Week 47: Aquaman Tours the Visitors' Center
Dear Loved Ones,
Yesterday, I went to this quiet corner of the visitors' center to be alone and read my scriptures. It has pictures of prophets from the Book of Mormon and modern times with touchscreens that play videos for you. Little self-guided stuff you don't need a tour guide for, so I never go over there. While I'm hiding in my corner, I sense movement behind me and turn around to find a lady has somehow gotten past the 3-5 people in the lobby waiting to catch visitors.
Her: What can you tell me about these displays?
Me: Uh... (I never needed to give a tour of this random corner of the visitors' center before) they're exhibits on Book of Mormon prophets.
Her: Say it again for the camera. I'm recording this for a celebrity. (pulls out phone)
Me: (quickly launching into Perky News Anchor Mode) Over here we have displays about prophets from the Book of Mormon.
Her: What can you tell me about that one?
Me: This exhibit tells the story of Moroni, the last prophet and historian of the Book of Mormon, burying the record of his people after all the Christians in America have been massacred. The record lay hidden until Joseph Smith, the first prophet in modern days, unearthed it.
Her: How long was that?
Me: (does math without breaking stride) Fourteen hundred years.
Her: (addressing mystery celebrity) Fourteen hundred years. I think we can use this exhibit as backdrop.
The visitors' center is weird because you have downtime to read or whatever for hours on end, but then people show up and you have to be ready to present at a moment's notice. And I had no idea who this mystery celebrity was. A member of our church who featured as one of the background extras in Ephraim's Rescue? Someone who's a real deal? So I'm adapting my insta-tour to suit someone I've never met.
She paused her recording and told me she's involved somehow in a proposed movie trilogy called Reign of the Judges that draws from the Book of Mormon but isn't being bankrolled by the church, which makes me nervous about accuracy. They're trying to get Jason Mamoa, who played Aquaman, on board. I never even saw Aquaman because I had only thirteen days between finals week and catching my plane to Idaho and it was playing the same time as Mary Poppins Return. But now I've toured its star (kind of) without even knowing it. The lady filmed me talking about the displays because she wants him to come to the visitors' center and use our exhibits as backdrops while filming a proposal or something. I hope this movie gets made so I have bragging rights.
Since this week is Thanksgiving, I was asked to give a talk on gratitude and this is what I came up with. People told me they liked it, so I guess my Erica-cynicalness was well balanced with scriptural insight. Enjoy!
Gratitude and Half-Price Pedicures
In the Netflix show Series of Unfortunate Events, the pessimistic narrator, Lemony Snicket, defines an optimist as someone who could lose their right arm and say, "Oh boy, half price manicures for life!" Later on in this same episode, a male lumber worker gets his leg crushed by a machine and says, "Oh boy, half price pedicures for life!" This is a man. He doesn't get pedicures in the first place. His reaction to his injury is intended as comedy, but I think about it a lot when people with very real trials are inappropriately counseled to look on the sunny side.
I once knew a girl who lost all four of her grandparents by age seventeen. On a camp out shortly after her last grandparent's funeral, she complained that the girl she shared a tent with, who had many health problems, was wrong to complain about her life because, "She still has four living grandparents."
That other girl could have easily flipped that around. "You're wrong to complain about losing your grandparents. You don't have my health problems."
People, naturally, don't notice the things that aren't going wrong. It is wrong to counsel people with different trials than ourselves as if they had no problems at all. People comforted in this way could readily say, as Job did to his would-be comforter, "I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.
3 Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?
4 I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.
5 But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief. (Job 16)
Assuage means relieve. People who are not currently suffering, or not currently suffering as much, have a sacred responsibility to relieve people who are suffering, not just to tell them to look on the sunny side.
Artists employ a painting technique called chiaroscuro where they juxtapose dark and light. If you paint light yellow next to a lot of black, your painted candle looks like it glows on the canvas. The dark things you are going through look worse when you set them alongside the light.
The prophet Joseph Smith received revelations in groves, on farms, in houses, and in upper rooms of stores. In happy places. But one of the most spotlighted places of revelation is Liberty Jail, where he was wrongfully imprisoned throughout a long, cold winter on trumped up charges. I think people like Liberty Jail because of chiaroscuro. [Side note: I want to end my mission by serving at Liberty Jail. I hated it for a long time while I was barred from serving because a lot of miserable comforters quoted the part about afflictions being for our good. Now I feel like I was sent to this mission because I need to learn about Liberty Jail ad reconcile myself to it.]
In Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk Lessons from Liberty Jail, he says,
"Spiritual experience, revelatory experience, sacred experience can come to every one of us in all the many and varied stages and circumstances of our lives if we want it, if we hold on and pray on, and if we keep our faith strong through our diffculties...We don’t have to look for sorrow. We don’t have to seek to be martyrs." But, "When you have to, you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly
instructive experience with the lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, let me say that even a little stronger: you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the lord in the most miserable experiences of your life—in the worst settings, while enduring the most painful injustices, when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced."
Gratitude isn't just watching the light in the dark that surrounds you right now. Gratitude often involves looking back at the dark that used to be. In the book of 1 Samuel, the children of Israel are defeated in battle by the Philistines twice in the same location, a place called Mizpeh. The first time, four thousand of them are killed. The second time, they lose thirty thousand. The third time, we read in chapter 7, "Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; and the Lord heard him.And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and...they were smitten before Israel.
In response to this victory, Samuel "took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us."
Eben-ezer means stone of help. This is the source of the line "Here I raise my Ebenezer" in the hymn come thou fount. This stone monument reminded the children of Israel that the Lord had their back in the very place they'd been defeated.
I have a personal Ebenezer I wear, and I'm wearing it today. It's a little gold necklace shaped like a V for Victory. Without going into unnecessary detail, [This was me getting barred from a mission] I had a lot of challenges and opposition in my life and was defeated twice in the same way . But when this trial threatened me for the third time, the Lord helped me conquer it. A friend gave me this necklace as congratulations and I wear it as a reminder of gratitude.
The people of the Book of Mormon, when they are righteous, remember to look at recent deliverance from oppression or long-ago deliverance of their ancestors and thank God. In Mosiah 25:10, we are told, "when they thought of the immediate goodness of God, and his power in delivering Alma and his brethren out of the hands of the Lamanites and of bondage, they did raise their voices and give thanks to God.
And in Alma 36, Alma tells his son Helaman, "I would that ye should do as I have done, in remembering the captivity of our fathers; for they were in bondage, and none could deliver them except it was the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he surely did deliver them in their afflictions."
Gratitude is not a lumber mill veiling of trials so they can masquerade as half-price pedicure blessings. It is not taking a desperate inventory of your status quo and reminding yourself that things could always be worse. It is a joyful acknowledgement of the things you actually appreciate. It's seeing the light set against the dark, remembering the captivity of your fathers, and raising an Ebenezer to the God that delivered you. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
Yesterday, I went to this quiet corner of the visitors' center to be alone and read my scriptures. It has pictures of prophets from the Book of Mormon and modern times with touchscreens that play videos for you. Little self-guided stuff you don't need a tour guide for, so I never go over there. While I'm hiding in my corner, I sense movement behind me and turn around to find a lady has somehow gotten past the 3-5 people in the lobby waiting to catch visitors.
Her: What can you tell me about these displays?
Me: Uh... (I never needed to give a tour of this random corner of the visitors' center before) they're exhibits on Book of Mormon prophets.
Her: Say it again for the camera. I'm recording this for a celebrity. (pulls out phone)
Me: (quickly launching into Perky News Anchor Mode) Over here we have displays about prophets from the Book of Mormon.
Her: What can you tell me about that one?
Me: This exhibit tells the story of Moroni, the last prophet and historian of the Book of Mormon, burying the record of his people after all the Christians in America have been massacred. The record lay hidden until Joseph Smith, the first prophet in modern days, unearthed it.
Her: How long was that?
Me: (does math without breaking stride) Fourteen hundred years.
Her: (addressing mystery celebrity) Fourteen hundred years. I think we can use this exhibit as backdrop.
The visitors' center is weird because you have downtime to read or whatever for hours on end, but then people show up and you have to be ready to present at a moment's notice. And I had no idea who this mystery celebrity was. A member of our church who featured as one of the background extras in Ephraim's Rescue? Someone who's a real deal? So I'm adapting my insta-tour to suit someone I've never met.
She paused her recording and told me she's involved somehow in a proposed movie trilogy called Reign of the Judges that draws from the Book of Mormon but isn't being bankrolled by the church, which makes me nervous about accuracy. They're trying to get Jason Mamoa, who played Aquaman, on board. I never even saw Aquaman because I had only thirteen days between finals week and catching my plane to Idaho and it was playing the same time as Mary Poppins Return. But now I've toured its star (kind of) without even knowing it. The lady filmed me talking about the displays because she wants him to come to the visitors' center and use our exhibits as backdrops while filming a proposal or something. I hope this movie gets made so I have bragging rights.
