Category Archives: Religion

F-Bomb defiance

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The last two movies my wife and I have watched have been exactly the same movie, except that one of them was terrible and the other was really awfully good.  In the new Red Dawn (which we Netflixed because my wife has a crush on Chris Hemsworth), a rag-tag group of American insurgents fight against terrible odds against the technologically superior forces of the (snicker) North Koreans.  In Oblivion, a rag-tag group of American insurgents fight against terrible odds against the technologically superior forces of Melissa Leo (or, you know, space aliens using Melissa Leo’s voice and presence).

Oblivion‘s better than that.  I thought it was one of the better sci-fi action flicks that I’ve seen in awhile.  It was thoughtful and smart and although afflicted by massive plot holes and leaps in logic, you don’t really notice them much while you’re watching it.  Tom Cruise may be a loon, but he’s a fine actor, and looks great, and it made for a very satisfying night at the movies.

But, here’s the point I want to make, and it requires a pretty massive spoiler alert, so if you haven’t seen Oblivion, stop reading and go see the movie and then get back to me, but there’s a moment in both movies I want to talk about. Both movies are rated PG-13.  Both, therefore, get one F-bomb to play with.  And both drop their F-bomb at an identical moment in the plot.

In Red Dawn (the plot for which I’m also going to ruin for you, but I feel less bad about it, ’cause, get real, it’s not like you’re going to see the durn thing), the bad guy is Captain Cho, who the technologically superior (snicker) North Koreans have put in charge of their invading forces in Portland, where the movie’s set.  (Cho is played by Will Yun Lee, who is from, like, Arlington Virginia.  Hey, it’s a gig).  And of course, he has to have a final big fight scene with Chris Hemsworth.  And at the climactic moment of the fight, Hemsworth gets to drop his F-bomb. “F-you,” he says, or something similar.  So okay, in Oblivion, same thing–final confrontation with Melissa Leo, and what does Tom Cruise say?  Same thing, right before he destroys the Death Star. 

I found it interesting.  The same thing happens in Stephen King’s The Stand, where our rag-tag bunch of patriots have it out with the baddies in Vegas; same last line.  And while I can’t remember which movies it’s in, I know I’ve seen it other places as well.

It’s interesting how the F-word, once essentially a verb suggesting a kind of violent sexuality, has now become a word suggesting plucky defiance, a cheeky response to oppression.  Of course, the F- word has lots of other meanings–it’s plenty versatile, as taboo words tend to become.  But of course meaning depends on context, and in the context of PG-13 action films, it’s a positive thing. Sort of uniquely American, even.  As we patriotically give the figurative finger to our oppressors.

Of course, that’s also sort of a silly stance for us to take, given that we Americans possess the greatest military the world has ever seen, with military expenditures taking up a preposterously huge part of our budget, despite the fact that like the next twenty countries in terms of military expenditures are also allies.  In what sense is America a nation of underdogs?  We’re much more bullies than bullied.

And to give Red Dawn its due, that point does get mentioned.  Chris Hemsworth is an Iraq war veteran, and he says to his high-school-aged-army ‘in Iraq, we were the occupying force, and the insurgents were fighting us–here, we have to fight like the mujaheddin, we’re the bad guys, we have to fight a guerrilla war.’  Red Dawn does plug into what we might describe as a kind of Tea Party/conservative/Christian right paranoia, in which traditional American values are endangered, and we few patriots are left to fight the encroaching forces of, whatever, Kenyan socialism.  That stance, of course, is as ridiculous as the idea that the North Koreans could conquer Portland because of their (snicker) technological superiority. But whatever.  Why begrudge Tea Partiers their own action movie?

But we like underdogs.  Nobody wants to root for the Yankees; we prefer the plucky underdog Red Sox.  We loathe the Lakers–go Jazz!  We liked Rocky over Apollo, the Karate Kid over his tormentors, Hickory High over all those big-time schools in Hoosiers. Right now, the NBA playoffs are going on, and although I like basketball, I can’t get that interested; Miami has the best team and the best player, and they’re going to win.  It’s depressing.  So, in their first game against the Bulls (who had, like, their best four players out with injuries), when Joachim Noah, the Bulls emotional leader said ‘F-you’ to Lebron James (caught on camera; you couldn’t hear him say it, but it was clear enough), I got . . . interested in the series. And the Bulls won .  . . one game. And lost the next four. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, saith the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, but generally that’s the way to bet.  And we know that, we know that powerful forces usually do actually win over less powerful ones, no matter how gritty and endearingly courageous the underdogs might be.  None of that really matters.  In reality, the rich beat the poor, big beats little, corporations usually do win.  Which is why we like movies (fantasies) where the opposite happens.  And why movie-makers go to fantastic lengths to make sure the heroes are underdogs, even when it doesn’t actually make sense.

There’s a terrific ‘F-you’ TV commercial on right now.  This skinny little kid, with the world’s awesomest Mom, is bullied by kids who steal his football.  But our skinny hero happens to know a kid weightlifter, a kid welder, a kid bear wrestler (!), a kid fire-fighter.  And the final line of the commercial, “touch or. .  .” “Tackle!” is the F-you moment.  Heck, yes, we’ll play you for the ball.  By the way, our right tackle wrestles bears.

And yes, I know some people find the F-word offensive.  I get that.  And yes, there’s absolutely a morality of language.  The Ten Commandments forbid ‘taking the Lord’s name in vain.’  A sin of language.  Or ‘bearing false witness.’ A sin of language.  But those sins are also sins of context, as must be the case with anything involving language, where we’re always invoking, reflecting, creating culture. I’m a playwright, and if my characters need to drop an F-bomb, I write it. And don’t feel like I’ve thereby sinned.

And sometimes, when facing implacable institutions, all-powerful bureaucracies, entrenched enemies with their castles and their moats, the F word is a battle cry, a shout of courageous defiance.  My grandmother was fond of a poem, which she turned into a needle-point sampler: “it may not be classic, it might be profane, but we mortals have need of it, time and again. And you’ll find you’re recover from life’s greatest slam, if you never say ‘die,’ say ‘damn.’”  As language has shifted and changed from her day, we might rewrite it as follows: ‘when you find that you need all your grit, all your pluck, never say die, say. . . . ‘

 

 

Bums

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One place they gather is just outside the Maceys parking lot.  Maceys is where I do most of our grocery shopping, and the entrance onto State Street is narrow enough that traffic backs up there.  They give you time to see them, with their cardboard signs.  ‘Homeless Please Help.’  Friday, it was a family, multi-generational, multi-racial.  The youngest looked about twenty; he was tall, had something wrong with his left leg, gimped over. He was on my right, passenger side, had to lean into the car for the money.  I gave him three dollars, all I had in small denominations.  “Thanks, man,” he said.

Something about homelessness; language reverts to a sixties usage and idiom.  Adding ‘man’ to every sentence.  “Here you go, man.”  “Wish it were more, man.” “Thanks, man.”  And yesterday, outside Bed Bath and Beyond, from the short toothless elderly African American guy I gave a few quarters to, “God bless you, my brother.”  It’s heavy, man, thinking about homelessness. Groovy to give. The sound track is Tracy Chapman and “Fast Car” and Jimi with Highway Chile and Tull with “Aqualung.” It all feels very tie-dye and patchouli oil.  Like, man, the first time we cared about our brothers, you dig?

I wonder how they decide who gets which spot.  The corner of State and Bulldog seems like a bad place to panhandle.  Cars move too stop–there’s not a good place to stand.  But they were there too, Friday. I’d broken a twenty and had a few bills for the Native American-looking woman, there with a daughter.  But the car behind me honked when I stopped to give it to her.  Impatient, maybe angry.

My wife and I have agreed; if we can give ‘em a few bucks, we try to.  We don’t always.  And I’m stingy about it.  I’ll give a couple of bucks, or a few quarters, but if I have a ten or a twenty, it stays in my pocket.  My charity has serious limitations.

