He's on the cover shouting at the other members, saying "You won't have Green Arrow to kick around any more!" Needless to say, I didn't get the Nixon reference at the time.

First Crush: Comeemee Johnson also in Blackfoot, also in Mrs. VE's class. She was Shoshone-Bannock and had enormous, dark eyes. Gavin and I had a little unspoken competition going for her.



First Car: A Volkswagen Vandetta, a.k.a. The artmobile a.k.a. Satan. It was a kit car from the late 60's/early 70's that my dad bought for me from my painting teacher, Don Ricks. It was brick red and had a tinted, circular window in the back that screamed "I was groovy two decades ago." Don had stenciled "Don Ricks, Artist" on the side. Dad got me some rubbing compound and soon it just said "Artist." And thus, the artmobile was born. I loved it and thought it was completely cool but it was not without limitations. It had no backseat to speak of and, strictly speaking, wasn't street legal. The entire back half was made out of fiberglass so if I'd ever been in a wreck, I probably would have died. The thing broke down constantly and smelled like gasoline. I eventually just nicknamed it Satan.



First Job: Washing dishes at Golden Corral in Rexburg, Idaho. I was fifteen. It was awful. The place went out of business while I was there. (I'm not implying cause and effect.) The last weekend before it closed, everyone sort of went nuts. Eric, one of the cooks, discovered that the plastic serving trays would shatter if you hit them against a corner hard enough. He went through about 20 before someone told him to stop. Two of the waiters took smoke breaks every fifteen minutes. I stole a cheesecake.

First CD: The Beauty and the Beast soundtrack. My mom bought it for me when I got a boom-box style CD player for Christmas when I was 12 or 13. My kids still listen to it.

First Date: The Sweetheart's Ball with Alisa Millar at Madison High School in early 1990. She wore ruby taffeta. I wore a matching tie. After the dance we went to Darla Grover's house, watched "The Land Before Time" (?) and made smores. I still have the picture but it's in storage in Idaho. If I had it, I'd scan it to show you all just exactly how young, pimply, and tiny I looked at age 16.

First Kiss: Alisa Millar on my doorstep, two or three dates later. It was sweet and clumsy. At the time, you would have thought I'd won the lottery or something. After I went inside, it was all I could do to keep from doing a breakdance of celebration.

First Heartbreak: I could go with Sunni Sorenson on this one but instead I'll say Antonia Decker. We dated secretly before my mission and then she moved to Georgia. After being gone for a couple of months, she stopped writing me gooey love letters and then eventually just stopped writing at all. When I called to ask her what was going on, she told me that we were just a "fling" and that she was actually going to marry Richard Clifford in a couple of months. Ouch. I was such a sucker.


First "F": In American Lit 2 from Hal Helwig (pictured above) at Idaho State. After not really attending class for almost two weeks, I still tried to hand in a paper. It came back to me the next class with a note that read, "Mr. Brown, this is not a correspondence course. Please see the attendance policy on the syllabus." Not a happy time.

First Time I Saw Suzanne: In Jim Papworth's poetry class at Ricks College, on the second floor of the Smith building. She was sitting in the middle toward the back. I thought she was really pretty. I sat toward the front, against the wall. She thought I was really obnoxious.

First Child: Maryn. She came out cone-headed and screaming. I will always remember that, amid her shrieking, she recognized my voice, stopped crying for just one second, looked my direction, and then went back to screaming bloody murder.

That's all the important firsts I can think of right now. (All the ones I'm willing to publish on the Internet anyway.)

Randomness

I couldn't get yesterday's Doonebury to appear with sufficient resolution. So instead, I'll include the link and a transcript. The infamous Duke and his son Earl are talking about Larry Craig:

Earl: "Wish you'd seen Craig's statement, Dad. His greatest regret was that he'd brought 'a cloud over Idaho.'"

Duke: "'A cloud over Idaho'? That's the big whoop? Hell, I've brought clouds over Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alaska, Utah, and large swaths of Ontario!"

Earl: "Dad, no one's comparing you."

Duke: "And that's just in North America! Craig's a piker!"

For whatever reason, the line "Craig's a piker!" made me giggle like a little girl. I've always enjoyed the fierce pride Uncle/Ambassador/Governor Duke takes in his malfeasance.


My other bit of randomness for the day is this:

Does anyone know what kind of bug this is?

Maryn holds forth on racial equality

This is Maryn's most recent picture of our family. I'm particularly pleased that I look like Charlie Brown with spectacles and a yarmulke.



This is an illustration from Maryn's totally self-initiated Family Home Evening lesson on equality and treating others with respect. She got the idea in her head that she wanted to give the lesson and that she'd take care of everything. So for several days she made different drawings and mapped out her strategy and then last night she took center stage and, after the song and prayer, pushed her hair away from her eyes and said, "Jesus wants us to be nice to everyone -- people with brown skin and white skin, people in wheelchairs, people who don't speak the language and can't understand English, and people who are blind."

