On the Fourth of July I sat in the driveway at my in-laws' house, watching the neighborhood firework show. Aerial fireworks are legal in Utah and it seemed like everyone in [the neighborhood] spent their life savings just for this occasion. Everywhere the sky was filled with a million bits of flame. We had left our home in California three weeks prior and at that very moment my husband was headed to the airport to fly here. I was left with our three kids for another three weeks in Utah before we would join him. I felt adrift, unmoored from time and identity. It seemed I was watching my old life--with all of its bright colors, fast disruptions, flashy ideas, big sounds--play out one more time and then explode and turn into smoke. We spent the last eight plus years near [the university] where [my husband] was a PhD student and then a post doc, where I did my residency in medicine and then worked as physician and as clinical faculty. To live [there] was to work hard, play hard, to always be searching for the next great idea, to cast aside tradition, to be ever surging upwards on the waves of manifest destiny. It was as if the gold rush never ended, only the treasure had become virtual, the Earth literally too expensive too hold in your hands. To quote Ray Bradbury, California was like a "gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with." This was where we met. Where we got married. Where we birthed all three of our children. Can you try and imagine our life? Picture endlessly cloudless blue skies, red tiled roofs, and yellow yellow yellow--an unending dryness that came with the drought that started the year our first was born. Picture him at two, seeing a sprinkler for the first time. He thought it was rain. Today that life feels like a million miles away. We're here now with you, possibly for a long long time--if [my husband] gets tenure here, and I don't get sick of treating Lyme disease. We are happy to be living in a house, soaked in real rain and awash in the green it leaves behind on the hills and in our own backyard. As my daughter puts it, "Mama, the sky here goes KABOOM."
Try to imagine with me also Jesus' life, a million lives farther away than the one I've just described. Try to imagine the colors and the sounds of his earth. The crumbled brown of his bread crust. The way he moved down the streets, the dust caking the hem of his robe and his feet. The sound his shoes made scuffing the sand and rocks of the shore. Isaiah tells us of Jesus, "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." The record tell us He ate simply--bread, fishes, corn he harvested himself from the fields, rubbing the cobs with his hands. He wasn't grand. He didn't seek out attention, it came to him, and while he sometimes fled from it, he didn't hide. He allowed children and beggars, prostitutes, and publicans to be near him. Homeless, he was always a traveler, always a guest, often sleeping in small cramped spaces. Most of his days probably lacked agenda, other than filling the needs presented to him in the moment and meeting the few of his own. The more that I learn of his life, the slower and smaller I imagine that life as he wandered the edges of the lake of Galilee, healing and preaching among the fishermen and their families.
It occurs to me as I try and imagine Jesus to try and imagine those who followed him as well. Perhaps follow is the wrong word. Perhaps I should say, came once, or twice, or saw him at all. Most of the people he interacted with probably only saw one small glimpse of his divinity. Perhaps they came seeking healing and, as the lepers, went their way afterward. Or they came to hear him talk as one of the five thousand, but after the sermon were pressed by obligations to their fields or livestock or their fishing boats. Even for those who followed him the most closely his true identity must have unfolded over the course of many small moments in crowded rooms, in the heat of the day, when they were hungry or tired or worried about their families back at home. Perhaps it is not surprising that in three years of ministry, only a few of his days are transcendent enough to make it into the permanent record. For the modern disciple the earthly Jesus is recorded in a series of short stories, woven together in a heavily edited intricate illustration that is likely not representative of what it was like to actually be with him on a long hot day. And yet a tenderness breaks through this record that illustrates the very human, very personal way his closest disciples loved him. I think of Mary, who after Lazarus' death was told by her sister, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto him." I think of Mary Magdalene, who had to be restrained from embracing the resurrected Jesus by these gentle words, "touch me not." I've heard it taught that Jesus saw each of our faces during His suffering, but perhaps being mortal He thought only of those He knew in His life. For the man who taught to leave the 90 and 9 to go after the one it might have been enough to hold on to his mother's face in that moment, or to whisper the names of his friends in life, "Martha, Lazarus, Peter, John."
