The Help

The Help was one of the first movies that I watched after coming home from my mission, and it was awesome.    There was never a dull moment and every single actress was loveable, even the one playing Hilly, the ultimate villainess.  Has anybody played a more effective devil than Bryce Dallas Howard?

Last month, my book club was searching for the next book and when they came across The Help, I mentioned how amazing the movie was and you know what?  None of them had seen it.

That still blows me away.

We chose Kathryn Stockett’s novel and went with it.  I had a little trepidation getting started.  Not a lot because there’s no way that a film with that much heart about a community of women could come from a lousy book.  But then, that’s what I thought about Forrest Gump, and let me tell you, that beautiful movie grew from a dung heap of a novel.

My fears were alleviated quickly because the novel is beautiful.  Stockett has a talent and understands the novel’s special effect: getting into the characters’ heads.  The chief difference between movies and books is that movies have never done a great job at internal dialogue and that is the books’ natural element.  It is so much fun reading what’s going through Minny’s head while she cleans up after her employers and her family.  There aren’t many narrators who have ever made me laugh more.

And despite how similar the plots are, there are some key differences between film and book that I can’t help but point out:

It’s inevitable that movies have to cut things from a novel in order to work.  I heard once that one-page of script equals one minute of screen-time, and while I doubt that’s exact, the point is that given most books are at least 300 pages long, if they tried to put in everything, you’d have at least a five-hour movie, and nobody is willing to sit through that for every adapted feature.  They barely tolerated nine-and-a-half hours of Lord of the Rings and that didn’t cover half the story.  (I’m assuming that you’ve only seen the originals.  The extended editions total up to 12 hours, and that still doesn’t cover half the story.)

While the movie and the book managed to fit a lot of Skeeter and Aibileen’s tales, Minny’s portion is significantly shrunk.  That’s not a limit for Octavia Spencer, who has a huge personality and makes use of all the time she’s been given to make you love Minny, but the fact is, we don’t see her as much in her natural element.

Her relationship with her abusive husband is lightly touched on in the film.  In the book, we actually read exactly what’s happening when it’s happening.  Minny’s pregnancy and how it changes the power in the marriage is completely ignored.

And her time spent with Celia Foote has a much different tone between film and book.  The film, Celia is just bubbly and adorable all through, and you can’t help but love her even when she’s stupid and willfully oblivious.  The book takes a much darker tone from the start.  Celia’s mansion and her listless and idle moods have an eerie feel, like it comes right out of a Victorian novel.  And because the book, we’re getting it from Minny’s very biased perspective, it’s actually easy to get as irritated with Celia as she is.

And one scene that I wish had made it into movie is when Celia beats up the naked guy with the fire poker.  That was Celia’s empowering moment in the book.  In the movie, they had to switch that to her cooking the dinner, which was sweet but it doesn’t have that raw sense of victory the book provides.

One thing I did feel was handled to perfection in the movie as compared to the book was the Terrible Awful.  The book does a lot of lead-up but when the revelation comes, it feels a little perfunctory.  The movie, the revelation has punch, and makes the rest of the events more meaningful.  It certainly added another level of audience participation and humor during the Benefit Dinner than the book provides.  That, and every actresses’ face is priceless after Minny confesses.

In short, if you haven’t read the book or watched the movie, do yourself a favor and get on it now.  This is one of the those stories you should have in your life before you go.

The Real 48--The Pilgrim's Progress

Well, I have a confession.  In my post “A New Reading List,” I said that I’d read The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan in college.  Not true.  I had read excerpts but I’d forgotten that I didn’t read the whole thing until last weekend when I was home for my sister’s wedding.

After finishing the comic books I brought with me (Batman rocks), I browsed through my parents library and found a very old pocketbook-sized Pilgrim’s Progress lying on the shelf and realized that that antique was my book.

I’d gotten it on my mission while tracting, i.e., knocking on doors and all the pleasantries that come with it, when an old lady became very excited to see me and my companion.  She wasn’t a Latter-day Saint or particularly interested in listening to us.  No, she had books for us.  Several years before, a friend of hers who had been a Latter-day Saint had died and she’d come into possession of some of his books.  They struck her as being “Mormon books” and had promised that if she ever came across the Mormons, she would get the books to the right church.

It was an innocent and easy mistake to make.  One of the books was a Book of Mormon published in the 70’s, and my companion leaped on that one.  He was into collecting all the various editions of The Book of Mormon as he could.  As far as I was concerned, he was welcome to it.  I was more enthralled with the five other books, which weren’t Mormon at all, but two of them were very Christian-oriented: In His Steps by Charles Monroe Sheldon and The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Missionaries have very strict rules and among them is that we were not allowed to read anything other than our scriptures and a small library of Church-approved materials.  So after I broke that rule and read In His Steps (wonderful story; no regrets) I mailed the rest of the books home to be waiting for me when I got back.  I only had half a year left; I could wait that long.

Over two years after getting back, I finally got to reading The Pilgrim’s Progress.  Now, I’d taken my time on it because even then I’d forgotten that I hadn’t read the entire thing.  I’m happy it worked out this way, though, I’m not sure I would have appreciated the book as much then as I do now.

