Sacred music

My lovely wife and I had the opportunity to hear the Apollo Chorus in Chicago perform Rachmaninoff’s Sacred Vespers over the weekend. The Apollo Chorus bills itself as the oldest volunteer choral society in the United States. (It was founded in 1872, 25 years after the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but Utah did not become a state until 1892; I do not know if that is the technicality that allows the Apollo Chorus to claim to be oldest or if it's organzing as a choral society or some other reason.)

As I sat in the sanctuary of the Fourth Presbyterian Church on Chestnut Street in downtown Chicago listening to liturgical music of the Russian Orthodox Church, I contemplated the role of music in my own worship. Does music bring the spirit? Does the spirit inspire the music? Or is my response to the remarkable artistry in Rachmaninoff and Brahms and Bach and others simply emotional? (Or technical?)

I thought about this again as we played yesterday evening the CD my wife received for Mothers Day, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Glory. The CD features traditional religious music such as Beethoven’s "Ode to Joy," but also more modern fare from Leonard Bernstein and John Williams.

I was taken back in my memory to sitting in our living room in Hiroshima on Sunday evenings years ago, listening to Kiri Te Kanawa sing Gounod’s “O Divine Redeemer.” For many Sundays in a row, I’d recreate the same scene: The kids were in bed, the room was dark, and Hiroshima’s city lights danced on the windows that covered two walls of the room. Was it in this song I began to understand the atonement? “I pray thee grant me pardon, and remember not; remember not my sins.”

When I was on my mission in Germany, one of my sisters wrote to me from time to time with quotations from German composers who wrote of their own religious devotion and religious experiences in writing their music. It’s clear to me that at some level, these artists seem to be more than just excellent technicians of their craft; at least I hope that it true.

Rachmaninoff, when he wrote his “Sacred Vespers” (also titled “All Night Vigil”, because the 1 hour and 15 minute set of music is part of a larger religious service designed to include Vespers (night prayers) and matins (morning prayers)), did not have a close relationship with the church, but the religious text and chant origins of the music certainly suggest his religious feeling.

The music of this work, like so many other religious works, is for me as mysterious as the subject matter. In some movements, the chant restricts the melody to what my sister-in-law calls compact melodies, and in others, Rachmaninoff recreates the pealing of bells in the voices of the choir.

Excellent music well performed is a wonderful gift to those who hear, including, I believe, God.

Learning our history

I’ve enjoyed a discussion in the comments of a recent post over at BCC. The post itself was about teaching the methods Joseph used when translating the Book of Mormon, and the subsequent discussion has touched on how we Mormons learn about our own history. There seem to be two broad points of view that have emerged in the discussion (which I will now simplify in such a way that proponents of either might not recognize them anymore…):

1. I learned my church history from Sunday School and seminary classes and learned only the very basic and most sterile view of the restoration and events surrounding it.

2. Somehow I learned not only the fundamental founding stories of the restoration but also the complexity of our history. This knowledge may have come from Sunday School and seminary lessons or from my parents or from my own exploration or perhaps from further study I’ve done as an adult.

There is a view advanced by some that the church, by “sanitizing” a history, has either misled or oversimplified or out-and-out lied to its flock in order to teach a certain faith-promoting point of view. I do not share that view simply because that has not been my experience.

I am a convert to the church. I was baptized with my parents at age eight (almost nine), so I had the benefit of hearing the missionary lessons AND “growing up” in the church. I attended Primary for nearly a year prior to my baptism (I was the first in my family to go to church), and I continued to attend MIA (back in the day), priesthood, Sunday School and seminary. Our family was not completely diligent in holding Family Home Evenings throughout my youth, but we did often enough and regularly enough that I knew what Home Evening was and how it worked. And I have fond memories of many of our family activities. I’m old enough that church was in the morning and in the afternoon on Sundays, and Primary and Relief Society were held during the week. Our family car made the half-hour trip to church every day of the week – often twice – except the rare Saturday that there wasn’t a stake meeting, a youth activity or some sports thing going on.

By the time I got to BYU as a freshman, I was not unfamiliar with some of the anti-Mormon stories. I’d heard some of the arguments of the day against the church (some from my well-meaning “Christian” friends, some from politically active folks who worried about blacks and the priesthood). Perhaps because I came to the church as a convert in a convert family, I was not steeped in a more narrow view of our history, so if I heard something new (like Joseph’s use of a seer stone), I didn’t worry about it; I just filed it away with other things I’d learned.

