He came from his blest throne,
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed-for Christ would know,
But O, my friend,
My Friend indeed,
Who at my need
His life did spend!

Sometimes they strew his way,
And sweet his praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King;
Then ‘Crucify!’
Is all their breath
And for his death
They thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight.
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
Themselves displease,
And ‘gainst him rise.

They rise, and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
The Prince of Life they slay.
Yet cheerful he
To suffering goes,
That he his foes
From thence might free.

In life, no house, no home
My Lord on earth might have:
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heaven was his home;
But mine the tomb
Wherein he lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine,
Never was love, dear King,
Never was grief like thine.
This is my Friend
In whose sweet praise
I all my days
Could gladly spend.

(Samuel Crossman, 1624-1684)

Like good Mormons, the panelists lined up according to seniority. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich spoke first. She said she had been surprised to read the headline question of Peggy Fletcher Stack’s article, since she and the Mormon feminists she knows haven’t gone anywhere. Still Mormon, still feminist, still very much here. She acknowledged that some of the big questions of Mormon feminism(s–it hasn’t ever been monolithic) of the 70′s–the divine feminine, ordination for women–have gone unanswered or been answered no. However, she felt that those may not have been the most important questions to Mormon feminists, even though they got the most airtime. Questions about equality within marriage partnerships, opportunities for women to pursue interests or careers outside of housewifery, fairness in hiring and compensation were all very important to Mormon feminists, and those questions have been answered with a ringing yes. It may be that younger Mormon feminists are quiet because they take the achievements of the feminism of the 70s as a given–they feel free to finish their education, to pursue all kinds of careers, to space their children using birth control, to work as equal partners with their husbands in creating a family life that balances the needs of all its members.

Gently pressed on the issue of women and priesthood, Laurel said that she has “complex feelings” about this issue, and that she really believes that, as promised in the 9th Article of Faith, God “will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God,” including with respect to women and the priesthood. She told a story of a friend who chose not to convert to the Church, even though her friend felt the spirit and loved the Church, because her friend could not stomach the thought of bringing up her daughters in such a patriarchal church. We will eventually need to more fully live up to the ideal of men and women as equal partners in order to effectively spread the gospel. She concluded by expressing appreciation for the power of priesthood service to help men grow into the full expression of their goodness, calling the priesthood a “brilliant system for socializing men.”

Maxine Hanks echoed Laurel’s sentiment that feminists are not dead yet (cue the Monty Python sketch), although the word “feminism” may be. (By this point, I was furiously crossing things out in my notes, as Laurel and Maxine made every point I had thought of more cogently and articulately than I could hope to do. However, I did have one line I was sad to let go, about the muddling effects of the word “feminism.” Here it is, a T&S exclusive: “When I hear the words “Mormon feminism,” I usually think of Claudia Let’s-Do-a-Musical! Bushman, while General Authorities of a certain age hear “Mormon feminist” and conjure up an alarming image of a hairy-legged, Birkenstock-clad protester demanding immediate ordination. It’s hard to have much of a conversation once those competing preconceptions get invoked.) Maxine asserted that many, maybe most, young Mormon women are feminists in all the ways that 70s feminists hoped for, despite the fact that they eschew the label–they pursue education in many fields, they expect their husbands to contribute to household work, they are aware of methods for family planning. The goals of “Second Wave” feminism are mainstream, even taken for granted by today’s young women.

Maxine suggested that things have changed in the church in part because the church is conscious of ways in which being perceived as too anachronistic will impede the progress of missionary work. If the disjunction between what women are allowed and encouraged to do outside of the church and inside, then the careful balance of being in, but not of the world, is upset, and fewer people will be able to choose membership in the church. She noted that it is in part because of women she called “independent feminists,” those who are no longer working within the church structure, that the perception of anachronism is sharpened. While those within the church tend to discount the voices of those who have “voted with their feet,” over the long term those voices do matter a great deal to perceptions within the church. The benefits of feminism are now mainstream in the church partly because of the work and sacrifice of those who have found it necessary to work from outside the institutional structure. We should acknowledge their contributions and work towards fuller cooperation.

