Easter Wanderings

Prone to Wander, Lord

2001

He wanders far from crowds, on quiet paths,

Slowly, in dark thoughts of human weakness,

In shade of trees and guilt, in cold iso-

lation of an early winter morning

And narcissistic self-pity.  But one

Prone to wander is not prone to stop

For long.  Even in despair he’ll wander

Through this vale of fears, and shadows give way

To fields and the bright risen sun and hope

Of the new day—another chance to give.

Warm sunlight and chance encounters drive

Out cold as friends and couples walk through fall

Reds and yellows.  Authors, poets, and prophets

Turn dark thoughts and keep the wanderer company,

And family stories chase his blank, cold stare.

Maybe a smile, a greeting, or a tear

Wanders on the wanderer’s face, and prayer

Wanders into his heart as he wanders

Back to his home and to his Father’s rest.

I used to do a lot of walking. Now I'm on the brink of becoming a "soccer dad" (you can't get your kids to their friends houses without driving). But I think my mind and heart are still wandering toward home. It's nice that I don't wander alone much, anymore, and I hang my hat on my head and keep my heart with me, so I can always remember that where I'm headed is in many ways already here.

And here's a favorite hymn.
 

I Want a Revolution

I've wanted one for years. I heard about some historian that described a trend in U.S. History. Every 50 years there is a major social change. In 2005, I started wondering what this would be? We had the Revolutionary War in the 1770s, the national bank, Missouri Compromise, and Monroe Doctrine in the 1820s, the Civil War in the 1860s, women's suffrage in 1919, the civil rights movement in the 1960s. What would come in the 2010s-20s?

We have certainly seen an increase in rights for LGBTQ individuals. I applaud that, but I had hoped for changes that would directly benefit more than 3-5% of the population. Ten, and even five, years ago, I couldn't see a will to change in the American people. I feared we might have lost it with the subtle, scientific manipulations of entrenched powers using the tools of social manipulation that we increasingly understand. I still don't know the answer, although I'm more hopeful that we will see good changes in the next decade. Still, I don't usually write much about American history or policy, even when I share my opinions here or there. Where I really want the revolution is in Mormonism.

Now it's time for you to guess which authors are providing my inspiration. Surprise, surprise, it's a physicist and a philosopher of science--Lee Smolin and Roberto Mangabeira Unger. They want a revolution, too, in physics and cosmology. They don't want incremental change that is allowed by working within the established structures. They want to foster new ideas that will break us through into the next era of scientific understanding. What are some of the things they call for?

• Breaking patterns of funding that limit research to established areas.
• Providing unencumbered, multi-year support to highly promising, unconventional individuals and groups, and trusting them to work hard based on past promise.
• Fostering interdisciplinary, meta-discussion of fields, since a philosopher is likely to see things a physicist can't, and vice versa. Or pick any other group of disciplines.
• Shape institutions to test and support revolutionary change rather than only reinforce the status quo.

These are just some of their ideas. How does this inspire my Mormonism? I'll share a few thoughts.

• Expanded councils are awesome. People who were completely ignored now have a bit of a voice.
• Turning power over to local units for things that were once governed regionally or centrally is awesome. Mormonism excels when it distributes power and focuses on the individual.
• Empowering teachers through manuals that support good teaching practices, and encouraging peer instruction and personalization of messages is very close to best teaching practices.
• Encouraging individual study and personal responsibility for understanding the gospel and seeking the Spirit is right in line with what cognitive theory tells us are the most effective tools for learning.  
• Missionaries and Home and Visiting Teachers going into homes and dealing with families and individuals on a personal level has incredible potential.

All of this diffusion of power and distribution of responsibility comes with problems. We aren't born knowing all the things we need or how to do them. We don't have time for intensive training in pastoral care when we are already volunteering many hours on top of taking care of our families and our work. So a lot of basic, standardized resources are needed to teach clueless people like us the essentials of how to do our different jobs. Enter Correlation.

