Have you ever wondered how your life would have gone if you’d hooked up with someone in whom you were once interested? Don’t. What if heaven allowed you to follow such a path and only extricate yourself most painfully later, if at all? “All things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things” (2 Ne. 2:24; see Eph. 1:11). I just read where President Packer stated that those who wait for marriage may depend upon God’s just judgments, “mercy without limit, . . . power to compensate” (Mine Errand from the Lord, 265) in a situation that, even if lasting a lifetime, is nonetheless temporary (Ibid., 266). What he doesn’t say is that sometimes our temporarily prolonged singleness may even be a form of protection and an as-yet-unexplained manifestation of such mercy.
I, therefore, try to never have regrets. All of us might have acted/reacted differently over the course of our lives. If, however, we were keeping the commandments and situated where we did the best we knew how, I’m still confident that the Lord would have arranged companionship where He saw fit. Indeed, I’m inclined to believe that two very well suited individuals would almost find it impossible to stay away from each other if both were similarly devoted to the Lord. Hence, as one whose life has been largely bereft of the man’s prerogative to advance, I tend not to press the issue.
A recent plea of my heart came entirely unbidden, and I startled myself with the wisdom and honesty in it: “I need someone who’s making the same choices I am.” As I’ve stated many times in many forms, most of who I am today is the result of what I chose to do (even if not always entirely voluntarily) while others were doing something else. Never mind how peculiarly I turned out; this has proven a blessing in the ways that matter, even if it is all the more disadvantageous in seeking a partner.
I’m reminded of the last dance I ever attended, about which I blogged on April 6, 2008. Among my other reasons for explaining how I can’t help but be alienated, I pointed to one piece of Church guidance (Ensign, Dec. 2002, 51, at the end) that is, to me, sufficient cause—even if it stood alone—for questioning the majority of our cultural leanings. I confessed to my tendency to not join in the main activity, but in that blog I didn’t quote another portion of my journal entry: “So it is that out of several stakes, not a single lady had so much as passing interest in entering MY world, which admittedly stuck out like a sore thumb. . . . I’m left to ponder that my type must not be enduring such spectacles. . . . The final goal was met when a group of ward members walked up and realized where I had been. Whether for good or ill, in their opinion, they know that it’s being like others—and not altogether being WITH others—to which I am indifferent. They proved for the second occasion in these three weeks that they’re content to turn their backs on me and let me go off alone into a cold night.”
Also at that dance inside a church building: “I wandered around, only to find one cluster of youth playing cards. I suppressed saying, ‘Face cards in the church? I never thought I’d see the day.’ I talked briefly with a man who was wrapping up clerk affairs in an office.” In an April 28, 2008 blog, I also touched on my reasons for feeling as I do about face cards. (Again, a stance summarized in, yet anything but confined to, President Kimball’s expression in the October 1974 General Conference: “We hope faithful Latter-day Saints will not use the playing cards which are used for gambling, either with or without the gambling.”)
In all my years of young single adult involvement, virtually no one remotely in my age group has ever thought to ask me why I behave the way I do with regard to issues such as this. It concerns me that they may be overly reliant on the first second-hand source to which they could refer the question, rather than benefitting from years of study in the gospel. Certainly attunement to the Spirit is more likely to open one's heart. By and large, they don’t seem so concerned about learning every possible truth.
Rather than deciding it's fear of the correctness of my position, or blatant wicked assumption about my motives, I’ve preferred to think they’re simply uncaring about my viewpoint. Whether or not someone agrees with how I approach life, I think all would agree that I ought to be with a like-minded companion. I should add that there are plenty of negotiable categories and millions of things on which I have no opinion, and would likely submit to her opinion. This says nothing about the principle I've confided to others, that I wish I could find someone who understands well enough both where I'm coming from and where she's coming from, that I could actually trust her disagreement. I readily admit the possibility of my being wrong, but telling me that I'm weird or that "nobody does that" is no kind of rebuttal at all. It often speaks poorly for the populace.
I imparted counsel to one roommate that one shouldn't disclose too fully what they seek in a companion, for then a relationship may succumb to the temptation to pretend to be exactly that, or force a rushed "conversion" to a personality type that is not really them. Nobody decent wants a robot or a fake. Furthermore, not all of my differences from society are ethically grounded. To understand that would also require more vulnerable exposition than anyone has time for; just imagine a kid who got a C+ in 6th grade P.E. because he couldn't serve the volleyball over the net, or spent Junior Prom very sorrowfully at home in a body cast, and that's the smallest possible glimpse. All the same, it's useful additional training in seeking only the things of a better world. I like the idea of a companion who shares my bewilderment at desires to accommodate oneself to the world, but might amaze me with her abilities to administer to the world's spiritual needs. (Make me sweat to keep up, and strive to the utmost to feel like I come close to deserving her.)
One of the saddest feelings in all the world is that there's no one within sight whom you'd like to get to know better, yet it is almost invariable that acquaintance brings disappointment, for dating purposes, at any rate. I’m not giving up hope on those entirely uncontrolled incidents whereby people cross into one’s life. At the same time, I have to let go of any what-ifs pertaining to those that transpired in the past. I think of the other week, when I attempted to leave a ward date. On my way out of the Wilkinson Center ballroom area, I passed a table at which a dark-haired girl sat reading, with a striking mannerism about her. She looked up with the most pleasant smile; I would have loved to talk to her, but I thought that I had no idea how to strike up a conversation and I owed my roommate a ride home anyway. It also somehow didn’t seem appropriate right after leaving another “date” behind.
The Marriott Center offers good opportunity for an assemblage of choice people from all over the world. Shortly after I moved back into a Provo ward, I attended a regional conference there. I went amply early with a couple of church books and studied for something like an hour. After the conference had ended, a girl came up and introduced herself to me. She wanted to inform me how “impressed” she was by my demeanor. Perhaps it was my only recently escaping socially injurious circumstances, or her getting ready for a mission (to include that age factor), or inexperience generally, but I failed to request her number during that respectful conversation. This too I forced myself to shrug off, except for writing in my journal, “Sorry, Joanna from Arkansas.”
Omitting a number of similar encounters, I jump back many years to a time when I was paying the price for knowledge. As I’ve described it, it was clearly not a season for dating success. I felt that the Lord did not intend it at that time, and so I heeded the next call, spending marathon hours in the BYU library, studying Church publications. At times—like during the major dance events—I mentally, or sometimes literally, dropped to my knees with loneliness (knowing nothing at the time of how futile that was), only to rise again in quest of eternal things which are not only stored away for the resurrection, but have already served me (and others) in this life. Once I ignored my bleary-eyed late-night fatigue to push toward library closing time. A girl plopped down in the chair beside me to engage in very friendly conversation. She said, “I have this theory that redheads were more valiant in the pre-existence.” See what President Monson says about them. ;-) I don’t know exactly how to explain this, but I think I had difficulty shifting gears to allow for the fact that someone was deliberately talking to me. I pulled off a sociable nature, but I certainly didn’t extend myself and acquire the necessary gumption to investigate a potential relationship.
It’s not my intention to recount every such instance. I’ve also restricted it to those most applicable and within a dating audience. Older people approach me everywhere I go, with some of the oddest statements. It’s enough to know opportunities have arisen in the past and may well occur in the future. I’ll try to overcome my inherent weaknesses so that I’ll be ready and willing to do whatever it takes. I have no regrets!!!
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
A society of insane sympathies
Okay, I had this nagging concern that the Ocean’s movies—besides being drenched with gambling culture—encouraged us to root for criminals. With the release of previews for Public Enemies (it’s R, anyway, folks), I’m thinking, “You can’t tell me they’re not giving Depp a very ‘cool’ image there as John Dillinger.” Then something clicked:
President Smith also noted, “I wish . . . to say a word to guard the people from unwise sympathies. While we may have a great deal of love for our fellow beings, and especially for those who have been favored of the Lord in times past, we should exercise that love wisely. . . . It is impossible for me to sympathize with those who do wrong” (CD, 5:212).
A few years after President Smith, Elder Reed Smoot also commented on this disease:
How can we account for this madness? Robert H. Bork wrote, “A violent man in prison will not shoot you, rape you, or crack your skull. There is no reason to be sentimental about a person who commits even one violent or serious crime. Violence is not inflicted through negligence or inadvertence. If the man who was sentenced to ten years served ten years, at least seventy-two people would be spared death, rape, or other serious injury” (Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline [New York, New York: ReganBooks, 1996], 165). One political commentator, whose name and affiliation will go unmentioned (I myself finding him a tad overbearing) gives credit to the conservative camp’s retained values in an accurate assessment: “The justice system today is crawling with ‘experts’ eager to exonerate the most heinous criminals on the grounds that they’re ‘genetically predisposed’ to murder, rape, take drugs, or otherwise endanger the welfare of others; the media fills its airwaves with liberal advocates eager to sympathize with murderers on death row, instead of the families of the innocent victims.”
This growing trend of enduring, pitying, embracing, and then turning on those who wish to remain innocent of wrongdoing is both insulting and harmful, as one Holocaust survivor wrote:
Statements from depraved artists like Cavani help bring our entire social structure nigher the abyss of association. (As an aside, notice how beloved Michael Jackson was, even when people can relatively freely admit to his abnormalities . . . all because he was successful, rich, and famous.) As for this queer idea of supporting murderers—the very premise behind secret combinations—present ever since Cain first gloried in his wickedness (Moses 5:31), allow me to say that very few actions could put you any farther from the presence of God. Yet even in Christianity there is confusion about one’s unenviable state in relation to grace upon committing the misdeed.
Lorenzo Snow said, “It is a noticeable feature in those who cherish a spirit of apostacy from the light of the Gospel, that they adopt the doctrine of Universalism and think none too wicked for a complete and unconditional salvation” (in Eliza R. Snow Smith, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow [rep. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1999; orig. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Company, Printers, 1884], 31). One can see this original apostasy resulting in the broader apostasy: “As to Redemption, Marcion taught a Gospel of love only. He represented the character of the Supreme God as one of pure benevolence—entirely without justice, a characteristic reserved to his second God. Irenaeus and Tertullian easily refuted this idea, explaining that the true God must possess both the attributes of goodness and justice, or cease to be God. . . . Marcion could not see this principle, nor comprehend the benefits of adversity upon Man. So he taught a gospel of universal love and forgiveness not unlike that taught in some Evangelical churches today” (Richard R. Hopkins, How Greek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God [Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers & Distributors, Inc., 1998], 166-167).
Paul indicated that love without dissimulation will “abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” (Romans 12:9; see Alma 13:12, 2 Nephi 4:31, Amos 5:15). Charity itself assuredly does not extend its suffering long to movie screenings depicting every species of wickedness, for it “rejoiceth not in iniquity” (Moroni 7:45), and it certainly will not deprive man of his accountability or others of freedom from sin and all its practitioners.
Remnants of pre-apostate Christianity, with which I’ve been acquainting myself further this past year, testify to this: “We consider the looking on at a murder to be nigh to murder itself and forbid ourselves such spectacles” (Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians, trans. Joseph Hugh Crehan [New York, New York: Newman Press, 1955], 76). “Who would fail to be horrified to see at the chariot races the frenzied brawling of the mob, to see at the gladiatorial contests a school in murder? At the theatre, too, this raving madness is undiminished, and the display of indecencies is greater; at one time an actor of farce may describe or represent acts of adultery, at another an effeminate pantomime may stimulate lust by simulating it—he even dishonors your gods by investing them with lovers' sighs, discords, and debauchery; he even induces your tears by feigning suffering with senseless gestures and signs. We can only conclude that murder is what you demand in fact and what you weep at in fiction” (Octavius, the Christian, in Marcus Minucius Felix, The Octavius, trans. G. W. Clarke [New York, New York: Newman Press, 1974], 122-123).
As for sentiments in relation to lesser (yet grievous) sins than murder, I really squirmed at the sheer volume of inserted grotesqueness in Transformers 2. One individual informed me how uncomfortable they’d felt watching that with their parent present. (One may hope that wasn’t the only reason.) It has also dawned on me that perhaps we have slid so far because in many cases parents themselves are not embarrassed by it, or by having their children see it. I have largely cited material which was not LDS for four reasons: (1) I am not currently with my books; (2) to expose our nation’s recent accelerated apostasy in the arts from a heritage they are denying by their own actions; (3) to keep this shorter than it’d otherwise be; and (4) I'd like to go eat now!