I took a church history class from our mission president the summer before I went to BYU and there I was likely exposed to a few new things about Joseph and his experience. Our instructor was Kenneth Godfrey, whom I didn’t realize at the time was quite a church history scholar. I also benefited from a rather progressive Sunday School teacher in my last years in high school; she challenged us to consider our testimonies and consider what we knew and could know. She gave me new ways to think about general authorities and how they taught. She was completely faithful, but also frank in her discussions in our class.

When I got to BYU, I had a roommate whose father had been leaving the church for years. My roommate was well-versed in the foibles of our history, and he was anxious to find resolution to many of his questions. To my good fortune, he included me in his search for answers, and we spent a good deal of time at the Special Collections section of the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU. Ultimately, he and I ended up in different places. Although we both left for our missions on the same day, he left his mission after six months unable to look himself in the mirror and truthfully testify that he knew Joseph was a prophet. My reaction was the opposite. I am still impressed with his integrity, and I cannot account for our different outcomes, only my own. I found peace in my study of doctrine and was ok with some ambivalence along the way as it related to specific historical questions.

Over time, I’ve been greatly encouraged by efforts by the church to make more real history more available. And I’ve sought out and enjoyed reading more scholarly efforts from Bushman and Arrington and Givens and others. The relatively recent (well, several years old, now) work by Walker, Turley, and Leonard on Mountain Meadows was far more satisfying to me than Juanita Brooks’ treatment that I read in my freshman year at the Y, though Brooks’ account was also illuminating and helpful as far as it went.

Recent online conversations have caused me to think again about how I’ve talked about church history with my children. I could do more. I have had the approach of waiting for their questions and then to answer as honestly as I can, and reaffirming my own faith. Perhaps there is value in my being more proactive than I have been; I don’t know.

When I have taught church history in Sunday School or institute classes or in priesthood, I’ve also done my best to represent truth as I understand it. I have generally sought supplemental information, and, when I’ve felt it appropriate, I’ve introduced it into my lessons. I try to measure such introductions against the needs and interests of my class.

My testimony is not as simple as saying “I know the Book of Mormon is true; therefore I know that Joseph was a prophet; therefore the church is true.” In fact, that is absolutely not my own path to testimony.

But my testimony is pretty simple. I do know from my own experience and in my own way that God is in His heaven. The scriptures, including the Book of Mormon, have taught me doctrine that has blessed my life. The fruits of the restoration – the priesthood and its ordinances, including temple ordinances – have been the source of great spiritual strength for me. All of those things point me toward the atonement and its remarkable power and grace.

Against that backdrop, I’ve yet to be overcome by historical issues. I realize my approach does not work for everyone. I have members of my family who have left the church over unresolved issues regarding our history, and one needn’t look far on the internet to find many others who are in the same boat. I read a comment a while ago that wondered what a TBM like me would have to learn to turn him away from the church, and I don’t have an answer to that question. I suppose the reason is that my testimony is rooted in the gospel, not the church; it is rooted in the Savior and His redeeming power, including the ordinances of His priesthood, not in the history of the restoration as I understand it, nor even the historicity of the scriptures. It’s not that I doubt the history or the scriptures’ historicity; those things are not the most important thing to me.

But I’m happy to learn more about them as I go along.

Sustaining my teachers

I wrote recently about sitting on my hands (here and here). One of my reasons for that post was to renew my support of my gospel teachers at church. I raised my hand to sustain them, and I want to continue to sustain them.

But what can we do when we have a teacher who is sub-par (or who just bores us)? We don’t all respond to the same kind of teacher, I’m sure, so there are likely times when the person in front of the room isn’t our favorite.

Here are things I hope class members will do for me when I teach:

1. Prepare to come to class – read the lesson and come ready to learn something. It may not be from the teacher, but from another class member, or even just from quiet reflection on what has been said. But I hope students come to my class prepared to learn. (And yes, that also means bringing a set of scriptures (I don’t care what form!) and a copy of the lesson manual. Extra points if I’m teaching one of those Teaching for Our Times lessons and someone brings a copy of the conference talk! (Personally, I never know what talk we’re discussing until I show up; somehow it doesn’t get communicated very well in our ward. But at least now that I use my Kindle Fire at church, I can find whatever conference talk is under discussion.)

2. Volunteer to read and comment – there’s nothing worse for a teacher than inviting volunteers to participate and hearing crickets in response. Ok, it may be a lame question, but maybe your insight will drive the discussion in a positive direction. There’s one fellow in my ward who is particularly good at this – I love having him in class when I teach because I know he’ll say something cool.