Now for the revolution I want. We have sound structures. We have a decent doctrinal and practical foundation for growth. Let's keep them, but let's remove the limits. Instead of the foundation being the ending point, where all ideas and decisions must pass the test of matching the incomplete and ill-developed ideas found in the missionary lessons and Gospel Principles manual, let's use those as the starting point they were designed to be. Let's stop dictating thought as we teach the basics. Let's give play to the charismatic and intellectual potential of Mormonism.

Let's welcome different ideas to the table at all levels, just as we are told they are welcomed at the highest levels. Let's invite people of good will who think differently than we do into our councils. Let's look for the thoughtful, loving agitators who might actually have a new idea worth listening to. Leave them on the sidelines, push them out, or make them wait until they are established in the church before they have a voice, and we will have lost 20 years of potential growth. Let's give them a real voice, and even if we don't do what they say, they will know they have been heard and that there is place for openness and change. Let's cheer our members on when they encounter doubt or pain. Embrace it and let it spread. We are strong enough to heal and to come out better on the other side. I'm not saying we should replace the prophets and the wisdom of age with radical or untested youth, but the church was started by radical and untested youths, and it wasn't such a bad thing. It might be good for us to seek more of that out today. I pray for it often.

Evolved Atonement

A Mind's Resting Place

It has been two and a half years since I wrote my most viewed personal post (almost 900 views as of today), Thermodynamics and Theories of Atonement. I want to write an update. I said then that each theory could be compared to an approximation of the reality of the atonement--some better, some worse, but many useful in their proper context. I am now ready to share my approximation of atonement. It is informed by my life of Mormonism. It is informed by my life of science. It is informed by my life in a family and a community. It is informed by chance and meaningful acquaintanceships, like the Indian Christian I met on a train into Baltimore who told me the saying, a sorrow shared is half the sorrow, a joy shared is twice the joy. It is informed by friendships and critiques that I have cultivated as I explored the meaning and hope of God and Goddesshood over the last three years. It is informed by Martin Buber, C. Terry Warner, Laura Buchak, Lee Smolin, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Janna Levin, Alvin Plantinga, Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, Lincoln Cannon, and other thoughtful authors. It is informed by ideas of evolution, emergentism, technological optimism, and cosmology. Maybe I have arrived here by misunderstanding some or all of what these many people have written, maybe I have misunderstood my life and relationships, yet it is an understanding I have settled into--that gives me peace--that makes me desire to be more, and to live and love deeply. Maybe I can accept atonement. Maybe you will let me join you.

What Nature Requires

There is a particular class of possible universes I hope we live in. It is not the only possible class, but it is the only class that feels to me both plausible and hopeful. It requires that Gods:

• create worlds
• create children who create worlds
• maximize creative rates
• perpetually learn and explore
• work with diverse communities of beings
• eliminate behaviors that inhibit maximal creation including
• destruction of creative potential
• inefficient use of resources

These traits are very similar to traits that make a biological species successful, but something happens when you begin to extrapolate human potential into the vast reaches of space and time. Things that have small or local consequences begin to have global or universal consequences. Two tribes can fight a war. Two nuclear powers had better not. Two galactic civilizations with automated, self-reproducing weapons of mass destruction?

The Solution

How do Gods and Goddesses raise children who will meet all these criteria? Children who will create, who will explore, who will develop a diversity of knowledge and skills, who will get along with each other despite the diversity of knowledge, ability, needs and desires, who will not destroy one another or one another's creation, but will use the resources available to maximize creation?

These Gods and Goddesses will hurt one another. They will require resources that another desires, and have things required of them that they do not desire. There is no other way. They will know good and evil, but learn to choose the good. Not because it is required to exist, but because it is required to be a community of effective creators. It is required to keep mediocrity, selfishness, or cavalier unconcern from overrunning the cosmos. It is required to invite as much unorganized matter as possible into the fulfilling realms of creation, creativity, and love.

