Luminous Laughter

Agency

The leadership of our church changed, this week. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, each congregation is called a ward. A number of wards usually meet in the same church building. Somewhere between six and fifteen wards together form a stake. Each ward is presided over by a bishop and two counselors. Each stake is presided over by a stake president and two counselors. All of these men are called to lead their respective stewardships. The stake presidency is called by an Area Authority Seventy, usually assisting a member of the Quorum of the Twelves Apostles. None of these men are paid for their service.

Our stake presidency has been serving for about fifteen years. Today they were released and a new stake presidency was called. Elder David Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presided over the meeting. Last night at the adult session of stake conference, he gave a great talk about agency.

In the Church, we talk a lot about free agency. Normally we say that we are free to choose good or evil. Elder Bednar said that as we learn more about the gospel, we learn that once we make a covenant with the Lord, we are no longer free to choose to disregard the terms of that covenant — at least, not without serious consequences. He said that rather than calling it “free” agency, we should call it “moral” agency. (I got this from Kim, who was there; I was home watching the children.)

In thinking these statements about agency, I made a connection that I had never made before. There are broadly two definitions of agency. One implies acting. This is the definition that normally is used to talk about choice. The other definition implies a delegation of authority. In this sense we speak of a real-estate agent: someone empowered to act on our behalf in real-estate transactions. In this sense we also talk about author agents or book agents; actor agents; and a number of other agents who act on behalf of someone to represent them in contracts. An agent is authorized to represent a person to someone else — given a limited, designated subset of that person’s rights.

So, when we’ve entered into a covenant with God, we end up with a different kind of agency. Rather than the freedom to choose righteousness or wickedness, we are left with the responsibility to choose righteousness, because we have taken the Savior’s name on us — we represent Him on the earth. If we choose otherwise, we have violated the covenant we’ve made with Him. We have misused our agency, because we have represented Him falsely.

In the world, when an agent represents his client falsely, the agent is subject to legal repercussions. In the gospel, when we represent the Lord falsely, we are subject to the full consequences of sin. Thankfully, the Lord has given us a promise of forgiveness if we repent.

Rest

Every night at bedtime, as long as the kids are cooperative, we sing three songs to each of them. They’ve chosen a lot of different songs. Emmi likes to choose songs by topic — usually something that she’s thinking about. Finding an appropriate song can be pretty challenging sometimes, when she comes up with topics like ‘ladder,’ or ‘Manchester United football team.’ Okay, so she hasn’t requested that one. I just threw it in for your benefit, Adele. (You try to think of a song about ladders. Off the top of your head. And you have to know the tune and be able to sing it verbatim.)

Lizzie likes “Jesus songs,” which are usually songs that have “Jesus” in the first line somewhere. (We’re trying to expand that definition, since the number of those songs is rather small.)

Last night, Lizzie requested “Come Unto Jesus.” The last phrase of the first line of the hymn says, “He’ll ever guide you unto that haven where all who trust him may rest.”

After we sang the song, Lizzie — our little five-year-old — was quiet for a brief moment, and then asked us, “So does that mean that the wicked don’t get to rest?” And I said, “…”

And I thought, “Whoa.” My five-year-old really thinks about things. I’ve never considered the contrapositive of the statement about rest in that hymn. And I told her that she is right: the wicked don’t get rest, either in this life or the life to come.

And I got thinking about the issue. Alma says to his son, who had strayed from the Lord’s path, “Wickedness never was happiness.” And in his great covenant temple ceremony toward the end of his life, King Benjamin contrasted the state of the wicked with the state of the righteous:

Therefore if that man repenteth not, and remaineth and dieth an enemy to God, the demands of divine justice do awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt, which doth cause him to shrink from the presence of the Lord, and doth fill his breast with guilt, and pain, and anguish, which is like an unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever. (Mosiah 2:38)

And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. (Mosiah 2:41)

And Samuel the Lamanite, speaking to the wicked Nephites, said:

But behold, your days of probation are past; ye have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure; yea, for ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head. (Helaman 13:38)

And I got thinking about all the agitation and hatred that have come against the church for its support of California’s Proposition 8, and I have to think that the agitation stems from the loss or absence of the Spirit. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

Without that peace, there is no rest.