There is a deplorable tendency among the people of this nation to sympathize with murderers, bank defaulters, evil adventurers, and a hundred other classes of criminals who are at large or who have been arrested or convicted for breaking the law. Such a tendency is not alone manifest among the people of the various states and territories of our nation, it is also apparent among the Latter-day Saints. This sympathy for criminals is entirely abnormal, and has a tendency to lower and destroy the moral sentiment of any people who indulge in it. For a Latter-day Saint to sympathize either with crime or with criminals, is a burning shame, and it is high time that the teachers of the community should stem such tendency and inculcate a sentiment that would make it extremely abhorrent to commit crime. Young men may please God by thinking right, by acting right, by shunning, as they would destruction, not only every crime, but the spirit either to see or sympathize with the criminal, or to hear or read the details of his damnable acts. It is an old saying, that we are what we think; then, to be a good Latter-day Saint it is necessary to think pure thoughts, to imbibe pure ideas, and to let the mind dwell continually upon the noble things, and the good deeds, and the exalted thoughts of life, discarding all sympathy or interest for crime and criminals, and all thought of evil. The man or woman who will resort to the court room, who will visit criminals with flowers, who will read and constantly discuss every detail of crime, should be condemned, frowned upon, and their actions should be made detestable in the eyes of the pure in heart. When a murderer is condemned, he should be detested, dropped, and forgotten; and so also should criminals of other classes who sin grievously against law and the commandments of God. (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine, 374-375)
President Smith also noted, “I wish . . . to say a word to guard the people from unwise sympathies. While we may have a great deal of love for our fellow beings, and especially for those who have been favored of the Lord in times past, we should exercise that love wisely. . . . It is impossible for me to sympathize with those who do wrong” (CD, 5:212).
As cheerful as the ever-widening spread of the balm of sympathy sounds, there are two flies in the ointment. First, there are few moral concepts as slippery as sympathy. At best, it substitutes indiscriminate niceness for goodness in human affairs. (Niceness is nice, but even a thief can be polite.) At worst, it embraces indiscrimination itself, and erases all boundaries between human beings and every other living thing. In trying to treat every living thing as part of one moral whole, it ends up inverting the entire moral order and the natural order along with it. The outcome is the animal rights activist who, overflowing with sympathy for the chimpanzee, destroys medical research clinics. (Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed up the World and 5 Others That Didn't Help [Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008], 94)
A few years after President Smith, Elder Reed Smoot also commented on this disease:
There are other things, it seems to me, that are sapping the life, at least the spiritual life, of the people of the world, and our communities are affected, somewhat, with the same evil. I have reference to the maudlin, half insane sympathy for the murderer, the unnatural, and the wicked, the desire for sensationalism, the mad rush for pleasure, the desire to become one of the idle rich, or a determination to join the idle poor. I simply have to refer you to a case which has filled the magazines and the press not only in this country but all over the world, and, as far as I can estimate, if the space had been charged for by the daily papers of this country as they charge the business men for the space for advertising, it would amount to a hundred million dollars, or more. I have reference to the Thaw case. Who was Harry Thaw? A man reared in the lap of luxury, a debauchee, a murderer escaping the gallows on the plea of insanity, a man reared in a home where all the luxuries of wealth were given him, but devoid of everything that makes man what God intended him to be. Wasn’t it a spectacle to deplore to see the crowds following him from place to place, from jail to the auto, while he was in Canada; ovation after ovation was given him; women presented him with flowers on every possible occasion, and young girls not out of their teens, stood at the jail begging “Harry” to come to the bars that they might see him. Oh God, have mercy on such deluded people. I remember one case here in Utah when a murderer, sentenced to die, was sent flowers by some of the women of our state. Thank the Lord there were but a few so foolish. I take it that such action can only be indulged in by a person having a diseased mind. There is surely something wrong with them. I do know that there isn’t a spark of the Spirit of God in them. (CR, Oct. 1913, 94-95)
How can we account for this madness? Robert H. Bork wrote, “A violent man in prison will not shoot you, rape you, or crack your skull. There is no reason to be sentimental about a person who commits even one violent or serious crime. Violence is not inflicted through negligence or inadvertence. If the man who was sentenced to ten years served ten years, at least seventy-two people would be spared death, rape, or other serious injury” (Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline [New York, New York: ReganBooks, 1996], 165). One political commentator, whose name and affiliation will go unmentioned (I myself finding him a tad overbearing) gives credit to the conservative camp’s retained values in an accurate assessment: “The justice system today is crawling with ‘experts’ eager to exonerate the most heinous criminals on the grounds that they’re ‘genetically predisposed’ to murder, rape, take drugs, or otherwise endanger the welfare of others; the media fills its airwaves with liberal advocates eager to sympathize with murderers on death row, instead of the families of the innocent victims.”
All too frequently . . . the abolitionist's concern seems to be for the murderer rather than for the murderer's victims. And here it is a consideration of the utmost importance that the death penalty is an absolutely effective deterrent against the perpetration of more murders by the same person. . . . Van den Haag is forced to conclude that advocates of the abolition of the death penalty "think the lives of convicted murderers . . . are more worth preserving than the lives of an indefinite number of innocent victims." He perceives that such persons are not interested in deterrence so much as they are obsessed with the campaign for the abolition of capital punishment.
[quoted:] The intransigence of these committed humanitarians is puzzling as well as inhumane. Passionate ideological commitments have been known to have such effects. These otherwise kind and occasionally reasonable persons do not want to see murderers executed ever--however many innocent lives can be saved thereby. Fiat injustitia, pereat humanitas. [Van den Haag, "Collapse," p. 403.]]
Without the death penalty the unique and inviolable character of the human person is in effect denied, murder is reduced to the level of lesser crimes, and the life of man becomes cheap. (Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Christian Ethics in Secular Society [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1983], 120-121)
This growing trend of enduring, pitying, embracing, and then turning on those who wish to remain innocent of wrongdoing is both insulting and harmful, as one Holocaust survivor wrote:
This mimesis, this identification or imitation, or exchange of roles between oppressor and victim, has provoked much discussion. True and invented, disturbing and banal, acute and stupid things have been said: it is not virgin terrain; on the contrary it is a badly plowed field, trampled and torn up. The film director Liliana Cavani, who was asked to express briefly the meaning of a beautiful and false film of hers, declared: “We are all victims or murderers, and we accept these roles voluntarily. Only Sade and Dostoevsky have really understood this.” . . .
I do not know, and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth. (Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal [New York: Random House, Inc., 1988], 48-49).
Statements from depraved artists like Cavani help bring our entire social structure nigher the abyss of association. (As an aside, notice how beloved Michael Jackson was, even when people can relatively freely admit to his abnormalities . . . all because he was successful, rich, and famous.) As for this queer idea of supporting murderers—the very premise behind secret combinations—present ever since Cain first gloried in his wickedness (Moses 5:31), allow me to say that very few actions could put you any farther from the presence of God. Yet even in Christianity there is confusion about one’s unenviable state in relation to grace upon committing the misdeed.
There are those who profess Christianity, who believe that even the murderer who has imbrued his hands in the blood of his innocent victim may, by saying the words, “I believe in Jesus Christ,” be ushered into the presence of the Redeemer of mankind. This is false doctrine and I am thankful that this people are not deceived by such teachings, but that on the contrary we are placed in a condition to know how we may obtain the blessing of Celestial glory, and not be disappointed. (George Albert Smith, CR, Oct. 1923, 71)
Lorenzo Snow said, “It is a noticeable feature in those who cherish a spirit of apostacy from the light of the Gospel, that they adopt the doctrine of Universalism and think none too wicked for a complete and unconditional salvation” (in Eliza R. Snow Smith, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow [rep. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1999; orig. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Company, Printers, 1884], 31). One can see this original apostasy resulting in the broader apostasy: “As to Redemption, Marcion taught a Gospel of love only. He represented the character of the Supreme God as one of pure benevolence—entirely without justice, a characteristic reserved to his second God. Irenaeus and Tertullian easily refuted this idea, explaining that the true God must possess both the attributes of goodness and justice, or cease to be God. . . . Marcion could not see this principle, nor comprehend the benefits of adversity upon Man. So he taught a gospel of universal love and forgiveness not unlike that taught in some Evangelical churches today” (Richard R. Hopkins, How Greek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God [Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers & Distributors, Inc., 1998], 166-167).
We dare not leave out the love of God and we dare not leave out the doctrine of Hell. Both are certainly true. Therefore they must be capable of reconciliation. The reconciliation must not come in ignoring Hell or believing in a kindly, good-natured God who does not judge severely about moral character and who only cares that His child should stop crying and be happy. We are having too much of this sentimentalism nowadays. It is a miserable misconception of that awful holiness which is “of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” It would never explain the need of Christ dying on the cross to put away sin.
Whatever reconciliation we find here or hereafter it must have at bottom God's unutterable hatred of sin but also God's unutterable love and pain over every sinful soul which He has made. (J. Paterson-Smyth, The Gospel of the Hereafter [New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1910], 188)
A vicious sentimentalism is poisoning the wells. It is in the universities and colleges, the churches, the entertainment industry generally -- movies, television, newspapers, magazines, popular songs—in the wells from which we get our spiritual drink, from which our whole cultural life is irrigated. . . . Sentimentalism is not just a weakness, and is certainly not a virtue—it is confused with mercy—but a crime; and vicious sentimentalism is ordinary sentimentalism raised up in place of principle. . . .
It is not really capital punishment that bothers sentimentalists, though they use it as the cutting edge of their argument. They object to punishment itself; and that is because they deny the existence of justice; and that is because they deny that man is free, that man is responsible for his acts. (John Senior, The Death of Christian Culture [New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1978], 107-108, 110)
Those who constantly invoke the sentiment of “who are we to judge?” should consider the anarchy that would ensue if we adhered to this sentiment in, say, our courtrooms. Should judges judge? What would happen if those sitting on a jury decided to be “nonjudgmental” about rapists and sexual harassers, embezzlers and tax cheats? Without being “judgmental,” Americans would never have put an end to slavery, outlawed child labor, emancipated women, or ushered in the civil rights movement. Nor would we have prevailed against Nazism and Soviet communism, or known how to explain our opposition.
How do we judge a wrong—any wrong whatsoever—when we have gutted the principle of judgment itself? What arguments can be made after we have strip-mined all the arguments of their force, their power, their ability to inspire public outrage? We all know that there are times when we will have to judge others, when it is both right and necessary to judge others. If we do not confront the soft relativism that is now disguised as a virtue, we will find ourselves morally and intellectually disarmed. (William J. Bennett, The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals [New York, New York: The Free Press, 1998], 121).
Paul indicated that love without dissimulation will “abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” (Romans 12:9; see Alma 13:12, 2 Nephi 4:31, Amos 5:15). Charity itself assuredly does not extend its suffering long to movie screenings depicting every species of wickedness, for it “rejoiceth not in iniquity” (Moroni 7:45), and it certainly will not deprive man of his accountability or others of freedom from sin and all its practitioners.
Remnants of pre-apostate Christianity, with which I’ve been acquainting myself further this past year, testify to this: “We consider the looking on at a murder to be nigh to murder itself and forbid ourselves such spectacles” (Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians, trans. Joseph Hugh Crehan [New York, New York: Newman Press, 1955], 76). “Who would fail to be horrified to see at the chariot races the frenzied brawling of the mob, to see at the gladiatorial contests a school in murder? At the theatre, too, this raving madness is undiminished, and the display of indecencies is greater; at one time an actor of farce may describe or represent acts of adultery, at another an effeminate pantomime may stimulate lust by simulating it—he even dishonors your gods by investing them with lovers' sighs, discords, and debauchery; he even induces your tears by feigning suffering with senseless gestures and signs. We can only conclude that murder is what you demand in fact and what you weep at in fiction” (Octavius, the Christian, in Marcus Minucius Felix, The Octavius, trans. G. W. Clarke [New York, New York: Newman Press, 1974], 122-123).
The Roman theater was borrowed from the Greeks, and the favorite dramatic themes were crime, adultery and immorality. . . . Lactantius wrote, “I am inclined to think that the corrupting influence of the stage is even worse [than that of the arena]. The subjects of comedies are the deflowering of virgins or the loves of prostitutes. . . . Similarly, the tragedies parade before the eyes [of the audience] the murder of parents and acts of incest committed by wicked kings. . . . Is the art of the mimes any better? They teach adultery by acting it out. How do we expect our young people to respond when they see that these things are practiced without shame and that everyone eagerly watches.”
Tertullian added, “The father who carefully protects and guards his virgin daughter's ears from every polluting word takes her to the theater himself, exposing her to all its vile language and attitudes.” He asked rhetorically, “How can it be right to look at the things that are wrong to do? How can those things which defile a man when they go out of his mouth not defile him when going in through his eyes and ears?” (Matt. 15:17-20) (David W. Bercot, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up: A New Look at Today's Evangelical Church in the Light of Early Christianity [Henderson, Texas: Scroll Publishing Co., 1989], 39-40).