I haven’t been so enthralled with a Christian work since reading C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters.  Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegorical adventure of a man named Christian who leaves his home to seek out the Celestial City, Mt. Zion.

The allegory is so obvious just from the names given to the heroes and villains and all the terrain encountered.  Christian is pointed in the right direction by a man called Evangelist, and his traveling companions are names Faithful and Hopeful.  He ends up having to deal with Obstinate, Pliable, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Ignorance, and a host of others.  Normally, I get annoyed by allegory, especially the obvious ones, but since this is a subject that is pretty close to my heart, I was able to get past that and delve into the meat that this story gives, both as an entertainment and as religious teaching.

This book is timeless, not just in that it has never been out-of-print, but it addresses issues that continue to be relevant today.  One of the criticisms shouted against my religion time and again from the other Christian sects (I’ve had to discuss this with dozens of people before) is how they think we say it’s our works that get us into heaven.  There’s a scripture in the Book of Mormon that says “by grace we are saved after all we can do,” and the argument immediately comes, “You can’t do anything.  Your works don’t save you.  It’s by grace and that’s it!”

And I sigh and wonder if they’re deliberately misunderstanding me.  But John Bunyan gets what I’ve been trying to say for years.  In fact, he makes my point better than I ever have.  When Christian and Faith meet Talkative, they say get into a conversation regarding the difference between saying and doing.

Says Christian: “The soul of religion is the practical part: ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.’…let us assure ourselves that at the day of doom men shall be judged according to their fruits; it will not be said then, Did you believe? But, Were you doers or talkers only? And accordingly shall they be judged.  The end of the world is compared to our harvest; and you know men at harvest regard nothing but fruit.”

The point is that belief in Jesus is not just saying you accept him but that you do what he would do, and it’s by the doing that salvation comes.

So if anybody argues with me about this in the future, I’m just sending them to Pilgrim’s Progress.

I am very happy I read this book before I died.  There’s more to it than just being able to win an argument.  I learned so much about the Law of Moses, how to handle depression, and most importantly, where I’m lacking as a person and how I can change those failings in myself.

I believe that to be the mark of great writing.  It’s the ones that make you want to change and better yourself to be a better person and be of value to those around you.  I am glad I read this one before I died.

Courtroom Observation

I keep saying that I’m going to write about going to court reporting school and I keep proving myself a liar.  The reason is simple: I don’t know how to make it interesting.  I find I need to have the machine on hand to explain how the keyboard works but peoples’ eyes tend to glaze over after more than two minutes.  To enthrall anybody over a blog post seems a hopeless quest.

Earlier this week, I finally did something worth mentioning.  One part in my advancement is courtroom observation, meaning I got to take time off of school to visit our county courthouse and see how it worked.  I had to do five hours a couple months back before I could move onto writing in the 120s class (that’s 120 WPM that I’m now working on achieving now.)

Once I got to my 120s, I was informed that I needed to do an extra five hours of courtroom observation before I could move into my 160s or 180s.  I’m not sure, but basically, I had plenty of time to get that done—I haven’t passed one 120 test yet.

Over the weekend, though, I went to visit my family for my sister’s wedding and I didn’t want to go back to school, so to stay home an extra day, I decided to do my courtroom observation right then.

What made this interesting was that I ended up going to the trial of my dad’s former boss, who is charged with fraud.

While I’m not going to go into detail about the trial itself (I already wrote a three-page essay on it, which was two more than I was required to do—yes, I’m an overachiever) there were a couple observations that I found absolutely fascinating.

First of all, the jury is not present for all of the proceedings.  Before they’re let in the courtroom and after they’ve been excused for their recesses, the lawyers and judges cover a lot of business, and that’s when it gets ugly.  I know in movies, the lawyers tend to do a lot of the grandstanding and arguments before the jury but that was not what I saw.  The lawyers were very well behaved in front of the jury and holding in their tempers.  Once the jury wasn’t in the room, though, the boxing gloves came off and they went for blood.

That judge was such an even-tempered man and very calm and deliberate.  He spoke slowly enough that I feel I probably could have written over ninety percent of what he said (and that was cool) although I know I would have fallen behind quick with the other lawyers and witnesses.  The point is, he needed that serenity because those attorneys kept fighting over the same issue all day long—namely, the admittance of certain exhibits, and specifically certain e-mail chains on the grounds of relevance and hearsay.  They gnawed on that like a pair of dogs over a favorite bone.  The defense generally got his way and the exhibits were allowed, although on the one case where his exhibit was not allowed because the judge deemed it to be hearsay, the lawyer threw a hissy fit for five minutes.

Let me tell you, the jury missed out on a lot of good stuff.  There was nothing else half as entertaining the rest of the day, unless you count the witness who couldn’t remember anything about the events asked of her.

Trials are very long and tedious affairs, and a case like this covers many months’ worth of evidence and facts.  I should know; it’s been at least five years since the fraud came to light.  I won’t find out until next week how the jury decides the case.  We’ll see how it goes.

