Starving

If, in some country, people would gather to watch a strip-tease of a mutton chop you could deduce they must be starving. What then can we reason from our societal obsession with sex? Perhaps we are starving for good relationships.

--my interpretation of C.S. Lewis' thought in "Sexual Mortality" chapter of Mere Christianity (p.94-103)

Poor & Needy

I've felt the need lately to feel more compassion for the needy. With that hope I've studied the phrase "poor and needy" from the scriptures Elder Bednar style.

I learned many lessons about caring for the poor and needy; here I'm going to include the top 5.

    5. It is not only a modern, but an ancient emphasized command
       30 times in Old Testament; Deut. 15:7-11 a beautiful example

    4. A top priority of Jesus in mortal ministry
        a doctrine he lived and taught (i.e. sheep/goats, Good Samaritan, Matt. 22:36-40)

    3. I must see myself as poor and needy before God
      many Psalms, Alma 34:17-27, Mosiah 4:17-18

    2. Must not harden my heart in this matter, don't let my heart faint
       Deut. 15:7-11, D&C 124:75, Pres. Eyring

And the point that impacted me most:

    1. I am not a disciple of Christ if I don't help the poor
      D&C 52:40, Alma 34:28, D&C 42:29, Jer. 22:18, D&C 104:18, D&C 105:2-3


Other great helps from:
 Pres. Romney,
 Bishop Burton,
 Pres. Eyring,
 recent section on welfare in Ensign magazine (last 7 articles on this page)


I'll end with some food for thought from Bishop Burton:

The purpose, promises, and principles that reinforce our work of caring for the poor and needy extend far beyond the bounds of mortality. This sacred work is not only to benefit and bless those who suffer or are in need. As sons and daughters of God, we cannot inherit the full measure of eternal life without being fully invested in caring for each other while we are here on earth. It is in the benevolent practice of sacrifice and giving of ourselves to others that we learn the celestial principles of sacrifice and consecration.

Memorizing

Friend MaryAnne's family has a tradition for their Dad's birthday. He's an English professor, so years ago he asked that each kid memorize a poem for him each year. Each got to choose what to memorize and then they would recite their choice to him. 

Now all his kids are grown and have several children of their own. The tradition has continued. Even MaryAnne's little 2-year-old daughter has short verses memorized.

Upon hearing this tradition, Ben and I felt inspired to memorize some poetry ourselves. We cracked open an old poetry book to try to find our selections. I originally chose the very inspiring "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll. (I had learned some of it years ago, so thought it'd be a fun and easy choice.) I later decided Ben's choice of "Death Be Not Proud" might be a more moving selection.

Death, be not proud    by John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

And would you know it, I've memorized it! Even though I still don't feel confident in getting my own age right, my mind might just have more capacity than I give it credit for. I also really enjoy being able to engage my own mind at any old moment I want. No ipod, library book or Kindle necessary.  

And lucky for me, my Dad's birthday's not until January. I'll have enough time to cement it down.

Wealth and Poverty

Maybe it's because I just read A Tale of Two Cities...which I still need to post about...Maybe it's because I'm thinking about the responsibility we'll have to society once Ben is a doctor.

For whatever reason, I decided to pick up the Readings for Inventive Writers book the other night and read two opposing essays about wealth and poverty. Both disturbing.

The first is called "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor". It was written by an American ecologist in 1974 and published in Psychology Today. Read if you dare. And by the way, he's serious. I had to look up his bio to see if he was known for being a satirical writer. Unfortunately, no.

The other essay is just as strong in the opposing opinion. It is called, "Socioeconomic Inequality: The Haves and the Have-Nots". It was written by a BYU Sociology professor in 1990 and published in BYU Today. It is not in response to the other article, only in stark contrast to it.

If you're going to read one, read "Socioeconomic Inequality".

The BYU professor's point disturbed me in realizing he's kind of painfully right. Or even definitely painfully right. Right about the prevalent attitude toward the poor and needy. And also that it is not just a problem to society but to our spiritual standing before God. That's strong stuff. Read it and see what you think.