As for sentiments in relation to lesser (yet grievous) sins than murder, I really squirmed at the sheer volume of inserted grotesqueness in Transformers 2. One individual informed me how uncomfortable they’d felt watching that with their parent present. (One may hope that wasn’t the only reason.) It has also dawned on me that perhaps we have slid so far because in many cases parents themselves are not embarrassed by it, or by having their children see it. I have largely cited material which was not LDS for four reasons: (1) I am not currently with my books; (2) to expose our nation’s recent accelerated apostasy in the arts from a heritage they are denying by their own actions; (3) to keep this shorter than it’d otherwise be; and (4) I'd like to go eat now!
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Well, I never . . .
This blog has been the occasion of offense. A while back, I accepted the friendship of someone through my Goodreads program. A few days ago, I noticed that one of their friends had the kind of qualities I liked in a reading buddy—so I attempted to add him. With extreme rapidity, as I perceive from Google Analytics, someone from that man’s city accessed my blog and spent half an hour or so perusing. Just like that, the first friend severed our Goodreads connection, as though the new contact point--who declined friendship--urged her to flee the weirdo. (Around that time, someone from her location bounced in and out of this blog.) And, no, my knowledge of these circumstances does not in itself make me weird; I multitask fairly quickly, and I’ve always been rather scrupulous about details.
Does my personality appear that toxic or strange? I’m terribly sorry. This doesn’t convey the thousandth part of what I think and feel, nor is the tip of the iceberg always what it seems. Truly, much of who I am has come to personify gritty determination, but scarcely a soul realizes the grace and necessity driving me to it. Indeed, this whole while I am sensing the innate demand that I have a much, much, MUCH thicker skin. Also, avoid the subject as I may, certain rough edges perhaps prove that it is “not good for man to be alone,” as I’d welcome the right sort of softening, feminine acquaintance into my life. Yet one must realize that the last woman I had close spent most of her time making demands or clamping her hand over my mouth lest I should ever say a word in public defense of truth and virtue. I in no way think that she represents the fairer, gentler, better sex, but experience has certainly put me on my guard. While I’m not who I could be, I know I didn’t want to be—should not have been—what she had in mind. Certain experiences are sufficient to remind one in perpetuity that it is better to live out one’s days single than go into spirit-stultifying captivity.
That I often write about somber matters is not an object of dispute. I view my responsibility with public discourse as largely a vehicle toward societal improvement. That I cannot warm people with my smile via electronic text is a major hindrance and alarmingly alters the reception of any message. I have before felt, and do now feel, that someone would be nearly impossibly hard-pressed to find individuals (certainly of credible reputation) who have had unpleasant personal encounters with me. I recall how some people seriously believed Joseph Fielding Smith must beat his children at home, simply because he was very intense with his message. It is also small part of my personality to supply the filler that evidently some desire: reminders that my having great role models does not mean I equate myself to them, and that my describing high gospel expectations does not mean I think I am without fault or authorized to impose them. I nearly always operate on the assumption that people realize I’m mortal, and that I have so much on my mind and tongue, as it is, that I can’t pause to restate the obvious. (It’s a bonus that when people see how absurdly short I am, and how obviously inoffensive, they realize quickly that it’s alright to suppress possible initial misunderstanding.) And if I say something weird, it’s possible I didn’t phrase it right, or that my perspective is really just that different. I love the Lord, I love His gospel, I love the human family. Need I say more?
On a lighter note, since I readily acknowledge among my weaknesses that this blog chronicles my heartache and/or my harshness much more readily than my blessings and gratitude. . . . Provo life has been among the greatest experiences of my life, every time I’ve managed to be here. Here, if I stand at the sidelines of a physical activity that my mortal frame cannot perform, there is no constant confusion at my “aloofness,” total misunderstanding that I might that desperately crave human company—instead, these good people welcome me in, converse lovingly, and extend alternate friendship activities freely. (Speaking in the aggregate, though it's an enormous aggregate in Provo.) I need only poke my head in almost any doorway at the Bountiful Court and I will hear a genuine chorus of welcoming voices calling my name and inviting me in. Not one odd feature of my demeanor and mindset over about six months has deterred them from the perfect bond of charity. I count myself fortunate to have acquired so many fast friends in such a small space of time and condensed geographical location. I also count the unreal distance and communication barriers (in addition to incorrect virtual familiarity) created by the Internet as all the more dangerous. So, hmph!!! :-)
Does my personality appear that toxic or strange? I’m terribly sorry. This doesn’t convey the thousandth part of what I think and feel, nor is the tip of the iceberg always what it seems. Truly, much of who I am has come to personify gritty determination, but scarcely a soul realizes the grace and necessity driving me to it. Indeed, this whole while I am sensing the innate demand that I have a much, much, MUCH thicker skin. Also, avoid the subject as I may, certain rough edges perhaps prove that it is “not good for man to be alone,” as I’d welcome the right sort of softening, feminine acquaintance into my life. Yet one must realize that the last woman I had close spent most of her time making demands or clamping her hand over my mouth lest I should ever say a word in public defense of truth and virtue. I in no way think that she represents the fairer, gentler, better sex, but experience has certainly put me on my guard. While I’m not who I could be, I know I didn’t want to be—should not have been—what she had in mind. Certain experiences are sufficient to remind one in perpetuity that it is better to live out one’s days single than go into spirit-stultifying captivity.
That I often write about somber matters is not an object of dispute. I view my responsibility with public discourse as largely a vehicle toward societal improvement. That I cannot warm people with my smile via electronic text is a major hindrance and alarmingly alters the reception of any message. I have before felt, and do now feel, that someone would be nearly impossibly hard-pressed to find individuals (certainly of credible reputation) who have had unpleasant personal encounters with me. I recall how some people seriously believed Joseph Fielding Smith must beat his children at home, simply because he was very intense with his message. It is also small part of my personality to supply the filler that evidently some desire: reminders that my having great role models does not mean I equate myself to them, and that my describing high gospel expectations does not mean I think I am without fault or authorized to impose them. I nearly always operate on the assumption that people realize I’m mortal, and that I have so much on my mind and tongue, as it is, that I can’t pause to restate the obvious. (It’s a bonus that when people see how absurdly short I am, and how obviously inoffensive, they realize quickly that it’s alright to suppress possible initial misunderstanding.) And if I say something weird, it’s possible I didn’t phrase it right, or that my perspective is really just that different. I love the Lord, I love His gospel, I love the human family. Need I say more?
On a lighter note, since I readily acknowledge among my weaknesses that this blog chronicles my heartache and/or my harshness much more readily than my blessings and gratitude. . . . Provo life has been among the greatest experiences of my life, every time I’ve managed to be here. Here, if I stand at the sidelines of a physical activity that my mortal frame cannot perform, there is no constant confusion at my “aloofness,” total misunderstanding that I might that desperately crave human company—instead, these good people welcome me in, converse lovingly, and extend alternate friendship activities freely. (Speaking in the aggregate, though it's an enormous aggregate in Provo.) I need only poke my head in almost any doorway at the Bountiful Court and I will hear a genuine chorus of welcoming voices calling my name and inviting me in. Not one odd feature of my demeanor and mindset over about six months has deterred them from the perfect bond of charity. I count myself fortunate to have acquired so many fast friends in such a small space of time and condensed geographical location. I also count the unreal distance and communication barriers (in addition to incorrect virtual familiarity) created by the Internet as all the more dangerous. So, hmph!!! :-)
Saturday, March 28, 2009
“Shall we not go on in so great a cause?”
I have no excuse for failing in the tasks apportioned to me (by our Father in heaven, that is). I’ll start the topic rolling with a theme drawn from Elder Featherstone, buttressed by the context in which he told it: “No matter how valid, an excuse never changes performance” (Commitment [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982], 39). Someone once told me that this quote meant nothing at all—I think they didn’t like the implications, intended more to motivate preparation and persistence (and probably honesty) than to condemn the anticipated falling short. Who is not challenged by God’s answer to Joseph Smith’s suffering? This is a superlative example, something I can always hold up at times when other rationales fail, inasmuch as it’s not entirely an explanation, but it should be a consolation, or at the very least a confirmation in the right. Like the Job account, it is almost “confrontational.”
Aside from the suffering undergone by our perfect Exemplar and Savior, to the end that we might be “left without excuse,” inasmuch as he will save “as many as” act in accordance with faith in Him (see John 1:11-12, with D&C 45:8-9), I think of the undaunted perseverance of another group. To that end, I quote one of my favorite lines: “We have been called to pass through trials many times, and I do not think we should complain, because if we had no trials we should hardly feel at home in the other world in the company of the Prophets and Apostles who were sawn asunder, crucified, etc., for the word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ” (Wilford Woodruff, JD, 23:328). Elder Maxwell helps to make this contemporary:
In many times and ways, President Hinckley taught that we did not come to this world to fail. Something upon which I almost dwell overmuch is that in taking up the cross (Matt. 10:38-39 and 16:24, JST, and especially the daily nature of JST Luke 9:23-25) and denying ourselves all ungodliness and the things of this world, we find joy (2 Nephi 9:18). Furthermore, there's nothing startling about trials specifically and abundantly arising from adherence to God's ways (see 1 Peter 4:12-14). This subject is set off finely by Thomas a Kempis, in one of my favorite books:
The only part which might lack doctrinal strength is in the word “seekest,” and perhaps its sole presumption of misery. I always was a sober child in some respects—but a hilarious one in others—and I think this is often misunderstood. To this day, I continually throw my hands up in frustration when trying to describe my worldview to one of my roommates; I think the problem is that we’re operating from different definitions of peace and joy, or he at least thinks I really don’t understand what it is. Christ does not give peace as the world gives it, therefore I do not expect tranquility and ease, though the difficult spiritual path bestows peace in ways one might easily call “unspeakable and full of glory,” or indescribable. I honestly don’t find peace and joy in many of the singles social scenes that he thinks might enliven my life. ;-) Nor do I altogether avoid them in an insane, imbalanced fashion. Even Confucius grasped the necessity of the hardened mindset:
What gives me unworldly pause to no end is the curious blend of the martial and the spiritual in my heritage, and to a great extent in my own personality. Is this truly a paradox, or perhaps well suited to many times and circumstances? To clarify the previous paragraph, President Benson put it so very well: “We need not solicit persecution, but neither should we remain silent in the presence of overwhelming evils, for this makes cowards of men. We should not go out of the path of duty to pick up a cross there is no need to bear, but neither should we sidestep a cross that clearly lies within the path of duty.” What sane man would rejoice in persecution for persecution’s sake? On the other hand, what God-fearing man would NOT rejoice (Acts 5:29, 41) in persecution “for righteousness’ sake” (Matt. 5:10)? This unsolicited societal rejection comes, as President Woodruff promised, not because one has sought persecution but because one has sought the gospel lifestyle, because “no man can live the celestial law without bringing upon his head persecution” (JD, 22:209).
We have been exhorted in various ways to reflect on the fact that the eyes of all generations that have gone before are upon those of this present age. Apart even from the examples of the apostles and saints of old, I think often of yet another group. How can I find any situation too difficult, when my own kindred have passed through such an ordeal before? My Huguenot ancestors, upon whom I fondly reflect, were martyrs in the truest sense of the word. This is verified by the fact that the only family member (of those captured) who recanted got to go home and did not die with the remainder. President Spencer W. Kimball explains:
It’s ironic that I admired the Christian martyrs years before learning of my descent from some. I have also increasingly learned that I did not overestimate my family’s commitment to principle in the past when referring to Swinsons as perpetual “minute men.” This past week I’ve examined more closely the efforts of distant cousins to expand knowledge of my father’s lineage. Their work verifies that Swinsons serve the United States out of all proportion to their numbers. (One researcher has a great picture, and attitude, that you can access by clicking here.)
I already knew that records placed William Swinson at White Plains with Washington’s army, and that he reenlisted for a lengthy period. What I did not know was that he died “while in service,” and, more importantly, information provided in a deposition placed him squarely in continuous service throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey beginning at least as early as 1777. I cannot assert his presence in 1776, thanks to a peculiarity of the record-keeping and an innate sense of personal forbearance. Another sworn statement shows that William was in charge of provisions.
