Monthly Archives: April 2015

A Grander View

Perhaps this might offend someone… but it might also uplift someone else. I write this as a rant, so I’m already convinced of the certainty of these arguments. It’s not a soul-searching piece. It’s just another page of my open-source diary.

Birth is not a beginning and death is not an end. There is no end to existence, though it may pass through phases, times, and seasons. I watched as this world came into being, and I shall exist long after its passing. My life here has a purpose, but it is for an end beyond this life. And of this beyond, what proof do I have? I have enough for my own purposes, and I had to fight and struggle for that proof born of faith. I confess a tired impatience when others speak of that faith as a secondary concern, or of it being no concern at all. It is the same tired impatience I experienced when an ignorant young wag would try to debunk my geographic knowledge by virtue of the fact that I had not yet been to every place in the world. I had been to enough of it to know that it was there and to trust in the tales of honest travelers who had been to other places in the great, wide world.

By that same token, I have been to spiritual places in number enough to trust in what is told to me by honest men that have seen more of that realm. That knowledge informs a view I hold that looks beyond the limits of mortality. I see my ultimate end as being one with God, as part of His family, engaged in the work and glory of bringing to pass the eternal life of mankind.

Why are people born the way they are? Jesus said it wasn’t because of anyone’s sins: it just happens. Pick any condition in the “born this way” category, and it just happens. Each of us faces a string of burdens in life, unique to our own existence. We can choose to be guided by pride and demand that we are right, damn anyone that dares to disagree. In the process, we can destroy goodness around us and blind ourselves to truth. Or, we can choose instead to be guided by humility and accept that we have much to learn and, in the process, open our eyes to truth as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, care and precision.

So how can I, a person who claims to be a just, enlightened, unbigoted intellect, be against the idea of same-sex marriage? How can I be against the idea of full gender equality in my own faith? Well, I shall explain.

First, the same-sex marriage thing: We are here to prepare to be part of an Eternal Family. That is no euphemism. I was a spirit child before I was a mortal child, and as a spirit child, I was the product of a loving union in the realm from which I came and to which I hope to return. Gender was important to the creation of my spirit. Important? No, it was vital. Gender is vital to the continuance of that work, for there is more of it to come. I cannot live alongside my Heavenly Father and do the things which He would have me do without an Eternal Companion of the necessary opposite gender. Biology for the continuation of the species is not limited to the time between birth and death in this mortal existence. It is Eternal. Marriage between a man and a woman can continue for eternity, should it be sealed upon earth by the proper authority and in the proper place. Any other sort of union cannot.

Now, if persons wish to make same-sex marriages legal, that is their business, and they have to accept that I will oppose such measures on my own moral grounds. Even so, if someone wishes to live a life in a same-sex union, so be it. We all are free to choose for ourselves how we live our lives. But don’t expect Eternal truths to change because of societal druthers. No matter what may be permissible in society, I am quite certain that my religion will never recognize same-sex marriages as being acceptable to God as things that can be as Eternally binding as those marriages I mentioned as being sealed by the proper authority and in the proper place. And I’m fine with that.

Now, given that gender has Eternal meaning and implication, part of our existence here is to experience what it means to be who we ultimately will become. Our roles and experiences here guide and form our souls, and our souls have a gender. All the stuff the Greeks came up with about the body being a prison for the spirit is only so much philosophical noodling. The body and spirit are the soul, and gender has no small part of defining our souls’ eternal experiences.

For some reason, men need to learn important lessons about leadership, organization, and service that go with serving in the priesthood in my religion. I don’t believe that women don’t need to learn those lessons: I just believe that they don’t need the priesthood in order to learn those lessons. For some reason, men need to be ordained to the priesthood in order to perform solemn observances in the Lord’s temples in my faith. Women can perform those observances without being ordained to the priesthood – they have that right from birth. There are things of Eternity in this difference and distinction. Asking why is fine, but demanding an answer that fits a notion at variance with Eternal truth is not.

And I admit that my answer on the women not having the priesthood thing is not as solidly formed in my mind as is my response to same-sex marriage. But I do know that the answer is there, and that it explains things fully and to the satisfaction of anyone not motivated by pride, self-importance, or with a mind to justify sin. Yes, it takes faith to muster up the patience to await that answer, but faith and patience have been good to me in the past, so I trust in them for my future.

Women should have the vote, equal pay for equal work, the same standing as men in a court of law, the right to own property, the right to have credit cards in their own name, the right to initiate divorce, the right to have custody of their children, the right to learn any subject taught in the university and a host of other equalities that they have struggled to attain – some only in the last 40 years in the USA – but there is an end to equality where gender makes a difference, and that applies to me as much as it does to my Eternal partner, my wife. The inequalities of gender do not make one greater or lesser – just necessarily different in order to experience the fullness of Eternal Life.