Several Music Revelations

I’m pretty average when it comes to my music diet: whatever’s playing on the radio is what I listen to.  While I have six different stations I have set in my car, the two I go to most are the Rock-n-Roll.  Bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Seether, Foo Fighters, Linkin Park, and Metallica speak to me more forcefully than anything else I’ll find among today’s modern hits.  They’re certainly the ones I’m more likely to sing to on the radio—although as I discovered at karaoke the other night, I’m not as good with Rock music as I am with the softer genres.

A few weeks ago, though, I had to realize that while I know my books and I know my movies, when it comes to music, I’ve been a dummy.  In my spare time, I’ve been immersing myself in music not only from genres I’m not familiar with, but also from different time periods.  Here have been some my discoveries:

                        ***

I grew up around classical music.  Fantasia was my favorite movie (mostly because of the dinosaurs, but hey, I sat through all the music many times.)  And when I used to play piano and later clarinet, I was surrounded by some beautiful pieces I can’t remember the names to.

That ended when I put away my instruments for good, with the exception of a couple concerts I attended in college.

YouTube is awesome, though, and I was able to check out the works of some of our famous composers.  I found out that I don’t have a lot of patience for Bach.  I’ve always like Beethoven, but his works can be a little hit-and-miss.

Tchaikovsky, though… that man was gifted.  I found myself replaying his music over and over for several hours.  Sleeping Beauty is by far my favorite and one I would pay money to see.  But there is nothing by him that is not brilliant.  Who else would have thought to make cannons part of the concert, as seen in the 1812 Overture?

                        ***

When I went through the Forties, I was largely unimpressed with the Billboard #1 hits.  I spent an afternoon going through them and halfway through, I was tempted to fall asleep, with one constant exception: Glenn Miller.

Part of it may be nostalgia.  I listened to a good portion of his music back in the 6^th grade and even a movie on his life, but I know that wasn’t it.  He was genuinely good and creative. I think it’s a shame that he and his band have been largely forgotten.

                        ***

When I took a trip home for my sister’s wedding, I was introduced an indie group, Walk Off The Earth.  My family actually showed me a parody of them (and it was hilarious) but I started checking their music videos and everything I saw from them kept getting better and better.

They do a lot of cover songs with different instruments or no instruments at all, and they don’t just playing the originals, they reinvent them and in a surprising number of cases, improve on them.

For example, I hate Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know.”  Soon as it’s on the radio, I switch stations. And if it’s on the next two stations I flip, I turn it off.

Here’s what WOTE did: they took one, the five members of the band all take positions around the guitar and all of them play on the guitar, one using it as a percussion piece and the other four playing different strings throughout.  It’s fun to watch and it’s fun to listen to.

But they keep doing more crazy things throughout their discography.  Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” I thought was pretty vapid considering the early part of her career.  WOTE does an a capella that was so upbeat and crazy, I wanted to join with them.

And Adele’s “Someone Like You” was played with a piano and ukulele, and it sounded as good as Adele (not better, because nobody is better than Adele.  But just as much a pleasure to listen, oh yes.)  They’re a Canadian group, so I’m not sure how likely it will be that I’ll have to see one of their concerts live in California, but I would be more than happy to do so given the chance.

They do originals of their own originals.  "Gang of Rhythm" and "Red Hands" are not just great songs to listen to, those are two of the best music videos I've watched in a long while.

Anyways, they’re on YouTube.  Check them out.

The Marathon

Once a year they will run down the road
in the morn full of cheer with no load
            but the shoes on their feet,
            so with smiles they do greet
a new chance to be out on the road.

It’s a beautiful day for a run
with their friends.  It’s a chore and it’s fun;
            for to be at their marks
            and to race past the parks
with the air turning warm from the sun.

There is someone with family away,
they’re away up ahead and they say
            “You said you would do it
            and now you must prove it.
We are waiting for you.  Seize the day!”

From the start to the finish, they ache
and they sweat, and with wonder they wake
            to the fact all around
            that strangers do surround,
and they swallow him up like a snake.

Now a roar, screams, dreadful confusion,
            a hue and a cry
            my God my God why
There is fire and dust and profusion
Of the wounded, the weary, where’s my—

It’s a beautiful day, yet for you
Today it has all come unglued.
            Now you are exhausted
            But hear me, O Boston,
From hereon when we run, it’s for you.

Crichton

“It is not easy to cut through a human head with a hacksaw.”

Best opening line for a book, ever.

This comes from Travels, Michael Crichton biography, spanning from his days in medical school to his trips around the world and his explorations into the New Age.

I mentioned last week how I considered him to have one of the longest influences on me.  I first read Jurassic Park when I was ten and read the sequel, Lost World, the next year.  While his bibliography is not as long as my arm, he wrote enough to keep me occupied through high school and college.

A few of his books were just entertaining, like The Terminal Man, Eaters of the Dead, Sphere, The Andromeda Strain, Prey, and Congo, although with each of these, I was constantly impressed with the amount of research brought into each creative work.