The point is that he served many years until his death, firmly establishing the Swinson tradition of being career military men. My cousins’ probing in the British Public Records Office turned up a document showing that he was among 534 North Carolina militiamen paroled on March 15, 1781, following the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. (His regular term of service had expired, but he did not stop fighting.) My direct ancestor, Richard Swinson III, who served modestly and briefly in North Carolina during the Revolution, later inherited his brother’s bounty land for war service. Hence one might say that, like so many others, William died although he had “received not the promise” (Hebrews 11:39), as the promise was not what held him to his performance!
I would consider myself blessed if in very deed my life were at the “disposal” of my coreligionists and countrymen, if in any way I could assist anyone in pursuit of the ultimate aims of life, God qualifying me for such. What’s more, I’m not exclusive in my friendship, but no one can expect to seriously date me who rebukes, stifles, or otherwise fails to appreciate this intensity. ;-) (Speaking in the direction of seeking those virtues we deem most valuable.) Our family zeal has not been diluted yet, and I won’t be the one to do it! I hold these beliefs firmly and independently, and not just by virtue of birth. Still, remember what President Hinckley said about not being a weak link in the chain....
The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever. (D&C 122:8-9)
Aside from the suffering undergone by our perfect Exemplar and Savior, to the end that we might be “left without excuse,” inasmuch as he will save “as many as” act in accordance with faith in Him (see John 1:11-12, with D&C 45:8-9), I think of the undaunted perseverance of another group. To that end, I quote one of my favorite lines: “We have been called to pass through trials many times, and I do not think we should complain, because if we had no trials we should hardly feel at home in the other world in the company of the Prophets and Apostles who were sawn asunder, crucified, etc., for the word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ” (Wilford Woodruff, JD, 23:328). Elder Maxwell helps to make this contemporary:
Actually, brothers and sisters, Jesus is already victorious in the greatest battle anyway: “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33; emphasis added). . . .
Ironically, as the restored Church comes “out of obscurity,” what seem to be stern challenges will actually disclose further the distinctiveness of the Church (D&C 1:30). Nevertheless, matching our behavior more closely with our beliefs will bring relentless reminders about the ongoing duties of discipleship. . . .
With scriptures to anchor and reassure us, we, too, can “look unto God . . . and he will console [us] in [our] afflictions” (Jacob 3:1; emphasis added).
We, too, can be “supported under trials and troubles of every kind, yea, . . . he will still deliver [us]” (see Alma 36:3, 27; emphasis added).
For the Lord has said: “I will be in your midst” (D&C 49:27). “I will lead you along” (D&C 78:18). . . .
Whether in tranquil or turbulent times, our best source of comfort is the Comforter. . . .
Regarding trials, including of our faith and patience, there are no exemptions—only variations (see Mosiah 23:21). . . . The faithful will not be totally immune from the events on this planet. Thus the courageous attitudes of imperiled Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego are worthy of emulation. They knew that God could rescue them. “But if not,” they vowed, they would still serve God anyway (see Daniel 3:16-18). Similarly, keeping the unfashionable but imperative first and seventh commandments can reflect the courage which three young women displayed anciently; they said no with their lives (see Abraham 1:11).
Therefore, we can be troubled on every side, but nothing can really separate us from the love of Christ (see 2 Corinthians 4:8; Romans 8:35-39); worldly anxieties are not part of being “anxiously engaged” (D&C 58:27). Even so, as Peter urged, we can and should cast our cares upon the Lord, because He surely cares for us! (see 1 Peter 5:7). . . .
Unless we are filled with resolve, what will we say to the heroes and heroines of Martin’s Cove and the Sweetwater? That “we admire you, but we are reluctant to wade through our own rivers of chilling adversity”?
Brothers and sisters, by divine appointment, “these are [our] days” (Helaman 7:9), since “all things must come to pass in their time” (D&C 64:32). Moreover, though we live in a failing world, we have not been sent here to fail. (Ensign, Nov. 2002, 16-17)
In many times and ways, President Hinckley taught that we did not come to this world to fail. Something upon which I almost dwell overmuch is that in taking up the cross (Matt. 10:38-39 and 16:24, JST, and especially the daily nature of JST Luke 9:23-25) and denying ourselves all ungodliness and the things of this world, we find joy (2 Nephi 9:18). Furthermore, there's nothing startling about trials specifically and abundantly arising from adherence to God's ways (see 1 Peter 4:12-14). This subject is set off finely by Thomas a Kempis, in one of my favorite books:
Which of the saints in the world hath been without the cross and tribulation? . . .
The whole life of Christ was a cross and a martyrdom, and dost thou seek for thyself rest and joy? Thou art wrong, thou art wrong, if thou seekest aught but to suffer tribulations, for this whole mortal life is full of miseries, and set round with crosses. And the higher a man hath advanced in the spirit, the heavier crosses he will often find, because the sorrow of his banishment increaseth with the strength of his love. (The Imitation of Christ, trans. Rev. William Benham [New York: P F Collier & Son Company, 1909], 264-265)
The only part which might lack doctrinal strength is in the word “seekest,” and perhaps its sole presumption of misery. I always was a sober child in some respects—but a hilarious one in others—and I think this is often misunderstood. To this day, I continually throw my hands up in frustration when trying to describe my worldview to one of my roommates; I think the problem is that we’re operating from different definitions of peace and joy, or he at least thinks I really don’t understand what it is. Christ does not give peace as the world gives it, therefore I do not expect tranquility and ease, though the difficult spiritual path bestows peace in ways one might easily call “unspeakable and full of glory,” or indescribable. I honestly don’t find peace and joy in many of the singles social scenes that he thinks might enliven my life. ;-) Nor do I altogether avoid them in an insane, imbalanced fashion. Even Confucius grasped the necessity of the hardened mindset:
If a man remembers what is right at the sight of profit, is ready to lay down his life in the face of danger, and does not forget sentiments he has repeated all his life even when he has been in straitened circumstances for a long time, he may be said to be a complete man. (Analects, XIV.12)
What gives me unworldly pause to no end is the curious blend of the martial and the spiritual in my heritage, and to a great extent in my own personality. Is this truly a paradox, or perhaps well suited to many times and circumstances? To clarify the previous paragraph, President Benson put it so very well: “We need not solicit persecution, but neither should we remain silent in the presence of overwhelming evils, for this makes cowards of men. We should not go out of the path of duty to pick up a cross there is no need to bear, but neither should we sidestep a cross that clearly lies within the path of duty.” What sane man would rejoice in persecution for persecution’s sake? On the other hand, what God-fearing man would NOT rejoice (Acts 5:29, 41) in persecution “for righteousness’ sake” (Matt. 5:10)? This unsolicited societal rejection comes, as President Woodruff promised, not because one has sought persecution but because one has sought the gospel lifestyle, because “no man can live the celestial law without bringing upon his head persecution” (JD, 22:209).
We have been exhorted in various ways to reflect on the fact that the eyes of all generations that have gone before are upon those of this present age. Apart even from the examples of the apostles and saints of old, I think often of yet another group. How can I find any situation too difficult, when my own kindred have passed through such an ordeal before? My Huguenot ancestors, upon whom I fondly reflect, were martyrs in the truest sense of the word. This is verified by the fact that the only family member (of those captured) who recanted got to go home and did not die with the remainder. President Spencer W. Kimball explains:
Into the pattern of martyrdom comes the voluntary phase. In every instance the martyr could have saved his life by renouncing his program. . . .
Joseph Smith did not want to die. He had so much to live for, with his family, his friends, with his interest in the expanding kingdom, and he was still a young man, but though he hoped and prayed that the cup could pass, he knew it was inevitable. . . .
But martyrs do not die. They live on and on. (TSWK, 180-181)
It’s ironic that I admired the Christian martyrs years before learning of my descent from some. I have also increasingly learned that I did not overestimate my family’s commitment to principle in the past when referring to Swinsons as perpetual “minute men.” This past week I’ve examined more closely the efforts of distant cousins to expand knowledge of my father’s lineage. Their work verifies that Swinsons serve the United States out of all proportion to their numbers. (One researcher has a great picture, and attitude, that you can access by clicking here.)
I already knew that records placed William Swinson at White Plains with Washington’s army, and that he reenlisted for a lengthy period. What I did not know was that he died “while in service,” and, more importantly, information provided in a deposition placed him squarely in continuous service throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey beginning at least as early as 1777. I cannot assert his presence in 1776, thanks to a peculiarity of the record-keeping and an innate sense of personal forbearance. Another sworn statement shows that William was in charge of provisions.
The point is that he served many years until his death, firmly establishing the Swinson tradition of being career military men. My cousins’ probing in the British Public Records Office turned up a document showing that he was among 534 North Carolina militiamen paroled on March 15, 1781, following the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. (His regular term of service had expired, but he did not stop fighting.) My direct ancestor, Richard Swinson III, who served modestly and briefly in North Carolina during the Revolution, later inherited his brother’s bounty land for war service. Hence one might say that, like so many others, William died although he had “received not the promise” (Hebrews 11:39), as the promise was not what held him to his performance!
I would consider myself blessed if in very deed my life were at the “disposal” of my coreligionists and countrymen, if in any way I could assist anyone in pursuit of the ultimate aims of life, God qualifying me for such. What’s more, I’m not exclusive in my friendship, but no one can expect to seriously date me who rebukes, stifles, or otherwise fails to appreciate this intensity. ;-) (Speaking in the direction of seeking those virtues we deem most valuable.) Our family zeal has not been diluted yet, and I won’t be the one to do it! I hold these beliefs firmly and independently, and not just by virtue of birth. Still, remember what President Hinckley said about not being a weak link in the chain....
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Checking in
I feel to apologize to anyone who has ever experienced the doorstep scene of dating with me. Don’t worry—it was at least twice as awkward for me. At no time is my height driven home to me more forcibly than at that particular moment, which has often been the reason I dread the end of a date! Anyway, one can imagine that I’m very reserved. A handshake would be a sign of respect, not that the absence of one is a sign of disrespect. Dates are subject to such a wide variety of unpredictable circumstance.
Lately I’ve been trying to describe to myself how I feel about efforts to focus. It goes something like this: I have no past but that which enriches and instructs, no present but sorrowing for the sins of the world and the acts to which this moves me, and no future but the duty to which my heart longs to be faithful.
This was truly terse, no?
Lately I’ve been trying to describe to myself how I feel about efforts to focus. It goes something like this: I have no past but that which enriches and instructs, no present but sorrowing for the sins of the world and the acts to which this moves me, and no future but the duty to which my heart longs to be faithful.
This was truly terse, no?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
This warfare we call DATING: one big soapbox for one little guy
For several months, I’ve enjoyed living in the BYU culture again. In the final analysis, as I was able to share with someone there, this is the best, brightest, and kindest aggregate I can find anywhere, even if somewhat young. For that very reason, I hope that the following observations about the single life will not sound—against their actual origin—scornful, derisive, upset, or bitter...you know, the usual host of expected emotions. This would not be so much on my mind were I not amused and saddened at witnessing the familiar social patterns.
This is not to say that I was ever any good at old style dating, either, but I’m astonished at the rapidity of its passing. What a difference just the last decade has made! With increasing frequency, I learn from young women that they have only been on a handful of dates in their lives, and far too many have never been on any at all. Just as one is prepared to berate all the men for dereliction of duty, we hear discouraging tales from their side of mind-bogglingly strange behaviors in the better half (a quite literal image in my apartment complex). Family life and their mothers’ examples in no way prepared the poor men to interpret these quixotic quirks, the majority of which, I’m sorry to say, would contravene the avowed goal of marriage—I’m not just saying marriage to undesired suitors, but marriage EVER.
I follow several cynical blogs where each side tries to counsel the other. One of the major problems? They’re trying to prop up a system that even prophets are now informing us has seen its demise (see, for instance, Dallin H. Oaks, Ensign, June 2006, 10-16), certainly not to be replaced by anything better. It would seem to me that most of its worst features have been preserved and nearly everything else has fallen out.
Good people everywhere are retreating, reminiscent of the oft-quoted Yeats line: “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” To whom do they leave the embattled expanse? Well, I see a lot of predatory figures (mostly male), contributing to a growing volume of horrible dating stories. These cretins strike over and over again. Still others are yet in the field because they are playful at heart, but this too often contributes little to the benefit of the race. In escaping all injury themselves, they dance in every direction but toward the target. This tends to be injurious to others who appreciate the gravity of the situation. As with any field of human endeavor, there’s a group of incompetent nincompoops. I also discern a body of courageous souls, determined to do what’s right and necessary. If I honestly believed that the outcome of dating depended upon courage and/or persistence alone, you would see me fighting my way through until life’s end, heedless of all past trauma (and in keeping with President Hunter’s rather direct counsel on that matter of holding dismay, based on past experience, in abeyance). I seriously like to think I’m not afraid to face anything needful, but this particular topic certainly evokes unpleasant feelings within me.