We shouldn’t encourage bums, you hear.  This is their job, panhandling, and a lucrative one.  You’d be shocked how much they make at it too!  Instead of just getting a real job, and doing real work, for an honest wage. Don’t be a sucker.  They work on the sympathies of soft-headed liberals/Christians/doo-gooders. And if you give them money, they’ll just use it to get drunk.

I don’t care about any of that.  Maybe some of them will get drunk. Or high.  I don’t care.  I see a family with children.  The kids look hungry.  I see an old guy, defeated by life, hanging on.  I see a battered face, I see worn jeans and a filthy jacket and a backpack.  A shopping cart, filled with junk.  I see some of the worst shoes ever.  Limping, like the shoes, crappy as they are, also don’t fit.

They don’t seem to hang out by Harmons.  We don’t shop at Harmons, much. It’s a lot nicer grocery store, with more organic veggies, with expensive cheeses, with fancy breads and muffins. Not many processed foods.  We shop there occasionally.  They offer a service where they bag your groceries and then take them to a loading area, where you can park and they load ‘em in your car.  Harmon’s is north east Orem, closer to the nicer neighborhoods in Lindon and up in the river bottoms and foothills.  You don’t see a lot of panhandlers there, outside Harmons.  Rich folks equal slim pickins, I suspect.

And I wonder what it’s like in the northwest valley, up by Alpine and Lehi and Cedar Hills and Saratoga Springs.  I once knew a guy who was a bishop in an Alpine ward.  He said that from time to time, it was his duty, as bishop, to tell people who had moved in, ‘we think you probably move.  We think you can’t afford to live here.’  Those wards, where Youth Conference involved trips to Cancun or Wahweap.  I wonder where they shop for groceries.  I wonder if panhandlers haunt their parking lots.  Maybe so.  Maybe it makes sense for them.

But in Provo, outside Macey’s or the Fresh Market on Center Street.  They’re always there. And I bet the real poor-people grocer, Reams, I bet that place is crowded with homeless beggars.  The people who shop at Reams, where you have to bag your own groceries, those are the people who know how fragile the line is between them an poverty. They may have less, but you can bet they give more.

And here I am, judging.  In fact, it’s hard to see any part of homelessness that doesn’t get all caught up in judging, in self-righteousness, in feeling superior.  We judge the homeless, assume their failures are entirely their fault, that they’re homeless because of recklessness or profligacy or self-indulgence or addiction.  (What’s that great Mitch Hedberg line? ‘Alcoholism is the one disease people get mad at you for getting’).  We try to think of ways to help them on our terms.  ‘I’ll buy you breakfast?,’ we consider saying, instead of giving cash they’ll just drink up.  But breakfast, at least he’s getting a decent meal.  Or we think, ‘what if I offered him a job? I bet he’d turn it down.  He’s a bum because he likes being a bum.’  We think that.

We like to judge beggars.  But then, when we hand the guy a couple of bucks, we like to judge the people in all the other cars that don’t give him anything.  I just did it, judging folks who shop at Harmon’s.  We judge those who give more than we do, and those who give less than we do, and we judge ourselves too–’why didn’t I give more (or less).’

And yet, it’s precisely when dealing with the poor that we’re not actually supposed to judge at all:

And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish. Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just—But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.  For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have? (Mosiah 4: 16-19)

And I’m not even going to get into the whole ‘the government should help more/no it shouldn’t, government programs just foster dependency’ debate.  I know both sides of that argument, and perhaps there’s some merit to both. It does seem to me to be getting worse. And I know which arguments we’re not allowed to make, as Christians.  We’re not allowed to say ‘it’s his fault.  He gets nothing from me.’  We’re not even allowed to think it.

So my wife and I do what we can, give a little each time, wish it were more.  Look into the faces of the poor, and see defeated eyes, rheumy eyes, crazy eyes.  See reflected desperation or anger or mental illness.  See our Heavenly Father’s children, down and out, down and falling, down to nothing in the richest country the world has ever seen.  So we give.

 

 

The Arias case, blood atonement, and continuing revelation

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Until this morning, I hadn’t really been following the Jodi Arias case. I almost never do follow these big, Nancy Grace/CNN-full-coverage murder trials.  Anyway, the Jodi Arias case is the latest, apparently, the latest car wreck we all are compelled to rubberneck at as we drive past.  Jodi Arias murdered her boyfriend, Travis Alexander.  Stabbed him, slit his throat, shot him thirty times.  And the trial was lurid enough, with grisly photos to look at, and recorded phone sex to listen to, and allegations of abusive behavior by him.  (Which, frankly, I kind of believe).  And her testimony, which apparently went on forever and got pretty strange and contradictory and unbelievable.

No, I wouldn’t bother myself with this case at all, really, except for this:  the Mormon blood atonement angle. Travis Alexander, it seems, was LDS.  And was having a rather kinky affair with Arias.  So, according to Brian Carr, a friend of Arias’, we blood-atoned him.  Says Carr, “If Jodi went on the stand and said that it wasn’t her and that the Mormons did this, then they will go after her and her family – their lives are on the line so she is covering up with her story.”  We murdered him, ’cause he was being naughty.

I totally remember doing that kind of thing, don’t you?  When I was sixteen, freshly ordained as a priest, I remember our duties: we had to prepare the sacrament, collect fast offerings, and murder adulterers.  Ah, the memories! Sneaking around, truncheon and dagger in hand, waiting for those vile sinners to fall asleep, then slipping into their homes and driving a blade through their black black hearts!  Halcyon days!

My initial reaction to this preposterous nonsense was to laugh at it.  But this is potentially damaging to the Church.  Not that anyone’s going to believe that we go around murdering folks who sleep around.  No, my fear is, folks read it, wonder what’s going on, google ‘Mormons blood atonement,’ and find stuff that makes us look, at least historically, kind of loony.

One way we could get in front of this would be to just flat out denounce blood atonement. I remember Orson Scott Card once, tongue firmly in cheek, defining blood atonement as “something Mormons have never preached, especially Jedediah M. Grant.”  In other words, yeah, it was a thing.  Obviously, the Church has repeatedly issued statements saying we no longer practice blood atonement; that certainly helps. It’s no longer part of our doctrine or practice.  But it was once, and was defended, by, among others, Elder McConkie, and as recently as 1978. And we’ve never just flat out said ‘it’s a thing some LDS leaders used to teach, but it’s crazy and they were wrong.’

To orient ourselves, this Wikipedia article is generally pretty accurate. It’ll be one of the first things folks will find.  Church authorities taught it, including Jedediah Grant. We believed that some sins are sufficiently heinous that Christ’s atonement was insufficient–that sinners, to gain full forgiveness, needed to allow their own blood to be shed. We didn’t, you know, kill people, but we did teach that hanging was an inappropriate punishment for murder.  It’s why Utah still allowed the death penalty via firing squad well after other states had all gone to lethal injection.

And see, that last part is the one that bothers me.  I don’t particularly care if Jedediah M. Grant said kooky things 150 years ago.  I don’t particularly care if Brigham Young taught this nutty doctrine.  I do care that their beliefs continued to influence public policy in the state of Utah in my lifetime.

And I care a lot that Elder Bruce R. McConkie, a General Authority that I remember with great fondness from my youth, continued to defend blood atonement as a doctrine as late as 1978.

Now, let me hasten to say that I don’t actually speak with any kind of authority on this.  I think blood atonement is weird and creepy.  I think the ‘infinite atonement’ of Jesus Christ means just that; it’s infinite.  I think this notion that you have to have your blood spilled to personally atone for wrong-doing is doctrinally, uh, bewildering.  But that’s just me, just my opinion.