3. Ask thoughtful questions – if the lesson is lagging or if there’s a question you brought to class hoping for an answer and it doesn’t look like you’re going to get it, ask the question. The worst that will happen is that you’ll get a blank stare. But the question might lead to an interesting and fruitful discussion. I’ve done this sometimes and had a fellow class member button-hole me after class for an extended discussion about my question.

4. Teach yourself the lesson you’d like to hear – if all else fails, you can always teach yourself the lesson while you sit in the classroom. Elder Eyring told a story a few years back about his dad’s doing this in sacrament meeting if a talk got a little on the dull side. I prefer to wait a while before leaping to this conclusion because if I’m teaching myself in my head, I probably won’t hear what others are saying in the discussion, and so I won’t learn anything from them.

I believe there’s value in showing up prepared for a class. It benefits me as a student and it also benefits the teacher. But sometimes there is a teacher we just don’t get much from. Hopefully that teacher isn’t instructing every week, and hopefully that teacher can get some in-service training. But even if he or she can’t, we can still sustain him or her by being present and ready to learn.

Some teachers do get better over time. I have a friend who taught a class I used to attend regularly. Initially I wasn’t all that thrilled going when he taught. But over time he introduced innovations to his lesson – he sought out information in other church publications to supplement what he was getting out of the shared manual; he did a better job of leading class discussions instead of reading from the manual; he became more confident in his own ability to teach. It was fun to watch the change in him, and it became fun to attend his class.

King Benjamin’s remedy for our earthly state seems to apply in this case, as well. If we are “submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love” (Mosiah 3:19), we are more likely to be accepting of our teachers who might not be our favorites, and we might learn something along the way.

Feeding Sheep at Women's Conference

You might think I want to blog about the BYU Women’s Conference, but you’d be wrong. Our stake in Southeastern Michigan just held its annual women’s conference, and that’s my subject.

Now you might wonder why I would blog about a women’s conference. I had only a very tiny bit to do with this one. I did not present (though I did, with my wife, two years ago), but my lovely wife is in our stake Relief Society presidency, and she helped to plan and execute it. And she conscripted me to set up and take down tables and chairs…

But she and my daughter also told me about what went on there, and it was awesome.

Since I am not a woman, I do not know first-hand what kind of talk there is around here about what perfect women are supposed to be like, but I do hear that there is that kind of talk around Mormon culture. And there seems to be plenty of guilt among really good sisters because they somehow don’t match the perfect image. Hopefully those who attended our stake’s women’s conference left with a more realistic view of things.

The theme of the conference was the spirit of faith. And throughout the conference there were stories of faith – not stories of horror turning to gold or happily-ever-afters at the end of the rainbow, but real, gritty, in-your-face stories of how normal women work day-by-day to exercise faith to put one foot in front of another and keep moving toward honoring covenants in the face of adversity, rearing children in imperfect families, coping with difficult choices in life, and generally trying to do good things.

One of the activities that moved my daughter was the program over lunch. Certain sisters were invited to consider a particular statue from the Nauvoo Women’s monument, to write a brief essay describing the significance of that particular statue, and to re-enact the statue while a narrator read her essay. (My daughter was one of the narrators.) What could have been a rather pedestrian “here’s what the statue means to me” exercise turned out to be filled with personal stories of faith as sisters described their connections to one of the monuments or another. The sisters did not choose their subject; they were assigned. And still, each had a personal connection, a personal experience, a personal story to tell which allowed the spirit of shared experience to permeate the program.

As is common in women’s conferences, sisters could choose from a variety of workshops where they learned about subjects ranging from teaching faith in the family to learning faith in the temple, from studying faithful women from the scriptures to learning about offering help vs. co-dependence.

I wondered aloud to my wife why the sisters had such a conference and the men do not. My wife pointed out that she did not know why men did not have such a conference, but that the Relief Society program has long provided for such conferences at the stake or local level. (I found myself wondering if men would show up.)

My wife (who sat on the stand for the opening session of the conference) said as she watched sisters stream into the chapel (about 200 sisters attended), it occurred to her that each one came with a particular need to be filled; each one came to be fed spiritually. And my wife hoped that what they had prepared would fill that need. That is surely at least one reason why this particular conference was a success, because those who planned it prayerfully considered the needs of those who would attend and sought to feed them as the Savior taught Peter to feed His sheep.

It occurred to me that I could do better at adopting that attitude in my church service. I could do a better job of feeding my home teaching families, the classes I teach, and, of course, my own family.

Pixels Away!

My fifth child (second daughter) is the first of my children to choose to serve a mission. We received a call last night from the stake president that he had just pressed “Send” and her mission application is on its way to Salt Lake City.