Dating as it is presently constituted more nearly resembles a battlefield of uncertain dimensions, filled with smoke, tumult, and violent, pervasive, deadly mortar fire. Another difficulty is that the objective is indeterminate through the confusion. We think we know where this could lead, but experience teaches us that “success” (i.e., marriage?) may apparently be obtained with at least equal facility through any number of alternative approaches, all of which nonetheless hinge on that elusive principle of timing. There is simply no good intelligence on the enemy’s strength and position, and linking up with our ally is the challenge of the situation. Knowing this, to advance carelessly would blight any commander’s record, but to remain paralyzed with fear will never do. I definitely would not advocate “hanging out” in the midst of this barrage. I’ve been woefully misunderstood if anything I say here is construed as cause for retreat. I don’t really believe in retreat, though I do recommend that one save their desperate actions for such time as their backs truly are against the wall. I believe very little even in feigned retreats, in most cases, as those all too easily become the very rout you were pretending to have.
Additionally, I don’t claim love is a battlefield. Dating is a battlefield, where one finds little of love, respect, or even of “friendship,” much-used though the phrase might be. When you do discover those qualities, you’re probably sensing victory. At one time, my father offered warning counsel that “love shouldn’t feel like that.” Love should only hurt for the other person . . . not from them—at least not often, and not for long, if they are at all serious about being with you in the eternities. In this arena, we’ve seen some heavy casualties as a result of misidentification of friend and foe.“Friendly fire” is also a complete oxymoron, yet hopefully of shorter duration. Knowing when to hold your fire is among the most valuable of skills.
I affirm most daringly from my “wizened” (read “old and cantankerous”) perspective that the essential assumption of risk for progression can hardly be applied to advancing indelicately into that fray. My mother, who knows me best and in this regard knows what’s best for me personally, has applied the humorous definition of insanity to my leading a headlong charge into that swirling void: “insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.” War is not a game, and neither is collecting wounds in the fervent hope that acquisition of enough of them will somehow eventually confer access to the companionship we desire. Believe me, I know. We create ourselves, not others. The most maddening part of this process is that we must instinctively/adaptively know what we are looking for without prejudicially predetermining exactly what we are looking for. May I make some rather forward observations from the forward observation post? I would not say a word to deter one from this fight, but it’d be nice to see people go out better prepared for victory (or loss) with valor.
First, we must learn how to look. We as members often talk about looking deeper into the soul when dating, but continue to do little to develop that ability. I love to quote Bytheway on this because he certainly tapped into this need before the groundswell became apparent:
Perhaps I should back up and discuss how to be, which will enact the change in perspective noted above. Rather than stopping short with satisfaction upon asking, “Are they Mormon?”, perhaps we should strive to know what kind of Mormon they are. (What’s more, we should be at least as scrutinizing with ourselves continually.) Among other things, charity “rejoiceth in the truth” (Moroni 7:45), or the knowledge of things “as they really are, and . . . as they really will be” (Jacob 4:13; see D&C 93:24). That is one reason why, as President Hinckley said, “The girl you marry will take a terrible chance on you.” To continue:
In the face of worsening statistics, such that I understand as many as half of the young men (at BYU) are afflicted with the plague of pornography, my bishop advised the young women that they had the right to ask searching questions when getting more serious with the men. I’d in no way deny those who struggle their own dating opportunities (once the Atonement cleanses their lives), but it sure is a shame to see so many problems arising from their involvement in the dating scene while many worthy men are sidelined. I’ve seen one sad little Facebook group, “BYU Boys Aren’t Quite What I Hoped For.” This is crowded with girls who aren’t quite what we hoped for, either. When it comes to dating . . . well, seldom have I seen such an unbridgeable gap between expectation and action. Are the ladies asking the right questions (e.g., President Woodruff’s recommended “Is he a man of God?”) before committing their hearts? Do we all constantly reappraise in that sort of light? In one of his classic talks, Elder Bednar placed the urgent need for discernment in this very context, describing beautifully how everyone can benefit from its protection.
One of the most helpful restorations to scripture is the JST for Matthew 7:1-2. Elder Oaks has commented at length on its application to intermediate judgment calls we must constantly make in life. Our own Master of Life and Salvation, of whom it was said in prediction that “there is no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2) does not judge “after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears” (Isaiah 11:3) but with superior spiritual vision. I have actually had others in the past discredit the possibility of my receiving insight into someone’s soul by proximal contact, when the scriptures are replete with examples of God protecting people by just such a method. The consistency of people discounting my goals in this respect very nearly overturned my track in life, when they overrode my internal reactions by insisting that I ought to be interested in someone. Now not even a girl herself can convince me to like her contrary to my own sentiments. Or dissuade me from liking her! ;-)
I sometimes wonder—since you know it’s going on—how many times girls have entertained future church leaders unawares. By this, I generically mean the strength of the Church in coming days, though extending it to the upper echelons really enlarges that food for thought. Think about it; are the ranks of the general authorities filled with elitist intellectuals or vacuous-minded pretty boys? Can you imagine President Monson’s wife saying that she wanted him to ask her out because he was so “ripped”? Or that he had a bit of a bad boy wild side in him? No. He was an authentic nice guy who did what the Lord expected of him. What’s more, he was what she was looking for, and vice versa. In so many cases, though, I see people dismissed for implausible reasons, if one were simply to view people the way God sees them. I doubt the fact that a guy sings too loudly, or laughs oddly, or that a girl has extra pounds, etc. is of any significance to He who reigns in the heavens. Several years ago, one of the kinder guys I've met had a hopeless crush on the roommate of a girl I was dating. It was ever so painful to watch her send him packing, essentially because he had a hand tremor.
One World War II veteran, and Medal of Honor recipient, expresses a portion of what I'm relating about character going ignored because of the flesh. Ralph Neppel was the only survivor in his machine gun emplacement after taking a direct tank hit which threw him 10 yards. With one leg missing and the other reduced to a stump, he dragged himself painfully the entire distance back to his gun to wipe out the infantry support for that tank. He tells people, "Everybody's handicapped in some way. In some of us it just shows more." Who, if granted the insight which sets aside outward appearance, would prefer a date in serious need of cleansing of the inward vessel over someone who has the intestinal fortitude to defend their faith and family against any onslaught?
I introduce the example of Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s courtship, which contains sweet elements concerning interaction and expectation that I personally have seldom witnessed in the past decade, as our world becomes ever more fixated on the perishable things. Keep in mind that throughout his earlier school days, Elder Maxwell also suffered from disfiguring acne and the social stigma from raising pigs.
Now, to return to a few of the unpleasant realities of present day and present circumstances. It’s my assumption that even dispensation heads might have difficulty finding dates in the current climate. Joseph Smith might not pass the demanding “career test” or, worse still, the popularity test. Emma’s parents didn’t even approve of him, and the community certainly didn’t. Two other great men might not stand up to the initial conversational requirements of rapid-fire ward mingling. Enoch replied to God, “[I] am but a lad, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech” (Moses 6:31). Is it possible that the man who “led the people of God, and their enemies came to battle against them; and he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled . . .” (Moses 7:13), and on whose account “all men were offended” (Moses 6:37) might have earlier flinched a great deal at the battle of dating? Moses also (after someone of no inconsiderable strength, as demonstrated in JST Exodus 4:24-26, had seen fit to marry him) pled that he was “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10), which many commentators have taken to mean that he stuttered. This might have helped him become “very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3), another virtue not terribly prized on the competitive scene. I’m also reminded of Mormon’s concern about his awkwardness in writing (a reversal of the brother of Jared’s ability, verifying that our weaknesses come in all shapes and sizes) in Ether 12:25-26.
Sometimes, when I feel the atmosphere of a room change, with girls and guys eying each other for forthcoming conversation, I’m reminded of school days where I know I won’t be chosen for the basketball team. I can usually make myself laugh by picturing that they’re stocking their side with the tallest, but what if they suddenly learned instead that the near future contains a limbo competition? Just the other night I dreamed that I was being herded away from the others by Gestapo agents. I awakened with the perfect insight that “dating is Darwinian.” And Darwinian runs in opposition in every way to God, who creates things spiritually before temporally. Imagine if we dealt with people in such terms! I shocked my roommates once by proclaiming, truthfully, as we might about anyone, that “if I have no spiritual identity, I’m not fit to live.” When the inane question is posed, “Why aren’t you married?” I can say, “In the past, because of gross character mismatch; at present, because I’m short,” which is to say that in 2007 I was thrown back onto the field where innate qualities are overlooked in favor of the irrelevant.
As for meekness, it almost seems as though a certain amount of arrogant braggadocio is demanded by the dating superstructure. I was horribly offended once upon a time when a class on friendshipping methods more or less posited that only extraverts and “players” can find companions. What this world needs is not more men whose voice is always and loudly heard, but men whose voices will always be heard on the side of what’s right. (Had the class only asserted that men are still required to take the initiative, I would not have faulted it.) Why do girls—and I don’t know whether the guys do it in return—come up with seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to justify themselves when ruling someone out? Do they not realize that men should not be everlastingly, boastingly lassoing the moon? Given a shred of hope as to WHY we ought to do something, then you will see some performance. Any gentleman awaits proper invitation.
Recently one of my roommates remarked that he could tell I would cross the Sahara for a certain girl. At the time, I had an acute injury to the posterior region, so I told them that I would slide on my rump the whole way too, IF ONLY I had her specific request to do so. We can ill afford to expend all our energies trying to please everyone on matters of passing importance in the big picture, though. I don’t believe in competing; in reality, in at least some areas there is simply no competition, but if the girl feels the need to scientifically or otherwise unreasonably compare and contrast, I refuse to submit to such a procedure—yet another reason that I don’t infringe when a girl of exceeding interest is strangely absorbed in another man, to the exclusion of varying possibilities. I will repeat this thought again, as it’s essentially the crux of my entire argument: we need God’s perspective on “dating,” and we will perish if trapped in tunnel vision.
I prepare to close by utilizing a quotation I shared with others on Sunday, followed by two more that seem appropriately linked.
In many instances, these times call for unconventional warfare. Some of my dated journalistic thoughts from 2003 about the terrain: “I can be an intensely active member without subjecting myself to competitions the very rules of which torment me. Not all that is religious is social, and by all means not all that is social is religious. . . . I play more by the LIMITS it [dating society] has set, though, than any particular RULES.” Again, pray do not think me hypocritical and inquire, “How’s that working for you?” ;-) I still won’t adopt lesser methods. General Ulysses S. “Unconditional Surrender” Grant was NOT noted for avoiding peril and losses, but he DID know where and when to commit troops, gaining the advantage where others did not so much as perceive an opportunity. (Is the bolded word too subtle for dating application?) He, as a great general, knew to hit fast and hard in the time and place of one’s own choosing. Opposing forces must not dictate the terms to us; we must act and not merely be acted upon. (I realize that this portion is largely directed to the men, but women have their own peculiar gifts for deflecting, accepting, withholding, and insinuating in ways nigh unto action. It is also the actions off the field that set the stage for successful execution on it.)
We cannot afford a charge like that in the (heavily edited) Last Samurai, where men rode to their deaths knowing full well that their old code would be cut to ribbons by the up-to-date, cold, and calculating weaponry. If I thought occasion called for it, then I'd be the first to say saddle up and let’s go! We must practically assess our foe at every opportunity, while refusing to descend to its level. Let us call upon our Supreme Commander, the Lord of Hosts, for strength beyond strength of arms. Let us not be softened up or driven back. We need hardy men to reconnoiter the place, as well as more women of resolve to secure and beautify the other parts of the zone, assisting men in recognizing an area worth striking out for in spite of all hazards. Men are not the foe and women are not the foe, though we have occasionally been pitted against each other by the enemy of our souls. When in unison, they are a force to be reckoned with. “Neither man nor woman can rise to the highest possible destiny, alone; righteous men and women constitute the Church of Christ. There is no sex-war among the Latter-day Saints” (John A. Widtsoe, MS, 94:136; see Doctrines of Salvation, 3:142-143).
Who is on the Lord’s side?
This is not to say that I was ever any good at old style dating, either, but I’m astonished at the rapidity of its passing. What a difference just the last decade has made! With increasing frequency, I learn from young women that they have only been on a handful of dates in their lives, and far too many have never been on any at all. Just as one is prepared to berate all the men for dereliction of duty, we hear discouraging tales from their side of mind-bogglingly strange behaviors in the better half (a quite literal image in my apartment complex). Family life and their mothers’ examples in no way prepared the poor men to interpret these quixotic quirks, the majority of which, I’m sorry to say, would contravene the avowed goal of marriage—I’m not just saying marriage to undesired suitors, but marriage EVER.