But there’s a reason that something wacky that a few General Authorities believed and taught in the 1870s was something Elder McConkie felt obliged to defend in the 1970s.  It’s because of what I consider a misunderstanding of the doctrine of continuing revelation.

We believe that there are prophets on the earth today, that the leaders of the LDS faith receive revelations.  And a popular folk doctrine insists that everything spoken by any General Authority from the pulpit in General Conference, is automatically scripture; the word of the Lord, the will of the Lord. If Jedediah M. Grant was an apostle (and he was), and if he spoke of blood atonement from the pulpit at General Conference (and he did), then we are obliged to believe in it today, and defend it, even if our current prophet no longer insists that we practice it.

By the same token, General Authorities, from the pulpit, insisted that plural marriage was not just something we practiced, but absolutely central to our entire belief system.  And General Authorities, from the pulpit, insisted that black members of the Church were in some very real sense inferior to white members of the Church, and that that was a justification for denying them the Priesthood.  And General Authorities, from the pulpit, insisted that homosexuality itself was a mortal sin regardless of practice; not just engaging in gay sex, but wanting to.

The Church no longer teaches any of those things.  But we can’t quite bring ourselves to repudiate them either.  We can’t quite manage to say what nonetheless seems obvious; that some talks, once spoken from the pulpit in General Conference, explored ideas that we no longer regard as true. That the doctrine of ‘continuing revelation’ is, at times, superceded by the doctrine of ‘line upon line, precept on precept.’  That, at times, further light and knowledge received, not only by revelation, but also from reason and science and research, renders the ideas of the past irrelevant, or offensive, or untrue.  That new knowledge trumps old knowledge, even for us, at least some of the time.

I believe in God and I believe in continuing revelation.  But for me, praying, seeking answers to prayers, listening to the Spirit, all of that is incredibly difficult.  It’s about feelings, thoughts, impressions.  And I have reason to believe that it’s just as difficult for General Authorities too.  This wonderful article describes the endlessly difficult process through which President Kimball received the revelation on Priesthood.  The hours of contemplation and prayer, day after day.  That accords with my experience.  And while it’s certainly possible that that process is easier for General Authorities than it is for me–and absolutely certain that they’re worthier and more spiritual than me–I actually think that we may misunderstand an apostolic calling.  It may not be about having the right to receive revelation.  It may be more about an obligation to pursue it.

Just once, I would love to hear a talk in which some doctrine that the Church once taught and that no one teaches anymore is just flat out repudiated.  Blood atonement seems like a pretty good candidate for that.  In the meantime, it’s our responsibility to read, study, pray, use our minds and use our spirits, to never quit struggling toward the light.

 

 

BYU Dress and Grooming

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A friend shared this image, a poster from the BYU Honor Code office, and a parody of that poster from the Student Review.  Yes, that’s James Bond being used as a positive example, a guy who follows the BYU Honor Code.  Clean-shaven and all.  Also a womanizer who kills people for a living, but let’s not quibble over nuances.

A couple of points worth making about the BYU Honor Code.  First of all, every college in America has an Honor Code.  They may not call it that, exactly, but every school has one.  If you’re caught cheating on a test, or plagiarizing, you’ll get in trouble.  If you’re a serial sexual harasser, or have multiple DUIs on your record, you’ll get in trouble; state schools, private schools.  BYU is not unique in having an Honor Code.

Where BYU is unique is what sorts of things the Honor Code includes.  You can’t drink, smoke, drink coffee or chew tobacco. You can’t have sex with anyone, unless you’re married. BYU cares what clothes you wear and, if you’re a guy, the length and location of your facial hair.  Tattoos are not allowed, nor are multiple piercings.  Here are the actual rules, if you’re interested.  BYU is a university where students are not allowed to drink or fool around.  Yeah, BYU’s unique.

I taught at BYU for twenty years.  And my feelings about the Honor Code were, to be honest, conflicted. Obviously, some provisions of the Honor Code were there because it’s a Church sponsored school, with its own institutional take on the doctrine of in loco parentis.  Other rules were just public relations. BYU wanted students to look a certain way, clean-cut and well scrubbed. That part always struck me as silly.  I couldn’t care have cared less how my students wore their hair, or their shorts were knee length.  I used to get the giggles, thinking of the Honor Code committee, and how comically solemn committee meetings usually were anyway, and then add sober-sided administrators issuing Talmudic disquisitions on hair or skirt length to the agenda, and ROFL.

But personally, I was actually kind of grateful for the grooming stuff.  Here’s why; my preferred mode of dress and grooming is basically that of a hobo. Left to my own devices, I absolutely would have worn my hair to the waist, gotten my ears pierced, festooned my visible bits with tattoos.  I’m essentially a hippie at heart.  I would certainly have sported any number of styles of beard. Faded and patched jeans, Grateful Dead tee shirts, Hawaiian shirts; heck, I wouldn’t have put anything past me.  Lava lavas.  Kilts.  Jodhpurs.

In short, I would have looked like a pathetic middle-aged guy desperately clinging to a long-vanished youth, and I would have made a public spectacle of myself.  Now, as it happens, I’m also married, and would never have gotten away with any of that.  But here’s my larger point: I don’t know how to dress.  I don’t care.  I don’t just value comfort over style, I value comfort over everything.  BYU’s silly rules simplified my life.  I had to get a haircut every few months.  I had to shave most mornings.  And I had to dress decently, wearing clothes my wife bought for me because she didn’t trust me to buy anything for myself, nor should she have done.

So BYU prevented me from following my own misguided sartorial heart, and I’m grateful for it.  As a teacher, I didn’t care what anyone wore–I couldn’t be bothered.  If I saw a kid with a beard or long hair, I figured he was an actor growing it out for a role.  It would never have occurred to me to turn anyone in for anything.

Boy, some people sure care, though.  As I understand it, one big issue now has to do with a current fashion popular among young ladies, in which they wear a short skirt with long leggings.  This either is or isn’t a violation of the Honor Code, and some people have taken it upon themselves to write nasty notes to perceived offenders, or otherwise chastise them.  One joker wrote one to my daughter.  Apparently, some guys find some women’s fashions sexually arousing, or something, and think it’s the responsibility of young women to dress in a non-arousing way. “When you dress that way, you don’t know what it does to my relationship to the Spirit.”  Or some such self-serving blather.  “I’m a spiritual Giant, I am, except for those times when you make me not be one!”  Blarg.  BYU fauna do include herds of self-righteous dolts–let’s hope they grow out of it.

As a professor I never would have noticed if a girl was dressed inappropriately, because noticing would have required that I look at her, not as a student, but, however briefly, as a sexual object.  I said that badly, I think, but I want to make this clear; my students were there to learn from me.  My job was to teach. I felt it was my professional obligation to treat all students, male or female, exactly the same–as people who were there to learn.  It certainly wasn’t any part of my job to think of any student in any other way.  For me to look at a young woman and think ‘I think that skirt is too short’ would have required for me to consider something as irrelevant to the subject matter as the length of her skirt.

But it’s tricky.  First of all, I wanted all my students to think of themselves as special, unique, valued.  This went beyond trying to remember their names.  If a student had distinguished herself in some positive way, I tried to remember that, and refer to it in conversation.  If a student had asked me a question about something, I might ask her about it later–’did you ever find an answer to such and such?’  So I might say something like ‘cute tee shirt,’ if the student was wearing a clever or funny tee shirt.  I might say something like ‘did you change your hairstyle?  It’s cute.’  Because college aged women do change their hairstyle with some frequency, and like it when people notice.  This is going to sound weird, but the persona I tried to cultivate was ‘older gay friend.’  Odd, because I’m not, in fact, gay. Just romantically uninterested/unavailable/unappealing.  Just this: there’s a fine line between ‘I like that sweater’ and ‘wow, you’re really hot,’ and I tried to stay on the appropriate side of that line, and I think I generally succeeded.

