The verses that impacted me most this semester:
D&C 58
31 Who am I, saith the Lord, that have promised and have not fulfilled?
32 I command and men obey not; I revoke and they receive not the blessing.
33 Then they say in their hearts: This is not the work of the Lord, for his promises are not fulfilled. But wo unto such, for their reward lurketh beneath, and not from above.
D&C 25
13 Wherefore, lift up thy heart and rejoice, and cleave unto the covenants which thou hast made.
D&C 6
33 Fear not to do good, my sons, for whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap; therefore, if ye sow good ye shall also reap good for your reward.
34 Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.
These are treasures that I will take with me forever.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
"Poverty is the Worst Form of Violence"--Gandhi
This is as political as I get these days. Bear with me...
...What is the beggar to me? Jesus first says he is my neighbor (Luke 10:29-37), then ups the ante a bit (after all, not all of my neighbors are sympathetic figures to me) when he says the beggar is himself (Matthew 25:40). King Benjamin gives the beggar a mirror so that I may see my reflection in his plight (Miosiah 4:19) and the image becomes even more clear. I really do know what it feels like to beg. As a genuine sinner I have begged the Lord to take my guilt away and make me new. I have even felt the awful uncertainty that beggars must feel when I have completely humiliated myself in pleading and still been unsure if the one hearing my petition would really respond.
I have also met beggars outside of myself. Gandhi was right. These people have suffered violence. The violence of weather extremes, the violence of police brutality, the violence of bourgeois teens who like to have fun at night (anyone remember that social highpoint of our culture known as "Bum Fights?"), the violence of hunger, the violence of vulnerability (sexually and otherwise), and the violence of social stigma and hate. No wonder these people suffer from an incredibly disproportiate rate of mental illness and no wonder it is so easy to look at them as sub-human.
I remember my mother's fervent desire to make her hopelessly bourgeois teens learn King Benjamin's lesson. We had a lemon tree in our backyard that bore fruit for a neighborhood. But no one liked lemons. Growing up in Southern California, most of the people who I saw picking fruit happened to be a different race than me. This also happened to be the same race that most often frequented the community pantry where my mother volunteered and would drag us kids along to help out on holiday breaks. My mother drank in the brief outpouring of social justice that occurred when her bourgeouis white sons actually picked fruit for their brothers of another race to eat instead of the other way around. After a long morning of picking, we would cram into the van and show up at the pantry sufficiently annoyed and withdrawn to show our teenage status. I remember when the old man cried as he picked through our bucket of lemons. He was so happy to get to eat the fruit he had probably spent most of his life picking but not enjoying. "Lemons!" he kept shouting, as if he needed the echo of his voice bouncing off the wall to convince him that they were really his. Why does he pick fruit that I eat? When will he get to pick his own fruit? I suddenly realized that my lifestyle required his.
Then there was the homeless man in the subway station in Paris. This was not an easy night. We were lost, we were cold, and we didn't know French. We had been stranded in the subway station and the menacing looking man in the corner by the trashcan was making me uncomfortable. From how he moved and groaned, I could tell that all was not right. He was one of the sick ones--the ones for whom the life of violence had left its permanent damage. I remember that he started to masturbate (sorry Natalie, I wouldn't include it if I didn't think it was necessary) and I turned away in disgust. He was like a creature on the Discovery Channel, completely inhuman to me and I remember blaming the Franch government for not keeping its streets "clean" enough for my taste. It was apparent that he didn't have the mental capacity to understand the morality of what he was doing the way I did, and so I cried that this life carried with it such spiritual trauma as well as physical. But I was grateful when the train came and I was able to escape to my hotel room. I've only thought of him when I feel these feelings.
What does it mean to "not allow the beggar to put up his petition to you in vain"? I'll tell you what I think it means to most of us. It means that we move to suburbs and put up gates around our communities and set up Home Owner's Associations and hire security guards and plant big hedges surrounding large fences in order to ensure that neither we nor our children ever meet that man from France on the street. After all, if you never meet the beggar, he cannot put up a petition, and you cannot be held accountable, right? Don't we wish. But in a time in the world's history where choosing to support tariffs here can mean causing an entire village to starve and die there, it's time we used the morality Jesus taught us to use with our local neighbors and applied it to how we treat our global ones.
I love Jesus and I want to learn to properly love his children. I am grateful for His morally challenging gospel and my opportunity to find out how I can take part in it. One day I too hope to be known as a giver of good gifts (Matt 7:11).
