There are six of them, all adults now, several with children of their own. They clog the street with their SUVs and economy cars, and no doubt clog their mother’s kitchen with welcome laughter and unwelcome fingers picking at the platters of food still under construction. I imagine the scene, and I smile. If I’m lucky, it will be my future.

Our nearest family members live 800 miles away. In some of the years past, my husband’s parents have made the drive from Portland to share the holiday with us; a few times we’ve driven to them. But this year, like last, we’re home for Thanksgiving–the nine of us cozying up on a drizzly day with the smell of roasting turkey driving us mad. The air is rich with content. I am grateful, more than those eight letters can really signify, for the family within these walls. But then I think about my brother, and I am sad.

The call from Church headquarters came a month or so ago. “We have the records of (name),” the quavery-voiced woman said. I could picture her, white-haired and wrinkled, sitting in front of a computer monitor with my brother’s information glowing onscreen. “We would like to send them to his current ward. Do you have a street address or phone number for his place of residence?”

My mouth ran dry. “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Is there someone we can contact who might have that information?”

“Not that I know of.” I swallowed hard. “None of us has heard from him for almost two years.”

She paused. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Yes. I was sorry, too, to hear the words spoken aloud. It had been months since I’d had cause to speak of my brother, and my sense of loss amplified anew. After I hung up the phone, I wept and wept.

My brother, my only blood sibling, two-and-a-half years older than I. Throughout our childhood he was my mind-twin, or perhaps, more accurately, my heart-twin, understanding things nobody else understood. He alone could comprehend the unfillable void in my chest that had yawned wide ever since our parents’ divorce. He alone shared my particular parcel of pain in the troubled blended family created by our mother’s remarriage. We didn’t speak our understanding aloud very often. We didn’t need to.

But while my life took an upswing after leaving home, his continued along the slow downward spiral we’d both been following throughout adolescence. His drug use became drug addiction. He was homeless for years, sleeping on friends’ couches and enjoying, at least some of the time, the freedom of uprootedness. He visited me once, ten years ago, when I had three small children in a tiny house. He and his friend, the delightfully odd bearded man named Jelly, arrived in a battered VW van (natch) and stayed for the afternoon, eating grilled cheese sandwiches and filling our washing machine drain with dirt from their incredibly filthy clothing. That was the last time I saw him.

Then came the car accident. Two people died; a strict new DUI law held him accountable. He received two prison sentences, each two to twenty years. After serving his minimum four years, he was released on a writ of habeus corpus due to controversies surrounding the new law and his attorney, who was disbarred soon after his trial. But after eighteen months, the state’s appeal was granted, and he was summoned back to prison to finish his 36 remaining years. Instead of complying, he ran.

I heard the news two Decembers ago. The children and I were decorating gingerbread men for Christmas when my mother called to tell me my brother had disappeared. I stood in the middle of my kitchen, hands dry and itchy with flour, apron smeared with butter, and felt utter rage. How could he do this? I thought. How could he do this to our mother? How could he do this to me? It was a betrayal of everything he’d been given over the course of his thirty-seven years–love, nurturing, compassion, forgiveness, encouragement. It was a betrayal of Home.

My rage is gone now, for the most part. It still flares now and again when I see and hear the effects of his choice on my mother, who grieves a certain yet ambiguous loss. “He could be dead,” she says. “And whenever he does die, I might not ever know.” But I believe that no matter how thickly brewed the pain can taste for all of us who love my brother, his is greater still. Even as my mother and I spoke that December evening, with my children chattering in the background and gobs of frosting hardening on the countertops, I was standing in the midst of everything warm and good, and he was moving farther and farther away from the chance of ever regaining it.

I don’t think of my brother often. I’ve had to close the door on his memory in order to minimize the impact of his choice on myself and my family. But on days like today, the door swings open. I remember holidays past, when he and I would be shuffled from one family gathering to another, trying to bridge the gap of a severed marriage. I remember our psychic closeness, which I’ve never experienced with any other person, not even my closest girlfriends, not even my husband. I wonder where he is right now, and who he’s with, and what he’s doing. And as I look around at my children, praying that one day they will eagerly return, like the Bishop’s children, to the heart of their upbringing, I pray that my brother can still hold and touch and feel a small piece of his own.

US Government JPATS (Justice Prisoner and Alien Transporation System) plane, used for mass deportation. Image by Cubbie_n_Vegas via Flickr

A High Priest I know is in crisis. He is an immigrant who, like many other Church members, came to the US without a visa, according to what I understand of the situation. After arriving here he joined the Church, and eventually fell in love and married a U.S. Citizen, a wonderful, faithful Church member. This situation would normally put him on track for a green card and U.S. citizenship.