One thing that helped, I think, is that I’m not an attractive guy.  I’m big and I’m not good-looking.  When I say this, understand I’m not pathetically begging for sympathy and reassurance.  I’m perfectly fine with how I look.  Remember–I’m a theatre guy.  When I say “I’m fat,” I don’t mean “I’m consumed with self-loathing!”  I mean it like an actor: “there are parts I’m right for.”

I was a professor of Theatre, a playwright and a director.  And that means being acutely aware of clothing, of social signifiers and cultural constructs, and what message does wearing that outfit send.  I did get to work with costume designers, really good ones, and that was sometimes tricky for me, because I really genuinely don’t personally care about clothing.  But I do care a great deal about stage picture and the look of a show.  So in casting a show, I did have to take looks into consideration.  Again, a fine line: I couldn’t allow myself to think ‘that’s a pretty girl,’ but I could allow myself to think ‘she’s an ‘ingenue type;’ probably not right for Lady Capulet.’  I think I engaged in more non-traditional casting than most other directors in the department, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t take looks into account.  I do one time recall telling an actress that, although her audition was tremendous, I didn’t think I could cast her, because I thought she was too pretty to be convincing in the role.  She showed up to the call-back looking like a complete mess–no makeup, hadn’t showered, she said–wowed me with her acting, and easily won the role.

So the modesty debate is an interesting one, on a lot of levels. It certainly does get caught up in all sorts of issues of sexism and misogyny and how our culture constructs gender and gender roles.  So saying ‘I don’t care if that skirt is considered immodest’ doesn’t mean ‘I’m indifferent to issues relating to sexual immorality.’  It means ‘I’m deliberately placing myself outside that particular debate.  I’m absenting myself from considering her physical attractiveness.  She is, to me, a student. I am, to her, a teacher. And that relationship, teacher/student, is, to me, something holy.’

 

 

The Pope of Islam

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The Boston Marathon bombing crisis seems to be over.  As best we know, the guy who masterminded the whole thing is dead, and his younger brother/accomplice is in custody.  Days to come, we’ll learn a lot more, about why this happened, motives and ideologies.

‘Not knowing’ doesn’t mean ‘not voicing opinions,’ however.  And I’ve been reading lots of chest thumping bluster on the inner-tubes about What It All Means.  And one opinion I hear regularly is that this proves– proves I tell you!– that Islam is an inherently violent religion, that Islam is fundamentally about jihad and terrorism, that the soft-headed notion that Islam is a peaceful religion is just more liberal media bias.  ‘Where are the prominent Muslim voices rejecting violence?  All we hear is terrorism, and more terrorism!  This kind of thing indicts their entire religion!’  And so on.

I get that it’s just ignorance.  I get that most Americans don’t know doodly-squat about Islam.  I’ve heard too many uninformed voices, the last few days (or rather, read too many uninformed posts), inventing silly nonsense about Islam.  One deep thinker opined that, as a religion, Islam has basically four tenets: suicide bombers, IEDs, Al Qaeda, and oppressing women.  And until authoritative Muslim voices denounce terrorist acts, in public, loudly and unmistakably, this guy says he’ll continue to think so.

The thing is, I’m hardly any expert on Islam.  I’ve read the Qur’an, but only once, in English translation.  I don’t have Arabic as a language, and I’ve hardly traveled extensively in the Islamic world–been to Israel, but that’s about it.  I’ve studied the religion a little, but not in any detail. I could get a lot of this wrong.  So bear with me, and forgive my ignorance, and if I’ve screwed up, set me straight.

But, yeah.  Islam is a peaceful religion.  The five pillars of Islam are straightforward: 1) the shahadah or creed (there’s only one God and Mohammed is his prophet), (2) daily prayers, (3) caring for the poor, (4) fasting during Ramadan, and (5) a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.  They believe in God, pray to him several times a day, care for poor people, fast, and renew themselves spiritually on a pilgrimage.  It’s awesomely simple and beautiful.

Are there passages in the Qur’an that suggest that God approves of violence?  A few, yeah, which we mostly take out of context. There are maybe ten or fifteen verses all told, most of which deal with defensive war, which the Qur’an does consider morally justifiable–fighting to protect your family and neighbors.  Are there passages in the Bible that suggest that God approves of violence? Sure, like ten times more.  We have the entire book of Joshua to explain away. Does that make either Judaism or Christianity blood-thirsty religions?  Of course not–we look at Joshua in its larger historical context. And the Crusades, and the Inquisition.  We have a history, they have a history.  Let’s call it a draw.

So, yes, we’re in a War on Terror, and terrorists nowadays are Moslems.  All of ‘em, basically; terrorists.  “Uh, what?  Wait! What about me?” That’s Timothy McVeigh, feeling neglected. Joined by Basque separatists, the Shining Path guerrillas, the Red Army, the Irish Republican Army, the Weather Underground, Che, Mao, Pol Pot, Carlos the Jackal. . .  .

So isn’t terrorism mostly a function of actual (and perceived) oppression?  Isn’t it more about politics than it is about religion, or perhaps a combustible mix of religion and politics?  We don’t know anything yet about the Boston guys, but if this is about Chechnya, isn’t the big thing there independence?   When people talk about Afghanistan under the Taliban as an example of an ‘Islamic nation,’ when they suggest that the Taliban’s hostility to education and grotesque mistreatment of women are typical of what happens when you create an Islamic theocracy, I would suggest that the problem in Afghanistan isn’t Islam, it’s the fact that Afghanistan is a miserably screwed-up poor country.  Don’t compare Afghanistan (war-torn, violent, oppressive, Islamic) to, I don’t know, Denmark (peaceful, non-violent, free, Christian).  Compare Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (war-torn, violent, oppressive, Christian).  Compare one screwed-up poor country to another screwed-up poor country.  Conclusion: it sucks to live in screwed-up poor countries.  Stop the presses.

Another factor–the unrelenting destructive power of sheer boredom. The 9/11 hijackers all came from either Saudi Arabia or Egypt. Both are Muslim nations, and both are reasonably prosperous.  But those countries have other things in common–massive unemployment, and a huge income gap; incredibly rich people, and desperately poor people, and not much in-between. 25 percent unemployment in both countries, more or less.   Unemployment means you’ve got lots of educated young men with no job prospects and nothing to do all day. Bored. (Could that describe the Boston guys? Underemployed bored young guys?)  That describes bin Laden, and it also describes Zawahiri and what we know of most of Al Qaeda’s leadership, and most of their recruits.  What does Al Qaeda want?  Essentially, the re-establishment of the caliphate. It’s a political goal. And it’s one that not all Moslems share.

The Shi’a sure don’t.  Okay, so when Mohammed died, he left behind a succession crisis.  According to Sunni Moslems, Abu Bakr Siddique ran things first, then passed the caliphate on to Umar ibn-Khattab, who passed it on to . . . ah heck, you can read Wikipedia as easily as I can.  Anyway, eventually the various attempts to establish a trans-Islamic caliphate failed, and there is no caliph anymore, though it’s the dream of some Sunni (including Al Qaeda) to re-establish one.  Shi’ite Moslems, however, think Mohammed intended his cousin and son-in-law Ali to be successor, to be passed on to his immediate family.  There’s even a hadith (a ‘saying’) of Mohammed to that effect, sort of the equivalent of Jesus saying to Peter, ‘on this rock will I build my church.’ (And a quick look at Christian history shows how much mischief that one caused!) Anyway, when Ali’s grandson, Hussein, was murdered, the Shi’a rejected the Caliphate entirely.  Some Shi’a look forward to a Messianic Mahdi, who come to earth and rule and reign.