And now it’s time for Silly Songs with Emmi…

Emmi was singing this gem, this morning, to the tune of “Fish and Chips and Vinegar”:

… Don’t throw your junk in my husband,
My husband,
My husband,
Don’t throw your junk in my husband,
My husband’s full.

Such an insightful song! And particularly appropriate, since we were talking with some friends last night about people who accumulate stuff and never manage to get rid of it.

The Burner

No, I’m not talking about Michael Phelps incinerating seven world records at the Olympics. And I’m not talking about Fahrenheit 451. And I’m not talking about the thing in a jet engine that ignites the fuel mixture. (That’s called a combustor, anyway, so I couldn’t possibly be talking about that.)

I’m talking about the kind that we have in our kitchen. It makes up part of our stove. It cooks food. Apparently, it cooks little boys, too.

On Monday during lunch, Caleb pushed a chair over to the stove and reached for something that was sitting on a hot burner. His arm almost immediately informed him in certain, unequivocal terms that doing so was a really bad idea. He came out of the scalding with three huge blisters on his palm, a second-degree burn on his wrist, and some smaller blisters on his fingers.

He spent most of the day with his hand in a big bowl of water. Kim held him while he slept so that he could keep his hand cool. We took him to the doctor’s office when I got home from work, and they lanced the blisters on his hand (since they were so large it was obvious that they were going to pop, soon, anyway).

We have to wash Caleb’s hand and change the dressing on it every day. Caleb’s not too fond of the process. But though there have been a fair number of tears involved in the hurting and healing process to this point — and Caleb’s cried a bit, too — the whole experience has reinforced to me exactly how sweet and apparently indestructible Caleb is.

He sometimes fusses a bit when we change his dressing. The fuss goes like this: “Waaaaa — ducky! Kitty!” You just can’t keep a happy child down. Even on the day he burned his appendage, he was perfectly content, curious, and… curious, as long as his hand wasn’t outside the water for too long.

Left-handed rights

This is an essay that I wrote for fun in college. Can you imagine — writing an essay for fun!? I reread it today and noticed that it was written in an election year, so I thought it was appropriate to post it now.

Armed with Our Left-Handed Rights
A Short Humerus Essay and Off-hand Commentary

Society has not dealt with left-handed people even-handedly. They frequently find themselves left out or left behind–left hanging, as it were, out in left field. Who decided that left-handedness isn’t right?

A quick look around you will probably uncover hundreds of examples of this right-handed bias right under your nose: consider, for example the common paper-cutter. On which side does one find the handle for cutting? That’s right: the right! Take a good, hard look at your pencil sharpener, sometime–which side is the handle on? I’ll give better-than-even odds that it’s on the right! The next time you visit your child’s classroom, examine the students’ desks. The vast majority are oriented just right for a right-handed person to write easily–an arrangement that makes writing difficult for the average lefty. It’s just not right!

The ergonomic mouse is designed for the right hand–ergo, it’s a pain in the (left) hand for the southpaw computer-user (Which raises another question: When was the last time you heard a right-handed person referred to as a northpaw?) Next let’s turn to the area of stringed instruments (although, given the size of the string bass, we probably ought to consider the volume, instead), where we’ll find more handsome irregularities. Whoever designed them should be strung up: they’re oriented completely for the comfort of righties. Perhaps the rightist part of the population ought to extend the hand of fellowship to the left-handed part in producing ambidextrous products.

A little etymology will verify that this heavy-handed bias is older than one might think. While a complete historical analysis isn’t right at hand, right off the bat one finds that in Latin the left hand is referred to as the “sinister,” whereas the right is called “dexter.” Who decided that the left hand is sinister? The word in Latin has many of the same connotations as it does in English. From “dexter,” on the other hand, comes the English “dextrous,” meaning agile. Where does the bias end?! (Why would anyone want to name their right hand Dexter and their left Sinister? It makes the whole limb situation sound like a grade-B black-and-white silent film!) Honestly! Does it make any sense to say that a violist has very dextrous fingers? All the fingering is sinister!