I was next. Sadly for you, gentle readers, you get a fuller version of my remarks than the others, because, darn it!, I’ve already typed them. If you’re getting tired of reading, though, skip down and read my summary of Kate’s remarks–they’re much more interesting.

I chose to address the subject obliquely, by flipping the question and asking “Where do Mormon Feminists Come From?” Broadly, they can be born or made. I was born feminist–there was nothing in my family to particularly encourage feminism. My rather traditional mother has spent her life variously gnashing her teeth and rolling her eyes at my uppity antics. (I related one incident I remember from the ERA era, when, on reading Rex Lee’s catalog of horrors that would befall the nation if the ERA passed, I pointed out to my mother that we had a unisex bathroom in our house and there had been no notable consequences of this lapse in family morality.) I mentioned fMhLisa as another example of one of the kind of feminists who seem “born,” who, without training in feminist theory and without much input from others, just have a sense that there’s something unfair about the way women are treated in the world and/or in the church, and who come to articulate that sense of injustice in ways that eventually are labelled “feminist” by them or others.

Other feminists are made. There are several mechanisms by which this happens, including:

–broad societal upheaval: I think this largely explains the Mormon feminism of the late 60s and the 70s–changes were afoot in the U.S., and some fraction of Mormon women were caught up in that change and sensed the Church’s similarity to other institutions that were being scrutinized by Second-Wave feminism in the broader culture, and sought to apply some of those critiques (as well as some distinctively Mormon ones) within Mormonism

–life. There are many, many Mormon feminists (or “not a feminist, but…” feminists–hereafter NAFB Feminists) who, for one reason or another–divorce, financial necessity of working, or (heaven forbid) strong desire to pursue a career other than homemaking, even something like having a handicapped child for whom they had to advocate in a voice raised above acceptable Relief Society levels–find themselves outside of the expected pattern of Mormon womanhood and suddenly at odds with an institution and a culture they had previously taken as constitutive of their identity. Putting together a new sense of self that incorporates the changes they’ve made requires a renegotiation of how they fit into the institutional framework, and often involves a critique of the institution, either explicit or implicit in their way of living and functioning in the church.

–motherhood (see also, Life). I know many, many women who become feminists, or, more often, NAFB feminists, on behalf of their daughters (or, more rarely, their sons). These are women who have been relatively content with Mormon ideals of womanhood for themselves but who find themselves suddenly willing to roar like mother bears in defense of their daughter’s right to go kayaking instead of learning to crochet in Achievement Days, or insisting that their sons can learn to play violin or to sew and not be mocked for it by their scout leaders at church.

–connection with other women. I don’t think this is often a primary cause of feminism, but it can be a necessary component in cementing a sense of feminist identity. The change in the dynamics of Mormon feminism can be clearly seen in the dominant modes of connection. In the 70s, there was Exponent II–very faithful, careful, focused on personal experience and only obliquely on political issues; Mormon Women’s Forum–a little bolder in tone, more political; and Dialogue and Sunstone–scholarly (and pseudo-scholarly), still largely dominated by male discourse with occasional nods to “women’s issues.” All of these (except MWF??) still exist, though mostly with decreased readership. However, there are new, more immediate means of connecting–listservs (Mormon-L, ELWC) and, obviously, blogs and online publications: fMh, T&S, BCC, Exponent II’s blog, mommywars, Segullah, and others. None, except fMh, is explicitly feminist, but all have regular and ongoing discussions of women’s lives, women’s interests, women’s contributions to Mormonism. These are both more and less “ghettoized” than previous modes of communication–there’s more self-segregation, largely along “conservative” and “liberal” lines, but there’s less gender segregation and less “pink issue-ing”: questions about gender, gender roles, etc. come up as part of larger discussions and not only in separate fora provided by generous male hosts. There still aren’t enough “tech-y” women, but we can manage the technology well enough to publish our own stuff and be full members of the community (my affirmative action hire at T&S notwithstanding :)).

–believing the gospel, following advice from church leaders: As long as we continue to teach that “… there is neither bond nor free, neither male nor female…, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” and “the glory of God is intelligence”, as long as we encourage girls as well as boys to “get all the education you can,” as long as we allow the anarchic influence of personal revelation, there will be Mormon feminism. Whether the institutional church will embrace its uppity daughters and find ways to celebrate their gifts, or marginalize and disown them, remains to be seen.