But the ones that still stick with me are Rising Sun, Airframe, and Disclosure.  They’re not just well-researched and inventive, they were powerful social commentaries.  Rising Sun was a fascinating look into Japanese culture and how it relates and clashes with the United States.  Airframe was breathtaking in its exposure of fear and how the media will manipulate to enhance and make money off of that fear.  And Disclosure gave me much to think about when it comes to sexual harassment and the insane drive those in power have to secure even more power.

Having been very impressed with his works, it was about time that I started reading some of his non-fiction, and being able to read about his own life has been quite the experience.

The first section on his days at Harvard Medical School was the most interesting for me.  He talks about what it was like to have to cut into the cadaver, his rotations through the different fields, his conversations with doctors and patients, and why he quit medicine right after he graduated.

Frankly, my hat is off to him for sticking all the way through into getting the degree at all, despite the fact that he never used it afterwards.  I know for myself I would not have survived the years that he put in.  There was a time when I pictured going into the medical field, and given my own mentality, I’m confident I would have done well in that profession—if I were willing to put in the hours.  The shifts doctors work while they’re in school are incredible.  No thank you.

Fortunately for him, Crichton not only had himself established as an author before he graduated, but he also had a Hollywood deal and would soon get work as a movie director along with his novelist career as well.

The rest of the book deals with his traveling.  I will admit, there was a little envious at the places he got to go.  I’ve always wanted to travel but time and responsibilities crop up and I know it would be difficult to afford to go to all the places he went: Africa, New Zealand, Hunza, Ireland, New Guinea, etc.  No matter how old I live, I doubt very much I’ll get to see half of these wonderful places.  On the other hand, it’s great to read about them.  That hike up Kiliminjaro sounds incredible.

What surprised me was his fascination with New Age.  Crichton was an atheist and highly scientific.  So as I read about his explorations with psychics, spoon-bending, meditation, seeing auras, having an exorcism performed on himself, visiting mediums, and a host of other stuff, I realized I didn’t know who this author was at all.

It certainly piqued my curiosity.  Even though he went to the end of his life denying the existence of a God, it’s fascinating to me that he still explored spirituality and the metaphysical as a way to better understand himself and his role in the universe.  It leads me to think that there is a longing in all human individuals to seek out something that is beyond them, like there’s a void inside that we are reaching out and trying to fill.

If his fiction is not your cup of tea, I still would highly recommend Travels.  It was difficult for me to move on from one chapter to the next, not because it wasn’t good, but because each chapter left me with something new to think about and I wanted the extra time to mull his experiences, beliefs and testimonies through my mind before marching onward to the next.

From Abinadi's Sermon

At least half of the Book of Mormon is filled with sermons given by prophets, or sermons are quoted from prior prophets, or perhaps a mixture of both.  Among my favorites is Abinadi’s sermon to King Noah.

King Noah is not to be confused with the Noah who built the ark.  King Noah was a wicked man ruled by his appetites and passions, who advertised and encouraged his subjects to follow him in his debaucheries.  His priests were all corrupt and had twisted the scriptures so much as to have no understanding about what the Law of Moses taught or what prophets like Isaiah were teaching about the coming of Christ.

Abinadi was commanded by God to preach the gospel one last time to King Noah and his priests and warn them that if they didn’t repent, destruction was coming.  And because I believe in spoilers, I’ll let you know now that after he finished his sermon, all but one of Noah’s priests pressed the king to kill Abinadi, and so Abinadi was burned to death—and much unhappiness followed these wicked people.

Abinadi’s full available sermon can be found in Mosiah 12-16.  In it, he discusses the Ten Commandments, the mission of Christ, explains the prophecies of Isaiah, salvation of little children, and the effect the resurrection has on mankind.  Most of it fairly straightforward stuff.

But there’s been one section of the sermon that has confused me for years, ever since I was in high school seminary.  It is in the beginning of Mosiah 15, where it talks about how Christ is both the Father and the Son:

“I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people.  And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and the Son—And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth.  And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people…even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father.” (Mosiah 15:1-5, 7; emphasis added)

This business of Christ being and becoming the Father and the Son was very troubling to me in light of the Latter-day Saint view of the Godhead.  We don’t believe in one God that has three different personalities or phases; our belief is in three distinct persons who are one God in purpose.  In Joseph Smith’s First Vision, he was visited by “two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air.  One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son.  Hear Him!”  (Joseph Smith—History 1:17; italics in the original document)  Just from that, we already believe that God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ, are two distinct beings.

We learn about the Godhead’s state of existence in later revelation, and learn that “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit.  Were it not so, the holy Ghost could not dwell in us.” (D&C 130:22)

They have their own individual functions in our salvation, which Paul beautifully describes in closing his epistle, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.  Amen.” (2 Cor. 13:14; emphasis added)  I could go into how each function is important, but that is better saved for another time.

The point I’m trying to make is that even though they are separate beings does not contradict them being one.  Christ’s intercessory prayer made that very clear to me; as he prays for the Twelve and the saints, he prays, “…for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one…” (John 17: 20-23)

Christ prayed that the Twelve and the saints would be one in the same way that he and our Heavenly Father were one; not in becoming the same being, but rather being one in purpose, or being agreed or unified in the mission to bear witness and to help bring about the salvation of mankind.