So here’s the point: Al Qaeda is working towards the time when a single pan-Islamic caliphate will be restored, when a caliph, called by God, will come and rule the entire Islamic world, unified under Sharia law.  That’s what they’re trying to achieve.  And they see the West, in unholy union with the corrupt Saudi regime, as preventing that from happening.  In other words, as I said before, it’s an essentially political ambition. It’s also crazy.  Seriously: Turkey, Indonesia, Iran and Yemen (just for grins and giggles, let’s toss Pakistan in there too) unified under a single theocratic ruler?  It’s completely insane. Whole lotta wars required to bring that one about.

And everyone knows it. It’s a fantasy, especially when you consider that the Islamic world is hardly united at all about what ‘sharia law’ means.  What percentage of the Islamic world shares those specific goals?  Hard to say, because it kind of depends on how you phrase the question.  Ask Christians how many ‘look forward to the Second Coming of Christ’ and my guess is a majority would say ‘yes.’  But if you asked it this way, ‘if the Second Coming of Jesus included a thermo-nuclear holocaust, would you look forward to that happening?’  The numbers would undoubtedly drop.  So when Moslems are asked if they support a restoration of the caliphate, yes, a majority do favor that.  But when you ask if Moslems support using terrorist means to accomplish the restoration of the caliphate?  Huge, overwhelming majorities oppose it, because nearly all Moslems consider terrorism un-Islamic. Basically, Islamic terrorists are to Islam what the Ku Klux Klan is to Christianity–tiny groups of fanatics without popular support.

So my friend asks, why don’t we see major figures in Islam condemn terrorist acts, when they happen?  One reason is that Islam isn’t a church.  It’s a religion, but it’s not organized like a Church is, with a President and leadership councils and that kind of administrative apparatus. Islam doesn’t have a Pope.  That’s kind of what bin Laden wanted, to give Islam a Pope. But there are four main divisions within Sunni Islam and two main ones in Shi’a Islam, and they’re all sub-divided.  There are certain imams with some influence, but there’s not an organizational structure that can do things like issue press releases condemning terrorism.  If a mullah in Iran issues a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, it’s not really binding on other Moslems, unless they happen to agree with that mullah.

But if Islam isn’t a church, boy do Moslems like to organize.  So, okay, just for fun, here’s a list of a few prominent Moslem groups that have consistently and completely condemned terrorism:

The American Muslim Political Co-ordination Committee.  The Islamic Circle of North America.  The Afghan Muslim Association. American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, American Muslims Intent on Learning and Activism, the Arab-American Congress, Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Networks Group, the Islamic Society of the East Bay, the Muslim Peace Fellowship, the Zaytuna Institute.

The Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar University, the oldest seat of Islamic learning, Muhammed Sayyed Tantawi, has repeatedly condemned terrorism. Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz and Sheik Uthaimeen, two important Saudi scholars, have come out against terrorism.  Oh, and Every Other Major Scholar of Islam, has come out against the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians and terror tactics generally. Abdul Aziz al-Ashaikh (Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and Chairman of the Senior Ulama), says that terrorist attacks constitute the worst possible violation of Islamic law, hirabah, waging war against society.  I don’t know what the Senior Ulama means, or Mufti either, but the dude sure sounds important. And sensible, and moral, and right.

I’m no expert on Islam, not in any way, not in any sense.  But to say ‘Moslems don’t condemn terrorism’ is just foolish and ignorant and prejudiced.  I looked it up. I Googled ‘Moslems oppose terrorism.’  Found everything listed above.  Took me five minutes.

Meanwhile, two screwed-up young guys did terrible things.  One of them’s dead, the other one’s in custody, badly wounded and trying to make sense of the disastrous mess he’s made of his life.  Let’s just leave it there for now.

 

 

Sexual violence, virtue, and Sister Dalton’s talk

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It’s General Conference time, which I always like; I enjoy going to Church in my pajamas.  And while the stentorian Voice at the beginning of the broadcast always uses the adjective ‘historic’ before each session, this one really did feel historic.  For the first time in the history of the Church, a woman was going to give one of the prayers at the beginning or conclusion of the session.  And when Sister Jean Stephens, first counselor in the general Primary Presidency gave the closing prayer at the end of this morning’s session, well, it managed to be both quotidian and awesome.  It’s not like we’ve never heard a woman pray in Church, after all.  And she gave a lovely, most appropriate prayer.

A number of friends on Facebook responded more negatively, however, to an earlier talk in the session, also by a woman.  Sister Elaine S. Dalton, general Young Women president, gave a talk entitled ‘We are daughters of our Heavenly Father.’  It was a lovely talk, for the most part.  She talked about her mother, who was widowed as a young woman, who raised her family while working as a school teacher.  It reminded me of my grandmother, who was likewise widowed much too young, and who also had to struggle to raise her family alone.

But then, Sister Dalton began to talk about virtue.  And she quoted Moroni 9: 9, about how the Nephites had deprived the daughters of the Lamanites “of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue.”  The point she was making was that virtue–chastity–is dear and precious.

But as a number of my friends on Facebook pointed out, that’s not what Mormon is talking about in that scripture.  Moroni 9 is a letter Moroni has gotten from his father, probably the saddest chapter in the Book of Mormon, a recitation of war atrocities, including rape and cannibalism.  The phrase, ‘deprived them of . . . their chastity’ is a 19th century way of talking about rape.  What Mormon is saying in those verses is that his own people, the Nephites, a people he has served as a political leader, a prophet and a commanding general, have become so depraved, they have raped and tortured and abused and even cannibalized captured Lamanite women.  He’s horrified by what he’s seen. He is overcome by it.  And this is his lament

O my beloved son, how can a people like this, that are without civilization— (And only a few years have passed away, and they were a civil and a delightsome people) But O my son, how can a people like this, whose delight is in so much abomination—How can we expect that God will stay his hand in judgment against us? Behold, my heart cries: Wo unto this people. Come out in judgment, O God, and hide their sins, and wickedness, and abominations from before thy face!  (Moroni 9:11-15)

Without civilization.  That’s how Mormon has come to see his people, his friends and countrymen, as people without civilization.  It’s a stunning condemnation of blood lust and violence.

The phrase ‘deprived of their virtue,’ however, poorly describes the values of our civilization about rape.  In the 19th century, women who were raped were described that way, as ‘having been deprived of their virtue.’  They were no longer virgins, they were no longer, therefore, pure.  This was also the Biblical standard.  In the Old Testament, women are encouraged to give their own lives rather than allow themselves to be raped.  Young unmarried women were commanded to marry their rapists.  Check out Deuteronomy 22–all sorts of crazy stuff in there about virginity and stoning people, stuff we don’t worry about anymore.  It’s there, in the scripture, as a reminder of how far culture has advanced.  But we don’t see it that way anymore, nor should we.

Civilization has changed, and very much for the better.  We see ‘virtue’ as something no one can take from you; something that can only be surrendered voluntarily.  A woman who has been raped is, in our eyes, a victim of violence, and completely virtuous in every sense.  Our counsel to a young woman who has been the victim of sexual assault would be that she has been attacked by a violent criminal, and that there is no sense whatever in which she is at fault.

I don’t doubt for one second that Sister Dalton would be horrified if someone were to say to her that her talk suggested that rape victims are in any way morally culpable.  Her use of Moroni 9: 9 was surely intended only to suggest the value of chastity, not to, in any way, minimize the horrors attached to acts of sexual violence.  May I gently suggest, however, that the use of Moroni 9: 9 in the context in which it appeared could only be described as unfortunate.

And yet, it would appear that that scripture is generally intended to be used precisely as Sister Dalton used it.  On LDS.org, the Young Women’s Personal Progress program urges our girls to have ‘value experiences’ in each of the eight Young Women’s values.  One of those values is Virtue, and one of the scriptures recommended to the girls is Moroni 9: 9.

Seriously?  Do we genuinely want our young women, age 12-18, to think that a woman who has been forcibly and violently raped has been ‘deprived of her virtue?’  That a scripture about war crimes will encourage young women to think about how important virtue is?