I'm struck by Jesus' words to those present as he traveled to Gethsemane. He said, "This is my commandment that ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." In this simple statement, this poor homeless carpenter from Galilee not only reveals that the essence of his Father's message is revealed through his mortal life, but he also invites his disciples into a peer relationship, essentially as equals or at least partners.
When Jesus' friend Mary anointed his feet just prior to his death, Judas asked, "Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?" I find meaning in the Savior's response here also. "For the poor ye have always with you; but me ye have not always." Jesus anticipated that most of his brothers and sisters would not know Him in this life and may not have his doctrine. And so He directs us towards a surrogate for himself--"For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in. Naked and clothed me, I was sick and ye visited me, I was in prison and ye came unto me... Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." When we picture Jesus as a mortal man, we come to see that this passage may actually be a literal description of his life and read it as yet another example of Jesus' desire to engage with us in a co-equal relationship regardless of our mortal limitations or circumstances.
Sometimes we superimpose a grandiosity into our search for Christ that was never a part of His personal earthly experience or that of His followers. We imagine him as if he were a man with a beard on top of a mountain, who is only reached after a long heroic journey upward. Or as a gilded throne-bound apparition who blinds us as we approach. That we must somehow be stronger or more persistent, purer or cleaner than those around us or even than ourselves, in order to approach him. We tell ourselves that we have to "draw near" unto Him but then talk about Him as if He is in a far off place called perfection. The people who drew near to him in his life did not see him this way, and Christ's choice to call His disciples "friends" illustrates that He saw himself very differently.
In the intentional design of the great plan of happiness, Jesus is our brother. His relationship with us is horizontal, not vertical. He is not above us, but parallel to us, on our plane, and in our presence. Our proximity to him is not defined by our worth or our worthiness or our circumstances. I am confident that in His eternal being He remains as He was in mortality--accessible to sinners and saints alike. Somehow he did--and does--treat each person with love and dignity from across the veil and provides for us a pull upward, an impetus for repentance, a call to become more like Him. While we may seek a transcendent magic, our mortal brother Christ's message is written on his palms and his feet, an in intentional choice he made to increase his mercy and his ability to succor us.
When we come to see Jesus in this way, it becomes more possible for each us to see ourselves in this way as well. We are reminded that our path to him is also written in our own mortal flesh, a story told in wrinkles, and warped hands, in tears and in smiles. We join his dusty-footed, often clumsy followers in a new identity not as servants--but friends--even brothers and sisters, siblings of Christ. Empowered by this identity we recognize ourselves as "joint heirs with Christ," joined in the yoke of his work which is the "immortality and the eternal life of man." We see ourselves as capable of contributing in significant ways to the salvation of our closest family and friends.
In his 2017 talk, "Drawing the Power of Jesus Christ into our Lives," President Nelson said, "It is doctrinally incomplete to speak of the Lord's atoning sacrifice by shortcut phrases such as 'applying the Atonement' or 'the enabling power of the Atonement.' These expressions treat the event as if it had living existence and capabilities independent of our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Under the Father's great eternal plan, it is the Savior who suffered. It is the Savior who paid the price for our sins and transgressions. It is the Savior who delivers us from physical and spiritual death. There is no amorphous entity called 'the Atonement' upon which we may call for succor, healing, forgiveness, or power. Jesus Christ is the source. Sacred terms such as Atonement and Resurrection describe what the Savior did. The Savior's atoning sacrifice--the central act of all human history--is best understood and appreciated when we expressly and clearly connect it to Him."
This quote suggests to me when we focus on Jesus as a real person who truly lived as recorded in scripture, we can identify actions that we, as real people, can take to share in his mission. Strikingly, by equating himself with "the least of these my brethren," Jesus not only makes himself accessible to all but makes sharing in his work accessible to all. While Jesus' ultimate Atonement surpasses our capacity, we don't need to try and outperform Jesus to gain salvation. We can touch the closest person within our reach. Likely that person is hungry or thirsty in some way and we can in simple ways attempt to fill their cup with kindness. Even when our service, like Christ's, causes us to suffer, we can picture the faces of those we love--in my case, [my husband and children]--and say in our hearts with him, "if you should bring only one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy."