The combination of emotions I have today is something else.

On the one hand, I’m remarkably proud of my daughter for her choices. She has talked about serving a mission since she was four, when she and my lovely wife hosted sister missionaries for lunch in our home one day each week when we lived in Venezuela. And she has spent the last 17 years since then preparing to serve.

Her choice to serve was not without some trepidation. More than once in the last few years at BYU she has wavered. She’s wondered if she would be better to stay and finish her degree, if she should pursue certain romantic endeavors, if there was some other way she would better serve. But more than once along the way she has received what she knows to be divine guidance that she was on the right path, and that yes, she should serve.

I should point out her decision has been hers and hers alone. In fact, at times I’ve told her she does not need to serve; she has no obligation to do so, except if she really feels moved by the spirit to do so. She has three older brothers who did not serve. Her mother and I were sad about those choices, but we have not pressed her to serve as some form of compensation or validation for us.

Her older sister has also not served. When our oldest daughter’s friends were leaving on missions, she called me and asked if she ought to serve. I told her what I told daughter #2: only if she felt strongly called to do so. As much as my own mission meant to me, and as much as I loved serving (most days, at least) I firmly believe the Lord does not need an army of unwilling missionaries. And sisters have always been in a place where they have considerable more choice whether to serve, without such social pressure to do so. Perhaps that’s one reason why the sister missionaries I have known almost without exception have been truly remarkable missionaries.

So, yeah, I’m very proud of her and her decision to serve, and her preparation to serve. (And yes, I am really proud. I have recently re-read President Benson’s words on the subject: there is no enmity in my properly placed parental pride.)

I’m also awestruck by the work that she will do. Yesterday in sacrament meeting we happened to sing Hymn #263, “Go Forth With Faith” as a closing hymn. As we sang, it occurred to me what my young daughter is about to do. She will

Go forth with faith to tell the world
Of Jesus Christ, the Lord.
Bear witness he is God’s own Son;
Proclaim his wondrous word.
Go forth with hope and courage strong
To spread the word abroad
That people of all nations
Are children of our God.

As I write to other missionaries in our family and serving from our ward, I regularly remind them of the awesome work they are doing. Now that I am three decades removed from my own missionary service, I’m amazed what we trust these young people to do. And at the same time I realize that there are few others who could do it. Somehow as I have aged, I’ve lost the childlike faith that propelled me to proclaim a gospel I barely knew with enough conviction that someone would listen long enough for the spirit to bear witness of the truth.

So I’m also pretty amazed that my little girl will participate in this great work.

And it’s very cool to me to see how – and where -- the work is progressing. Even the application process is digitized. We talked in the beginning of my daughter’s mission “papers” because we remembered when it was all paper. Now I talk of her Mission Pixels. Soon someone will sit in front of a screen an meet her as Elder Rasband described a few conferences ago.

Of course we’ll all be excited to learn where she will serve and when she will leave. But mostly I’m excited when I hear her honestly say that she doesn’t care where she goes, but just that she can. Already she is preparing to go where He sends her.

Things I avoid when I teach

I’ve written couple of posts on gospel teaching (for instance, here, here and here). It’s a subject I care a lot about and have for many years. Just before my mission (I think the telephone had been invented by then – and by telephone I mean the one that was connected to a wall…) I took the teacher improvement course and I really enjoyed it.

Early in my marriage, I served as a Sunday School president. I approached my calling very seriously (even though by then SS presidents were about as useful as the human appendix) and my counselors and I worked hard to try to improve teaching in our ward. I’ve really enjoyed teaching over the years, and have taught in Sunday School, Primary, Young Men’s and in my Melchizedek PH quorums. I even taught one Relief Society lesson when I was a bishop. (Ok, it wasn’t a whole lesson, but I was in the room and I got to teach!) I’ve never taught in Young Women’s, but I have taught Young Women in seminary and in youth firesides. And I’ve taught institute, as well.

I don’t know that I’m a great teacher, but I guess I’m entertaining enough. People seem to respond to my lessons enough that I keep getting asked to teach.

Here are a couple of things I try to avoid when teaching. When I’ve seen these things in other classes (or when I’ve realized I’ve been doing it in my teaching), I’m kind of turned off, and I figure other students are, too. This is my short list. Maybe you have others, and you’d like to share them in the comments:

1. Play “Guess what the teacher’s thinking.” Remember in Junior High (ok, I’m so old that we didn’t have the trendy “Middle School”) when a teacher would ask a question, you’d summon the courage to answer in front of your peers with a completely logical and reasonable answer and she’d say, “Well, that’s not what I’m looking for; anyone else?” It made you feel silly, didn’t it? (Well it made me feel silly, anyway.) The point of questions in a church class is not to test knowledge, but to foster discussion. Even if an answer is a bit off the beam of a teacher’s message, the teacher can walk back to his central theme and still acknowledge and accept the discussion as it comes.