Atonement

What is atonement? Thank you, English, for giving me such an inspiring word for it. It is a condition of being one with another. It is going forward in covenant relationships, whether formal or unspoken, where our actions show us committed to the requirements of belonging to the community of Gods. It is a forward looking process, not a backward looking correction of harm and errors restoring us and the cosmos to some perfect state. There is no perfect state of Godhood. No eternal freedom from pain or sorrow. Godhood is a process, and remember that ours is a God who weeps--who feels the pain of his creatures even while he dwells in peace and glory. Atonement is a state of eternal compromise, continually striving to lift up all of creation, including yourself and the other Gods.

Is there any part of this atonement that requires forgiveness of sins? Certainly, but as much for the forgiver as for the forgiven. It isn't possible to be an effective creator while you desire to destroy or otherwise limit another who could help with creation. Is there any part of this atonement that is about being freed from Satan? Maybe. While Lucifer's premortal plan would have made us all one, it would have made us one in sameness, without the diversity needed for effective creation. We must be free of that. We must be free of habits, patterns, and actions that harm or limit us and others. If this is Satan's realm, then this atonement is about being free from Satan. Is the moral influence of Jesus's sacrifice part of this atonement? Clearly. He entered a life--and death--long relationship with the poor, the outcast, the sinner, and all who wanted to follow him in ushering in the kingdom of heaven. He resisted oppression and shared new truths. Is this atonement about meeting the demands of justice? Not in some cosmic truth sense, no. But it is about treating one another justly as we move into eternity together. Is it about restoring something past? Perhaps, but that is more the purpose of resurrection and similar processes. While resurrection and restoration are not atonement, they enable greater atonement through allowing us to connect with other Gods through time and space.

And lastly, is this atonement magical? Was Jesus's suffering for us truly unique and necessary? It almost seems there could be this atonement without it. But no. Jesus had to atone with every being in the cosmos. He had to know their pain so he could lift them up, working together into a future of love and creation. That's magic. And it's magic we can do, too.

Longing Love Poems

I haven't felt this way for more than 10 years now, but the words are still among the favorites I have ever written. For me the images and rhythms capture the feelings I felt. Perhaps you can sense them, too.

Hesitation
2000

I wouldn’t stop
sensing the moment or break
the flow of words between us that falter
on your lips, or on mine to await
a time and place to unblock
their expression, where feelings won’t catch
on some buried snag that holds
our hands hidden, frozen
in the cold air, not warm, locked
in each other to pause,
and think, and breathe, and rest.

Catching a Sunset
2000

My arms reach out to catch the sun before
Its last rays drop behind the mountain’s ridge,
So that the yellow sky will light with red
The western clouds for just one moment more.
I hold my breath to still the wind that would
Disturb the southern slate-blue clouds that fly
Dark holes within the dusk-blue summer sky,
And for a few quick heartbeats all is good.
But then my breath escapes my lungs, the night
Wind sends the clouds into the night’s dark realms,
And I pull back my hands whose blackened palms
Had held the sun before it slipped from sight,
And memory is left alone—to pray
The next day’s end will come and choose to stay.

My Jesus

I don't know what I think about Jesus, sometimes. I'm clearly a believer--a believer in his life, in the resurrection, in the atonement, in salvation and exaltation, in his hard moral teachings. But sometimes the ways I believe in these things seem so different from how I understood them before that some might not recognize them as Mormon.

I believe in the resurrection. I know it's unprovable historically, but I am pretty convinced the Book of Mormon is a historical narrative (not textbook), and that Christ's visit probably happened. At the same time, I'm nearly certain that Joseph Smith expanded on some parts of the original text he was translating/revealing, so I don't claim absolute certainty about much from the Book of Mormon. I just don't see evidence to suggest that the physical visit was an expansion without having first concluded Christ's visit was impossible. I also believe in the possibility of technological resurrection. I think Jesus knows how to do it, and it is a physical process (since it is restoring a physical body), so why can't we learn how to do it? We are expected to learn to be like Jesus in other ways, why not this one? Resurrecting people may not be the highest thing on my to do list, but I don't see why we should discourage anyone else from doing their best to be like Jesus--even if I agree that faith and repentance ought to be higher on the list. We can each work on more than one good thing.