But this brother is facing deportation, and his ward and stake are praying for a miracle that will keep him here in the United States.

The indiscretion that is giving this High Priest trouble is one that is relatively minor and has already been resolved. Years before joining the Church this brother was convicted of drug possession. He served his time for this crime and repented of it before joining the Church. But under immigration laws, the fact that he has paid for his crime isn’t enough; a conviction of any kind at all puts an immigrant at risk for deportation.

From the perspective of the Church, he has repented, and paid his debt to society as required. So in his ward and stake, he is treated as a member in good standing.

This situation makes me wonder about how our country handles immigration issues. Are our laws truly fair and just? I’m not talking about obedience to current laws here. Its not an issue of “honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.” I have no dispute with the idea that laws should be followed. The question is whether or not the current laws should be changed. I just don’t see how the current laws are fair or just! I don’t see how they are being just to my friend. He paid for his crime.

This issue has been discussed before, both here on Times & Seasons, and elsewhere in the Blogosphere. But I can’t find anywhere that my direct questions have been examined without conflating them with the “law and order” issue. For this post, let’s NOT discuss whether or not the current immigrants should be deported because they have done something illegal. Instead, let’s talk about whether or not the immigration laws are what we want them to be.

I know many Mormons want tougher immigration laws. What I don’t understand is the logic for wanting tougher laws, given the principles the gospel teaches. When I look at the gospel, I don’t see any way to justify restricting immigration laws much at all.

Perhaps its just me and my way of thinking. Perhaps I just didn’t know the gospel well enough. If so, please someone set me straight. Show me some gospel logic that justifies restricting immigration.

Let my try to put it a few different ways:

• Why can we restrict others from the benefits we enjoy as U.S. Citizens simply because of the accident of where they were born?
• Under what gospel principle do we get to draw borders and play “keep away” with the resources and blessings that the Lord has seen fit to give?
• How is treating people differently based on where they were born any more moral than treating them differently based on the color of their skin? Aren’t both beyond their control?

Try as I have, I can’t come up with any gospel logic to justify immigration laws beyond keeping out terrorists or violent criminals (most major government functions do have some minimal logic — if nothing else because those affected by the law have a voice in the creation of the law. Immigrants do not have a voice in immigration laws.)

I’m not excluding the possibility that there is some good logic or gospel principle on which I can base an understading of the justice or morality of immigration laws. So, I’m very open to what anyone might say to help me understand the logic.

But short of an understanding, I have to suspect that these laws are, in fact, immoral. Shouldn’t I, and anyone that believes in the gospel, be seeking looser, more rational immigration laws, ones that allow outsiders to participate in the blessing of living in a first-world economy under a free democratic government? [I shouldn't be too U.S.-centric here, these same issues are faced in many "first-world" countries in the West.]

Regardless of the answers to my questions here, I will continue to pray for this High Priest and his wife. As I understand it, his only hope lies in convincing a judge to vacate the conviction. Friends and fellow Church members have provided more than 100 letters in his support — letters which have been delivered to the judge in his case in the hope that this will sway the judge towards vacating the decision.

I pray that this will work.

Note: Please, stick to the subject as I’ve outlined. I’m reserving the right to delete comments that are off topic — especially those that harp on how illegal immigrants are disobeying the law.

Update (18 Nov at 12:22 am US Eastern time): So far I’ve had to remove 14 comments that were off topic or that replied to other off-topic comments. I regret that I had to take this action, and that it may have disturbed the flow of the comments (and the references, which are no longer correct).

I thought I made the subject clear. The discussion is what immigration laws should be and whether or not they are moral, NOT whether illegal immigrants are violating the law (they are by definition doing so, saying it over and over again helps no one, IMO). If you want to discuss the violations of the law, there are several older posts here and elsewhere on the bloggernacle where that is on topic, either go to one of those posts, or start your own on your own blog!

What’s up with that?

Seriously. Can someone explain to me how things like this happen?

Perhaps I am naïve, (and, I admit I know nothing about how the University of Phoenix operates) but I tend to believe that there must be something to charges like this, especially when the University is willing to pay so much per employee to settle the problem. At least, the evidence the EEOC had must have been good enough to keep the case from being thrown out of court easily. (FWIW, I’d guess $1.9 million could pay for 3 full-time lawyers for an entire year at $300/hour. If the case was easy to win, surely they wouldn’t have settle for so much money).

The news reports says that this isn’t about who was hired or fired. Instead, it is apparently about giving advantages in distributing work. The suit “alleged that non-Mormon counselors were given fewer new student recruiting leads and more reprimands.”

So, assuming the EEOC is right, how could members of the Church (as I understand it, the University of Phoenix is owned and run by members of the Church) pull something like this?

