One lower light shining

Yesterday at institute, our teacher was gone, so we had one of the recent RMs from the ward sub in.  Although the lesson was fairly decent, he seemed to fall back on a lot of gospel cliches–words and phrases that we’ve all heard hundreds of times before.  One of those that stood out to me was “feel the Spirit.”

“Feel the Spirit” is a phrase that’s really common among us Mormons.  We say it all the time, usually in reference to coming closer to God or increasing our personal spirituality.  Yet the phrase itself denotes a passive state of mind, one where we’re just waiting around for God to make us feel good.

That doesn’t sit well with me, because I know that that’s not the way God works.  Yes, He gives us comfort–after all, “Comforter” is one of the names of the Holy Ghost–but that’s not all that He does, and certainly not the most important thing either.

The Holy Ghost’s mission is to testify of Christ and bring us unto Him, and He does that primarily by communicating eternal truths and giving us personal guidance and inspiration.  He doesn’t just exist to make us feel good–quite the opposite, in fact.  Through His still, small voice, He pushes us to repent, be baptized, keep our covenants, and endure faithfully to the end.  If we’re just sitting around doing nothing, He won’t come to us–or if He does, it’s usually to kick us in the pants.

I submit that instead of the term “feel the Spirit,” we should use the term “receive the Spirit.” This is in connection with the baptismal ordinance, which ends “and say unto you, receive the Holy Ghost.”

To receive the Spirit, we need to be striving to follow the gospel–to exercise faith, continually repent, keep our baptismal covenants, and follow the promptings and inspiration of the Holy Ghost.  We need to make place in our lives to listen to that still small voice–to tune out the distractions and actively listen.  We need to humble ourselves so that our hearts are contrite enough to follow His guidance, regardless of how it seems to contradict our own plans and desires.

In short, I hope that in speaking of the Holy Ghost, we can recognize that inspiration is not just a “feel good” thing.  It’s a vital part of our eternal salvation, and as such it requires an element of work.  Let’s not forget that.

I am very impressed with the church’s youtube channel, Mormon Messages. I watched this short video clip recently and was blown away. This is exactly how I feel about Jesus Christ and His gospel. The words shared here express my testimony exactly.

I think that sometimes, in the church, we tend to compartmentalize our religion. Sacrament meeting is one thing, but Sunday school and Priesthood / Relief Society are something else. When we’re working on our food storage or our family history, we aren’t thinking about our scripture study or our prayers, and when we’re worshiping in the Temple, we aren’t thinking about our home teaching or our missionary work (unless we come to the temple with a specific related question).

When we compartmentalize our religion so much, we run the risk of losing sight of the center of it all–the thread that ties everything together. That thread is the gospel of Jesus Christ–the good news that He suffered and died for our sins that He might become our Savior and Redeemer. The church is true only because Jesus is the Christ, and every doctrine or practice, no matter how obscure, relates back to this supremely important point.

It reminds me of an excellent BYU devotional talk given my freshman year. The speaker was Thomas B. Griffith, a US federal judge, and the talk was entitled “The very root of Christian doctrine.” He told how, when he was a bishop, he and his counselors decided that every talk, lesson, and church activity would have to be explicitly and directly related to Jesus Christ. Without departing from the standard curriculum, they accomplished this–and saw a huge spiritual outpouring in their ward and stake. Truly, Christ is at the center of everything we do.

Jesus is the Christ–he is the root of everything in this church. Without him, we can do nothing–literally. He is my Savior and knows me personally. When I look beyond the daily workaday struggles of my life, I am blown away by how much He blesses me. No matter what I do–or what you may do or have already done–His arm is stretched out still (Isaiah 9:12, 17, 21).

Hey, I just saw that this blog got a mention on MormonTimes.com‘s Today in the Bloggernacle column!  Thanks!

Back when I was following the bloggernacle more avidly, I used to keep up with that column.  Emily Jensen does a good job distilling some of the more interesting Mormon content from the blogosphere–something that can be quite time consuming if you try to keep up with all those blogs yourself!  Back when I was a sophomore, I tried that…but not anymore.  Oh, how life gets in the way of things (like blogging, for example).

But if you’re interested, I just finished writing one of my novels (revising it, actually).  I wrote a post about it on my writing blog, One Thousand and One Parsecs. It doesn’t have too much to do with the gospel, except in the fact that my personal values and beliefs undoubtedly had an influence.  It’s like Orson Scott Card says–your Mormon-ness inevitably shines through whatever you write.  When I get published, I suppose I’ll add to the ever growing ranks of LDS science fiction and fantasy authors.

