Useful Pain

Two things stand out when I read the story of Job:

1. People talk about losing everything, and I have at times thought that I'd lost everything. Mostly we're exaggerating. Job is one of the few who actually knows what losing everything looks like, and when it happens it is spectacular and can't be mistaken for anything else.


2. Job's friends are jerks.

When Job was sinking headlong into the tarry morass of despair, his friends betrayed him. When he needed comfort they offered a reproach. When he needed people who loved him they told him that he was being punished for his sins. They were insensitive cads and deserved to be trampled by camels.

I can't fault them. Like Job's friends, I am at a loss when my friends are in pain. What were they supposed to do? They saw their friend in the wreckage of his life and couldn't say or do anything to restore to him what he had lost. They couldn't tell him everything would be okay; they couldn't tell him jokes to cheer him up; they couldn't tell him that they understood what he was going through. Had they said any of those things they would have deserved trampling by gangrenous sheep. And so, out of helplessness, they blamed him for his losses. What else could they do except to join him in a miserable, aching, useless silence?

Job was not the sole explorer of the far reaches of suffering. Others have been there, and Jesus Christ went deeper than anyone else. He gave his friends this advice:

Then saith He unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. (Matt 26:38)

I think of the Saviour as the fearless one who stared down mobs, commanded storms, and walked knowingly into the city where he would be condemned and executed. He had every virtue and infallible knowledge. He had penultimate authority. But even this man, who was more able than any other to stand alone, wished to have his friends with him as he entered into obliterating agony. It meant something to him that there were others who loved him just a little way off, and that they watched with him. It was important enough that he expressed disappointment when he turned to them and found them slumbering. In part he asked them to join their sympathy to his suffering out of concern for them, so that they would be protected from temptation (Mark 14:38, Luke 22:40). Even so, he would not have commanded them to pray for him were it not part of a principle that holds here as well as in eternity.

I am nothing. I am less than the dust of the earth, which makes me impressively bereft of importance. Even so, I have influence. God's commandments make it so. He commanded that we love one another, and when we obey he must bless us (D&C 130:21, D&C 82:10). The pain that comes to me through love of another is powerful because there is a God who loves these, my friends, more than I do. He sees my anguish and uses it to satisfy the law of obedience so that he can bless them. This is a true principle.

There is another principle that says those who dedicate themselves to following Christ are sent help and answers when they pray. They're obeying another commandment, that we must become like Christ (3 Ne 27:27). In your pain for the hurts of others you become an echo of the Saviour and his infinite atonement. Like him, you suffer out of love. In that moment of defenseless sorrow you become his disciple. His generous mercy falls upon you and the one you love because you are his. There is a beautiful economy of heaven here ensuring that pain from love is never wasted.

Job's friends should have chosen the silence. It would have been miserable and aching, yes, but not useless. In that silence they would have taken part in the mute and watchful service the Lord requires of his disciples. Their love and pain for Job would have become something lovely and powerful, wings that lifted them nearer to God. He would have smiled on their shared sorrow and answered their unspoken petitions for their wounded friend with infinite love and boundless mercy for them all. He stands waiting to do the same for me and mine. When I am at a loss and uncertain what to say or what to do, it is enough to accept the hurt and watch with my friend. This pain isn't redundant or wasted. My helpless silence is a prayer, and the Lord is listening.

The Musician's Promise

Crowds around me, undeserving
I hold my breath and let my gaze fall
They shouldn't have to see this.
I am not their fault.

Yearning within me, undeserving
I turn out the light and curl in the dark
Hope is too sharp to handle.
I belong in the black.

I want to give but have nothing.
I want to love but do not feel.
I want to dance but can only stumble.

Music surrounds me, unexpected
I lift my feet and they become less heavy
The musician's gift surprises me.
I am undeserving.

Then he speaks:

If you will walk, I will play
If you will speak, I will harmonize
If you will lift your eyes, I will make the colours

And you will be undeserving.

But

You will give the beauty you find
You will love out of joy in harmony
You will dance as if you flew

And the crowd around you, undeserving
will come to take, to feel, and to see
Welcome them all in from the black.
I made hope for the undeserving.

Don't call it that.