I imagine that for most of us, spiritual experiences with Christ may actually be very similar to the ones of his contemporary disciples and friends. Very few of us are capable of following Christ around all day or even ministering to others every day and that may discourage us from seeking Him or serving others. Sometimes we seek him only when we need to be healed, and then go on our way. Even for those of us who have testimonies of him already, additional glimpses of His divinity may be rare. Perhaps in the whole of our lifetime we feel a transcendent sense of His close presence once or twice if at all. I admit to feeling like one of the five thousand most Sundays--hungry, crowded by elbows and bags, carrying a baby literally crying to be fed. In all the Sundays I've attended church in my life, only a few are memorable enough to make it into any permanent record of my life. And that's ok. It's ok for me. It's ok for you. The more I understand Christ, the more I let go of not only an unapproachable grandiose vision of him, but of grandiose visions of myself. I abandon form or comeliness as a necessary trait to love or be loved. I accept myself and others as poor. I am willing to accept small moments of kindness or empathy as metaphorical fragments of loaves and fishes which, multiplied together, become a spiritual meal. I see strangers and friends as surrogates for Christ in my life. I believe that a testimony of Him can unfold over the course of small moments, in small rooms, when I am hungry, tired or worried. I've learned over time that when I need to prepare a talk that the words and the images will have already come, that I can find them in the bucket of my soul--short phrases, little mental photographs taken in the chaos of my children or my commute to work. Miraculously, the spirit weaves these threads together into a message when the opportunity arises. I am grateful today to see once again the fragments of my spirituality come together to deepen my understanding of Christ.
Maybe Christ comes to some of us like fireworks--brief but unforgettable flashes of bright color that light up our darkest nights, if only for a moment, reminding us that there is a source of freedom from sin. Maybe Christ comes to some of us like our recent rains, sudden, torrential, pressing, and we open our mouths heavenward hoping to collect enough tiny drops to sustain our souls. Maybe Christ comes to us as Callie or Charlie or Morgan or Nancy. Regardless, he intends to be found. Walt Whitman said, "In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass." I invite you to join me in looking around the room at each other as I read part of a famous prayer about Christ from St. Patrick's breastplate:
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I am grateful to be here. I am grateful to take the Sacrament today and be reminded of the mortal body of Christ. I am grateful to be a part of the spiritual body of Christ. I am hopeful that as we get to know you and you get to know us that we reveal parts of Christ to each other. I love my family-- my husband Bob, my three children. I hope that our souls will continue to progress together in this life and in the life to come. I believe that Jesus Christ lived, that He died and that He lives again. I believe that with Him, my family will live and die and live again. I know that it is possible to feel love for myself and for others that transcends my own innate powers to love and I believe that this love comes from Christ. I recommit myself to following his commandment to "love one another" and do so in His holy name, Jesus Christ, amen.
Sister Doe (Anonymous)
Sacrament Meeting in USA
August 2018
Try to imagine with me also Jesus' life, a million lives farther away than the one I've just described. Try to imagine the colors and the sounds of his earth. The crumbled brown of his bread crust. The way he moved down the streets, the dust caking the hem of his robe and his feet. The sound his shoes made scuffing the sand and rocks of the shore. Isaiah tells us of Jesus, "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." The record tell us He ate simply--bread, fishes, corn he harvested himself from the fields, rubbing the cobs with his hands. He wasn't grand. He didn't seek out attention, it came to him, and while he sometimes fled from it, he didn't hide. He allowed children and beggars, prostitutes, and publicans to be near him. Homeless, he was always a traveler, always a guest, often sleeping in small cramped spaces. Most of his days probably lacked agenda, other than filling the needs presented to him in the moment and meeting the few of his own. The more that I learn of his life, the slower and smaller I imagine that life as he wandered the edges of the lake of Galilee, healing and preaching among the fishermen and their families.