Kate Holbrook, batting cleanup, hit the ball out of the park. She also noted problems with the term “feminism,” not just that it has such uncontainable and divisive connotations, but also that it asserts too strongly that men and women face different problems and should have different agendas. Particularly within the church, we have to work together, because the problems facing us are bigger than “women’s issues,” and will be solved only as we work effectively together. [One interesting example of a problem facing both men and women is the pervasive consumerism and overconsumption and the related (I was going to say "consequent," but I'm pre-empting Frank's objection!) need for ever-increasing productivity and longer and longer work-weeks. This is a huge threat to family life, to children, to marriages, etc., and the more simplistic versions of equity feminism (women should be allowed to be just as overworked as men!) do nothing to address the problem, and exacerbate its negative effects on children.]

She noted several instances in her experience where priesthood leaders had worked hard to include women and women’s voices in leadership councils without changing the fundamental structure of the church.

Kate said that she also appreciates that young women are taught that they have a direct relationship with God. But she says that the culture of our Church can make women feel that they need to wait around for a man to ask them to marry them, instead of using their own agency to determine what they want to do with their lives. This “waiting” can become a pervasive tendency, and can contribute to women’s overreliance on priesthood authority for direction in areas of their lives that they can and should manage with their own inspiration.

One example of women learning to wait: men don’t have to think about how their wives’ careers may affect their careers, but women plan their careers and lives (which they can and should control) around getting married and having children (which, ultimately, they can’t effectively plan or control).

There were lots of great questions from the audience, and a lively, somewhat hopeful discussion. Rather than try to summarize that discussion, I want to just offer the two emotional impressions that have stayed with me from that discussion.

1) We’ve GOT to figure out a way to include single women in the life and leadership of the church. I’ve thought about this as an intellectual problem before, but (I’m embarrassed to confess) it has never struck me with such emotional force before. There I was, in a roomful of incredibly bright, articulate, fabulously well-educated and capable women, many of whom struggle with the feeling that the church doesn’t need or want them. What a waste, what a stupid, shameful waste of talent and devotion that all the church leadership can manage toward them is an occasional pitying nod and a promise that “someday” you’ll be married and valuable, if not in this life, then the next. NO! They are valuable now and whole and complete and worthy. It is not enough to have one Sheri Dew; it is not enough to promise “someday”; it is not enough to publish the occasional stupid Ensign article on “How to Include that One Pathetic Single Sister in Ward Activities.” There’s only one because all the others read the signs on the wall (y’know, the wall where we frame and hang the Proclamation on the Family instead of the Proclamation on Jesus Christ) and left. To the extent that we do not value or appreciate single sisters, we do not value any of the women of the church–single women force us to confront them as individuals and not as soft-focus Hallmark gender-roles (wife, mother), and WE FAIL THE TEST.

(I did warn you it was an emotional response).

2) Although there are many ways to improve women’s situation at local levels, and lots of hopeful anecdotes about working individually with the fabulous men socialized by the great institutional structure of the priesthood, there is not much individuals (or even groups) can do to change the church at the general level, at least not in any of the ways we usually think of effecting organizational change. The horrible, painful, difficult, wonderful truth is that the only thing to do is to believe and live the gospel, right now, where we are. We can claim the power of our personal connection with God, live by the inspiration of the Spirit, and sustain our leaders by our righteous lives and by fasting and praying that God will pour out his Spirit on them. And that’s it. After that, it’s all about patience and enduring to the end. No letter-writing campaigns, no sending Exponent II subscriptions to President Hinckley (hey, have we tried that? we still should!), no public protests, no mass deliveries of white roses–it won’t work. Institutional boundaries are too entrenched, too impermeable.

This is both the bad news and the best news of all: Mormon women are free–”because of the covenant which [we] have made [we] shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters. …under this head [we] are made free”, and “the power is in [us] wherein [we] are agents unto [our]selves.” There is good work to do, both within the established church and in the world that waits for Zion. We who are blessed to have been taught that we are daughters of heavenly parents, reborn as daughters of Christ, have all the tools we need “to bring to pass much righteousness,” with or without institutional permission or blessing.