It was a very clear doctrine to me.  But now I read Abinadi’s sermon, and now Christ is being called both the Father and the Son.  Something was not making sense with my own doctrine.

Fortunately, I came across a statement from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve made in 1916.  This was reprinted in the April 2002 Ensign, under “The Father and the Son.”  Actually, the best thing I could suggest is to read this article, as it answers this question better than I could.  It’s pretty easy to find on www.lds.org.

The summary is that while God the Father is the literal father of our spirits and the Father of both Christ’s spirit and physical body, Christ also bears the title of Father as well as Son.  And in Abinadi’s sermon, the important thing to remember is that when he talks about God, he is referring strictly to Christ.

Let’s look at verse 2 in Mosiah 15: “…because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God…” Okay, that one is self-explanatory.  God conceived Christ, therefore he must be the Son.  Here’s where it gets fun: “…having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—”

In the 1916 statement, a term is introduced called “divine investiture.”  The example used in the statement is the angel from Revelations.  When the holy messenger appears, the Apostle John bows and begins to worship, but the angel forbids him to do so as he is merely his fellow-servant.  But then the angel speaks to John as if he were Christ, telling John, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” (Rev. 22:13)

The angel was divinely invested, or given the right, to represent Christ before John.  In much the same way, Christ has been given his own divine investiture, or right, to represent our Heavenly Father and speak in the Father’s own words.  It’s yet another way showing how they are one, or unified, in all that they do.

(Of course, because I can’t leave any stone unturned, I have to take a small tangent in what this verse teaches about Christ.  Christ has subjected the flesh to the Father’s will.  The easy explanation is that he was obedient entirely to his Father, which is true enough.  But remember, every reference Abinadi makes about God is specifically referring to Christ, and this one can teach us much about ourselves.

The “flesh” is also referred to as the “natural man,” or our mortal desires and appetites.  In King Benjamin’s sermon, he says, “…the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord…” (Mosiah 3:19)

Our fleshly or natural desires are to feed the physical, mental, and emotional appetites that the body hungers for.  We are born in a fallen condition and so was Christ.  The condescension of God was that Christ was born into a fallen state, with a mortal body that was subject to death and the same appetites that we deal with.  If it weren’t, I can’t imagine that Satan would have even bothered to tempt him on those several occasions.  A great difference between us and Christ is that where we have to put off the natural man and become a saint through the Atonement, Christ needed no atonement.  If you replace one word in the Abinadi verse, it can read like so, “having subjected the flesh to the will of [Christ], being the Father and the Son.”

Christ used his own agency to command, like the God he is.  He was not mastered by the flesh as we so often are; he was the master.)

Moving onto verse 3, we see that Christ is “The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God…”

What is the power of God?  The Priesthood.  Latter-day Saints make a large deal about priesthood, because it is only by God’s power that anything has any eternal permanence or force.  We call it the Melchizedek priesthood because Melchizedek was such a righteous high priest within the priesthood order, but we know that “before his day it was called the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God.” (D&C 107:3; italics in original)

The Priesthood belongs to Christ, and it was by his Priesthood that he was conceived.  Christ can rightfully be called the Father because it was and is his power for all eternity.

“…and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and the Son—”

Because he was born, he had to be the Son.  This does not require great explanation.  However, I hope this helps make clear how where before, Abinadi talked of Christ being the Father and the Son, in this verse, it’s shown how the priesthood also let Christ become the Father and the Son.

Or maybe I irreparably confused you.  That does happen a bit.

The point is, it should be clear that “they are one God” because Abinadi has been talking about the same person the entire time; he’s just been referring to Christ by two distinct titles.  It also should make clear how in verse 7, “the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father” shows how the flesh of Christ was completely swallowed by his undeviating purpose to save all mankind.  Christ, as always, is the master.

Another way that Christ is the Father is shown in verse 4, that Christ is “the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth.”  Jesus Christ is Jehovah, who created heaven and earth in the Genesis account and the other revealed scriptures we have of the Creation.  He is the Father of the world in which we live and the one in which we will go to after this life.

This wraps up the doctrine that confused me.  My trouble had been in understanding how Christ could be both Father and Son, and these little discoveries helped me understand and draw a little closer to him.

But there is always one more thing to learn. In this case, it’s another way that Christ claims the title of Father, and is frankly, the most marvelous to me.  Abinadi explains this a little later in his sermon:

“And now I say unto you, who shall declare his generation?  Behold, I say unto you, that when his soul has been made an offering for sin he shall see his seed.  And now what say ye?  And who shall be his seed?  Behold I say unto you, that whosoever has heard the words of the prophets, yea, all the holy prophets who have prophesied concerning the coming of the Lord—I say unto you, that all those who have hearkened unto their words, and believed that the Lord would redeem his people, and have looked forward to that day for a remission of their sins, I say unto you, that these are his seed, or they are the heirs of the kingdom of God.”  (Mosiah 15:10-11)

Those who accept the Atonement of Christ, they who have faith in him and repent, become his seed.  In short, Christ is the Father of the righteous.