It occurs to me as I try and imagine Jesus to try and imagine those who followed him as well. Perhaps follow is the wrong word. Perhaps I should say, came once, or twice, or saw him at all. Most of the people he interacted with probably only saw one small glimpse of his divinity. Perhaps they came seeking healing and, as the lepers, went their way afterward. Or they came to hear him talk as one of the five thousand, but after the sermon were pressed by obligations to their fields or livestock or their fishing boats. Even for those who followed him the most closely his true identity must have unfolded over the course of many small moments in crowded rooms, in the heat of the day, when they were hungry or tired or worried about their families back at home. Perhaps it is not surprising that in three years of ministry, only a few of his days are transcendent enough to make it into the permanent record. For the modern disciple the earthly Jesus is recorded in a series of short stories, woven together in a heavily edited intricate illustration that is likely not representative of what it was like to actually be with him on a long hot day. And yet a tenderness breaks through this record that illustrates the very human, very personal way his closest disciples loved him. I think of Mary, who after Lazarus' death was told by her sister, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto him." I think of Mary Magdalene, who had to be restrained from embracing the resurrected Jesus by these gentle words, "touch me not." I've heard it taught that Jesus saw each of our faces during His suffering, but perhaps being mortal He thought only of those He knew in His life. For the man who taught to leave the 90 and 9 to go after the one it might have been enough to hold on to his mother's face in that moment, or to whisper the names of his friends in life, "Martha, Lazarus, Peter, John."
I'm struck by Jesus' words to those present as he traveled to Gethsemane. He said, "This is my commandment that ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." In this simple statement, this poor homeless carpenter from Galilee not only reveals that the essence of his Father's message is revealed through his mortal life, but he also invites his disciples into a peer relationship, essentially as equals or at least partners.
When Jesus' friend Mary anointed his feet just prior to his death, Judas asked, "Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?" I find meaning in the Savior's response here also. "For the poor ye have always with you; but me ye have not always." Jesus anticipated that most of his brothers and sisters would not know Him in this life and may not have his doctrine. And so He directs us towards a surrogate for himself--"For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in. Naked and clothed me, I was sick and ye visited me, I was in prison and ye came unto me... Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." When we picture Jesus as a mortal man, we come to see that this passage may actually be a literal description of his life and read it as yet another example of Jesus' desire to engage with us in a co-equal relationship regardless of our mortal limitations or circumstances.
Sometimes we superimpose a grandiosity into our search for Christ that was never a part of His personal earthly experience or that of His followers. We imagine him as if he were a man with a beard on top of a mountain, who is only reached after a long heroic journey upward. Or as a gilded throne-bound apparition who blinds us as we approach. That we must somehow be stronger or more persistent, purer or cleaner than those around us or even than ourselves, in order to approach him. We tell ourselves that we have to "draw near" unto Him but then talk about Him as if He is in a far off place called perfection. The people who drew near to him in his life did not see him this way, and Christ's choice to call His disciples "friends" illustrates that He saw himself very differently.
In the intentional design of the great plan of happiness, Jesus is our brother. His relationship with us is horizontal, not vertical. He is not above us, but parallel to us, on our plane, and in our presence. Our proximity to him is not defined by our worth or our worthiness or our circumstances. I am confident that in His eternal being He remains as He was in mortality--accessible to sinners and saints alike. Somehow he did--and does--treat each person with love and dignity from across the veil and provides for us a pull upward, an impetus for repentance, a call to become more like Him. While we may seek a transcendent magic, our mortal brother Christ's message is written on his palms and his feet, an in intentional choice he made to increase his mercy and his ability to succor us.
When we come to see Jesus in this way, it becomes more possible for each us to see ourselves in this way as well. We are reminded that our path to him is also written in our own mortal flesh, a story told in wrinkles, and warped hands, in tears and in smiles. We join his dusty-footed, often clumsy followers in a new identity not as servants--but friends--even brothers and sisters, siblings of Christ. Empowered by this identity we recognize ourselves as "joint heirs with Christ," joined in the yoke of his work which is the "immortality and the eternal life of man." We see ourselves as capable of contributing in significant ways to the salvation of our closest family and friends.