The Hebrews and other Mid-Easters are also right-minded. For thousand of years they’ve considered the left-hand unclean. Biblical tradition also states that it is desirable to end up on the right hand of God. (For those of you who are smug about being thus righteous, though, remember that He is pleased to be on your left. Does this make Him leftous?) To defend these noble nations, however, one need only take direction from their direction of writing–much handier to the left-handed writing community than the Latinized left-to-writing we practice in the West. It saves from smearing. (The Hebrews and Arabs write right-to-left; anciently, the Egyptians wrote any direction that suited their fancy.)

Scientists tell us that there may be a genetic predisposition toward left-handedness. Of course, long before this stance was ever conceived (i.e. pre-disposition), people thought left-handedness was the result of possession by evil spirits. I have no idea what people thought about it before that (i.e. pre-datposition). This gradual change in the attitude toward lefties gives me hope that someday we can wash our hands of this right-handed bias: that someday, children will hope they have the right stuff to be left-handed.

Hand-in-hand with genetics, a close examination of the sciences reveals a strong bias toward right-handedism. For example, the right angle seems little more than an innocent phrase until one searches for a handy example of the left angle. It always turns up missing. (Or more appropriately stated, it doesn’t turn up, missing.) One also finds this rightist philosophy in the mechanical and electrical limbs of physics: right away one is confronted with the right-hand rule. As usual, there is no corresponding left-hand rule.

This linguistic bias can cause some amusing situations, though. Consider, for example, the poor lass who finally gets asked out on a tennis date with Mr. Right, only to find out on his very first serve that he’s really Mr. Left! She can then never say that he’s her right-hand man! And every time he talks about her, he’ll be giving left-handed compliments!

Etiquette is one of the worst offenders in the area of righted-ness. When you shake hands, you always shake with the right, right? Also, when one is eating it is considered polite to eat with the fork in the right hand–a rather awkward feat of hands for those who favor the left.

Truly, then, something must be done to correct this rightist favoritism. Perhaps, since this is an election year, one of the parties ought to make left-handed rights part of their platform! (They would, of course, be left with a leg to stand on.) Perhaps a Constitutional amendment is in order–it could be rather appropriately named the “Bill of Lefts.” Let’s all get out there and lobby for equal lefts!

Hooked on Phonics was wrong

A long time ago, when I was growing up, Hooked on Phonics ran a radio commercial that said, “Did you know that there are only forty-four sounds in the English language? Forty-four!” I’m sure that they meant well, and many kids learned to read using their system. But they were wrong, as Caleb demonstrated a few days ago.

The girls are learning to read. We have a number of CDs and videos with various songs that teach the kids the association between the letters and the sounds that they make. Caleb listens to the songs, too, so he’s picking up the sounds, even though he doesn’t know the letters to associate with them.

A couple of days ago, Caleb and Emmi were sitting at the table singing one of the songs in an echo sort of format. The song went like this:

Emmi: The ‘k’ says…
Caleb: K!
Emmi: The ‘o’ says…
Caleb: Ooohhh!
Emmi: The ‘u’ says…
Caleb: Quack-quack!

So you see, clearly there are forty-five sounds in the English language.

Obtaining a Little Boy’s Love in One Easy Step

I have discovered the secret to a little boy’s heart.  Shh… Don’t tell anyone.

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Arms stretched out

I’m currently reading all kinds of mythology as background for a book that I intend to write one day.  Right now I’m focused primarily on Celtic and Norse mythology, because I think I have a pretty good handle on Greek and Hebrew mythology.  (Note that I use the term “mythology” in its dictionary sense, not so much the vernacular: “the body of stories associated with a culture or institution or person” — Princeton’s wordnet.  In this sense, it doesn’t have any connotation of truth or untruth.)