(The answer? Gone for bloggers, every one. When will they ever learn…?)

On the way home from school this afternoon, my daughter was talking about her plans for when she grows up. She said she wants to work with animals or own a store. Her older brother slapped her down with “well, you can’t own a store, because store managers are men.” I managed not to drive off the road, despite the simultaneous raising of every last hackle. As calmly as I could, I named all the store managers and owners we know who are female, and threw in the examples of our pediatrician, the headmistress of the children’s school, and my husband’s boss, just for good measure.

Peter, uncowed, replied that men are better at being in charge. “Like at church. That’s why men have the priesthood.” Good little American meritocrat that he has, he has drawn the nearly inevitable conclusion from what he sees.

What should I have said? My children are too young for my nuanced arguments about church history, about cultural baggage, about the uncertainty of what God intends. What they see every week at church is teaching them something perniciously false. And what they see is more powerful than anything I can say to them.

How can I bear this? How can I let my children be damaged in this way? By the time they are old enough to examine this issue intellectually, the emotional and spiritual damage will be done. If it were any other institution, I would withdraw immediately. Tell me, please, why I shouldn’t take them down the street to the beautiful Episcopal church with the great choir and with male and female priests–wouldn’t it be better to let them grow up with a healthy sense that “in Christ there is neither bond nor free…neither male nor female” and then add true and delicious Mormon doctrine when they are old enough to discern its subtleties without being hurt by the appalling sexism of current Mormon practice?

A Christmas Caroll, sung to the King
in the Presence at White-Hall

by Robert Herrick

What sweeter musick can we bring,
Then a Caroll, for to sing
The Birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the Voice! Awake the String!

I. Dark and dull night, flie hence away,
And give the honour to this Day,
That sees December turn’d to May.

2. If we may ask the reason, say;
The why, and wherefore all things here
Seem like the Spring-time of the yeere?

3. Why do’s the chilling Winters morne
Smile, like a field beset with corne?
Or smell, like to a Meade new-shorne,
Thus, on the sudden? 4. Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be :
‘Tis He is borne, whose quickning Birth
Gives life and luster, publike mirth,
To Heaven, and the under-Earth.

We see Him come, and know him ours,
Who, with His Sun-shine, and His showers,
Turnes all the patient ground to flowers.

I. The Darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we finde a roome
To welcome Him.

2. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart,

Which we will give Him ; and bequeath
This Hollie, and this Ivie Wreath,
To do Him honour, who’s our King,
And Lord of all this Revelling.
————————————————————————
Excerpted from:
Herrick, Robert. The Poems of Robert Herrick.
London: Oxford University Press, 1933, p.385-386.

At the risk of having to permanently surrender my music snob credentials, I confess to having fallen in love with this poem in John Rutter’s treacly setting, which you can hear here. It took me several rehearsals to be able to make it through the bit about the winter’s morn smiling and smelling like a meadow without choking up a little. In part, this is because I am deep-down quite pagan, and always tempted to love the creation more than the Creator, and in part it was because I once saw November turned to March, on the occasion of a particularly joy-filled birth.

When my daughter Louisa was born in late November of 1998, Philadelphia had nearly a week of crazy-warm temperatures. The day she was born, it was 70 degrees. When we brought her home from the hospital, the forsythia outside our front door, tricked by the false spring, was in full golden bloom. If you knew my Lulu, this would make perfect sense–she has always been an astonishingly joyful child, nourished by rich springs of delight (which, by the way, are also a constant source of puzzled wonder to her melancholic Scandinavian mama). Of course the world smiled in the place where she landed.

It seems to me that this, simply, is the miracle Christmas requires us to believe in–that the events on this earth are intimately known and influenced by the One who made the earth. That the weather down here matters, that matter matters to the One who breathes His Spirit into it in a thousand ways. We are asked to believe that this is true not just in the runaway imagination of poets, but in material, palpable reality. The virgin birth, a new star, nights as bright as day–if we believe these things, then we will also find it possible to believe that we, each of us, matter to our Creator. We will find it possible that he can influence the unpredictable weather of the human heart, a possibility beautifully envisioned by one of my favorite hymn texts by John Newton (also the author of the text ‘Amazing Grace’).