...What is the beggar to me? Jesus first says he is my neighbor (Luke 10:29-37), then ups the ante a bit (after all, not all of my neighbors are sympathetic figures to me) when he says the beggar is himself (Matthew 25:40). King Benjamin gives the beggar a mirror so that I may see my reflection in his plight (Miosiah 4:19) and the image becomes even more clear. I really do know what it feels like to beg. As a genuine sinner I have begged the Lord to take my guilt away and make me new. I have even felt the awful uncertainty that beggars must feel when I have completely humiliated myself in pleading and still been unsure if the one hearing my petition would really respond.
I have also met beggars outside of myself. Gandhi was right. These people have suffered violence. The violence of weather extremes, the violence of police brutality, the violence of bourgeois teens who like to have fun at night (anyone remember that social highpoint of our culture known as "Bum Fights?"), the violence of hunger, the violence of vulnerability (sexually and otherwise), and the violence of social stigma and hate. No wonder these people suffer from an incredibly disproportiate rate of mental illness and no wonder it is so easy to look at them as sub-human.
I remember my mother's fervent desire to make her hopelessly bourgeois teens learn King Benjamin's lesson. We had a lemon tree in our backyard that bore fruit for a neighborhood. But no one liked lemons. Growing up in Southern California, most of the people who I saw picking fruit happened to be a different race than me. This also happened to be the same race that most often frequented the community pantry where my mother volunteered and would drag us kids along to help out on holiday breaks. My mother drank in the brief outpouring of social justice that occurred when her bourgeouis white sons actually picked fruit for their brothers of another race to eat instead of the other way around. After a long morning of picking, we would cram into the van and show up at the pantry sufficiently annoyed and withdrawn to show our teenage status. I remember when the old man cried as he picked through our bucket of lemons. He was so happy to get to eat the fruit he had probably spent most of his life picking but not enjoying. "Lemons!" he kept shouting, as if he needed the echo of his voice bouncing off the wall to convince him that they were really his. Why does he pick fruit that I eat? When will he get to pick his own fruit? I suddenly realized that my lifestyle required his.
Then there was the homeless man in the subway station in Paris. This was not an easy night. We were lost, we were cold, and we didn't know French. We had been stranded in the subway station and the menacing looking man in the corner by the trashcan was making me uncomfortable. From how he moved and groaned, I could tell that all was not right. He was one of the sick ones--the ones for whom the life of violence had left its permanent damage. I remember that he started to masturbate (sorry Natalie, I wouldn't include it if I didn't think it was necessary) and I turned away in disgust. He was like a creature on the Discovery Channel, completely inhuman to me and I remember blaming the Franch government for not keeping its streets "clean" enough for my taste. It was apparent that he didn't have the mental capacity to understand the morality of what he was doing the way I did, and so I cried that this life carried with it such spiritual trauma as well as physical. But I was grateful when the train came and I was able to escape to my hotel room. I've only thought of him when I feel these feelings.
What does it mean to "not allow the beggar to put up his petition to you in vain"? I'll tell you what I think it means to most of us. It means that we move to suburbs and put up gates around our communities and set up Home Owner's Associations and hire security guards and plant big hedges surrounding large fences in order to ensure that neither we nor our children ever meet that man from France on the street. After all, if you never meet the beggar, he cannot put up a petition, and you cannot be held accountable, right? Don't we wish. But in a time in the world's history where choosing to support tariffs here can mean causing an entire village to starve and die there, it's time we used the morality Jesus taught us to use with our local neighbors and applied it to how we treat our global ones.
I love Jesus and I want to learn to properly love his children. I am grateful for His morally challenging gospel and my opportunity to find out how I can take part in it. One day I too hope to be known as a giver of good gifts (Matt 7:11).
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Addiction
Addiction
The blanket
That is so comfortable
I pull it tighter
and tighter
and breathe it in
Instead of air.