I find the commonalities among Indo-European mythologies fascinating.  I’m reading through the introduction to Celtic Myths and Legends, and there’s one statement that interested me, so I decided to explore it a bit from the Hebraic traditions.

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When it rains, it pours

Let’s hear it for emergency funds.  It.  It, it, it!

While it was still winter, we decided that this spring we were going to finish our basement.  And get our garden in shape.  And as the weather warmed and our flowers started growing, it became very evident that we needed some kind of permanent separator between the flowerbeds and the grass, since our grass had its hands around the flowers’ necks and was choking them.  And right as spring started, Kim started feeling like it was time to get our one year supply of food filled out.  It turned out that we had about three months worth of food if we were trying to feed five people.

So we started on the downstairs, buying lots of materials and having lots of fun learning all kinds of things about framing and ducting.  We got more than half-way done before gardening season hit and we put it on hold so that we could get the garden in.

We discovered an exciting way of gardening without spending seven years amending our incredibly alkaline soil.  This, of course, entails building some above-ground gardens and buying real soil to fill the boxes with.

And we hired someone to do our edging.

So there we were with more than a thousand dollars in supplies for finishing the basement, several hundred dollars of supplies for creating a garden, and more hundreds of dollars for the edging.  Then about a thousand dollars to bulk up our food storage.

We figured the government was paying for a good portion of the basement via the stimulus payment.  We decided that we were putting too much money into retirement and not enough into the kids’ college savings plans.  So we pulled some of the money that was going into retirement to fund the food storage buildup for a few months (then it will start going into the kids’ plans).  The garden we figured we’d take out of savings and being a little extra frugal for a month or so.

And then the air conditioner stopped working.  We called the repair man, and he determined that we were basically out of coolant.  He thought it might be a valve leaking, so he replaced the valve and recharged the system.  $400 later, we had a working air conditioner.  For about two days.  We called the repairman back, and he determined that we were out of coolant again.  So he pressure tested the system and couldn’t figure out where the leak was.  So he refilled the system with coolant and an ultraviolet dye.  He then said to call him when the system stopped working again, and he’d come out and tear apart walls to try to figure out where the leak is.  Bleah.  $500.

So here we are almost $1000 into this A/C repair, and we haven’t even found the problem, yet.  That wasn’t in the budget.  Thankfully, we have a sizable emergency fund that we can draw from to pay for the repair.

I don’t know how people survive without emergency funds.  I get all jittery having less than a three-month supply of money that can be drawn from.  I’m reluctant even to pull money for things like this, which is really the point of having the fund in the first place.  I can’t imagine the stress that I’d feel if I had to put the whole thing on a credit card.

Sawing Lions

Those vicious kings and angels.  I tell you what — they shouldn’t be let within miles of prophets or lions.  Or saws, apparently.  After all, Isaiah is reputed to have been sawn asunder.  And there are a fair number of stories about Saul almost getting killed while sawing logs, by David or one of his men.

For the last two nights, Emmi has requested as one of her bedtime songs, “Daniel,” which is, being interpreted, the verse about the prophet Daniel from the song, “Follow the Prophet.” (It’s verse eight, for those of you who are following along.) The song says, in relevant part, “Angels calmed the lions, and the king soon saw/Daniel’s pow’r was great, for he obeyed God’s law.”

Last night, after we sang it, Emmi stated firmly, “The king shouldn’t be sawing the lions.  That’s not very nice.”  Tonight, after we sang the song, her response was, “Angels shouldn’t be throwing saws at the lions.”  Well, at least we know that she’s listening…

I think she has a good point though — pauses in songs can be very misleading.  For example, when I was little, the children’s song “Baptism” had me rather confused.  The song says that Jesus came to John, “And was baptized by immersion/In the river Jordan’s flow.”  But no kid ever sings it that way.  It’s properly sung, “And was baptized (gasp) by immersion (gasp) in the river (gasp) Jordan’s flow.”  So I kept wondering what this river was that was called “Jordan’s Flow.”