How Tedious and Tasteless the Hours
When Jesus I no longer I see
Sweet prospects, sweet birds and sweet flow’rs
Have all lost their sweetness to me;
The midsummer sun shines but dim
The fields strive in vain to look gay;
But when I am happy in Him
December’s as pleasant as May.

His name yields the richest perfume,
And sweeter than music his voice.
His presence disperses my gloom.
And makes all within me rejoice.
I should, were he always thus nigh
Have nothing to wish or to fear;
No mortal so happy as I,
My summer would last all the year.

Content with beholding his face,
My all to his pleasure resigned,
No changes of season or place
Would make any change in my mind.
While blessed with a sense of his love,
A palace a toy would appear;
And prisons would palaces prove,
If Jesus would dwell with me there.

Dear Lord, if indeed I am thine.
If thou art my sun and my song,
Say, why do I languish and pine,
And why are my winters so long?
O drive these dark clouds from my sky,
Thy soul-cheering presence restore;
Or take me to thee upon high,
Where winter and clouds are no more.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

November is an odd month–hard to say whether it’s the end of autumn, or the beginning of winter. This year I think we’ve even had a few days of spring. It doesn’t fit easily in the American cultural calendar, either–the somewhat belated harvest festival at the end of it seems to be mostly an impediment to full-out marketing of Christmas merchandise beginning right after Halloween and a decorating dilemma: no one can decide whether to stay with the gold and orange-tones of autumn, or go straight to red and green. And then smack in the middle of the month is Veteran’s Day, suggesting red, white and blue accents perhaps. There’s one overlooked holiday in November, though, that may help us make sense of these clashing themes. November actually begins with All Saints’ Day–not much celebrated by Latter-day Saints, but one which I think could actually fit well in our tradition. All Saints’ Day is observed by many Christian churches as a day to remember the lives of virtuous people and rededicate onesself to following their example. It thus introduces a major theme of the month of November–REMEMBRANCE, which is then made more specific and poignant on Veteran’s Day, when we remember the veterans of all wars, and also celebrate the armistice after WWI–a peace which, of course, turned out to be fragile and temporary. These dual celebrations of virtuous lives and noble deaths give us an opportunity to remember those who have died with gratitude for their sacrifice and their example. And there are deeper lessons there, too, that prepare us for Thanksgiving and Christmas, all bound up in the word “remember.”

“Remember” is a nice sturdy Anglo-Saxon word that means the opposite of “dis-member.” That is, it means, at its most basic, “to put together,” (especially to put together in one’s mind–to fit together the pieces of a mental image). My dictionary gives the following definitions: “to recall to the mind through an act of memory; to call to the mind with effort or determination.” It is this determination and effort that finally connect remembrance to thanksgiving. As human beings, we choose by an act of will how we will re-member our experiences. Sometimes this choice is barely conscious; sometimes it takes a long time before we can make sense of an experience enough to name and take control of our memories, but, as we tell and retell the stories of our lives to ourselves, we gradually sort out the narrative elements we will keep, the themes around which we will organize our recitations of events, the action that will occupy center stage in our memories.

Stories, like our lives, are usually organized around a crisis, a central tension of some sort. Just as the armistice after World War I turned out to be too fragile to last, we will find that the periods of contentment and peace in our lives are interrupted by sickness, by death, by sin, discouragement, and despair. The way that we choose to tell the story of our lives in these moments is especially important: we can become overwhelmed by the crisis of the moment, or we can situate the current problem in a narrative that includes the remembrance of God’s help in our past, and in the lives of those we love and revere. One of my favorite reminders of this possibility is in Hebrews, Chapter 11: 1-16, 30-34

Paul is not the only prophet concerned with our remembrance of the goodness of God to our forefathers and mothers. The stories of these people are told over and over in the scriptures; the Exodus is reenacted each year in the Passover, the Book of Mormon is full of the admonition to remember.