I follow several cynical blogs where each side tries to counsel the other. One of the major problems? They’re trying to prop up a system that even prophets are now informing us has seen its demise (see, for instance, Dallin H. Oaks, Ensign, June 2006, 10-16), certainly not to be replaced by anything better. It would seem to me that most of its worst features have been preserved and nearly everything else has fallen out.
Good people everywhere are retreating, reminiscent of the oft-quoted Yeats line: “The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” To whom do they leave the embattled expanse? Well, I see a lot of predatory figures (mostly male), contributing to a growing volume of horrible dating stories. These cretins strike over and over again. Still others are yet in the field because they are playful at heart, but this too often contributes little to the benefit of the race. In escaping all injury themselves, they dance in every direction but toward the target. This tends to be injurious to others who appreciate the gravity of the situation. As with any field of human endeavor, there’s a group of incompetent nincompoops. I also discern a body of courageous souls, determined to do what’s right and necessary. If I honestly believed that the outcome of dating depended upon courage and/or persistence alone, you would see me fighting my way through until life’s end, heedless of all past trauma (and in keeping with President Hunter’s rather direct counsel on that matter of holding dismay, based on past experience, in abeyance). I seriously like to think I’m not afraid to face anything needful, but this particular topic certainly evokes unpleasant feelings within me.
Dating as it is presently constituted more nearly resembles a battlefield of uncertain dimensions, filled with smoke, tumult, and violent, pervasive, deadly mortar fire. Another difficulty is that the objective is indeterminate through the confusion. We think we know where this could lead, but experience teaches us that “success” (i.e., marriage?) may apparently be obtained with at least equal facility through any number of alternative approaches, all of which nonetheless hinge on that elusive principle of timing. There is simply no good intelligence on the enemy’s strength and position, and linking up with our ally is the challenge of the situation. Knowing this, to advance carelessly would blight any commander’s record, but to remain paralyzed with fear will never do. I definitely would not advocate “hanging out” in the midst of this barrage. I’ve been woefully misunderstood if anything I say here is construed as cause for retreat. I don’t really believe in retreat, though I do recommend that one save their desperate actions for such time as their backs truly are against the wall. I believe very little even in feigned retreats, in most cases, as those all too easily become the very rout you were pretending to have.
Additionally, I don’t claim love is a battlefield. Dating is a battlefield, where one finds little of love, respect, or even of “friendship,” much-used though the phrase might be. When you do discover those qualities, you’re probably sensing victory. At one time, my father offered warning counsel that “love shouldn’t feel like that.” Love should only hurt for the other person . . . not from them—at least not often, and not for long, if they are at all serious about being with you in the eternities. In this arena, we’ve seen some heavy casualties as a result of misidentification of friend and foe.“Friendly fire” is also a complete oxymoron, yet hopefully of shorter duration. Knowing when to hold your fire is among the most valuable of skills.
I affirm most daringly from my “wizened” (read “old and cantankerous”) perspective that the essential assumption of risk for progression can hardly be applied to advancing indelicately into that fray. My mother, who knows me best and in this regard knows what’s best for me personally, has applied the humorous definition of insanity to my leading a headlong charge into that swirling void: “insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.” War is not a game, and neither is collecting wounds in the fervent hope that acquisition of enough of them will somehow eventually confer access to the companionship we desire. Believe me, I know. We create ourselves, not others. The most maddening part of this process is that we must instinctively/adaptively know what we are looking for without prejudicially predetermining exactly what we are looking for. May I make some rather forward observations from the forward observation post? I would not say a word to deter one from this fight, but it’d be nice to see people go out better prepared for victory (or loss) with valor.
First, we must learn how to look. We as members often talk about looking deeper into the soul when dating, but continue to do little to develop that ability. I love to quote Bytheway on this because he certainly tapped into this need before the groundswell became apparent:
When a teenage girl looks across the dance floor and squeals with delight, "Oh, he’s so gorgeous!" that’s definitely a feeling, but it’s not real love. On the big screen, when eyes meet across a crowded room and the music swells, that’s a feeling too. But on such an occasion, you don’t hear the actors say, "Wow, suddenly I’m filled with cleanliness, progress, sacrifice, and selflessness." Real love is, "I’ll take the baby for a while; you go take a nap." Real love is, "I’ll be out with the car, can I get you anything?" Real love is, "Wow, I guess it was something you ate. . . . I’ll clean it off the carpet; you go lie down." They don’t show that part in the movies. (John Bytheway, What I Wish I'd Known When I Was Single [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1999], 114-115)
Perhaps I should back up and discuss how to be, which will enact the change in perspective noted above. Rather than stopping short with satisfaction upon asking, “Are they Mormon?”, perhaps we should strive to know what kind of Mormon they are. (What’s more, we should be at least as scrutinizing with ourselves continually.) Among other things, charity “rejoiceth in the truth” (Moroni 7:45), or the knowledge of things “as they really are, and . . . as they really will be” (Jacob 4:13; see D&C 93:24). That is one reason why, as President Hinckley said, “The girl you marry will take a terrible chance on you.” To continue:
Now is the time to prepare for that most important day of your lives when you take unto yourself a wife and companion equal with you before the Lord. . . .
The girl you marry can expect you to come to the marriage altar absolutely clean. She can expect you to be a young man of virtue in thought and word and deed. . . .
The girl you marry is worthy of a husband whose life has not been tainted by this ugly and corrosive material [pornography]. . . .
She will wish to be married to someone who loves her, who trusts her, who walks beside her, who is her very best friend and companion. She will wish to be married to someone who encourages her in her Church activity and in community activities which will help her to develop her talents and make a greater contribution to society. She will want to be married to someone who has a sense of service to others, who is disposed to contribute to the Church and to other good causes. She will wish to be married to someone who loves the Lord and seeks to do His will. . . .
And so, my dear young men, you may not think seriously about it now. But the time will come when you will fall in love. It will occupy all of your thoughts and be the stuff of which your dreams are made. Make yourself worthy of the loveliest girl in all the world. Keep yourself worthy through all the days of your life. . . . There can be so much of happiness if there is an effort to please and an overwhelming desire to make comfortable and happy one’s companion.” (Ensign, May 1998, 49-51)
In the face of worsening statistics, such that I understand as many as half of the young men (at BYU) are afflicted with the plague of pornography, my bishop advised the young women that they had the right to ask searching questions when getting more serious with the men. I’d in no way deny those who struggle their own dating opportunities (once the Atonement cleanses their lives), but it sure is a shame to see so many problems arising from their involvement in the dating scene while many worthy men are sidelined. I’ve seen one sad little Facebook group, “BYU Boys Aren’t Quite What I Hoped For.” This is crowded with girls who aren’t quite what we hoped for, either. When it comes to dating . . . well, seldom have I seen such an unbridgeable gap between expectation and action. Are the ladies asking the right questions (e.g., President Woodruff’s recommended “Is he a man of God?”) before committing their hearts? Do we all constantly reappraise in that sort of light? In one of his classic talks, Elder Bednar placed the urgent need for discernment in this very context, describing beautifully how everyone can benefit from its protection.
One of the most helpful restorations to scripture is the JST for Matthew 7:1-2. Elder Oaks has commented at length on its application to intermediate judgment calls we must constantly make in life. Our own Master of Life and Salvation, of whom it was said in prediction that “there is no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2) does not judge “after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears” (Isaiah 11:3) but with superior spiritual vision. I have actually had others in the past discredit the possibility of my receiving insight into someone’s soul by proximal contact, when the scriptures are replete with examples of God protecting people by just such a method. The consistency of people discounting my goals in this respect very nearly overturned my track in life, when they overrode my internal reactions by insisting that I ought to be interested in someone. Now not even a girl herself can convince me to like her contrary to my own sentiments. Or dissuade me from liking her! ;-)
I sometimes wonder—since you know it’s going on—how many times girls have entertained future church leaders unawares. By this, I generically mean the strength of the Church in coming days, though extending it to the upper echelons really enlarges that food for thought. Think about it; are the ranks of the general authorities filled with elitist intellectuals or vacuous-minded pretty boys? Can you imagine President Monson’s wife saying that she wanted him to ask her out because he was so “ripped”? Or that he had a bit of a bad boy wild side in him? No. He was an authentic nice guy who did what the Lord expected of him. What’s more, he was what she was looking for, and vice versa. In so many cases, though, I see people dismissed for implausible reasons, if one were simply to view people the way God sees them. I doubt the fact that a guy sings too loudly, or laughs oddly, or that a girl has extra pounds, etc. is of any significance to He who reigns in the heavens. Several years ago, one of the kinder guys I've met had a hopeless crush on the roommate of a girl I was dating. It was ever so painful to watch her send him packing, essentially because he had a hand tremor.
One World War II veteran, and Medal of Honor recipient, expresses a portion of what I'm relating about character going ignored because of the flesh. Ralph Neppel was the only survivor in his machine gun emplacement after taking a direct tank hit which threw him 10 yards. With one leg missing and the other reduced to a stump, he dragged himself painfully the entire distance back to his gun to wipe out the infantry support for that tank. He tells people, "Everybody's handicapped in some way. In some of us it just shows more." Who, if granted the insight which sets aside outward appearance, would prefer a date in serious need of cleansing of the inward vessel over someone who has the intestinal fortitude to defend their faith and family against any onslaught?
I introduce the example of Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s courtship, which contains sweet elements concerning interaction and expectation that I personally have seldom witnessed in the past decade, as our world becomes ever more fixated on the perishable things. Keep in mind that throughout his earlier school days, Elder Maxwell also suffered from disfiguring acne and the social stigma from raising pigs.
It was not an unpleasant surprise the day Neal called her to ask for a date. The only problem was that "he talked so fast." His approach on the phone somehow "made her feel she was number fifteen on a list of girls he’d been calling." In her version, she turned him down "just for spunk." Looking back, Colleen and Neal have somewhat different perspectives on this event. She remembers she "was impressed that he seemed to have so much charisma. People were looking to him for answers and just had a great regard for him." Then Neal adds, "So much charisma [that] she turned me down when I first asked her for a date." Fortunately for both, he called again, and this time she said yes.
It didn’t take them long to overcome slight differences in their backgrounds. . . .
Even so, Colleen found herself increasingly drawn to him. She found him "really cute and interesting," even if he did lack just a little social polish. He didn’t care for dancing and didn’t like small talk, both of which were more important to other people than they were to her. He “was so knowledgeable and such a good speaker, even though he did talk fast. But if you could listen fast you could learn a lot.” As Neal came to know her better, he was impressed with her maturity, her sensitivity to other people, and the depth of her spiritual convictions. He began feeling a “spiritual impetus that this was a young woman out of the ordinary.” . . .
Meanwhile, at the Maxwell house, Emma remembered, "Our first introduction to Colleen was when you came home one night and said, I've got to see more of that girl. She has some thinking under her hood.' It was your habit to sit on the side of our bed when you came home from a date and tell us about it. There was never anyone who compared to Colleen." . . .
Colleen gasped as she realized the depth of Neal's commitment to the Church [when he responded, as a married man, for the second time to a call for missionaries]. Then her thoughts reverted to her pioneer heritage. She thought again about those women "who stayed home" in the Church's early days "when their men went off for years" as missionaries. Her commitment was equal to theirs--and to Neal's. But still she was relieved when their bishop explained that the request was for men who had not yet served missions.
Neal also came soon to see how right he was about that thinking going on beneath Colleen's "hood." "I knew I was not dealing with an eighteen-year-old co-ed who was so anxious to please me that I'd have my way when I shouldn't," he said. "We hadn't been married long before I knew I had a kind of Gibraltar--someone who would be tough and strong in the storms of life." . . .
Neal also found that Colleen had reading interests different from his own. His preferences were strong enough that he wasn't sure why anyone would read Anne Morrow Lindbergh or Mother Teresa if one could read military history or political biography. Then, taking Colleen's subtle hints, he began to read some of what she enjoyed. Soon Neal discovered a whole new genre of valuable literature, such as Lindbergh's Gifts from the Sea, which became the source of a quotation he liked so much he later had it framed and placed on the wall of his busy office: "My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds." . . .
He also found that, in his writing and speaking, Colleen could be a gentle but very constructive critic. Once in his early years as commissioner of education, he was trying hard to use a series of rhetorical devices to develop the theme of a written speech. He asked a colleague at work to read through the draft and offer suggestions. The friend thought his stylistic tools were calling too much attention to themselves. As the friend groped for a polite way to say what he was thinking, Neal sensed the concern and said, "It's too cute, isn't it? That's what Colleen thinks." The friend sighed and said, "She's right." Neal completely reworked the draft.