Could this really be some kind of innocent, unintended favoritism?

I know we are all human. Mormons have committed some pretty horrible crimes over the years. I saw these things way too often when I was running Mormon News. Some things simply don’t surprise me at all — such murder under impassioned circumstances. I can understand someone getting angry when they shouldn’t, and overreacting. I won’t condone or excuse it, but I can see how it happens.

But who play’s favoritism over weeks or years due to an impassioned feeling?

I can also see how greed could lead to a series of planned thefts over weeks or years. But who plans favoritism when there isn’t a direct benefit?

The only though process that might make the motivation clear to me is the idea that we should help each other in the Church. If that is what the motivation is, then I think that the idea got corrupted somehow in this case.

Please help me understand.

I ran into similar problems when I went to college at BYU. Growing up outside Utah defined my values. Though a few teenage members chose slightly different values, I unconsciously equated my brand of morality with general Mormonism. BYU shocked me out of that belief. I found fellow students who were drastically “more faithful” and some who were drastically “less faithful”—and all would have defined themselves as active Mormons (though those guys who were drinking beer out of Sprite cans while talking about their missions had to know they were crossing some lines).

If a guy in high school had crossed one of my “morality lines,” I would have told him “no” and told myself I was following what the prophet taught. But when you come to BYU and your LDS date crosses one of your morality lines, you aren’t so sure. Especially if that date is an active member of the church, maybe an Elder’s Quorum president, and someone whose testimony you admire. Or what if the Relief Society President wears a dress you would have put back on the rack because it was immodest? Then you can’t help but wonder if you are the weird one, if you have defined lines that were not really Mormon lines at all, if what you thought was honest or chaste or true is just uptight and rigid.

Thus, I find that I struggle to defend my values to other Mormons. I do not necessarily think this is a bad thing. My high school morality was somewhat thoughtless and assumed. Being challenged helped me solidify what I, personally, believe to be true and where, exactly, I stand on certain issues and doctrines. I just find it interesting and ironic: when someone decidedly a-religious or other-religious questions my values, I leap to defend myself and do it in the name of Mormonism, but when someone of my own faith questions me, I take a big step back and question myself.

So where do you draw your “faithful” lines? And how do you handle situations when your faithful brushes up against someone else’s faithful? Because I was really stumped with the woman in my ward. I stammered around about how my daughter had been sick (true) and was really tired (true) so she couldn’t (true), but that wasn’t the whole, real or complete answer, was it?

Perhaps what we need is a good, Mormon-specific monster!

Halloween costumes seem to fall into a few different types, from what I can tell. There are monsters, angels and other “good” characters, superheroes and other comic-book characters, actual people (politicians and celebrities mostly) and, finally, representational characters (e.g., my son was a chess board one Halloween).

But I’ve never seen a Mormon-related character. Now, I don’t live in Utah, so perhaps I’ve just not been in the right place. Do they sell costumes of the Apostles there? Can my 5-year-old buy a costume of President Monson? (probably not, how would you do it without a mask?)

I also wonder, would a Mormon character have to be only good? Sure we could somehow do the three Nephites or Nephi or Captain Moroni or something, but who are the bad guys? The devil, I suppose (but he’d have to be radically different — no horns, and represented as non-corporeal somehow) or perhaps King Noah.

In this dispensation, we have a few boogeymen that might fith the bill — certainly the mobs from the middle 1800s, and the Federal Marshalls from the days of polygamy. Then by the 20th century, the polygamists actually became the boogeymen somehow. I don’t know who you would include today — Evangelicals? Anti-mormons? Those guys that put floride in the water? (GRIN)

I’m not sure who Mormons are afraid of nowadays (please don’t give me the doctrinal saw that we don’t need to fear anyone — people are afraid anyway — or suggest that our biggest fear is sin — what kind of Halloween costume would that make?), so perhaps it would be better if we came up with our own Mormon superheroes. But then again, what superpower would a Mormon superhero have? Super Faith?

I’m sure we Mormons could put a lot of fun creativity into this. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll see kids dressed up as Gladys Knight and Donny Osmond ringing our doorbells on Friday.

If that happens, I’ll have to pull by tongue out of my cheek in order to give a little chuckle and fill their bags with candy.

Baseball often helps me remember days of my youth in suburban Washington, D.C., when my father, then a long-time Yankees fan, took my brother and I to RFK Stadium to see the Washington Senators play. We knew that the Senators were awful, and leading up to the game we swore we would be rooting for the other team.

[I don't think we realized then that the Senator's best player was Mormon. Later, he was also the only acknowledged Mormon baseball player (there have been more than 70, I estimate) to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Trivia question: Who is he?]