Here endeth the rant. I don’t care if anyone reads this or is persuaded by it. I just care to commit it to a document for my own sense of posterity.

Climate Change: Leading to a Bluer America?

Looking at internal migration patterns in the USA, California begins to loom as a state facing its worst drought in recorded history. People are leaving that state, and the numbers are going to increase as time goes on and the drought worsens there. Where are they going to go?

Texas looks good to them. Cheaper houses, warm climate, not too many earthquakes… seems like the place to be. Austin’s gotten crowded, but there’s still stuff to do in Dallas and Houston and San Antonio, right? And what happens to Texas politics if there’s an influx of a bunch of them there libberul Californy-ans?

Texas turns blue, that’s what. As in, votes in Democrats to the the state and federal house and senate, puts a Democrat into the governor’s chair, and puts Texas’ 38 electoral votes into the Democratic camp. Republicans have a hard enough time winning presidential elections – they couldn’t possibly do it without Texas.

Ironically, it’s those Texas Republicans, with massive backing from the oil industry, that have been some of the most vociferous critics of the need to take action to alleviate the problems of global climate change. Now, while it looks like California’s drought woes are based upon an pre-existing cyclical pattern, it does seem like a kind of poetic justice that there’s a shot of a climate change leading to the toppling of those people that pooh-poohed the idea that the environment was something to worry about.

Because it sure is something to worry about when it changes your safe seat into a toss-up or a win for the other party.

I, for one, plan to hide and watch. This looks like it’ll be an interesting story to follow, given the upcoming election. Because the Republican’s haven’t had a convincing win since 1988. Bush II’s wins in 2000 and 2004 were near-run things. Moving Texas to the blue column would have produced Democrat victories.

Now, while I view the main political parties as basically different branches of a political elite that remains largely captured by special interests like AARP, AIPAC, defense lobbyists, and the federal employee unions, I still find the outcome of political contests to be as entertaining as a Super Bowl featuring two teams I don’t have an emotional attachment to. Win or lose, I can still enjoy to watch how the game is played.

And it looks like the GOP will have some heavy lifting to do, all thanks to Mother Nature.

6 April 2015, 11:45 am

Flower petals snow
Bamboo chattering greetings
Water wind whispers

Birds call their kindreds
Maples reach to the ripples
Fish swim anciently

The path beckons me
To where the lowest branch laughs
Where vines turn and twist

Soft colors float by
Songs decorate the spring clouds
I rest in heaven

My Irrational Faith

I know that my redeemer lives. This knowledge is born of my faith, and my faith comes from my personal spiritual experiences. My experiences are repeatable for myself: therefore, to me, they are scientific proof. To anyone else, they will mean nothing unless that anyone else has his own corresponding spiritual experiences.

Whoever searches for a reason for faith in external proofs is a fool that does not understand faith. What, would such a searcher have the same demands for evidence were someone to profess love for that person? Is not the unspeakable bond of the heart sufficient? If not, love can never be in the life of that person. And, since faith is love, so goes faith.

But open a heart to love, and it opens to faith. There are things about love for which I have no reasons, but only trust, and that trust is sufficient even if irrational. When I allow this irrational, unproven faith into my life, I find that my heart fills and then spills over with joy and love. When this faith guides my heart and my actions, I seek to do good and to serve others. Would I subject such goodness and service to withering doubts to drain my desire to do them? Or would I be better for it if I kept my faith, nurtured it, purified myself that my faith would become more perfect?

For this I know: were there nothing to have faith in, there would be no restraint on the soul. Our world groans under the oppression of the faithless, the sociopaths that will murder to get gain. Would we have no faith, no love, to keep their numbers from including the whole of the human race, descended into an orgy of shouting, murder, shrieking, and tortured lusts? For that is the logical conclusion of the logical elimination of faith and love – every man prospering according to his own strength, preying on others lest he himself become prey. There is no rational reason to be otherwise, save as part of some calculated evil that requires patience to unfold. I will mock any philosophy that purports a reason to avoid sociopathy if that philosophy does not make an appeal to the irrational.

And that irrational is the faith and love we rightly associate with the divine. It is that which elevates the soul and promises us, one and all, that observation of a higher law is justified. It is that which motivates sinners to change their hearts and minds and to desire no more to sin. It is that which consoles in time of grief, it is that which elevates in time of depression. It is the only thing that can save us.

I believe that Jesus made no cold calculation before he submitted to the awful trials of his atoning sacrifice. No, he made that decision with the warmth of faith and love. He did not know what was on the other side of that bitter cup when he assented to drink of it. He trusted that it was the right thing to do, because he had faith in the Father, whom he loved perfectly.

May I know a day of such perfect faith and love in my own life: that is my prayer.