I believe in the atonement. I believe that Christ suffered to bind us all together and cover our sins, if we would join him. But I have a hard time seeing it as something magical in the ways I used to. What I see is an existence where pain and harm will never go away, even for Gods, and so if we would be with our Heavenly Parents--if we would be Gods--we must accept this pain. We must feel the harm our choices, and even eternal life, inevitably cause. We must choose to go forward together in full knowledge that eternal rest does not mean freedom from pain--love comes at a cost. So every one of us must atone, just as Jesus did what he had seen his father do. Jesus's atonement is miraculous to me partly because it is such a powerful example of atonement, and also because choosing to stay together in relationships with those who sometimes hurt us is simply miraculous, to me.

I believe in miracles. I think most are probably faith-promoting stories that popped up later, just like I think most fantastic stories are today, but I find it presumptuous to claim certain knowledge of very much in the distant past, especially based on negative evidence. Such claims reflect more on the (dis)believer than on what really happened. So I choose to believe many of Jesus's miracles, with very little certainty. To use the terminology of biblical scholarship, as best I understand it, I believe a high christology of miracles, but I bring it almost down to earth. My God condescended perhaps further than most, or perhaps not as far since he never was as unreachable.

But one thing all my uncertainties and earthbound beliefs have not removed is those moments of longing for home with Jesus. One Sunday I was thinking about why I long to be like Jesus. Here are some of my conflicted thoughts:

I want honor . . . He had none.
I want home . . . He wandered.
I want understanding . . . He was questioned.
I want life . . . He died.
I want redemption . . . He suffered.
I want certainty . . . He submitted.
I want peace . . . He brought a sword.

Why do I long for this?
Yet I do.

My Wife's Sunday Wisdom (Softened)

Stop defending Patriarchy. It's animal instinct raised to social dogma. It's using your lower brain. It's not using your higher reasoning powers. It's the definition of the natural man.

It's not enough to say, "I'm a benevolent ruler." You need to use your power to give power to those without it. Sometimes at the expense of your own power.

Amen.

After the test of life

I remember wondering how the Millennium could include all the just of the earth--both those destined for celestial glory and those for terrestrial glory--and everyone wouldn't simply convert to Mormonism? For years I satisfied myself with the answer that the spirit world and the Millennium must look enough like other religions' conceptions of the afterlife that there would still be room for confusion. And maybe lots of people simply won't want to be as good as is required to become celestial beings. They will be happy with stunted potential. But I don't get that anymore. If you could become a God, why would you choose less--especially if eternity is involved? Maybe you aren't in a rush to become a God, but would you honestly refuse the possibility--forever?

So what are the differences among the kingdoms of glory? From a naturalistic perspective that rejects arbitrary or authoritarian definitions of justice or punishment, and also rejects the arbitrary power of God to bring everyone to heaven and celestial glory simply through His grace and love, what distinguishes a God from a servant of God?

Let's get out of the way some ground rules. Three degrees of glory is simply a convenient grouping, not a walled reality. Beings are as diverse as we see on earth--or more. What makes a God is only based on the power to create worlds and new Gods--any other characteristics must be justified. Now I've already shared my reasons for hoping that Gods are compassionate, empathetic, and willing to contribute to a creative and loving society. Now I want to share why I think atonement is so miraculously hard.

As Mormons we have two stories we love to tell. The much more prominent one is that Jesus's suffering in the Garden far surpassed anything he suffered after. That time in the Garden of Gethsemane was when he took on himself all our sins. All the sins of all who lived or would live on this earth. All the sins of all who would live on other earths. We often add that he suffered so we don't have to suffer. I'm not exactly sure I believe that anymore.

The second story we tell less often, but still love. This is the story of God weeping when the great flood killed so many of His children. It's hard for me to imagine this was like my 4 year-old melting down because I accidentally stepped on the bug we had been looking at--"You killed my bug! Now I can't see it!" I'm glad at my 4 year-old's valuing life, even of insects, but that isn't how I picture God's compassion. I see a Father--and a Mother--weeping at the pain, loss, and suffering of their children. Weeping because of what their children were experiencing and losing. I see Them weeping sometimes at the pain of any God or proto-God, and there are a lot of those.