Over the years, Neal's respect for Colleen has just kept growing, along every front. (Bruce R. Hafen, A Disciple's Life: The Biography of Neal A. Maxwell [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 2002], 186-191)
Now, to return to a few of the unpleasant realities of present day and present circumstances. It’s my assumption that even dispensation heads might have difficulty finding dates in the current climate. Joseph Smith might not pass the demanding “career test” or, worse still, the popularity test. Emma’s parents didn’t even approve of him, and the community certainly didn’t. Two other great men might not stand up to the initial conversational requirements of rapid-fire ward mingling. Enoch replied to God, “[I] am but a lad, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech” (Moses 6:31). Is it possible that the man who “led the people of God, and their enemies came to battle against them; and he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled . . .” (Moses 7:13), and on whose account “all men were offended” (Moses 6:37) might have earlier flinched a great deal at the battle of dating? Moses also (after someone of no inconsiderable strength, as demonstrated in JST Exodus 4:24-26, had seen fit to marry him) pled that he was “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10), which many commentators have taken to mean that he stuttered. This might have helped him become “very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3), another virtue not terribly prized on the competitive scene. I’m also reminded of Mormon’s concern about his awkwardness in writing (a reversal of the brother of Jared’s ability, verifying that our weaknesses come in all shapes and sizes) in Ether 12:25-26.
Sometimes, when I feel the atmosphere of a room change, with girls and guys eying each other for forthcoming conversation, I’m reminded of school days where I know I won’t be chosen for the basketball team. I can usually make myself laugh by picturing that they’re stocking their side with the tallest, but what if they suddenly learned instead that the near future contains a limbo competition? Just the other night I dreamed that I was being herded away from the others by Gestapo agents. I awakened with the perfect insight that “dating is Darwinian.” And Darwinian runs in opposition in every way to God, who creates things spiritually before temporally. Imagine if we dealt with people in such terms! I shocked my roommates once by proclaiming, truthfully, as we might about anyone, that “if I have no spiritual identity, I’m not fit to live.” When the inane question is posed, “Why aren’t you married?” I can say, “In the past, because of gross character mismatch; at present, because I’m short,” which is to say that in 2007 I was thrown back onto the field where innate qualities are overlooked in favor of the irrelevant.
As for meekness, it almost seems as though a certain amount of arrogant braggadocio is demanded by the dating superstructure. I was horribly offended once upon a time when a class on friendshipping methods more or less posited that only extraverts and “players” can find companions. What this world needs is not more men whose voice is always and loudly heard, but men whose voices will always be heard on the side of what’s right. (Had the class only asserted that men are still required to take the initiative, I would not have faulted it.) Why do girls—and I don’t know whether the guys do it in return—come up with seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to justify themselves when ruling someone out? Do they not realize that men should not be everlastingly, boastingly lassoing the moon? Given a shred of hope as to WHY we ought to do something, then you will see some performance. Any gentleman awaits proper invitation.
Recently one of my roommates remarked that he could tell I would cross the Sahara for a certain girl. At the time, I had an acute injury to the posterior region, so I told them that I would slide on my rump the whole way too, IF ONLY I had her specific request to do so. We can ill afford to expend all our energies trying to please everyone on matters of passing importance in the big picture, though. I don’t believe in competing; in reality, in at least some areas there is simply no competition, but if the girl feels the need to scientifically or otherwise unreasonably compare and contrast, I refuse to submit to such a procedure—yet another reason that I don’t infringe when a girl of exceeding interest is strangely absorbed in another man, to the
I prepare to close by utilizing a quotation I shared with others on Sunday, followed by two more that seem appropriately linked.
Brother Truman Madsen shared the story of how Elder LeGrand Richards proposed to his wife: Shortly after returning from his first mission, "He was walking along with her, and everything was well between them, when he said, 'Ina, there is someone who will always come before you.' She gasped. She cried out, and she ran. When LeGrand caught up with her, he stopped her and said: 'Wait, wait, you don't understand. On my mission there were times when the Lord was so close that I felt I could almost reach out and touch Him. He has to be the foundation of our lives; but, Ina, if you want to be second, I want to marry you.'" (Robert K. McIntosh, How Do You Know When You're Really in Love? [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 2000], 61)
Seek women of faith, women of pure lives; and then be sure, be very sure that you are in love with the women you espouse and hope to marry. I would not say to love them with all your heart and soul, because that belongs to God. That duty is to him alone. But be sure you love the young woman sincerely and truly, and be sure that she is a good woman. (Rudger Clawson, CR, Oct. 1930, 79)
As we love God more than anything else, we find that things inimical to His character become unappealing to us. We do not wish to break the commandments; we strive to keep them. We do not lust after what is forbidden; we shun all evil. Even the desire for fashion and fad is replaced with a simple yearning to be neat and comely. That which we love determines that which we become. . . .
When I married my dear wife, I knew I would always be number two in her life. This is because she loves God more than she loves me. Over the years my understanding and appreciation for the paramount importance of this “first and great commandment” has deepened. You see, because she loves God more than anything else, she is able to love me more than everything else. How grateful I am that the keeping of this commandment helped her overlook some pretty major deficiencies. (Keith B. McMullin, in Brigham Young University 2003-2004 Speeches [Provo, UT: BYU Publications & Graphics, 2004], 120-121)
In many instances, these times call for unconventional warfare. Some of my dated journalistic thoughts from 2003 about the terrain: “I can be an intensely active member without subjecting myself to competitions the very rules of which torment me. Not all that is religious is social, and by all means not all that is social is religious. . . . I play more by the LIMITS it [dating society] has set, though, than any particular RULES.” Again, pray do not think me hypocritical and inquire, “How’s that working for you?” ;-) I still won’t adopt lesser methods. General Ulysses S. “Unconditional Surrender” Grant was NOT noted for avoiding peril and losses, but he DID know where and when to commit troops, gaining the advantage where others did not so much as perceive an opportunity. (Is the bolded word too subtle for dating application?) He, as a great general, knew to hit fast and hard in the time and place of one’s own choosing. Opposing forces must not dictate the terms to us; we must act and not merely be acted upon. (I realize that this portion is largely directed to the men, but women have their own peculiar gifts for deflecting, accepting, withholding, and insinuating in ways nigh unto action. It is also the actions off the field that set the stage for successful execution on it.)
We cannot afford a charge like that in the (heavily edited) Last Samurai, where men rode to their deaths knowing full well that their old code would be cut to ribbons by the up-to-date, cold, and calculating weaponry. If I thought occasion called for it, then I'd be the first to say saddle up and let’s go! We must practically assess our foe at every opportunity, while refusing to descend to its level. Let us call upon our Supreme Commander, the Lord of Hosts, for strength beyond strength of arms. Let us not be softened up or driven back. We need hardy men to reconnoiter the place, as well as more women of resolve to secure and beautify the other parts of the zone, assisting men in recognizing an area worth striking out for in spite of all hazards. Men are not the foe and women are not the foe, though we have occasionally been pitted against each other by the enemy of our souls. When in unison, they are a force to be reckoned with. “Neither man nor woman can rise to the highest possible destiny, alone; righteous men and women constitute the Church of Christ. There is no sex-war among the Latter-day Saints” (John A. Widtsoe, MS, 94:136; see Doctrines of Salvation, 3:142-143).
Who is on the Lord’s side?
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Too much to ask?
From time to time, as I struggle through a little something or other, I think ever so briefly to myself, “This is one of those times when it would be nice to have a companion.” Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m fairly accustomed to doing everything on my own, and I’d love the opportunity to do an awful lot of things for someone else. I’m intensely mindful of one of those constant teachings from President Hinckley: “If every husband and every wife would constantly do whatever might be possible to ensure the comfort and happiness of his or her companion, there would be very little, if any, divorce” (Ensign, Nov. 2004, 84). I’ve already experienced a very negative relationship which was so lopsided in the giving that when the giver (namely, me) finally lapsed, however briefly, into resentment, that spelled the rapid demise of the entire unstable thing! Hence #7 on my Dating Bill of Rights, from which I quote a portion: “In far too many cases I end up bending over backward too long, though I hesitate to surrender this way of thinking for fear that it would make me uncharitable. I begin to notice much sooner, however, when someone is taking without giving.”
Surely I wouldn’t be so brazen as to say such needy thoughts spring to mind nearly every time I attempt to prepare a meal for myself! ;-) (I suppose the true effort goes into getting it down and keeping it down.) In cases like that, how much easier to learn it yourself, and then have something to offer another, right? But, yes, how can I deny that sometimes the little things call this to mind even more than the big reasons that I successfully keep at bay? For instance, it sure would be nice to have someone color coordinate my socks. I still can hardly tell the difference between black and dark blue, and my suspicions are high that I’m inept at other matching as well. I also wish I had help almost every time I run two loads of laundry in a time pinch, and have to tote it all between Lehi (my place) and Provo (my place of choice). (Yeah, I live in two places in order to just barely meet my social needs. What of it?) It really is funny watching me try to fold things that are longer than I am tall and lug around huge laundry bags that thump my ankles. Or staring at all the furniture I have to move for a mop job.
More shockingly, what about a simple rub once in a blue moon? No, I’m not soliciting that from anyone. The other week apparently I somehow let it drop in casual phone conversation with my mother that I hadn’t had a genuine rub in a very long time. (I almost conned a back rub out of my little nephews once, but their attention span’s too short.) Then this Monday I ended up taking time off work in anticipation of my parents arriving in town on a brief visit. I was a tad sick and achy, so I fell asleep on my sofa. I faintly heard my father calling at me to wake up, and then my mother hushing him and saying, “This is how you do it.” She proceeded to rub my feet. Yet one more in a vast multitude of reasons my heart overflows with gratitude toward my dear mother.
One prayer attributed to Elder James E. Talmage exhibits the universality—and correctness, at least in part—of these desires:
Now if you’ll please bear with an unusual unveiling of my own feelings, little changed over the course of six years, I promise it’ll all prove relevant to my points. From my journal entry, August 20, 2002:
The quotation from President Hinckley?
In curious ways, my abnormal height (or lack thereof) has stripped me of the initiative that is ordinarily the man’s in dating. Once, when someone challenged me to start sitting beside girls who were alone in church meetings, I startled them by countering that I’d thought about it, but it was a nicer favor for me not to put them in that awkward position. He raised his eyebrows at this, but perhaps my dear readers will believe me when I say that I could fill volumes on how I’ve activated the fight or flight response in women socially.
Anyway, along different lines, there may be a girl upset with me right now because I haven’t seized hold of her advances. I sought objectively to give her the chance that I seldom get, and have learned all that I needed to. Laughably, I recollect a girl in a long-ago ward who certainly treated me coldly for doing nothing at all other than a nicer version of what’s playing out all the time. I look on almost dispassionately, capable of saying from a deep, dark well of experience that we all get our turn(s) at rejection. I have this very odd hankering to be able to say something akin to (and pardon the blasphemy, as it’s being wrested from context), “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” (John 15:16). And naturally I’d like fairly rapid reciprocation. :-) Once I asked a girl out and she queried, presumably in a complimentary fashion—and I do know more about our prior and subsequent interaction than you do—why I’d chosen her out of all the girls. I came home and wrote, “Because I wanted to, that’s why!”
For more spiritual thoughts on seeking companions, here’s a source which I gather from my garbled notes may also be contained in Robert K. McIntosh, How Do You Know When You're Really in Love? [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 2000], 30-31:
I narrowly escaped having as mother-in-law someone who did not value truth and virtue, indeed, was also impossibly unfair. She sat down with her daughter to have a long talk about what she assumed she wouldn’t have if she happened to have the misfortune of marrying me. That reminds me—um, only by slight comparison—of the battle waged against the future Elder Mark E. Petersen for other largely irrelevant circumstances over which he had no control, who was forced to wait out on the porch for his date (Peggy Petersen Barton, Mark E. Petersen: A Biography [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1985], 62). Much, much later, his mother-in-law “often, while speaking of him, . . . would say that although he was an apostle, he definitely had some improvements to make . . .” (Ibid., 93).