Every semester or so the Pro-Life group on campus sets up a couple of boards in a public spot. They scrawl a question about abortion across the tops and leave them there, dangling markers, for a few days. Those boards fill up fast. There's lots of emotion running hot around the topic; everyone has something to say (in capital letters with multiple exclamation marks) and no one, no one attempts to take the middle ground. There is no middle ground. The most intermediate opinion would look like, "I don't much like it but I'm not going to tell you what to do." That shunts our moderate voice into the Pro-Choice camp. Once you get there it's not about babies anymore, it's about the fundamental right of each individual to do as they see fit within the law. The result is a sweltering clash of ideals in point form as some defend life while others defend freedom. It's a difficult debate. The pro-lifers snarl about freedom to live and the pro-choicers rasp back about freedom to choose a way of life. Those boards don't make anyone happy.

I like them, in an unhappy way. They get me thinking about the ranking of values and conflicting ideals. It's rash to say one side is flat out wrong. Who's going to argue that life isn't worth protecting? Obviously it is. Mine is, anyway. Likely anyone who's breathing and sentient is going to claim the same status. Problem solved, we're all pro-life! Hold on, though. Who's going to say that an individual's way of life should be out of their control? Or that it's good to force your values on another? Clearly both stances have powerful ideas backing them. The advocates of both pro-life and pro-choice are passionately devoted to their perspectives, and why wouldn't they be? Both sets of values appear to be sound, being predicated on rights that are desirable and necessary for civility and freedom. Both the right to live and the right to choose are wrapped around the guts of every North American. Try to wrench them away and we all start screaming.

Then again, no one would claim that both camps are right. The conclusions each espouse are mutually exclusive. How can that be when the opposing arsenals are universally recognized rights that normally go hand in hand? Something somewhere is off.

Until a couple years ago, I had never heard the term "Pro-Choice." I called it "Pro-Abortion." It's not the prettiest name, and it doesn't have the reassuring glow of humane responsibility that bathes "Pro-Life". People who are pro-abortion can't call themselves that or they'll be outglimmered by their foes from the beginning. If they wanted to set themselves up exactly opposite to pro-life, they could go with "anti-life" or "pro-death," but as replacements for "pro-abortion" those are hardly remedial. "Pro-choice," now, rings sweet and true, belling forth strains of freedom, liberty, and equality. This must be why it was adopted to describe one who supports the legalization and availability of abortion: it has such a fine sheen to it. But maybe . . . maybe it isn't the most accurate of names. Maybe choice is not what pro-choice supports.

If we assume that "choice" refers to the species of decision that lends life to liberty, then the anatomy of choice becomes important. Choice exists where there are three things:

1. A group of options (no fewer than two).
2. An organism capable of recognizing the presence of options.
3. Differing outcomes with the selection of each option.

The first two are self evident enough. No options means nothing to choose between. No awareness of the options means no ability to alter self direction, which means no freedom, which means no choice. The last piece, what can be called "unique consequence," is the component most often mislabeled or misplaced in descriptions of choice. Is is far more than an incidental byproduct, more than something that comes trailing in after the choice has been made. Choice cannot exist without it. No difference between outcomes means the decision made by the organism never mattered, and power to act and direct becomes strictly illusive. Our much vaunted rights of freedom rely heavily on the third and final appendage of choice. Consequence grants us the inalienable right to choose a way of life and a method of happiness when it brings force to the current decision and light to future decisions. Every choice downstream is marked by the third appendage. If the organism is paying any attention, future clusters of options will be flanked by notes in the margins, written there by experience. Consequence, then, develops and reinforces the power to choose by expanding the choice maker's ability to recognize and comprehend the significance of future options.

Pro-choice thought holds that abortion protects choice by creating another option. The idea is that pregnant women are mature, functional adults (or something like it) with the responsibility of directing and managing their own lives. As such they should not be forced to carry to term a child they do not want. To expect this of them is to rob them of an inalienable freedom, to hobble their pursuit of happiness. These women and their partners have a right to choose what they will do with the life they have, and abortion shores up that right.

Abortion as the guardian of choice is an uneasy fit. Does it really provide another option? Childlessness is an option that may be realized in other ways. Giving the child away is one. Avoiding pregnancy is another. If the couple had no choice but to become pregnant, then certainly abortion supports choice. Disregarding pregnancies from rape (which are tragic exceptions and not the rule), such a circumstance seems overwhelmingly unlikely. More probably, our mature, functional adults made choices leading to pregnancy. Promoting and protecting choice is no longer the battle; a pregnant couple is in the post-choice arena, in which they become acquainted with the vital third appendage that gives their choices power.