But our Heavenly Parents go on, enduring to the end. But remember, there is no end. They watch children grow and succeed, grow and fail, experience joy, sorrow, love, loss, good, evil, learning, languishing, and the list goes on. And on. In this cosmos it doesn't stop. It doesn't stop for us. It doesn't stop for the Gods. The form changes. I trust that we will one day overcome disease and death. The lamb will one day lie down with the lion. The child will play on the hole of the asp. Not all of eternity will be the hell of mortal life. But when we are free of mortality, we will not be free of suffering for others.

Remember the one, unavoidable job of the Gods. They must make world upon world. They must raise up God after God. If they slow down for any reason, they cease to be Gods. Other beings will surpass them, and after few generations all the new Gods born in the cosmos will be the children of these other Gods. Countless lives brought into being and living under the rules and in the society of these other beings. Whether bad or good, that is a mathematical certainty. So even without killing off ineffective reproducers, evolution can exert pressures to make them inconsequential for most every living being.

What does that mean in the words of Mormon thought? The rest of God is not a freedom from work. It is not even freedom from sorrow or pain, even if we have overcome death, because we cannot overcome emotion. We cannot lose the empathy that would free us from sorrow, because we need that empathy to be reproductively fit. We need it to work as a society. We need it to cease destroying the work of others. We need it to desire children.

But what happens to those who are just, who have empathy, who overcome death and the impulses to harm others, and yet somehow choose not to be Gods? What do they do? Why might they choose irrelevance or servitude over godhood?

I think the answers are likely as simple and complex as several of my friends shared when I asked this question. One more way my Gods are in our image. Why do people choose to not become parents? But remember, the group we are looking at is the just men and women of the earth. It isn't the murderers, thieves, and others who have proven themselves motivated first by selfishness. This life weeded those out and left them to their kingdom of selfishness until they figure out how to be happier. Why would just beings reject parenthood? What are the good reasons?

For one, it will cause pain. There is no path to godhood except through a life like this one. There is no path to godhood without bringing beings into self-awareness and empathy and watching them lose their brothers and sisters. You are inviting the most empathetic and loving to become Gods, and those are the ones who will watch a Lucifer lead away a third of their brothers and sisters. Those are the ones who will watch more suffer through mortal life. Those are the ones who will watch more choose selfishness and give up their chance at godhood. Those are the ones who will watch even more turn away from godhood when it was in their grasp. They will watch some just and loving brothers and sisters choose other paths because they don't want the work and uncertainty of Godhood. Those will choose paths of greater certainty, but less evolutionary fitness. But these loving Gods will watch others walk away, not because they were too evil, or selfish, or averse to uncertainty for godhood. These last will choose other paths because they feel too strongly the pain and suffering of other beings and they are not willing to bring others into a cosmos of sorrow. Because sorrow doesn't go away when you are God. These may even serve the Gods because they want to alleviate sorrow. They may feel both pain and joy more intensely than the Gods--for eternity.

What is the rest of God? It must be a peace in the midst of joy and sorrow. It must be something we can learn. It must be something we can find even as we navigate existence in a society of Gods, where different needs and desires forever conflict, and where we continue to hurt one another, even if it is only through the inevitable unfairness of making conflicting choices.

So what is the miracle of atonement? It is the Gods choosing to be, and act, together despite their different desires. Despite the pain they will cause each other, again and again, throughout eternity. It is the Gods choosing the joys of relationships, and choosing to rejoice in the success of others, even if it is sometimes at their own expense. It is the Gods choosing to lift other beings up to godhood, knowing that those beings--Their children--must suffer through pain, death, separation, and uncertainty. Knowing that even after the pains of mortality suffering will not be all gone, because only those who love can become Gods. It is choosing to continue in the society of Gods knowing that life will be forever uncertain. This, for me, is the miraculous atonement. It is why Jesus had to suffer the pains of all creation, and why we will have to choose the same. It is why we all must partake of the atonement. It is why, if we are not one, we are not God's. It is our joy and our song.