By contrast, I often reflect with delight on Elder McConkie’s courtship. Very early on, his future father-in-law, President Joseph Fielding Smith, became one of his greatest advocates. Amelia’s parents were favorably impressed when Bruce departed early on Saturday in order to be properly prepared for the Sabbath the following day. These days sometimes I wonder if there aren’t many Joseph Fielding Smiths around to approve, or Amelias either, for that matter. For one instance, my strong views on the Sabbath, intended for my own life and benefit, have alienated me and even drawn some abuse in one ward. They’ve theoretically lost me opportunities now in yet another, simply because I choose to reallocate frivolous socializing time from Sunday to any other day, when for some reason the Sabbath has become the day most used to advantage to further flirtatious interests (and I don’t mean in the “proper courtship” manner referred to by the Brethren). I can follow edifying conversation and videos, but not frolicking. Somehow declining on Sunday is often viewed as an affront, worthy of ostracization the remainder of the week.
I try not to sorrow over the cost of this and many other things, but the apparent scarcity of opportunity within my desires. Even if subject to pain and death, at the heights of discipleship one should only sorrow for the sins of the world (see 3 Nephi 28:9). In furtherance of developing the appropriate friendship theme:
To enhance its pertinence:
Setting aside all that trivial talk in the very beginning, what’s number one on my list of things it would be nice to have? A confidante. When I say this, I mean someone capable of caring, cheering, contributing, correcting. And I don’t hold any minor definition of capability there. Is it too much to ask for such that arises naturally from an equal participant in a shared future, shared aspirations—someone hoping to give no less than I also wish to give for the kingdom of God? I’m reminded of a returned missionary I asked out on the strength of a tearful testimony that she’d do anything for the gospel; I was content to let the date die its usual fate, and quit trying to put myself forward, when she managed to offhandedly disclose within thirty minutes that she had absolutely no testimony of visiting teaching.
As it is, the thoughts running through my head reverberate like thunder, but I can seldom release more than about 25% of them. Also...can I be taken care of? Just a little? Every now and then, on a little selfish whim? But nobody get any ideas that I’m vulnerable! You’ll not be seeing my soft side!! ;-) To make this more poignant, I’m listening to Richard Marx’s “Hold on to the Nights.”
I’m playing(?) for keeps here, as with everything else I undertake! I have to confess that at various times the dating scene has managed to make me feel petty, sad, upset, jealous, demeaned, daydreamy, even condescending or bored myself, in the presence of women. But that’s not the right idea. All my noblest thoughts and finest deeds have been on my own, which is definitely not to say I’m all that fine and noble...just that I have yet to experience inspiration from an earth-based source. ;-) (At one time in my life I was pressing forward in spite of, and not because of, someone.) Is that too much to ask for? My faith and confidence in the Lord lead me to exclaim, “No. It isn’t!”
Surely I wouldn’t be so brazen as to say such needy thoughts spring to mind nearly every time I attempt to prepare a meal for myself! ;-) (I suppose the true effort goes into getting it down and keeping it down.) In cases like that, how much easier to learn it yourself, and then have something to offer another, right? But, yes, how can I deny that sometimes the little things call this to mind even more than the big reasons that I successfully keep at bay? For instance, it sure would be nice to have someone color coordinate my socks. I still can hardly tell the difference between black and dark blue, and my suspicions are high that I’m inept at other matching as well. I also wish I had help almost every time I run two loads of laundry in a time pinch, and have to tote it all between Lehi (my place) and Provo (my place of choice). (Yeah, I live in two places in order to just barely meet my social needs. What of it?) It really is funny watching me try to fold things that are longer than I am tall and lug around huge laundry bags that thump my ankles. Or staring at all the furniture I have to move for a mop job.
More shockingly, what about a simple rub once in a blue moon? No, I’m not soliciting that from anyone. The other week apparently I somehow let it drop in casual phone conversation with my mother that I hadn’t had a genuine rub in a very long time. (I almost conned a back rub out of my little nephews once, but their attention span’s too short.) Then this Monday I ended up taking time off work in anticipation of my parents arriving in town on a brief visit. I was a tad sick and achy, so I fell asleep on my sofa. I faintly heard my father calling at me to wake up, and then my mother hushing him and saying, “This is how you do it.” She proceeded to rub my feet. Yet one more in a vast multitude of reasons my heart overflows with gratitude toward my dear mother.
One prayer attributed to Elder James E. Talmage exhibits the universality—and correctness, at least in part—of these desires:
Lord, Thou knowest that I have very few acquaintances among the young women of Zion, and Thou hast full knowledge of them all. Guide me to her who is meant to be my help-meet in life. (John R. Talmage, The Talmage Story: Life of James E. Talmage—Educator, Scientist, Apostle [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1972], 68)
Now if you’ll please bear with an unusual unveiling of my own feelings, little changed over the course of six years, I promise it’ll all prove relevant to my points. From my journal entry, August 20, 2002:
I’m not seen as one of the guys in the fullest sense of the word—and I’m also not fooled by [some] people’s lame attempts to say that’s because they respect me so much above most people. If such be true, it is better to be loved than respected! A member of the bishopric for my Budge Hall ward once hugged me and said he’d always had a kind of special love for me. That apparently only extends so far in various spheres, since I stood by him at a reunion as he told someone else they should date his daughter, since she’d asked him if there were any good men in his ward. . . .
A couple of months ago I thought to myself that I was “friends with all, but close to none,” which proves strikingly similar to something President Hinckley wrote in his recent book about being friendly to all but cautious of personal association. . . .
I’m not obligated . . . to take the first person or first few people who demonstrate interest. . . . I will want to be with someone and she will want to be with me. Certainly not too much to ask! . . . But I return to my now-prudent stance. It is insufficient for me to find girls I’d like to be with, and hope. The obstacles are insurmountable. I only pray that God will send me some to choose from, and He’s fully aware of whom I could feel drawn to.
The quotation from President Hinckley?
Everybody wants friends. Everybody needs friends. No one wishes to be without them. But never lose sight of the fact that it is your friends who will lead you along the paths that you will follow. While you should be friendly with all people, select with great care those whom you wish to have close to you. They will be your safeguards in situations where you may vacillate between choices, and you in turn may save them. . . .
There they are, nine Be’s which, if observed, will bring handsome dividends to any young man or woman. . . . They will bring you friends of your own kind. They will protect you from associations that would pull you down and deflect you from your course. (Way to Be! [New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002], 48, 123)
In curious ways, my abnormal height (or lack thereof) has stripped me of the initiative that is ordinarily the man’s in dating. Once, when someone challenged me to start sitting beside girls who were alone in church meetings, I startled them by countering that I’d thought about it, but it was a nicer favor for me not to put them in that awkward position. He raised his eyebrows at this, but perhaps my dear readers will believe me when I say that I could fill volumes on how I’ve activated the fight or flight response in women socially.
Anyway, along different lines, there may be a girl upset with me right now because I haven’t seized hold of her advances. I sought objectively to give her the chance that I seldom get, and have learned all that I needed to. Laughably, I recollect a girl in a long-ago ward who certainly treated me coldly for doing nothing at all other than a nicer version of what’s playing out all the time. I look on almost dispassionately, capable of saying from a deep, dark well of experience that we all get our turn(s) at rejection. I have this very odd hankering to be able to say something akin to (and pardon the blasphemy, as it’s being wrested from context), “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” (John 15:16). And naturally I’d like fairly rapid reciprocation. :-) Once I asked a girl out and she queried, presumably in a complimentary fashion—and I do know more about our prior and subsequent interaction than you do—why I’d chosen her out of all the girls. I came home and wrote, “Because I wanted to, that’s why!”
For more spiritual thoughts on seeking companions, here’s a source which I gather from my garbled notes may also be contained in Robert K. McIntosh, How Do You Know When You're Really in Love? [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 2000], 30-31:
Many years ago while serving as a full-time missionary, I had the privilege of meeting Elder Bruce R. McConkie. He was a new General Authority and had come to tour our mission. My companion and I were assigned to drive him from Missoula to Butte, Montana. As we talked along the way, one of us asked him, “How can we know whom we should marry?” To our surprise, his response was quick and certain.
He asked us to turn to the 88th section of the Doctrine and Covenants, 40th verse, which reads: “For intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence; wisdom receiveth wisdom; truth embraceth truth; virtue loveth virtue; light cleaveth unto light; mercy hath compassion on mercy and claimeth her own; justice continueth its course and claimeth its own; judgment goeth before the face of him who sitteth upon the throne and governeth and executeth all things.”
We showed some consternation. Elder McConkie explained to us that if we were men who loved the truth, we would be attracted to others who loved the truth. If we were men of virtue, we would attract others who were virtuous. If we loved light and justice and mercy, we would be attracted to a person who loved these qualities. He then said, “If you are men who love truth and virtue, go and find a young lady with these attributes, and then proceed to fall in love.” (L. Aldin Porter, CES Young Adult Fireside, 13 Sep 1998)
I narrowly escaped having as mother-in-law someone who did not value truth and virtue, indeed, was also impossibly unfair. She sat down with her daughter to have a long talk about what she assumed she wouldn’t have if she happened to have the misfortune of marrying me. That reminds me—um, only by slight comparison—of the battle waged against the future Elder Mark E. Petersen for other largely irrelevant circumstances over which he had no control, who was forced to wait out on the porch for his date (Peggy Petersen Barton, Mark E. Petersen: A Biography [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1985], 62). Much, much later, his mother-in-law “often, while speaking of him, . . . would say that although he was an apostle, he definitely had some improvements to make . . .” (Ibid., 93).
By contrast, I often reflect with delight on Elder McConkie’s courtship. Very early on, his future father-in-law, President Joseph Fielding Smith, became one of his greatest advocates. Amelia’s parents were favorably impressed when Bruce departed early on Saturday in order to be properly prepared for the Sabbath the following day. These days sometimes I wonder if there aren’t many Joseph Fielding Smiths around to approve, or Amelias either, for that matter. For one instance, my strong views on the Sabbath, intended for my own life and benefit, have alienated me and even drawn some abuse in one ward. They’ve theoretically lost me opportunities now in yet another, simply because I choose to reallocate frivolous socializing time from Sunday to any other day, when for some reason the Sabbath has become the day most used to advantage to further flirtatious interests (and I don’t mean in the “proper courtship” manner referred to by the Brethren). I can follow edifying conversation and videos, but not frolicking. Somehow declining on Sunday is often viewed as an affront, worthy of ostracization the remainder of the week.
I try not to sorrow over the cost of this and many other things, but the apparent scarcity of opportunity within my desires. Even if subject to pain and death, at the heights of discipleship one should only sorrow for the sins of the world (see 3 Nephi 28:9). In furtherance of developing the appropriate friendship theme:
I want to acknowledge to the brethren and sisters that my obedience to the laws of the Church has never been a drawback to me in my life; and I want to testify, upon the other hand, that it has been a strength and a power to me, and I have never lost a friend that was worthy of being a friend, from living as near as I could to the requirements of the gospel. (Reed Smoot, CR, Oct. 1916, 39)
To enhance its pertinence:
Remember, my young brethren and sisters, you will never have an occasion to be embarrassed—among people of character, people who count, real men and women—because you live according to the standards, the teachings, and ideals of the Church. (The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, 461)
Setting aside all that trivial talk in the very beginning, what’s number one on my list of things it would be nice to have? A confidante. When I say this, I mean someone capable of caring, cheering, contributing, correcting. And I don’t hold any minor definition of capability there. Is it too much to ask for such that arises naturally from an equal participant in a shared future, shared aspirations—someone hoping to give no less than I also wish to give for the kingdom of God? I’m reminded of a returned missionary I asked out on the strength of a tearful testimony that she’d do anything for the gospel; I was content to let the date die its usual fate, and quit trying to put myself forward, when she managed to offhandedly disclose within thirty minutes that she had absolutely no testimony of visiting teaching.
As it is, the thoughts running through my head reverberate like thunder, but I can seldom release more than about 25% of them. Also...can I be taken care of? Just a little? Every now and then, on a little selfish whim? But nobody get any ideas that I’m vulnerable! You’ll not be seeing my soft side!! ;-) To make this more poignant, I’m listening to Richard Marx’s “Hold on to the Nights.”
And one good yardstick as to whether a person might be the right one for you is this: in her presence, do you think your noblest thoughts, do you aspire to your finest deeds, do you wish you were better than you are? (The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, 546)
I’m playing(?) for keeps here, as with everything else I undertake! I have to confess that at various times the dating scene has managed to make me feel petty, sad, upset, jealous, demeaned, daydreamy, even condescending or bored myself, in the presence of women. But that’s not the right idea. All my noblest thoughts and finest deeds have been on my own, which is definitely not to say I’m all that fine and noble...just that I have yet to experience inspiration from an earth-based source. ;-) (At one time in my life I was pressing forward in spite of, and not because of, someone.) Is that too much to ask for? My faith and confidence in the Lord lead me to exclaim, “No. It isn’t!”
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