There’s an interesting principle of adoption that seems to be in place here and it only seems fair.  As our Heavenly Father is the father of our spirits, and our mortal fathers would be the fathers of our physical bodies, those who reach out for the Atonement accept Christ as their father as well.  Just thinking of our baptismal covenants, one of the promises we make is to take Christ’s name upon ourselves; yet another way that we become one with him.  Certainly binding ourselves to Christ through this covenant would mean entering his family of the righteous.

Christ himself said, “In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe in my name; and they shall become my sons and my daughters.” (Ether 3:14; emphasis added.)

Card

I used to have favorite books.  I even wrote my own Top Ten lists for books that I thought were meaningful, powerful, and grand in every sense of the word.

The problem was that the more books I read, the more this list tended to change.  And some books that I remembered being so meaningful to me at a certain time in my life didn’t hold up on re-reading.  I stopped concerning myself with favorite titles and began looking at the authors who consistently touched, entertained, or taught me more than others.

The list included such giants as C. S. Lewis, Jane Austen, Brandon Sanderson, Hugh Nibley, Stephen King, Robert Jordan, Bill Willingham, Edgar Allen Poe, Jack London, William Shakespeare, Richard Adams and Ray Bradbury.

This past week, though, I’ve had to mentally kick myself.  There are two authors who have been with me longer than any of the rest of these but I always forget to mention them.  In fact, I’d forgotten about their impact on me entirely until now: Orson Scott Card and Michael Crichton.

With Card, I cannot believe how little credit I’ve given him in the past year.  The fact is, he’s had an artistic presence over me since I was five.  My parents had purchased a VHS collection from Living Scriptures, an animation company that was making movies of many scripture stories from my church’s canon.  Card wrote the scripts for the first six Book of Mormon videos and a few of the exceptional New Testament videos.  Those were some of my favorite cartoons growing up and I had no idea that Card was behind it until I was well into high school.

By that time, I was a devoted follower of anything he wrote.  I started off with Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead (like the majority of his fans) when I was a freshman.  Once I finished Children of the Mind, I went on to read some of his earlier, stranger stuff, like Wyrms and “Hart’s Hope” from the Chrysalis 8 collection.

As an author, I’ve always found him entertaining and his fiction always gave me a lot to think about.  But as much as I enjoyed his stories, it was his newspaper columns that kept me reading.  His OSC Reviews Everything column (which is still ongoing) continues to fascinate and intrigue, as he talks about everything from books and movies to food and history.  And his World Watch column (which isn’t updated regularly, if at all, anymore) has had more impact on how I approach politics and is responsible for my no longer being a conservative (Ayn Rand is the reason that hasn’t changed, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

I found these columns on his website, www.hatrack.com, but that’s not even the most important thing for me.  His writing wasn’t his greatest creation—it was the Hatrack Writer’s Workshops, a forum for beginning and amateur authors to learn: the ins-and-outs of writing; what characterization, plot, and setting are about; sending up our stories to be critiqued by the other writers and to take part in critiquing theirs as well; learning the steps to publication; and best of all, it was where I met the wonderful people of my first writing group.  The year I spent writing, reading, and improving with them meant more to me in my literary attempts than anything else.  If Card had not opened up his site for that, that experience wouldn’t have happened.  I doubt I would have felt confident enough to even do this blog if it hadn’t have been for the help that group gave me those several years ago.

And while I don’t do Top Ten lists for my favorite books, I’m going to give my Top Ten favorites from the Orson Scott Card bibliography.  He’s done enough to deserve it.

1)      Hart’s Hope—the novel version, and is NOT the first book you should read by him.  It is heartbreaking and violent beyond anything he has ever written before or since.  It’s an incredibly complex novel; King Pelicroval, who everybody in the story sees as a hero, is heartlessly cruel and shameless.  The villainess, Queen Beauty, is surprisingly sympathetic.  I would root for her if she wasn’t so undeniably evil.  The unusual depth arises in that King Pelicroval really was the champion of the good side, and yet his flaws make you nauseous.  And yet, because of Queen Beauty’s cruelty and her willingness to kill her own children for vengeance made me want Pelicroval to win that second war.

 
And poor Orem, who is caught in their sick game and forced to make the greatest sacrifice of all.  In this high fantasy of men and gods, he makes the most god-like and selfless decisions, and without the gratitude or reward of anybody else in the story.  There’s a chord of truth in this book that hasn’t struck with me in any other book in Card’s bibliography.

2)      Ender’s Shadow—published 20 years after its companion/parallel novel, it took the smallest character from Ender’s Game and turned him into a giant.  If anything, it proved that Card has only gotten better with time.

3)      Ender’s Game—if you haven’t read anything by Card, this is where to start.  This is one book I refuse to own in hardcover.  I’ve loaned this book out more than any others in my library.  So much so that I had to buy a new copy so I could continue to let others borrow it when my original was lost and demolished.