I watched Celebrity Rehab today and was once again amazed at the phenomenon we know as addiction. This subject is one of the big reasons I have chosen my major (neuroscience) and with the limited knowledge I have gained on this subject, I have also gained remarkable appreciation for the Goliath it is. I watched proud, unstoppable rock stars cry like babies because they could not understand why they couldn't have just one more hit. In parallel, in class I watched a video of a rat that was operantly conditioned to hit a lever that was attached to an electrode which would electrically stimulate its dopamine reward system (the system involved in most addictions) in its brain over and over again, ignoring its food and water needs, until it would collapse from exhaustion. How different are the two addicts really? The answer of course is "very different" as the rock star has the dissappointment, the guilt, and the emotional pain that comes with evolution's contribution of a disproportionately large frontal lobe. Indeed, this just might be the area that is most damaged by addiction (according to new research) which shows cocaine addicts exhibiting cortical degeneration in the frontal cortex, the very area of the brain responsible for helping man overcome his base, animal drives in order to satisfy higher motivations (the desire to be "good" and spiritually fulfilled). This finding is monumental but not surprising. It appears to be the physiological representation of the well-known spiritual phenomenon of giving into the natural man and losing the ability to put it off again. The problem that I have with those who see this as justice, however, is that for most addicts, the punishment doesn't really seem to fit the crime. Many are addicted as children, before their reasoning and even spiritual accountability has fully matured. Many others are made susceptible to addiction by events in their lives beyond their control. Still others make foolish adolescent mistakes as all of us do, knowing that what they're doing is bad, but not really caring, and their punishment just happens to include a lifelong enslavement to addiction while mine required one week of no TV. We must be more compassionate to those battling addictions. While science may not have found the molecule involved in applying the atonement in our lives to overcome addiction yet, this certainly is the only way addiction is ever overcome. Thank God, for his son and his offering of a second chance. Our mistakes are not only written in on our book of Life, they are their in our brain physiology and chemicals, and only Christ can rewire our bad connections. What good we can do as we reach out and help those making their way along the path to recovery.
The blanket
That is so comfortable
I pull it tighter
and tighter
and breathe it in
Instead of air.
I watched Celebrity Rehab today and was once again amazed at the phenomenon we know as addiction. This subject is one of the big reasons I have chosen my major (neuroscience) and with the limited knowledge I have gained on this subject, I have also gained remarkable appreciation for the Goliath it is. I watched proud, unstoppable rock stars cry like babies because they could not understand why they couldn't have just one more hit. In parallel, in class I watched a video of a rat that was operantly conditioned to hit a lever that was attached to an electrode which would electrically stimulate its dopamine reward system (the system involved in most addictions) in its brain over and over again, ignoring its food and water needs, until it would collapse from exhaustion. How different are the two addicts really? The answer of course is "very different" as the rock star has the dissappointment, the guilt, and the emotional pain that comes with evolution's contribution of a disproportionately large frontal lobe. Indeed, this just might be the area that is most damaged by addiction (according to new research) which shows cocaine addicts exhibiting cortical degeneration in the frontal cortex, the very area of the brain responsible for helping man overcome his base, animal drives in order to satisfy higher motivations (the desire to be "good" and spiritually fulfilled). This finding is monumental but not surprising. It appears to be the physiological representation of the well-known spiritual phenomenon of giving into the natural man and losing the ability to put it off again. The problem that I have with those who see this as justice, however, is that for most addicts, the punishment doesn't really seem to fit the crime. Many are addicted as children, before their reasoning and even spiritual accountability has fully matured. Many others are made susceptible to addiction by events in their lives beyond their control. Still others make foolish adolescent mistakes as all of us do, knowing that what they're doing is bad, but not really caring, and their punishment just happens to include a lifelong enslavement to addiction while mine required one week of no TV. We must be more compassionate to those battling addictions. While science may not have found the molecule involved in applying the atonement in our lives to overcome addiction yet, this certainly is the only way addiction is ever overcome. Thank God, for his son and his offering of a second chance. Our mistakes are not only written in on our book of Life, they are their in our brain physiology and chemicals, and only Christ can rewire our bad connections. What good we can do as we reach out and help those making their way along the path to recovery.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Sunday Has Come!
Today, I learned of the passing of Elder Wirthlin, one of our apostles. I only knew this man through talks he gave, but in these short moments I have gained great insight. Elder Wirthlin's talks seemed to me to be more penetrating and poignant in the last few conferences and I have imagined that this was the result of a man beaten wise by the suffering and sorrow that surrounded him. I will never forget his "Sunday Will Come" talk given at the October 2006 conference. It was in this address that I was given this precious testimony:
"Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.
But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come. "
All this given while Elder Wirthlin shook and strained under the stress of his weary and old body. I couldn't help but weep for joy that this man could give such a testimony. It meant so much. It meant so much for him as he spoke of his personal suffering and loneliness resulting from the death of his wife. It meant so much to my sister who was going through her own personal Friday as she endured endless surgeries. And it means so much to me. I love Elder Wirthlin for saying these words with a message so universally needed.
While I mourn our loss, I carry no regret on his behalf, for his Sunday has come!
"Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.
But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come. "
All this given while Elder Wirthlin shook and strained under the stress of his weary and old body. I couldn't help but weep for joy that this man could give such a testimony. It meant so much. It meant so much for him as he spoke of his personal suffering and loneliness resulting from the death of his wife. It meant so much to my sister who was going through her own personal Friday as she endured endless surgeries. And it means so much to me. I love Elder Wirthlin for saying these words with a message so universally needed.
While I mourn our loss, I carry no regret on his behalf, for his Sunday has come!
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