I want to digress for a minute and tell a small story about my own life: when I was a little girl, my mother used the hymnal as a weapon. If we were fighting, she would sing “Let Us Oft Speak Kind Words.” If we were resisting going to bed, she would sing “Now the Day is Over,” when we did not do our chores fast enough, she sang “The Time is Far Spent.” Now, my mother has many talents, but carrying a tune is not among them, so this was a pretty effective way for her to do battle. When we were upset about some perceived slight, or some little thing that wasn’t going our way, she would often sing “Count Your Many Blessings.” And I confess that it never worked to make me feel better, and I still really dislike that song. Moreover, I’m not convinced that my dislike of the song is entirely rooted in childhood trauma; I believe there may be something fundamentally wrong with the premise that “when upon life’s billows [we] are tempest-tossed,” counting our many blessings is the most effective way to snap out of our funk. I know it’s heretical to question the premise of a hymn, but bear with me a minute. Let’s compare the formula prescribed by the song with Psalm 137, which is about a moment when the children of Israel were “tempest-tossed:” “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

One of the reasons I think “Count Your Many Blessings” rubs me the wrong way is that tells us how to feel–it suggests that we should feel grateful all the time. It “requires of us mirth.” And that, of course, makes me feel guilty because I don’t seem to be capable of sustaining that feeling for very long stretches. It’s likely that I am exceptionally wicked and ungrateful, but still, I think that the kind of overwhelming gratitude we think we should feel is not an emotion we can manage to feel constantly. I think maybe the Psalms are a better guide than “Count Your Many Blessings.” I’ve been reading them over this week, and here’s the lesson I take from them: the Psalmists command praise of God, giving thanks, not as the result of an overflowing of feeling grateful–indeed these poems move from cursing the poets’ enemies, to imploring God for blessings, to giving thanks for God’s past mercies and praising Him for His miraculous interventions with a rapidity that is stunning, if we think of them as descriptions of how the poet is feeling. Instead, I think they make sense if we read them as a guide to the process of remembering, if we understand that we are to be grateful as an act of will, that we are to decide to tell the stories of our lives with emphasis on God’s goodness and mercies to us. And we have to practice telling our stories this way, so that it becomes the narrative we know best–perhaps this is why we begin our prayers with offering thanks, and try to do it when we don’t much feel thankful. Even when our thanks are routine or a little perfunctory, when our feelings don’t quite match up, it is useful to cultivate the habit of praise and gratitude. Discouragement, despair, sin can all feel like exile–when we feel like strangers in a strange land, we will not feel like singing. We will want to weep. And yet, if we have learned to sing the song of gratitude by long practice, then even in exile, in despair, when we are longing for “an heavenly country,” as Paul says, we will be able to remember the words of the songs–we will be cheered by the singing of those around us, and we will remember the lives of the faithful who have gone before, who have made it through their own wilderness places and found home at last. And this memory will make room for the happy ending of our own story, just as our Autumn rituals of memory and thanksgiving make space for the sudden glory of Christ’s birth, in the middle of the darkest nights of the year. Here is how the poet John Donne described this abundance in the midst of want:

God made Sun and Moon to distinguish seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons: But God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies; In paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is alwaies Autumne, his mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask panem quotidianum, our daily bread, and God never sayes you should have come yesterday, he never sayes you must again to morrow, but to day if you will heare his voice, to day he will heare you. If some King of the earth have so large an extent of Dominon, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together: He brought light out of darknesse, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the wayes of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclypsed, damped and benummed, smothered and stupified till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all shadowes, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries. All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

May we more fully entwine the stories of our lives with grateful memories of God’s mercies, so that our yearly ritual of Thanksgiving will prepare us to receive light out of darkness as we celebrate Christ’s birth, just as our daily ritual of beginning our prayers with a litany of gratitude prepares us to recognize and give thanks for God’s continued presence in our lives.

That’s right, at Stake Conference, in the dark. It snowed all day yesterday in Boston, a heavy, wet snow that brought down a tree onto the power line that feeds the Stake Center. So we had the evening session of conference with only emergency battery back-up lights, flashlights, and a lantern which a brilliant Boy Scout of a Times and Seasons reader (who never comments, but *should*! ahem) just happened to have in his car. I got to turn pages and shine flashlights at music stands, so I was right in the middle of all the music-making, but still able to listen.