She did a little role play with two drawings of little girls, one white, one black. Then she held up this drawing that shows that we can all be "nis" to one another. Notice the cat and dog getting along together in the lower left corner and Jesus with the super-long, almost ZZ Top-like beard on the right. Needless to say, Suzanne and I were both pretty impressed.

For all the other difficulties associated with living in Michigan, I can say that it's unlikely that Maryn ever would have thought to give a lesson like this if we were still living in Idaho. I like that her friends at school have names like Abba and Mehereen. I like that black people are neither a threat nor an interesting curiosity to her -- but that they are people. I don't think that's something she'd get so much of back home.

School

And so it begins. Maryn and Avery both have their first full day of school today and last night was the second of my two new classes at Wayne State. Here at YDB, we're taking in a new cadre of students starting Monday morning at 8 a.m.

It's fall and school is starting.

It's a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's exciting that the girls are so grown up and that they're going to have all the great experiences of making new friends, loving their teachers, getting to go to the library/gym/lunch room, etc.

But, on the other hand, my tiny daughters are out there surrounded by people I don't know, susceptible to the influences of other children I have no control over, and out of my protective reach for most of their waking hours. It terrifies me. Like most parents, I think, I bring my issues to my children. I worry they'll be lonely or that they'll be persecuted by cruel children who don't know better. I worry they will feel awkward and isolated. I worry that people who see them, talk to them, teach them, learn with them, etc. won't realize what spectacular little people they are and won't treat them right.

My own schooling is also a double-edged sword. I really love being in a classroom with a smart, capable, prepared teacher and a group of bright, curious, generous fellow-students. Sitting in a room and talking about an idea or a book or a movie while leapfrogging off one another's comments, getting new perspectives, managing to say just the right thing exactly the way you mean to say it -- it's really one of the great pleasures of my life.

However, the workload is heavy. There's a lot of reading, all of it dense theoretical stuff with little in the way of humanity or concrete detail. I'll be spending a lot of my off moments at work scrambling to get through another few pages of Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" or "The Politics of Memory" by Barbara Cassin.

The other downside is that it's essentially two days of the week that I will just be completely absent from my family. We'll drive separately into work on Wednesday and Thursday mornings and then I won't return to our house until 9:30 that night, long after the girls in bed and Suzanne has lost all ability for coherent thought. (She endures long, demanding days. By about 8 p.m. she's done. We usually go into a mutual coma in front of reality TV -- Big Brother, Fat March, So You Think You Can Dance, America's Next Top Model.) Plus, the girls will be going to bed earlier in general to compensate for long days at school with no naps.

So after a relatively relaxed summer, things are accelerating in a hurry. We've already had some cool mornings, Michigan's storied cider mills are open for business, and we spotted the first red leaves of autumn over Labor Day weekend. The cool weather, the new school clothes, the sudden sense of urgency and purpose -- it's exhilarating but also sad.

(Suzanne buys cider and a"big bag of little donuts.")


(The girls and the first red leaves of autumn.)

Long evenings of just watching TV with nothing to worry about for tomorrow other than making it to work on time are done for. Days of shorts, short-sleeve t-shirts, and sandals are numbered. The absence of night-before-the-big-class-presentation anxiety is a thing of the past.

Sigh.

Still, sweltering hot days that make it hard to breathe or move will also be a thing of the past. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are all coming up. Sitting under a blanket while it storms outside or while snow falls will be nice. Plus, most of the really good movies come out in fall and winter anyway and, really, what else matters?

But If Not. . .

Elder Dennis E. Simmons

"As a young man, I returned home from an eighth-grade basketball tournament dejected, disappointed, and confused. I blurted out to my mother, 'I don't know why we lost—I had faith we'd win!'

"I now realize that I did not then know what faith is.

"Faith is not bravado, not just a wish, not just a hope. True faith is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—confidence and trust in Jesus Christ that leads a person to follow Him.¹

"Centuries ago, Daniel and his young associates were suddenly thrust from security into the world—a world foreign and intimidating. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego refused to bow down and worship a golden image set up by the king, a furious Nebuchadnezzar told them that if they would not worship as commanded, they would immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. "And who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?"²

"The three young men quickly and confidently responded, "If it be so [if you cast us into the furnace], our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand." That sounds like my eighth-grade kind of faith. But then they demonstrated that they fully understood what faith is. They continued, "But if not, . . . we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."³ That is a statement of true faith.

"They knew that they could trust God—even if things didn't turn out the way they hoped.⁴ They knew that faith is more than mental assent, more than an acknowledgment that God lives. Faith is total trust in Him.

"Faith is believing that although we do not understand all things, He does. Faith is knowing that although our power is limited, His is not. Faith in Jesus Christ consists of complete reliance on Him.