Which reminds me of an interesting tweet by @MosheMF (Brandon Sanderson‘s editor at TOR):

Doorbell just rung by 2 pretty LDS missionaries in rain. Told them I’d stick with Judaism, but would welcome more LDS bestselling authors!

Yeah, we Mormons definitely have a strong representation in the science fiction and fantasy community.  At World Fantasy convention this year, there were almost thirty or forty Utahans present, most of them authors and aspiring writers.  The Utah writing scene is extremely vibrant; even though I’ll be in Washington DC this next winter, I’m seriously considering buying plane tickets to Utah just to attend BYU’s Life, the Universe, and Everything symposium.

Enough about all that, though.  Thanks to MormonTimes for mentioning my last post!  And if you haven’t checked them out already, go and do it!  I’m definitely going to resubscribe–I don’t have time to keep up with all the bloggernacle, but at least I can keep up with their excellent daily summaries.

Bishop Burton spoke at BYU today.  I was working with Dr. Bowen on the final for PL SC 474 (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), so I didn’t catch the whole thing.  I did catch the first part, though, where he mentioned the twitter posts in response to his conference talk.

Of course, this prompted me to check my barely active twitter account, just to see what people were saying about his BYU devotional address.  As soon as I opened the search page, about a dozen tweets went up that all basically said “OMG! Bishop Burton mentioned twitter!” Afterwards, though, there were a few more thoughtful responses, and I posted a few myself.

If you don’t know what twitter is, it’s this new social networking thing.  I won’t go into depth explaining what it is, but you can check it out yourself.  I tried it out over the summer, but lost interest in it when school started, mainly because I didn’t have time to read all of my friends’ tweets, and most of my “friends” were just random writer people I’d met through twitter.  Honestly, I don’t really care enough to read their every tweet.  Add to that the proliferation of spam (honestly!  Half the “people” who wanted to follow me are either spambots or trying to sell me something), and twitter dropped off my radar.

One of the strengths of twitter, though, is the way it can set up a real-time conversation on a current event.  That’s what Bishop Burton was talking about with the twitter posts.  At a conference, for example, people in the “twittersphere” can respond to an address in real-time as the speaker is presenting.  I’ve even heard of conferences setting up a special room with a screen at the front displaying the tweets as they are posted.

This got me to thinking: maybe twitter does have its uses.  Bishop Burton said that his conference address alone generated twenty five pages of tweets.  Most of those tweets are probably frivolous and overly opinionated, but the idea of engaging in a conversation about the talk as it’s happening fascinates me.  At the very least, it would help me to stay awake; I have to admit, I tend to drift off after a straight hour of church talks (unless Elder Holland is speaking, that is ).

In general, though, I was very impressed that Bishop Burton is on top of the new developments in social networking.  The church has made some tremendous leaps in this area in the last five years; we’ve come a long way since filmstrips and AncestralQuest.  I think it’s great.

By the way, if you want to follow me on twitter, my username is @onelowerlight.

Today was Stake Conference up in Orem for the BYU 11th stake. We don’t have a stake choir (not that I know of, anyway), but the Stake President had asked us in the 64th ward choir if we could sing.

Well, we sang today, and it was really fun!  This was the first time our stake had tried to fit everyone into the stake center up in Orem, and it was PACKED!  We had both cultural halls and both chapels filled up completely!  There was a big screen set down at the other chapel, so the people in the opposite chapel, with their backs to us, could watch through a video camera set up in our chapel.  Wow–one huge sea of heads, stretching for hundreds of yards–lots of people!

I decided to join the ward choir this semester, after my roommate suggested it.  I don’t know why I hadn’t joined earlier–I really enjoy singing, and every choir or musical number I’ve been in has been a lot of fun.  I guess I was always just too lazy doing other stuff on Sunday.

There are some things about ward choirs that can be somewhat annoying, however.  Us FLSRites (FLSR = Foreign Language Student Residence) tend to be very driven, passionate people, which can be a really positive thing in some ways, but in other ways it can be a liability.  In the context of ward choir, it means that half of us are either trying to be soloists or are trying to direct everyone else.

Then there are the usual annoyances of a volunteer church choir: people who talk with each other while the director is trying to instruct us, people who can’t sing on pitch no matter how much they practice, people who get carried away and start singing other people’s parts, people who never show up to practice but show up the day of the conference and don’t know about the little adjustments the choir has made to the piece, etc etc.

However, even with all that little stuff, it was fun going to practices, and it was even more fun singing in front of the rest of the stake!  Good times.  I’m looking forward to ward conference in April!