Since this week is Thanksgiving, I was asked to give a talk on gratitude and this is what I came up with. People told me they liked it, so I guess my Erica-cynicalness was well balanced with scriptural insight. Enjoy!
Gratitude and Half-Price Pedicures
In the Netflix show Series of Unfortunate Events, the pessimistic narrator, Lemony Snicket, defines an optimist as someone who could lose their right arm and say, "Oh boy, half price manicures for life!" Later on in this same episode, a male lumber worker gets his leg crushed by a machine and says, "Oh boy, half price pedicures for life!" This is a man. He doesn't get pedicures in the first place. His reaction to his injury is intended as comedy, but I think about it a lot when people with very real trials are inappropriately counseled to look on the sunny side.
I once knew a girl who lost all four of her grandparents by age seventeen. On a camp out shortly after her last grandparent's funeral, she complained that the girl she shared a tent with, who had many health problems, was wrong to complain about her life because, "She still has four living grandparents."
That other girl could have easily flipped that around. "You're wrong to complain about losing your grandparents. You don't have my health problems."
People, naturally, don't notice the things that aren't going wrong. It is wrong to counsel people with different trials than ourselves as if they had no problems at all. People comforted in this way could readily say, as Job did to his would-be comforter, "I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.
3 Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?
4 I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.
5 But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief. (Job 16)
Assuage means relieve. People who are not currently suffering, or not currently suffering as much, have a sacred responsibility to relieve people who are suffering, not just to tell them to look on the sunny side.
Artists employ a painting technique called chiaroscuro where they juxtapose dark and light. If you paint light yellow next to a lot of black, your painted candle looks like it glows on the canvas. The dark things you are going through look worse when you set them alongside the light.
The prophet Joseph Smith received revelations in groves, on farms, in houses, and in upper rooms of stores. In happy places. But one of the most spotlighted places of revelation is Liberty Jail, where he was wrongfully imprisoned throughout a long, cold winter on trumped up charges. I think people like Liberty Jail because of chiaroscuro. [Side note: I want to end my mission by serving at Liberty Jail. I hated it for a long time while I was barred from serving because a lot of miserable comforters quoted the part about afflictions being for our good. Now I feel like I was sent to this mission because I need to learn about Liberty Jail ad reconcile myself to it.]
In Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk Lessons from Liberty Jail, he says,
"Spiritual experience, revelatory experience, sacred experience can come to every one of us in all the many and varied stages and circumstances of our lives if we want it, if we hold on and pray on, and if we keep our faith strong through our diffculties...We don’t have to look for sorrow. We don’t have to seek to be martyrs." But, "When you have to, you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly
instructive experience with the lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, let me say that even a little stronger: you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the lord in the most miserable experiences of your life—in the worst settings, while enduring the most painful injustices, when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced."
Gratitude isn't just watching the light in the dark that surrounds you right now. Gratitude often involves looking back at the dark that used to be. In the book of 1 Samuel, the children of Israel are defeated in battle by the Philistines twice in the same location, a place called Mizpeh. The first time, four thousand of them are killed. The second time, they lose thirty thousand. The third time, we read in chapter 7, "Samuel cried unto the Lord for Israel; and the Lord heard him.And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and...they were smitten before Israel.
In response to this victory, Samuel "took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us."
Eben-ezer means stone of help. This is the source of the line "Here I raise my Ebenezer" in the hymn come thou fount. This stone monument reminded the children of Israel that the Lord had their back in the very place they'd been defeated.
I have a personal Ebenezer I wear, and I'm wearing it today. It's a little gold necklace shaped like a V for Victory. Without going into unnecessary detail, [This was me getting barred from a mission] I had a lot of challenges and opposition in my life and was defeated twice in the same way . But when this trial threatened me for the third time, the Lord helped me conquer it. A friend gave me this necklace as congratulations and I wear it as a reminder of gratitude.
 |
| "Here I raise my Ebenezer." |
And in Alma 36, Alma tells his son Helaman, "I would that ye should do as I have done, in remembering the captivity of our fathers; for they were in bondage, and none could deliver them except it was the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he surely did deliver them in their afflictions."
Gratitude is not a lumber mill veiling of trials so they can masquerade as half-price pedicure blessings. It is not taking a desperate inventory of your status quo and reminding yourself that things could always be worse. It is a joyful acknowledgement of the things you actually appreciate. It's seeing the light set against the dark, remembering the captivity of your fathers, and raising an Ebenezer to the God that delivered you. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Sincerely,
Sister Smith
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