"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego knew they could always rely on Him because they knew His plan, and they knew that He does not change.⁵ They knew, as we know, that mortality is not an accident of nature. It is a brief segment of the great plan⁶ of our loving Father in Heaven to make it possible for us, His sons and daughters, to achieve the same blessings He enjoys, if we are willing.

"They knew, as we know, that in our premortal life, we were instructed by Him as to the purpose of mortality: "We will make an earth whereon these may dwell; And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them."⁷

"So there we have it—it's a test. The world is a testing place for mortal men and women. When we understand that it's all a test, administered by our Heavenly Father, who wants us to trust in Him and to allow Him to help us, we can then see everything more clearly.

"His work and His glory, He told us, is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."⁸ He has already achieved godhood. Now His only objective is to help us—to enable us to return to Him and be like Him and live His kind of life eternally.

"Knowing all this, it was not difficult for those three young Hebrews to make their decision. They would follow God; they would exercise faith in Him. He would deliver them, but if not—and we know the rest of the story.

"The Lord has given us agency, the right and the responsibility to decide.⁹ He tests us by allowing us to be challenged. He assures us that He will not suffer us to be tempted beyond our ability to withstand.¹⁰ But we must understand that great challenges make great men. We don't seek tribulation, but if we respond in faith, the Lord strengthens us. The but if nots can become remarkable blessings.

"The Apostle Paul learned this significant lesson and declared, after decades of dedicated missionary work, 'We glory in tribulations . . . knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed.'¹¹

"He was assured by the Savior, 'My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.'¹²

"Paul responded: 'Most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. . . . I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.'¹³ When Paul met his challenges the Lord's way, his faith increased.

"'By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac.'¹⁴ Abraham, because of his great faith, was promised posterity greater in number than the stars in the heavens, and that that posterity would come through Isaac. But Abraham immediately complied with the Lord's command. God would keep His promise, but if not in the manner Abraham expected, he still trusted Him completely.

"Men accomplish marvelous things by trusting in the Lord and keeping His commandments—by exercising faith even when they don't know how the Lord is shaping them.

"By faith Moses . . . refused to be called the son of Pharoah's daughter;

"Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;

"Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. . . .

"By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king. . . .

"By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land. . . .

"By faith the walls of Jericho fell down."¹⁵

Others "through faith subdued kingdoms, . . . obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,

"Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight."¹⁶

But in the midst of all those glorious outcomes hoped for and expected by the participants, there were always the but if nots:

"And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, . . . bonds and imprisonment:

"They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about . . . being destitute, afflicted, tormented; . . . ¹⁷

"God having provided some better things for them through their sufferings, for without sufferings they could not be made perfect."¹⁸

"Our scriptures and our history are replete with accounts of God's great men and women who believed that He would deliver them, but if not, they demonstrated that they would trust and be true.

"He has the power, but it's our test.

"What does the Lord expect of us with respect to our challenges? He expects us to do all we can do. He does the rest. Nephi said, "For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do."¹⁹

"We must have the same faith as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.

"Our God will deliver us from ridicule and persecution, but if not. . . . Our God will deliver us from sickness and disease, but if not . . . . He will deliver us from loneliness, depression, or fear, but if not. . . . Our God will deliver us from threats, accusations, and insecurity, but if not. . . . He will deliver us from death or impairment of loved ones, but if not, . . . we will trust in the Lord.

"Our God will see that we receive justice and fairness, but if not. . . . He will make sure that we are loved and recognized, but if not. . . . We will receive a perfect companion and righteous and obedient children, but if not, . . . we will have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that if we do all we can do, we will, in His time and in His way, be delivered and receive all that He has.²⁰ I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

NOTES

1. See Guide to the Scriptures, "Faith," 80; Hebrews 11:1; Alma 32:21; Ether 12:6.
2. Daniel 3:15.
3. Daniel 3:17–18; emphasis added.
4. See Mosiah 7:33.
5. See Alma 7:20; 3 Nephi 24:6; Mormon 9:19; Moroni 8:18.
6. See 2 Nephi 11:5; Alma 12:25; D&C 84:35–38.
7. See Abraham 3:24–25.
8. Moses 1:39.
9. See 2 Nephi 2:27; Helaman 14:30; D&C 101:78.
10. See 1 Corinthians 10:13; Alma 13:28.
11. Romans 5:3–5.
12. 2 Corinthians 12:9.
13. 2 Corinthians 12:9–10.
14. Hebrews 11:17; emphasis added.
15. Hebrews 11:24–27, 29–30; emphasis added.
16. Hebrews 11:33–34; emphasis added.
17. Hebrews 11:36–37.
18. Joseph Smith Translation, Hebrews 11:40.
19. 2 Nephi 25:23.
20. See D&C 84:35–38.