Gospel Doctrine

Before the opening prayer the teacher started making the rounds, passing a bamboo kebab skewer to each class member.  "Everybody gets a stick, everybody gets a stick.  OK, here's your stick.  Everyone gets to participate because that's how we learn by the spirit.  Don't poke each other, they're sharp, ha.  We're going to pass out these sticks.  Alright, last one.  Now I need two volunteers.  Alright, sister, I need you to break your stick."  The sister easily snaps it in two.  "Alright, second volunteer, here's our second volunteer.  OK, who loves this brother?  Who will give him their stick?  He needs your sticks."  Class members slowly begin to pass their sticks to the brother one by one.  He ends up with perhaps 16 skewers.  "He's going to try to break these sticks, but he'll find it's harder.  When we're united, we can't be broken."  With a great crack bambo dust bursts into the air and all over the brother's pants as he breaks all the skewers together in a feat of strength.

Ballet and loathing

Several weeks ago a friend who teaches piano invited me over to scavenge through a stack of music she was throwing away. Nothing remarkable--some Chopin, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff piano duets I gladly picked out, but it was something else entirely that caught my fancy. I was powerless to resist the urge as I placed it on the stand and eagerly played with more passion and relish than I have in a long time. I had made it to Dance of the Mirlitons before I abruptly stopped in the middle of an elegant gesture, slammed the book shut and reached for some Schubert. That's right, gentle reader, it was a piano reduction of the Nutcracker Suite that so delighted me until the shame of playing Tchaikovsky in February overwhelmed me and I had to move on and pretend it hadn't happened. I can't wait to play it again.

Ite, missa est

Like any self-respecting Mormon intellectual, I have a bad case of liturgy envy.  So, when presented the chance to attend a Latin Tridentine Mass at a local mission church I could ne'er answer nay.  Benedict XVI issued a decree called Summorum Pontificum in 2007 which facilitated the celebration of the Mass in Latin at the request of the faithful.  My understanding is this local church began holding Tridentine Mass last fall.

Having not yet experienced the older rite, the savory incense and gentle dialogue of the antiphon I welcomed and enjoyed more finely for the anticipation, but for all that was new and strange I must say I benefited most from the strong homily that was offered.  The gospel reading for the day was Mark 9:2-10, I think, about the transfiguration of Jesus.  The priest taught how though Jesus had always had the nature the disciples saw with their eyes that day, it was hidden from their sight.  It was in these times when the glory of Christ was veiled that the disciples jockeyed for honor, bickered, denied and betrayed and this was how we all lived--coming from moments of divine grace and insight back to our ordinary experience where we must sort out the particulars of Christian living.  For the priest, the faithful's experience of Christ in the eucharist was the prime example.  The priest took Peter's "It is good for us to be here" as true for the faithful, for whom it is "good to be here": in the church, celebrating the mass, taking communion.  He spoke of the "terror and tenderness" of the disciples' experience on the mountain and the faithful's experience of the eucharist.  Reading this episode in the gospels, I have often found myself moved at Peter's plain exclamation, remarkable not only for how obvious it is, but at what was left unsaid of his own terror and delight at being in the presence of heavenly beings.  He's at a loss for words at his own spiritual experience, something I can surely relate to.  I've thought back on those words, "It is good for us to be here" many times in my life as I've been shown that a circumstance is just where the Lord would have me be.  What a blessed thing, may I be there always.

The priest's comments regarding Christ's divine nature being veiled from human view during his early ministry and the head coverings worn by many women present had me pondering the veiling of glory, from Paul's teaching ("woman is the glory of the man [. . .] if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her" 1 Cor 11: 7,15) to Moses (Exodus 34:33-35) to some Latter-Day Saint practices.  Is veiling to protect the sacred or preserve the ignorant?  What is the meaning of veiling?

In other news, the talks in our own sacrament meeting were on the theme "steadfast faith in Christ."  As I listened to the youth speaker compare a saint's waiting on the Lord for blessings to seeing candy fall and slide through the workings of a transparent glorified gumball machine I was struck at how years ago I would have found this trivial and out of keeping with whatever imagined teaching the speaker had in mind but now found it entirely appropriate.  The last speaker, when reviewing ways to "increase our faith" urged us to do what was right with no thought of reward, which I was impressed to note reiterated Jesus' teaching in Luke 17:5-10 almost exactly without the speaker seeming to be aware.