A Doubter's Response to President Uchtdorf

As a non-practicing person of LDS heritage, I have fallen out of the habit of watching general conference. I am still connected to Mormonism through family and friends and continue to love my Mormon heritage and the foundation it has provided in my life. Because of the Facebook flurry it generated, I decided to listen to President Dieter Uchtdorf’s talk. It was wonderful to hear a talk on doubt. Anything helps in respect to shepherding members to broaden their understanding of why people leave full participation in the LDS Church. However, I was disappointed that President Uchtdorf did not address the substance of doubt. Talks like this encourage tolerance for those of us who doubt or decide to leave the church, but there is always an underlying subtext: It is ok to doubt, so long as your doubt produces the right outcome.

Uchtdorf lovingly acknowledged that there are a host historical issues that cause some to doubt the church’s claims to truth with a capital ‘T’. However, he did not address these issues in a way that would help those who struggle to think through these issues. There is no method, no advice.  In a very euphemistic reference to “historical issues” he says: “Some struggle with unanswered questions about things that have been done or said in the past. We openly acknowledge that in nearly 200 years of Church history, along with an uninterrupted line of inspired, honorable, and divine events, there have been some things said and done that could cause people to question.” This statement makes it seem like the issues are trivial or superficial keeping the doubter on the outside, on the fringe, rather than acknowledging that these are serious challenges to the Church’s claims. Yet, Uchtdorf acknowledges doubt as essential to seeking truth: “In this Church that honors personal agency so strongly that it was restored by a young man that had questions and sought answers, we respect those who honestly search for truth.” Doubt is framed as a sort of right that we (unwisely) exercise, like our right to sin. While this talk may be a step in the right direction, Mormons must do better at acknowledging that the search for truth can sometimes lead people out of the Church. Thank you president Uchtdorf for your kind and respectful words, may the dialogue between Mormons and their doubting friends and family return to the table in love and good will.

Solstice

For the last several years I have tried to commemorate the solstice with at least some acknowledgement of this our longest day of the year. Nothing to New Agey, ritualistic or woo-woo; solitude, a hike, etc. This year I awoke early and watched the eastern sunrise from my Forest Service station at the Mill Hollow Guard Station east of Heber, Utah. As I watched I thought of the trip I had recently made to the Chaco Canyon Pueblos in New Mexico where the Puebloan peoples that lived there for approximately 1,000 years developed an elaborate sun, moon and star watching practice. It is thought that the astronomy of these people developed to plan festivals and trade fairs that were held each year and which were attended by thousands of people from all over the region. Being able to predict the cycles of the sun and moon in their ascent and descent in the sky were essential aspects of everyday life because Chaco was the ceremonial center of this brief empire that synchronized trade and streamlined architecture into the uniform masonry that the Chaco ruins reflect. The sun and moon were meticulously watching using simple instruments like a stick in the ground whose shadow was measured each day to orient the villages along a north-south axis. Natural monuments such as Chimney Buttes and small cracks in the rocky mesas were used to track the journey of the Sun high into the summer sky and back to its winter nadir.

How little I know about the cycles of the sun, moon and stars. They have been mostly eclipsed, so to speak, by our more precise technological time pieces and secular calendars. I struggle to remember whether the moon is waxing or waning. I sometimes notice the ascending and receding position of the sun throughout the year, but am never still enough, in one place long enough to watch it actually change. Yet, on the solstice I try to be present to this silent but ever present liturgy as the sun rises and sets, ascends and descends in the sacred sky.

On this particular solstice I didn’t do anything that different. I watched a spotted sandpiper drunkenly walk the shore of the creek near the cabin. I listened to unknown birds call from hidden bows of a nearby aspen wood. I watched the slow advance of a beaver logging operation on the other side of the creek. I walked endlessly through forests that were being ravaged by spruce beetles; the sappy trunks of towering trees smattered with the frass and pitch of fresh beetle entries and exists. The tall, ancient boles whose glory fades one needle at a time; from green to faded brown.

The spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis) is such a small creature having such a huge impact on a place. I am reminded of us; our voracious appetite for material things, money and comforts is killing the earth upon which we have evolved, lived, loved, laughed and learned. And just as the beetle knows nothing else but to eat, mate and reproduce; we too, despite our supposed enlightened minds, technological prowess and religious moralities are eating ourselves out of house and home. And like the beetle, when the trees run out, we may very well face a crash. I hope we have the strength to buck this powerful evolutionary urge and course correct. Perhaps we will, and perhaps we will not. Yet on this solstice, even under the fading green of spruce trees fighting to stay alive, I have hope that we too will survive, that the trees will grow back and that a balance will be struck.

8.7 Million Names for God

In a recent botany class I took for fun, I learned the taxonomic Family, Genus and Species of about 60 different woody plants. This month I also attended the annual Great Salt Lake Bird Festival, a mecca for migratory bird enthusiasts and avid birders, who devoutly greet the some 5 million birds who migrate through our state each year. In all my efforts to identify plants and birds using dichotomous keys and beautifully illustrated books, I wonder about the process of naming. In Genesis, Adam names the animals. But what’s in a name? Is naming an act of relationship? Or, is it one of dominance and control? Keying out plants was sometimes frustrating, and I did more reading than observing the actual plant. But, as I learned the new vocabulary of plant anatomy and was able to identify more and more plants and their habitats, the landscape took on a more transparent feeling. It was like adding letters to an alphabet, or the slow process of getting to know someone. In some small way, knowing something about a plant connects me to it. And lately, I have been desperate for connection to myself, the earth and to God. So, while the process of naming plants was frustrating and hardly very spiritual, as I learn more and more plants, their habitats and uses, I feel surrounded by familiar faces. Naming has also allowed me to be present to the creatures before me, as a miraculous manifestation of the Ground of Being, the one become many. So, to name something, to recognize it, is to enrich my vocabulary for the face of God. He was once a white-robed, bearded male in the sky; now s/he is a dizzying diversity of plants, animals, rivers, rocks, lichens, mosses, invertebrates, fishes, and birds.

As I learned to identify birds and their calls, the incomprehensible chatter and flitting of a dusk sky became a grammar of winged fellow creatures. The general descriptor ‘Bird’ became the myriad Northern Flicker, Yellow Warbler, Sand Hill Crane, etc. Since the GSL Bird Festival birding has becoming a kind of walking meditation. The other day, I was standing on a flat boulder on the west bank of the Provo River just outside of Heber, Utah; I was mesmerized by the rush of water as it meandered slowly southwestward. The body of the river I was in had been restored to an undulating meander, and was surrounded by ponds and wetland. I focused on my breathing as I scanned the sky for flying objects. An Osprey appeared suddenly, hovered in place and dipped out of site beyond the trees. In a small pond in sight of the passing freeway, a beaver swam through the shallows. A buck froze with the whiff of my scent. I heard the haunting call of Sand Hill Cranes in the distance. By actively searching for birds, I am that much more present and mindful to all creatures. I am not so distracted by my thoughts as I would be if I were simply hiking, thinking about my to-do list for tomorrow. This is the focused meditation of the mystics that opens to door to God. As I walk, I feel the quality and temperature of the air passing through my nostrils as I go from shade to sun, I hear the sound my shoes make on the gravel and I anticipate any warble or dip in the air. I feel a deep sense of calm. What beauty there is to behold in the some 8.7 million creatures on this earth, each unique, each striving to live, and each a manifestation of the miracle that is life. Eight point seven million names for God, the Ground of Being.

Back in my truck, a man with his fly rod ambled by not noticing me. Loading his gear, he mumbled some unrecognizable words in melody and then broke into a more clear singing voice:

“Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me, enough to die for me.

Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!”

I smiled to myself and began to sing along to this familiar hymn. I felt a deep happiness that this (most likely) Mormon man was connecting his deeply held spiritual beliefs to a quick after work fishing trip. But I hope he also realizes that just as his temple rituals and church meetings teach him how to become closer to God, the fish that slip through his fingers, the river he stood in, the plants on its banks and the birds overhead are closer to God than he thinks! 

Cercocarpus ledifolius