A few of its zingers and good questions:

LDS scriptures state clearly that the obligation to assist the poor remains intact whether or not the poor are judged to be deserving. Second, how can one reasonably view the growing millions of poor children as blameworthy, no matter what one thinks of their parents?

......

A major point from the widow’s mite seems to be that the moral judgement over the use of money is based not on how much we give, but on how much we keep for ourselves.

.......

Indeed, throughout history only a relative few have been afforded the “opportunity” to engage in selfish political or economic oppression. Now, for the first time, the test seems to be underway on a truly massive scale. There may even be more people alive today exercising substantial political and economic agency—facing real choices between personal luxury and Christian charity—than in all previous centuries combined. How will they handle their “opportunity” to engage in direct or indirect oppression, their choice to hoard or to share? How are we handling ours?

.......

It becomes a difficult moral and financial dilemma that each of us must work out individually. How much are we justified in keeping to meet our needs, and how much are we keeping selfishly to satisfy our wants?

It reminds me of how I felt after watching and reading about Gandhi. It's not easy to read or think about because it's asking you to change the way you think and live somehow. I'm still on the thinking part.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

I read Dr. King's letter for the first time yesterday: Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Ben and I read it outloud to each other, before dinner then finished before we went to bed.

Truly one of the most persuasive, moving pieces of writing I have ever read. We will have to make a tradition of reading it every Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

His letter is a response to a statement published in a newspaper by eight white Birmingham clergymen denouncing King's protests.

Here's the whole thing. It's definitely the most powerful to hear his entire response. But I'll put a few quotations here too.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely...

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily...

Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "n*****" your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

-------------

One may want to ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.

-------------

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

------------

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

"Favorite Part of the Day"

We've had this tradition in my family since I was little. While we ate dinner together my dad would ask each of us, "What was your favorite part of the day?" Now at dinnertime Ben and I continue the tradition, asking the same question.

Today I knew what my favorite part of the day was in the moment. It was late afternoon, I was sitting on the piano bench. Seth sat on my lap playing with his new travel-size magnadoodle. He played with it for 50 minutes, happy to be held--something that doesn't happen everyday with a very active 13-month-old.

While we sat we listened to the Hollands episode on "Conversations". Partway through the interview they were asked about motherhood.

"I think the heart of the woman's soul is that need to nurture and care for her children. She might not realize it at the time those babies are little and its so demanding...but when you get to be my age you realize that's really where you needed to spend your time."

--Patricia Holland

With those words spoken and with Seth close and contend, I drank in that moment. I recognized the love we were receiving from each other. It became a sacred moment to me. I was with my little boy and we were happy.

Being Good

Lately I've sensed the pulls of laziness, selfishness and competitiveness in myself. As I've been working to fight them this quote has become more real to me:

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is...

You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.

...Christ because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means--the only complete realist.

C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity, p. 142, italics added

And I might add: thus, the only one to deliver us from temptation. I'll couple this with something else Lewis said.

...a Christian is a not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble--because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.

That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good...the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us...

Mere Christianity, p. 63, italics added

Time

Shoot. Lewis has a way of hitting things on the head. Here's another one of my problems exposed:

Now you will have noticed that nothing throws [this Christian] into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend's talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tete-a-tete with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen...

...If [God] appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day, he would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day [God] said 'Now you may go and amuse yourself.' Now if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realize that he is actually in this situation every day.

-- The Screwtape Letters

C.S. Lewis

p. 111-113

Creating Beauty

"Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty." -- Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Our first garden. I did feel an energy and a completeness as we created beauty in new place. And in a place we will see every day. I'm excited to water and weed this space and watch these flowers grow.

Caring for Seth gives me a similar feeling I think. It's a matter of bringing out beauty in him and around him every way I can.

"The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create...As you take the normal opportunities of your daily life and create something of beauty and helpfulness, you improve not only the world around you but also the world within you."