It gets worse.  82 percent of rapes involve an acquaintance, a friend or family member.  Let’s suppose that a young woman is on a date, and he rapes her, or in a study session with a guy who attacks her.  According to Moroni 9: 9, she’s been deprived of her virtue.  She has been rendered non-virtuous.  Wouldn’t that tend to make her less likely to tell someone, less likely to report it to her parents or a teacher or a Church leader, or the cops?  Wouldn’t that compound whatever feelings of wrong she may be experiencing?

I honestly don’t think any of this is intentional.  I don’t think the Young Women’s program is insensitive to rape.  I think most likely someone did a scripture search for the word ‘virtue,’ and when Moroni 9: 9 popped up, went ‘hey, there’s a strong scripture about how important virtue is, let’s use that,’ without thinking it through.  I think it’s also possible that this usage may reflect the unconscious values of an older generation taught to think of a rape victim as being deprived of her virtue.  And I’m not knocking Moroni.  It’s a terrific scripture, about the kinds of horrors that can take place when a culture loses its moral bearings.  It just doesn’t make sense as a scripture intended to persuade young woman to live chastely.  And may I suggest that it’s time for that usage to go away.

Suffrage: A review

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Jenifer Nii’s beautiful new play, Suffrage, is playing at Plan B Theatre in Salt Lake.  Before I get to the rest of the review, let me say this: you want to see this.  It’s terrific.  Tickets at 801-355-ARTS.

Frances (April Fossen) and Ruth (Sarah Young) are two of the five wives of Benjamin, an otherwise anonymous Mormon patriarch ca. 1880s.  That’s the time and setting of the play.  Frances and Ruth are, in a sense, Mary and Martha, in a play in which the issue of women’s suffrage is the cause to which they both adhere–Mary/Ruth, passionately engaged in that cause, Martha/Frances, more concerned with daily tasks and responsibilities.  Benjamin has been jailed, and as the play begins, is waiting trail, for the crime of plural marriage.  As the play progresses, he is, apparently sentenced to further jail time.  With no male breadwinner, the women (and especially Frances) is worried about paying the mortgage.

It’s a deeply political play, on every level.  The national political debate over the passage of the Edmunds/Tucker Act is alluded to.  It terrifies both women, and energizes Ruth, who is sure that by organizing Utah women and gathering signatures on suffrage petitions, she can influence the national political debate.  She is, in short, hopelessly naive, and Young plays that naivete superbly–Ruth is as appealing a character as a passionate and engaged young person can be.  The play also explores local politics, as Frances, who is superbly qualified to work as a bookkeeper for a local businessman (a job that would save the family home), loses the job, in part due to her prospective employers’ knee-jerk sexism, but also due in large measure to local perceptions of Ruth’s activism.  Frances, it turns out, is perfectly capable of defending Ruth to others, though in person, she constantly urges Ruth to tone things down.

But for me, the most interesting political element in the play is the inter-personal politics of a polygamous family.  This is a play about wives number 2 and 4, in a 5-wife family.  We never meet wives 1, 3 or 5, but they’re alluded to, and we get a very strong sense of them–the senior wife, sick and exhausted and dying, the youngest wife, illiterate and beautiful and (as Ruth puts it), ‘dumb as a houseplant.’  Wife 3, a drudge, waiting to be told what to do.

Obviously, I’ve never lived in a polygamous family, nor have any desire, ever, to do so. But in any family, things have to get decided, tasks need to be finished–stuff has to get done.  Working out who does what and on what schedule and with what priorities is the task of any family leadership council, whether that council has two members or six. We talk of marriage as a ‘partnership of equals,’ and the Church has certainly toned down patriarchalist rhetoric, and that’s all well and good and valuable, but in the meantime, there are meals to prepare and laundry to wash and families have to work it all out.  And who decides?  Well, you talk about it, you make decisions, you negotiate.  Its politics at its most straight-forward and simple.  And the play shows those negotiations, complicated by the fact that Frances, as wife 2, doesn’t enjoy what you might call a presumption of authority from the other women.  She has to lead, and she knows full well she may be resented for it.  But there’s no one else to do it.  That was what I loved best about the play, the interpersonal stuff, involving five women, only two of whom were ever on-stage.  What a lovely dissection of inter-family dynamics.

But of course the play is also about larger concerns, specifically polygamy and its connection to feminism and the issue of women’s suffrage.  And the play ends with a call for all of us in the audience, enlightened 21st century folks that we are, not to forget the struggle for suffrage.  And yes, sure, we should remember and honor that struggle.  Of course we should (Gayle Ruzieka and Ann Coulter notwithstanding).  But honestly suffrage, as it appears in the play, is just ‘the thing Ruth’s into.’  It’s not really central to the concerns of the play, which were, to me, much more about polygamy, and its role in our community.

And it’s great.  If anything, it’s a little embarrassing, as a Mormon playwright, that the finest play describing polygamy from the point of view of plural wives was written by someone not of our culture or faith.  That shouldn’t matter, of course–Jen Nii is a wonderful writer, a deep and responsible researcher, and everything in the play rings true, from the language to the characters to their attitudes and testimonies.  In fact, she may have had an advantage over a Mormon playwright, in that she went into the project knowing what she didn’t know.  An LDS writer might have seen his/her LDSness as a shortcut.  “Their attitudes reflect mine–I don’t need to research their testimonies, for heck’s sake.”

But it’s a play I have to approach from a decidedly mixed point of view.  I think polygamy is loathsome.  I think it’s frickin’ weird, even wanting it.  I can’t think about it in our history without embarrassment.  I wish it wasn’t in our history.  I don’t get it, not at any level.

But Frances and Ruth, I do get. They’re my people; that’s my heritage.  I have polygamous ancestors, and I honor that history.  I think back to my polygamous ancestor, Mary Curtis Markham.  Grim lookin’ lady, but heck, she had a tough life.  And an amazing one.  I’m tremendously honored to have her in my family history.

And then you look at the history, and that same mixed-and-confused feeling reasserts itself.  So the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which ended polygamy in Utah, infuriates me.  It was blatantly unconstitutional, clearly violating the First Amendment. (And both Edmunds and Tucker were renowned constitutional scholars too. Infuriating).  It wreaked havoc in Mormon families, leaving woman like Frances and Ruth utterly rootless and bereft.  Passing it was a contemptible act of moralistic self-satisfied hypocrisy.  And part of me also agrees with it, and in retrospect, it did lead to President Woodruff’s Manifesto, which was important and needed and about time. I don’t think Utah’s current polygamists should be persecuted, but I also think it’s great Warren Jeffs is in jail.

I’m conflicted, is what I’m saying.  And this play does something wonderful; it rubs my face in my own conflictedness.  I belong to a faith that has, in its history, polygamous doctrine and practice, vestiges of which remain in our holy books.  How do I deal with that?  How do I reconcile those contraries?

It does what a terrific play should do, and it does so while moving us deeply.  April Fossen, as Frances, gives an extraordinary performance, so focused and in-the-moment.  Sarah Young’s character is less complex, which doesn’t make her performance any less remarkable.  Cheryl Cluff directed, with her usual directness and economy, even making great auditory and visual use of costume changes.  As always, when she directs, I loved the sound design in the show, including this amazing pro-suffrage version of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.

Anyway, a wonderful play, given a great production. And if I left the theater wallowing in my own conflictedness, well, that’s a good thing for theatre to accomplish.

‘Mormon’ literature

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This past Saturday was the Annual Meeting for the Association for Mormon Letters.  I’ve been a member of AML for twenty years, and try never to miss the Annual Meeting.  It’s basically an academic conference–lots of great papers, exploring this arcane world of Mormon literature.  And some poetry reading, some readings of other works.  Plus–and I always love this part–awards. Outstanding achievement in poetry, drama, fiction in a variety of categories, personal essay.