If anything, abortion hinders choice. It creates an artificial situation in which people can partially disable the third appendage of their choices. Consequence no longer works for them and they are left to choose blindly, to sort among options they will never fully understand or recognize. If we acknowledge that pregnancy and parenthood are natural outcomes of both intra- and extra-marital sexual relations, then pro-life philosophy creates conditions that encourage and celebrate choice. Pro-choice does not.

We came here by musing over the jangle of apparently conflicting rights which should be mutually supportive. In the end, we had a Rose Problem: a flower named "phug" is never going to smell quite right because the name is all wrong. The debate between pro-life and pro-choice will always be cloudy because at least one of those names has been wrongfully appropriated to support a cause it does not describe. Pro-life is also pro-choice. What we have called pro-choice needs another name. Pro-abortion still works. I suppose anti-life and pro-death are out of the question, but there are other adequately apt candidates: pro-convenience, pro-self, and anti-consequence. Anti-choice. True, none of them have the gorgeous sheen of "pro-choice," but names so beautiful have never fitted properly over abortion. Perhaps this uncomfortable phenomenon merits even more attention than the search for a name that will sound like a bell . . .

A Havler Production

Lost in the gadgetry of despair
I abruptly terminate this poem.
And look, it doesn't even rhyme.

See

Time stands behind me like a wall.
Back there is my camp.
It is where I pitched my tent.
My pots and towels and blankets hang in their places.
They are not waiting for me.
Time herded me away long ago.

Time stands before me like a gauntlet.
Ahead are questions and uncertainties.
There I keep my fears, because I can see
where the ground falls away from underneath.
These leaps are designed for feet more sure than mine.
Those flights are made for legs more brash and sturdy.
I am tired already and I cannot see the end.
Time waits impatiently, demanding.

Time stands beside me, a breathless companion
Trembling like a sweet high note
Eager eyed and humming with intensity
Pointing there to show a crimson splash
A flower.
Running here to bring me to
a laughing gurgle and shattered light
A brook.
Time dances at the edges tugging me and pleading:
Only look. Just see.

I smile to time behind.
I nod to time ahead.
I slip my palm into the hand of time
and together we walk to the first precipice.

Time always wants to fly.

An Overdue Absquatulation

I was observing the blessing and passing of the sacrament with unusual attentiveness the other week. That guy was blessing it - the one in the wheelchair who speaks and moves as though his motor cortex is always fritzing or as if there's a neuromuscular tangle somewhere. He moves with an erratic tremor and speaks with difficulty. It is hard for him to form words and hard for everyone else to decipher them. So I was watching and listening carefully and thinking. I was admiring the way the other man supported him and helped to make this endeavor possible, because he did it in a way that did not lessen the one he was helping. And I was also admiring Wheelchair Man, because this is a demanding task for him and he is willing to do it anyway. The ordinance is important enough to him for him to put himself in front of everyone while his weaknesses are most exposed. Here, in this, he betrays a humility and dedication that takes me aback. I hate to be seen doing something without any trace of excellence, and so it took me by surprise, this foreign breed of excellence that lives in patiently working through a task which one can only accomplish gracelessly.

Being myself, I was also admiring my own discernment and fairmindedness for thinking to admire both of them. Most pleased with myself was I. How satisfied I became with my lofty perspective. How softly the smugness stole into its familiar camp in my heart. How eagerly I welcomed it.

So far everything here is running along through a familiar track. But this time I took a moment to trace my superior thoughts to their origin. Here is what I found:

Some years ago I read an article in that most honourable and august publication, The Reader's Digest. The author was mother to a child with a difficult handicap. She expressed her exasperation with people who gushed at her about how wonderful she must be, to have so much patience and fortitude. She said that certainly she needed both patience and devotion to raise her child, but her efforts were dwarfed by the struggles of her child, who strained to live with and through her disability. This girl needed to have patience with herself and also with everyone else, because these people didn't know how to react to her. The hardest work, the most exacting virtues, were required not of her mother but of her. No one ever thought to gush about her. The mother wrote the article in protest of this skewed perception, and this article was the well from which I drew my marvellously supernal musings.