4)      Maps in a Mirror—this one is kind of a cheat.  It’s a short story collection, so instead of one story, I’m recommending about a hundred, and they’re all from a variety of subjects and genres.  But… I don’t care.  Of all his short story collections, this was the most fantastic.  It includes “Unaccompanied Sonata”, which Card considers his best written work.  I personally preferred “Sandmagic”, “The Porcelain Salamander”, and “Mortal Gods”, but the great thing about this collection is that there’s bound to be something for everyone.

5)      Saints—I really like the fictional Dinah Kirkham.  I was a little disappointed that she didn’t actually exist, although considering that she’s based on real women from early Latter-day Saint history, that’s all fine.  Besides, if nothing else, this book whet my appetite to learning as much of my Church’s history, something I discovered was a real lack of education on my part.

6)      A Storyteller in Zion—it’s actually not the greatest collection of essays I’ve ever come across, but the inclusion of “Consecration: A Law We Can Live With” continues to have a transformative influence on me.

7)      Characters and Viewpoint—this is a must read for anybody who wants to get into novel-writing as a profession.

8)      Songmaster—this kind of story is generally not my cup of tea: the soap opera.  And yet, this is one of the few times where I actually cared about each person in the love affairs, and because Card is not an idiot, the politics are well-thought out and compelling.

9)      Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus—there’s only so much you can do with a time-travel story.  There hasn’t been an original take on time travel since the Golden Age of science-fiction.  There are two things that make this book work: (1) this operates much like a heist novel, in that a lot of the fun is see the team pull off this incredible performance; in this case, they’re trying to keep Columbus from discovering America and making the future better for everyone; (2) some of the best parts is reading about the life of Columbus.  If it weren’t for the last hundred, which throw history to the wind, it wouldn’t make a terrible study of Columbus’s life, and he had a fascinating one.

 

10)  Magic Street—I still haven’t read or seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I still thought this was a fun take on Shakespeare and putting his characters into the modern world.

100

I'd forgotten that I started this blog at the beginning of February last year.  I thought that since I post twice a week (minimum), my 100^th post would be closer to that year mark.  Then I remembered that two-month hiatus I took from my blog last year—the worst sin you can commit if blogging is important to you at all.  On the web, infrequent updates lead to a bored and frustrated audience, which in turn leads to no audience.

And the audience is important to me.  I know I have a few friends who keep up with this blog, and certainly my mother (the only family member who cares; I know for a fact my siblings don’t.)  Thanks, guys.

I made a discovery last month which completely made my blog so much cooler for me.  For a while, I ignored my stats.  I was happy to see that people were looking at my blog, but I didn’t want the numbers to control my happiness in any way, for or against.  Finally, I succumbed, mostly because I wanted to see what some of the buttons on my blog page do.  One of them, I get to look at where my audience is from, and what I saw blew me away: recently, my blog is not most read by my friends and family.  In fact, most of my audience isn’t in the United States at all.  I have an audience who reads from the United Kingdom, Russia, and Germany.

I don’t know what brought you to check out my page or why you keep coming back week after week, but it is very flattering and I want to thank you as well.  That was awesome to see.

                    ***

I reread my first post, entitled “What to Expect from Me.”  It’s a rambling mission statement with the chief virtue of being short (although maybe not short enough.)  I looked back to see how I did.

And with the exception hiatus, I have kept true to updating twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, and that is something I plan to continue.  I also mentioned the subjects I expected to write about, and some of those have happened and others didn’t.  If nothing else, I always have written about my interests.

When I started this blog, I used the OSC Reviews Everything column as my model.  After all, I’m not getting paid to do this so why shouldn’t a write only about the things I care about?  Nobody is twisting my arm to see a movie I don’t care about or listen to music that makes me want to drive a spike through my ears.  And while I don’t cover the spectrum Card does (he wrote an entire article on toilet paper once) I have had the variety of musings.  So much so I worry week after week that I’m going to run out of things to talk about.

This next year, I am going to try something new with weekends.  Saturdays are reserved for my 1,001 Novels on that list, only to be updated whenever I finish the books or decide they’re not worth my time.  But last month, I did a special on a Sunday talk I gave and you know, I enjoyed that so much that it’s something I want to keep doing.  I’m reserving the second Sunday of each month to post on any gospel-related subject that has caught my attention.

And in closing, the last paragraph in “What to Expect from Me” explained the meaning behind my blog’s title.  It still applies.  If I can’t find the silver lining behind anything I discuss, you are free to call me on it.

#48 The Little Prince

I have a thing for children’s books.  The best class I ever took in college was Children’s Literature, which was no less than playtime for me.  This was where I fell in love with “Red Riding Hood” all over again and discovered how nearly every nursery rhyme through the centuries was a cry from tired mothers trying to justify infanticide.

So I was excited when that ridiculously long list I committed myself to included The Little Prince by Antoinne de Saint-Exupéry.  It’s one I had been meaning to take an hour to read but somehow kept pushing aside for other things (like the next installment of Bleach).