Anyway, Saturday, my wife and I had some things we had to do in Salt Lake City, and so I missed the Meeting.  I always feel bad about missing it–I do love AML. And it turns out, I probably shoulda gone.  I won an award, a big one.  I won the Smith-Pettit award.  A life-time achievement award.

I’m incredibly honored and grateful. I mean, everyone likes to be recognized for what they do, and I’ve been writing plays and getting them produced for thirty-five years now. I honestly never thought I’d be a candidate for the Smith-Pettit.  But it rocks. Just wish I could have been there to receive it.

But even talking about AML gets me thinking about Mormon literature generally.  It’s a tiny niche category of literature, and it’s even a bit ill-defined.  What do we mean by Mormon fiction, or Mormon drama, or Mormon poetry.  Definitions aren’t terribly important, I guess–what matters is writing well.  And when I served as President of AML, I sort of resisted having, like, a mission statement.  I worried about limiting our field of study.

To me, Mormon literature comes in basically three categories, all of which I think should count as legitimate.  First, it means literature written by Mormons, for Mormons.  That is, novels or plays or poems in which Mormons write about our own culture.  A great example, for me, is Levi Peterson’s novel The Backslider.  It’s a tremendous novel, about a young LDS cowboy growing up in Southern Utah, and it’s brilliant, a novel about guilt and expiation and family and love and self-hatred.  I mean, we can call it a Mormon novel, and that does describe it, but it’s also just a great novel–as good a novel as anything written by an American.  I think it’s every bit as important and profound as Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, or Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist is perhaps the most brilliant recent work in this category.

Second category: literature written by Mormons about anything else.  Obviously, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game comes to mind, as does Anne Perry’s The Face of a Stranger.  Card writes about Mormon culture from time to time too, but he’s basically known as a sci-fi/fantasy author.  And a a lot of Mormon authors have been very successful as fantasy authors, from Dave Wolverton to Brandon Sanderson to Brandon Mull to, you know, Stephenie Meyer.  I would also include Tim Slover’s plays; what a smart, compassionate, literate voice.

Final category, Mormon literature also includes works written by people who aren’t Mormon at all, but find Mormonism a fascinating subject for literature.  The best two works in this category have been plays, I think–Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and The Book of Mormon, the musical.  Neither piece is without controversy in Mormon circles–both also have their defenders, and I count myself as one.

But the main thing I believe about Mormon literature is this: it’s a very big tent.  Authors of literary fiction consider ‘genre fiction’ a less important or valuable category.  Popular Mormon culture faces off against ‘High’ Mormon culture, just as pop v. high arguments disfigure the larger world of cultural criticism nationally.

Me, I like to read good writing.  I don’t care about genre and I don’t care about style, and I certainly don’t care about the membership status or current level of actual or perceived Church commitment.  I want to read good prose, an engaging story, interesting, complex, believable characters.  I like Lance Larson’s poetry, which is dense and powerful and moving, but I also like John Harris’ cowboy poetry, which has its own insight and impact.  I like Dave Wolverton’s fantasy fiction, but I also like Dean Hughes’ Children of Promise series of historical novels.  I’m a big fan of Julie Jensen’s marvelous plays, though I don’t think she has any formal connection to the Church anymore, but also Scott Bronson’s plays, who is a very active practicing Mormon.

The two best novels by Mormons I’ve read recently, in fact, you probably don’t know.  Sarah Dunster’s The Lightning Tree is a terrific historical novel–find it, buy it, read it.  And I read Ryan Rapier’s novel, The Reluctant Blogger, a terrific first novel which isn’t even published yet.

The one idea that ties all of this together is our 13th Article of Faith “if there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”  A good reader needs to seek, and I try to.  And I think that seeking needs to transcend parochial concerns, about genre and popularity and whatever facile judgments we might make about the lives of our brothers and sisters.  Find good stuff to read, read it, write about it.  That’s the mission statement for the Association for Mormon Letters, if we never needed one.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep writing.  More plays, more blog posts, perhaps a novel or two, something I’m not good at but want to keep trying.  Just keep on keepin’ on.  We’ll see what comes of it.

 

Tombs

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Tonight, I was asked to introduce a staged reading of my dear friend Scott Bronson’s play,Tombs.  I ended up thinking about the plays of Corpus Christi, and transubstantiation and stuff.  Anyway, this is what I ended up saying.

“I stand before you, on this Good Friday, to talk about a play.  A play, as it happens, written by one of my dearest friends.  I’ve seen the play in production; I regret that I will not be able to stay to see it tonight.  But I want to begin in a place a long time ago, and a long way off.  The towns of York and Wakefield and Chester in the North of England, sometime in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  It’s June, and spring harvests are in. Nights still a bit chilly, days crisp and clear and warmed by the sun.  A parade has begun, and the priest carries before him a holy wafer and a vial of wine.  Perhaps we hear a song in Latin “Oh, salutaris hostia,” sung in perfect, four-part harmony. Tonight, there will be a feast; today, a parade, and performances.

The feast of Corpus Christi begins on the Thursday six weeks following Easter; six weeks, that is, after Maundy Thursday.  Corpus Christi is Latin for the “Body of Christ.” The Feast day celebrates the eucharist, the real presence of Christ in the elements of the host—the body and blood of Christ.  Holy wafers and wine, in the Catholic tradition.  Tap water and Wonder Bread, in the Mormon faith.  Served by twelve year olds, their shirts too big for their necks, clip-on ties askew.  Every Sunday, at mass, back then, we’d take the sacrament; as Catholics still do.  But in addition, an annual holiday celebrated the host itself.  Corpus Christi is primarily a Catholic feast day, though some denominations in the Anglican tradition also celebrate it. We Mormons don’t bother with it.  About the only Holiday we worry about in June is also about Fathers: when we get our Dads a tie or some cologne.   But for Catholics, 13th through 16th centuries, Corpus Christi was a major holiday, and a fun one.

The idea for Corpus Christi came from a woman, Juliana of Liege, an orphaned child-turned nun, who had a vision of the moon, darkened by a spot, signifying, in her mind, a deficiency in the liturgical calendar.  She suggested that in addition to the weekly Eucharistic service, that a special feast day be established just to celebrate that Sacrament, and the miracle of transubstantiation.  Pope Urban IV eventually established Corpus Christi as a feast day in 1264.

One of the main ways in which the Feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated was through the performance of plays.  That may seem a little strange at first, until we interrogate the practice.  Although we Mormons don’t share with Catholics their belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, which is at the heart of Corpus Christi, we also practice it, do we not?  In this miraculous art form we call theatre? In transubstantiation, the substance of sacramental bread literally becomes flesh, and wine becomes blood.  Well, what do actors do, but take upon themselves, with the aid of some greasepaint and a costume piece, literally flesh out, provide flesh to, an idea, an abstraction, a series of constructions of language.  Dramatic characters, living human souls, enacting a story, for our edification and enjoyment.

Initially, Corpus Christi started with a parade honoring the elements of the host, but in time, plays were written and performed by the guilds of the community—the solid backbone of Christian society, the tailors and bakers and nailmakers and cobblers and wheelwrights.  The plays they wrote have survived, especially in England.  We call them Mystery Plays, perhaps to celebrate the twin mysteries of Incarnation and Atonement, in which God became Man, and later died for our sins.

Joseph of Galilee was a favorite character in the plays of Corpus Christi. The unidentified and anonymous authors of the these plays understood something fundamental about drama; that comedy and tragedy are not competing, but complementing masks and styles.  Noah is a doddering old buffoon, his dottiness juxtaposed against the shrieks of drowning neighbors.  Herod’s soldiers are drunks.  And even the soldiers crucifying our Lord are comedically bad at their jobs.  We’re allowed to laugh, just before we’re invited to weep. Astonishingly, shockingly, the plays still work in production.  And are still frequently produced.

Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, is a comic figure as well.  He’s old, a senile and feeble cuckold.  The ‘foolish old man, married to a younger woman’ would become a staple of Moliere, of Cervantes, of commedia dell arte and TV sitcoms.  And in the York version of Corpus Christi, the play of the Annunciation, performed by the pewterers and metal-workers guild, Joseph contemplates suicide.

The purpose of the Corpus Christi plays was to humanize the characters of the Bible, to make them accessible.  Since the liturgy was in Latin, most congregants likely went through Sunday services in a bit of a daze.  Stained glass windows served as a nice aid to communication.  So did acting; and some priests became as adept at chewing the scenery as in administering the wafer and wine.  But so did these annual exercises in community theatre, which were not in Latin, but in the vernacular, in the robust and blunt Middle English of Northern Britain.  The point was to point up the shared values of the entire town, to celebrate together the hard-won spirituality of the late Middle Ages.  When we read about medieval Christianity, what strikes us are its heresies; the mortification of the flesh, the violent sexism and anti-Semitism. The violence: period. Products, perhaps, of a culture too close to death, too used to instant, sudden, inexplicable annihilation.

But we can relate to the plays.  The plays and the music and the cathedrals—the products of genuine devotion—we can look there, and feel the same kinship and wonder we feel in holy places today; the caves of Lescaux, and the temples of India, and Tenochtitlan and Machu Picchu, or in concert halls, listening to Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony or Barber’s Adagio for Strings.  That sense of shared humanity and reverential adoration.

And here, tonight, at UVU.  In Tombs, Scott Bronson shows us a very different Joseph, the kind and caring father to whom our Heavenly Father entrusted his Only Begotten.  Joseph has just died, in fact–though we flash back to catch a glimpse of his parenting style–and Mary and Jesus mourn together outside his tomb.

But in many respects, Tombs reflects the same impulse that drove the plays of Corpus Christi.  It tells us the story of our faith.  It reorients us towards our theology, towards the beliefs that center us and define us.  It reminds us of what we hold most dear.

It’s a deceptively simple play, really.  A mother and son mourn together, and she presses him to tell her his plans.  They share memories.  He has an upcoming task that he dreads—she presses him to let her share his burden.

As I re-read the play once again this morning, that word came back to me—burden. In a very real sense, Scott has written a play about unburdening.  Through confession and conversation, through memories and recollections.  Through atonement.  These characters, so familiar, and yet also doctrinally distanced from us, unburden themselves to each other. As we literally unburden, pass on our burdens, of sin and pain and regret and error, to our Savior, who then chooses to bear them himself, for us, out of love.  And the play ends with two words, the two words above all others, all Christians wish we could speak. Thank you.

Juliana of Liege saw a flawed and incomplete moon, and sought to fill it with a celebration.  And communities and towns across the medieval Catholic world enhanced that celebration by writing and rehearsing and designing and directing and building and performing deceptively simple plays, reflecting the profoundest stories and beliefs at the heart of their culture.  Scott Bronson has done the same here.  He reminds us what must never be forgotten; he speaks for and to our culture of our most central and enduring shared faith.  He makes The Word flesh, he theatrically transubstantiates.  He places us outside a tomb, and reminds us of a tomb found empty, and how that emptiness fills our hearts.  He nourishes us with the bread of mimesis.  From the Guild of Scribblers and Thespians, we bring you our fondest story.  We share with you: Tombs.

Sports, for people who hate sports

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I like sports.  I grew up playing basketball, baseball, football, tennis.  I played all these sports very badly, but in our backyard, or the backyards of neighbor kids, or in our driveway.  It was how we bonded, and it was also how we excluded.  One neighbor kid didn’t play sports–he was somehow even less coordinated than I was–and didn’t want to.  We didn’t mean to treat him badly, but we did.  I still feel terrible about that.  But we loved sports, and when we weren’t playing sports, we were watching them, either live or on TV.  Or talked about them. My brother was just in town, and while he was mostly here on family stuff–his daughter’s baby’s blessing–we did fit in two basketball games on TV.

I know lots of people who can’t stand sports, who especially can’t stand televised team sports.  I am, in fact, married to one of those people.  I get that. We sports fans can be quite sadly fanatical in our devotion to the teams that have earned our allegiance–that’s where the word ‘fan’ comes from, after all.  I hear from people from time to time who tell me they like this blog, and usually they add “except for the baseball ones.”  I get that too, which also doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing baseball ones.

But why?  Why do we attach ourselves do devotedly to something as artificial as a professional sports team?  Or college team.  In fact, isn’t inter-collegiate athletics somehow worse?  Doesn’t big-time college sports detract from the educational mission of high ed?  Doesn’t it divert resources that might be better used to hire a new math professor, build a new lab, construct a theatre rehearsal room or dance studio, pay TA’s properly?  Are we seriously seriously, pretending . . .  no.  Wait. Stop! I like sports.  I’m arguing for them.

How?  Why?

It’s good to care about something.

The great New Yorker writer, Roger Angell, used to make this argument; that caring deeply is a basic human good, even if it’s for something silly.  In fact, lots of things we care a lot about are silly.  Once we silly human creatures have got the Food, Sex, Shelter thing down, turns out we have plenty of time and brain-space for silly stuff.  And full-blown life-long infatuation with a sports team is, turns out, mentally healthy.

It’s a shortcut to bonding with other people.

So this past weekend, our family spent some time interacting with my niece’s husband’s family.  I found myself spending some time conversing with my niece’s father-in-law.  Seemed like a nice guy, and we chatted a bit.  Then he mentioned being a baseball fan.  And we went from ‘awkward family party conversation with a stranger’ to ‘my gosh what a cool guy how much fun were we having?’  We got along immediately.  I know the guy now, know how he thinks about something important to both of us.  And it was something safe, not something really volatile–politics, religion.

There’s a theological angle to it, a celebration of human potential, of human beauty.

The human beauty we’re talking about here. . . has nothing to do with sex, or cultural norms.  What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.  There’s a great deal that’s bad about having a body.  We can just quickly mention pains, sores, nausea, odors, aging, gravity, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, limits–every last schism between our bodies and our actual capacities.  Can anyone doubt we need help to be reconciled? Crave it?  It’s your bodies that die, after all.

Great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch, to move through space, to interact with matter.  Granted, what great athletes can do with their bodies are things the rest of us can only dream of.  But those dreams are important.

David Foster Wallace “Federer both Flesh and Not.”

And as a Mormon, I believe that the human body is magnificent, not sin-filled and vile.  I believe that bodies enhance and enable spiritual capacities, not stunt them.  There is not Mormon equivalent to the heresy of ‘the mortification of the flesh.’

BYU is in a basketball tournament right now, the NIT (National Invitation Tournament), and one of the announcers last night was Bill Walton.  Walton was one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived, sort of a hero of mine.  He’s also a dreadful announcer.  Too talky, too interested in long stories about his own career, and not, like, the ballgame right there in front of him.  He was a former teammate of Danny Ainge and we got to hear many stories about what a great guy Ainge was.  And so on.  But then he talked about Kresimir Cosic.  Cosic was a genuinely brilliant player, for BYU and later, for the Yugoslavian and Croatian national teams.  And Walton stopped himself, got a little choked up, trying to describe the beauty of Cosic’s game.

This happens sometimes.  You remember a Willie Mays, a Joe Montana, a Wayne Gretzsky, a Magic Johnson, and your eyes get a little teary.  What they did was so beautiful, it still takes your breath away.

It’s good to care about things, and to care about beauty.  And of course, I get that same feeling when I hear a great tenor sing, or a great dancer dance, or a great actor in a great role.  If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, praiseworthy . . . So watch this kid,twenty years old, from Africa, already a college graduate.  Watch him soar: Victor Oladipo, from Indiana.  Meanwhile, the NCAA tournament is on-going, and baseball season soon to start.  Go Hoosiers, and go Giants.