The prelude was the middle movement of the Bach double concerto, gorgeous, perfectly played by two world-class violinists. I listened, noticed how beautiful it was, mused on the impossibility of playing that movement as baroque–it is just Romantic, a century ahead of itself. Then there was the congregation, a little confused by the circumstances, but gaining confidence throughout “High on the Mountaintop” (though the words were a little mushy after the first verse). There was talking and some choir pieces performed by a good ward choir which would have been even better if they could have used the organ (I was in a good enough mood not to think too many evil thoughts about the obnoxiousness of partner tunes and the power of one composer to unleash such an idiom on the whole of the church musical scene. Hmmm, ok, well, maybe I did dwell on that a little too much).

More talking, personal and sweet and sometimes funny–funnier and more poignant because we were all together in the dark, talking about the light the gospel brings. More music–a luscious violin arrangement of “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief,” that never lapsed into lugubriousness because it was so expertly played, an astonishing arrangement (and I really mean “astonishing”–my mouth nearly dropped open a couple of times at unexpected and neat effects) for two flutes of “Oh, That I Were An Angel,” surely as Mormon a piece as there ever was.

Then congregational singing again, “Israel, Israel God is Calling,” and a beautiful talk–sincere and elegant at once–with words from the hymn woven into the text as refrain.

Then more ward choirs, now from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking units of the stake. One could quibble about their technical expertise: there were some notable lapses in intonation, some rhythmic troubles (probably from not being able to see the conductor in the dark!). But they were earnest and well-rehearsed and enthusiastic. In every way that matters, it was absolutely glorious. Just when I thought there could not be a more joyful noise in all the world, there was a new sound that I couldn’t place for a minute. And then I realized the men in the choir were WHISTLING!! The women were singing words and harmony while the men whistled the tune. I thought I would burst from the sheer delight of it. It was all I could do to stay sitting down.

I am pretty sure there’s no theoretical framework robust enough to account for Bach and Larry Beebe and whistling by flashlight. If there is, I’m not going to be the one to articulate it. And I don’t care. I just want to be there shouting hallelujah and amen.

During the weeklong celebration of Sukkot, Jewish families erect a simple shelter, called a sukkah, in their yards and eat their meals and sleep there. This is done in commemoration of the time when the Jews were wandering in the wilderness and lived in crude, flimsy tents, or “booths.” (Although Sukkot is often rendered in English as “The Feast of Tabernacles,” this is misleading, because the shelters really represent the “booths” in which the Israelites lived, not the tabernacle in which they worshipped.) While it is a simple observance, not as elaborately detailed as, for instance, a Seder, I think it may contain all of the essential elements of true religion.

The shelters are to remain open on one side–this is to commemorate Abraham’s hospitality to strangers who turned out to be angels. And the top is supposed to be open to the stars, so that when one lies down to sleep in the sukkah, the heavens are a visible reminder of God’s omnipresence and permanence.

On Tuesday, the morning after Sukkot began, I found myself sobbing in the kitchen, listening to a spokesman for Oxfam International describe the plight of those made homeless by last week’s earthquake in a mountainous region where it will soon be winter. “More tents are needed than exist in the world,” he said. “There simply aren’t enough winter tents anywhere to house these people.” The irony is bitter–some of God’s children reminding themselves of their dependence on God through a symbolic and entirely comfortable reenactment, others experiencing that dependence in such a literal and painful way.

The lesson of Sukkot, though, is that we have no way of knowing from day to day whether we will find ourselves with nothing but God to rely on. We are “the children of [our] Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” All of our defenses–houses, money, insurance, vitamins–all of them are ultimately useless. The earth shakes, the floods roar, and we are all tiny specks on a little planet that we don’t understand nearly as well as we like to think we do.

This is the sweet paradox of the sukkah: it is precisely when we acknowledge the flimsiness and impermanence of the things we build with puny human hands that we are able to most clearly see the stars and commune with the One who fixed them in their courses. And it is when we take down the walls and open our hearts to each other and to strangers that we find ourselves in the presence of angels.