I have suspicions that something like this is true in every case where I am pleased with myself for being wise. The best thoughts I can find knocking about in my head were put there by other people. None of the credit is mine. The camp inhabited by smugness in my heart ought, by all rights, to remain permanently abandoned, because I am not my architect. These mental towers were designed by someone else. The best parts of me were shaped by other people through the qualities they showcased, the words they said, the thoughts they wrote. Why do I become so proud? If I have admirable qualities, it is because I am a shameless parasite.

The camp for smugness is hereby being razed to clear the ground beneath. We're building there - an all season cottage for gratitude, who is far better suited to watch over the collection of thoughts and imaginings that is me.

Unity and Individuality

Some months ago two of my luminescent friends (Sera and Ryan, both of them the human equivalent of a solar flare) had a brief interchange of blogs on the topic of unity. Specifically, what is the point of possessing individuality if inseparable from it is the obligation to surrender it? If you lose yourself in unity, as commanded, isn't that a forfeit of the agency so central to our purpose? How does this stuff fit together? Does it fit at all?

These are limp attempts at paraphrase and I find them inadequate. Here: links. Take them and be enlightened.

Sera: Womanhood Rant
Ryan: Does the individual have a place in Mormon ideology??
Sera: Becoming Identical vs. Becoming Unified
Ryan: Individualism is a lie we must cherish

Unity is one of those ubiquitous concepts of Mormondom. The scriptures are riddled with it, and it pops up on Sundays whenever the subject at hand concerns missionary work, service, temple work, Zion, the ward goals, eternal families, the final millenium . . . Try getting away from it. Go ahead. Failure is good for you.

What they don't talk about so much is individuality. Agency has its primacy of place, yes, but individuality itself is never extolled as a virtue. At least, not inside the chapel, not from the pulpit, and not from the chalkboard. And agency is to be used to submit your will to another's, not to preserve autonomy. Is individuality a neutral attribute? Like dimples, maybe? Nice, but you don't really need them?

D&C 76 seems to imply that inequality and individuality both survive into the next life, preserved in the limited kingdoms. Glory in the telestial kingdom is numbered like the stars. It sounds like the classic mosaic model: together but different! The melting pot is over in the celestial kingdom, where there is a single glory only: one enormous blazing sun. It looks alarmingly as if the clear and defined differences that arise from individual preference, choice, and volition are kept only when power and responsibility are curbed to accommodate limited capacities. Which brings forward an unpopular conclusion: the defense of individuality is a wasted battle, because individuality is not exactly desirable and therefore not worth protecting.

Not desirable? For me, without differences between individuals there would be no richness of experience. Life would be without taste or texture. For Sera, these differences are vital to becoming edified. She says that without them there can be no true unity, only a bland sameness repeated endlessly. So individuality is vital, but it musn't be guarded unless you're aiming low. The only way I can make this work is if persons are never more fully themselves than when they are lost in the appreciation of others. Perhaps this is what it means to be one: not identical, but so intertwined in enjoyment of one another that the collection of celestial individuals runs together into a reverberating, rebounding, brilliant mass of light. Many people, none of them the same, but so caught up in each other they make one sun flooding everything in and out with truth, comprehension, and love. That kind of love isn't possible unless there is someone who is other, who can be loved and appreciated specifically because they are not you. Appreciation of them would only be compromised if you were concerned with maintaining your own identity and autonomy. How can you be lost in the brilliance of those around you when you are tending to your boundaries? You shut yourself in, you shut them out, you block the light. You are a star. Your light is small and cold.

So then. To be self contained and carefully apart is also be separate, alone, and miserable. It is to wither as your regard and attention narrow and collapse in the sterile environment of self only. In counterpoint is the celestial state. D&C 76 says people there "see as they are seen and know as they are known." In the celestial kingdom there is no hiding. You see those around you with absolute clarity, perfect understanding, and engulfing, overwhelming love, because you have forgotten yourself and are pouring out into them; you are cradled in the same regard and they pour into you. After experiencing that, how could you feel you belonged anywhere else? Maybe it's too late already. We weren't made to be in full expression in any other, lesser circumstances.

If all this is true, then to desire exaltation is also to desire to bring everyone you love with you. If you have only yourself in mind it is not exaltation you are thinking of. So forget your fabulous individuality and lose yourself in the remarkable, exquisitely unique individuals around you. Pour yourself out, and you will unselfsconciously, unaffectedly, undilutedly express yourself with perfect fidelity. And you will find that unity is the setting in which you become completely yourself.