The story is a simple love story about a boy who lives on an asteroid.  It’s a small world but he takes good care of it.  He grows a rose on his asteroid but after a fight, he goes away on a journey that takes him to six different asteroids with their own lonely and foolish indigents until finally he makes his way to Earth and realizes that he wants to go back home to his rose.

I later discovered how big a deal this book is in France.  In that country, they voted it as the best book of the 20^th Century.  I’m not going to go that far, but hey, they have every right to be proud that this was written by one of their own people, and during the World War II days, I’d say this was a fairy tale that needed to be brought during that era.

It’s easy to focus on the main message, which is conveyed by the fox, who speaks some great truths about relationships and responsibility, especially in his statement, “It is the time you have lost for your rose that makes your rose so important.”  It brought to mind Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s comment on relationships that, “Love is spelled T-I-M-E.”

But that wasn’t what drew me into this lovely though slightly odd novelette.  It was his initial journey away as he went from asteroid to asteroid.  I made an odd choice of word in describing them indigents but that’s how each of them struck me.  There are a variety of characters (there is a king, a businessman, a drunkard, etc.) each of them is lacking in true wealth.  The king claims to be ruler of everything and yet he is ruler of nothing.  The businessman counts his wealth of stars, claiming them all his because nobody else has and yet he can never do anything with them.  The drunkard… well that one goes without saying.  The thing is, each plays at happiness or importance, but none of them has ever come close to what happiness is.  And what struck me is how many people I know that are just like this.

I include myself in this.  I found myself to be ridiculously like the geographer on the last asteroid, who is continually making maps for places that he has never been and never even plans to go.  As far as the world goes, I’ve studied the world from South America to China, Egypt to Rome, New Zealand to South Africa, Canada to Russia, but as for any personal experience, I’ve never been west of California and the farthest east I’ve ever been was Texas.  Despite very brief opportunities, I’ve never taken the plunge and wouldn’t even know what to do if it ever happened.

But it’s not even just travel.  Looking at my own life, I can see all the things that I’ve looked at and wanted, but never reached out to grab it or experience it.

That trip is only about a dozen pages long, but the amount of introspection and meditation they brought more than makes it worth the claim that this is a book you should read before you die.  I’m glad I let this one into my mind and my heart.

Cheers and Frasier

When I got NetFlix, I expected to be watching more movies.  I didn’t realize how many complete TV shows they had, and I had the chance to watch them without any commercial interruptions whatsoever.

Except for X-Files, though, I’ve elected not to watch any show where the episodes are longer than 30 minutes.  This translates to a lot of sitcoms.  My most recent obsessions are Cheers and Frasier, and though I haven’t finished an entire season of either one, I’ve already judged which one is worth continuing and which one I can’t.

I apologize to any fans of Cheers but I cannot bear to keep watching it.  I thought that it might be because it’s a culture thing.  I don’t drink, never been in a bar, so basically the show is based entirely on something that I don’t relate with.

But that reasoning fails quickly with one of my favorite comedies: M*A*S*H.  Never been in the army, never done any doctoring, never been shot at or had to shoot at anybody, and never had those wild drinking and carousing bouts, but that show is hilarious and feels as real as anything.  I feel connected to these characters going through their daily tragedies and boredoms, and laughing at their antics.

So it’s not a culture thing.  In fact, take the drinking out of the equation, the bar is just a place to hang out and be with friends.  I can totally relate.  Everybody has such a hangout spot for friends with similar or dissimilar interests as the case may be, but for those few hours, they can relax and forget about life.

Then I thought that might be the reason I didn’t care much about the characters.  Their relationship is limited to the bar.  One of the successes with The Office was that their relationships and dramas weren’t limited to their work but extended into their personal lives, in their homes, you got to see what they were like afterwards.  In Cheers, they never leave the bar.  They only talk about their outside lives, but you get the feeling that no matter what is said or what help is offered, the connection ends as soon the door is closed and they’ve locked up for the night.  It never struck a permanent chord with me.

But then, the reason could be simpler than that: the show’s just kind of boring.  I laughed a grand total of three times and I just passed the halfway mark.  This doesn’t bode well for all eleven seasons.

I can’t knock it entirely, though.  The jingle is very catchy and one of its actors went on to succeed in their own show in a way that never happened with Joey after Friends ended.

Frasier is a whole different show.  This show is about a character in his mid-life, divorced, starting a new career, and arm-twisted into having his father live with him.  From the get-go, I have reasons to care about what happens in this series.  Frasier is a very good man trying to do the right thing, despite how much it is forcing him to change and improve the way he conducts his own affairs.

One of the best early moments was in the third episode, where Frasier’s father called him and his brother Niles out in public for being snobs.  It’s a painful moment for them to realize how horrible they actually are, and then they immediately try to apologize and make it better.  They handle it like idiots, but they do try.  And I like the goodness that’s behind such an action.

That, and the humor is there.  It’s a hoity-toity brand of humor, but what makes it succeed is that while they’re making fun of the upper class, it is a great example of what classy humor is.  It pokes fun at the educated while still being intelligent.  It’s one of those delicious blends of irony and wit, I’m looking forwards to completing all 11 seasons worth.