In his 2017 talk, "Drawing the Power of Jesus Christ into our Lives," President Nelson said, "It is doctrinally incomplete to speak of the Lord's atoning sacrifice by shortcut phrases such as 'applying the Atonement' or 'the enabling power of the Atonement.' These expressions treat the event as if it had living existence and capabilities independent of our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Under the Father's great eternal plan, it is the Savior who suffered. It is the Savior who paid the price for our sins and transgressions. It is the Savior who delivers us from physical and spiritual death. There is no amorphous entity called 'the Atonement' upon which we may call for succor, healing, forgiveness, or power. Jesus Christ is the source. Sacred terms such as Atonement and Resurrection describe what the Savior did. The Savior's atoning sacrifice--the central act of all human history--is best understood and appreciated when we expressly and clearly connect it to Him."
This quote suggests to me when we focus on Jesus as a real person who truly lived as recorded in scripture, we can identify actions that we, as real people, can take to share in his mission. Strikingly, by equating himself with "the least of these my brethren," Jesus not only makes himself accessible to all but makes sharing in his work accessible to all. While Jesus' ultimate Atonement surpasses our capacity, we don't need to try and outperform Jesus to gain salvation. We can touch the closest person within our reach. Likely that person is hungry or thirsty in some way and we can in simple ways attempt to fill their cup with kindness. Even when our service, like Christ's, causes us to suffer, we can picture the faces of those we love--in my case, [my husband and children]--and say in our hearts with him, "if you should bring only one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy."
I imagine that for most of us, spiritual experiences with Christ may actually be very similar to the ones of his contemporary disciples and friends. Very few of us are capable of following Christ around all day or even ministering to others every day and that may discourage us from seeking Him or serving others. Sometimes we seek him only when we need to be healed, and then go on our way. Even for those of us who have testimonies of him already, additional glimpses of His divinity may be rare. Perhaps in the whole of our lifetime we feel a transcendent sense of His close presence once or twice if at all. I admit to feeling like one of the five thousand most Sundays--hungry, crowded by elbows and bags, carrying a baby literally crying to be fed. In all the Sundays I've attended church in my life, only a few are memorable enough to make it into any permanent record of my life. And that's ok. It's ok for me. It's ok for you. The more I understand Christ, the more I let go of not only an unapproachable grandiose vision of him, but of grandiose visions of myself. I abandon form or comeliness as a necessary trait to love or be loved. I accept myself and others as poor. I am willing to accept small moments of kindness or empathy as metaphorical fragments of loaves and fishes which, multiplied together, become a spiritual meal. I see strangers and friends as surrogates for Christ in my life. I believe that a testimony of Him can unfold over the course of small moments, in small rooms, when I am hungry, tired or worried. I've learned over time that when I need to prepare a talk that the words and the images will have already come, that I can find them in the bucket of my soul--short phrases, little mental photographs taken in the chaos of my children or my commute to work. Miraculously, the spirit weaves these threads together into a message when the opportunity arises. I am grateful today to see once again the fragments of my spirituality come together to deepen my understanding of Christ.
Maybe Christ comes to some of us like fireworks--brief but unforgettable flashes of bright color that light up our darkest nights, if only for a moment, reminding us that there is a source of freedom from sin. Maybe Christ comes to some of us like our recent rains, sudden, torrential, pressing, and we open our mouths heavenward hoping to collect enough tiny drops to sustain our souls. Maybe Christ comes to us as Callie or Charlie or Morgan or Nancy. Regardless, he intends to be found. Walt Whitman said, "In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass." I invite you to join me in looking around the room at each other as I read part of a famous prayer about Christ from St. Patrick's breastplate:
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I am grateful to be here. I am grateful to take the Sacrament today and be reminded of the mortal body of Christ. I am grateful to be a part of the spiritual body of Christ. I am hopeful that as we get to know you and you get to know us that we reveal parts of Christ to each other. I love my family-- my husband Bob, my three children. I hope that our souls will continue to progress together in this life and in the life to come. I believe that Jesus Christ lived, that He died and that He lives again. I believe that with Him, my family will live and die and live again. I know that it is possible to feel love for myself and for others that transcends my own innate powers to love and I believe that this love comes from Christ. I recommit myself to following his commandment to "love one another" and do so in His holy name, Jesus Christ, amen.
Sister Doe (Anonymous)
Sacrament Meeting in USA
August 2018
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