2. Ask yes-and-no questions. See #1. If the point of questions is to foster discussion, how does a yes / no question do that? Furthermore, do we really expect anyone to say “No, we don’t believe in the Godhead?” I agree that a careful series of yes or no questions may work as a rhetorical device from time to time, but as a general rule, these are the wrong kinds of questions to ask.

3. Be Nephi (or any other scripture character). Avoiding this is a newer innovation for me in my teaching. In fact, I used to assume roles all the time. I used to say things like, “I can imagine what Nephi was thinking – here he was tied up on a ship which is about to go under the sea and his brothers are dancing and having a great time…” The thing is, I don’t know what Nephi was thinking. There are surely some who might have said of me, “I know Nephi. Nephi is a friend of mine. You’re no Nephi.” This issue came home to me a few years ago as I sat in a class taught by another entertaining gospel doctrine teacher who did the same thing. Except I thought to myself, “Nephi didn’t think that. He never said that.” And I realized that although I can liken the scriptures unto myself, I ought not liken myself unto the characters of the scriptures. I ought to let them speak for themselves.

4. Run overtime. There is nothing I have that will be more important to all the members of my class than getting out on time. If they can hear the bell or see a clock, they will worry about whatever they have to do next more than whatever fabulous ending I have planned for my lesson. Therefore, I need to plan to start my “big finish” (if I have one) early enough to be done at the end of class. (That said, it was entertainingly ironic a few weeks ago as our substitute gospel doctrine teacher ran five minutes over while discussing looking past the mark. As it happens, he had misunderstood what time class was supposed to end.)

Well, that’s my short list. I’m happy to have you add your thoughts to the list.

Hand sitting progress...

A while ago I posted about sitting on my hands -- in church classes, that it. I thought I'd let you know know that's going.

I'm relieved that not every idea I have is bad. (One bad one here...)

I have tried to be more measured in my participation in class. I am happy to read, and volunteer to do so. And I'm trying (for now) to limit myself to just one comment. My reasons:

1. To avoid "teaching from the fourth row" -- I want to respect that the instructor has a point of view, a message he or she has prepared, and I want to hear what that is. If I keep interrupting with my great ideas, neither the rest of the class nor I get to hear what the instructor has planned.

2. To avoid monopolizing the conversaton -- more than once I've been in a class where someone comments so much that others kind of shut down and let the instructor and the verbose commenter carry on their dialog. Recently I've realized that sometimes I'm that guy, and I didn't want to be.

3. As much as I like to hear myself talk, I'm trying to limit my pontification to my blog and to my home, where I'm king. (Oh, strike that second part...)

So over the last few weeks, I've been pretty good about it. I substituted for two weeks in my son's Sunday School class, so I got to talk all I wanted there (guided by the lesson manual and the Real Manual (aka, the scriptures), of course).

In priesthood the first week of hand sitting, I responded to a question early on, and the stake president, who was visiting our ward that day, commented on my comment. I was anxious to answer his thoughts, but even as I was putting up my hand, I remembered to sit on it, instead. As it happens, someone else commented on what he said. The conversation did not go in the direction I would have taken it, but the instructor was happy to have several people participating, and that was good.

In Sunday School yesterday, I was a little late to the discussion because I had to follow up with the bishop on another matter. When I joined the class, they were discussing one of my very favorite chapters of all scripture, Mosiah 4. There we learn about our need to serve others, about how our attitude in service is at least as important as our actions, and about how caring for the poor and needy is the way we ensure that we retain our sins' remission that we receive in baptism and in taking the sacrament.

Our teacher had me read verses 21-26. For me, the key is verse 26:

And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you—that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God—I would that ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants. (Emphasis mine.)

As our teacher reviewed key verses, he had me read through verse 26, but he did not discuss it. My hand was itching to go up, but I sat on it again. He clearly had somewhere he was heading. After class, he told me that he was going to spend some time on that subject, but because I'd read the verse with the emphasis I marked above, he felt like his point had been made and he moved on.

All in all, so far so good. I am noticing, particularly in my HP group, more participation when I curb my dialog with the instructor. And I'm getting to hear some other points of view besides my own. That can't be a bad thing.