Despite our intentions to root for the other team, we could never actually do it. Somehow, between the time we arrived at the stadium and the first few innings of play, we abandoned our intentions and were rooting for the home team, at one with the thousands of others in the stadium. We joined the ritual, participated in their worship, and became one with the congregation.

Every game I go to, I experience this same process. I’m drawn into the game. And not just because of what happens on the field. The rituals of the Stadium, the music played and the songs we sing, the chants and cheers we give and the reactions of 50,000 people to what happens on the field–all make us, in a very real sense, one with the other fans–one in purpose and one in hope, but a hope that is often dashed in failure. But even then, we remain one, and as one our hope is soon reborn.

Its an interesting process. I know I’m being drawn into this charade. After all, what exactly am I being loyal to? The players and managers change often enough–no one on the field is the same as when I first went to Yankee Stadium–that I’m not really loyal to them. If anything, its just the event, the feeling I get, the being part of 50,000, the unity.

Have I been manipulated? I don’t think so. I know what’s happening to me. And I actually want it to happen. I want to be part of this event, this something that is so much larger than me.

I don’t want to give the impression that I worship baseball, or the Yankees, or Yankee Stadium, or the other fans. Far from it. I don’t have season tickets nor do I purchase a ticket plan. Only rarely do I purchase tickets more than a few days ahead of a game. I don’t even watch on TV religiously or listen to every game on the radio. I’m more likely to just check the scores or skim through the game on fast forward.

Nor do I think this feeling is the same as what I get at the Temple or in Church. But there is a similarity: I feel drawn in. I want to be a part of the service, to participate, to be part of something that is so much larger than me. All this, and I don’t feel manipulated.

I don’t know at what point the feeling of unity becomes something manipulative. The history of religion clearly shows that it can. And how much I enjoy that feeling of being at one with 50,000 others makes it clear exactly how.

Early on, I served a large bowl (there were 8 of us) of mashed potatoes after thinking that if a little salt was good, . . .

I grew up in suburban Washington, D. C., where my brother and I were the only LDS Church members in our high school. There were other members who lived within walking distance, and most of the high schools in the area had a handful of members in each. The Church was organized into stakes, just three in Maryland and another couple in Northern Virginia. The Temple was built while we lived there, and became a fixture in the city, a landmark framed, when you approached it the right way, by the overpass that had spraypainted on it, “Help, Dorothy!”

After serving a mission and attending BYU, I landed here in New York City, which, in terms of the concentration of members, feels similar. Our stake covers just the island of Manhattan. My daughter starts high school today and will be one of perhaps a handful of members in the school. My son graduated from a different high school a couple of years ago — he was one of I think three LDS Church members in high school. The city is covered by three stakes and a couple districts, with perhaps another 4 stakes covering most of the suburbs.

To me this all feels about right. Here the Church is the salt of the earth. Members are scattered through a larger population, trying to not only live their lives, but also make a difference in their communities. There’s room for the Church to grow, and lots of room for Church members to both improve the community and be improved by the community.

Of course, how much salt to have is a matter of taste and health. Some like more, others like less. Some like more, but their health would be better off with less. For me, New York City has about the right amount of salt.

But regardless of taste, isn’t there a point where there is simply too much salt?

My responses in the past have, to be honest, not seemed particularly beneficial to me or to anyone else, as far as I can see. No one using the information has ever contacted me. I’ve also never sought information from the Alumni Association about anyone else (don’t even know if I can get it). I don’t even know if the directory is something that I have to pay for or not. I don’t even know if the Church uses the information at all.

The only thing I’m certain that has happened when I give this information, is that the Alumni Association has asked me to donate to BYU. [FWIW, I decided before leaving BYU that I would not make any donations to BYU's general fund. In my final years there BYU made significant changes to student-run programs I cared about and felt were of high value. These were killed without student input and, IMO, in an effort to increase University control, part of a pattern I've yet to see change and that still bothers me about BYU. So, they don't get my money.]

In recent years I’ve noticed that the Alumni Association is just one of several BYU organizations that collect information from alumni and friends, if not also donations. In addition to the Alumnis Association, I’m also familiar with the BYU Management Society, the J. Reuben Clark Law Society and the BYU International Society, all of which purport to have local chapters around the world. I’m sure that the alumni from other LDS-owned and LDS-oriented student bodies also have chapters for multiple organizations.

Here in New York City, over a decade or more, I tried to help the BYU Management Society get off the ground. Recently, its seen some success, as the New York LDS Professional Association — which includes both the BYU Management Society and the J. Reuben Clark Law Society chapters here. I hoped (and in some ways I still hope) that this organization would meet a need I perceived — that of helping LDS Church members meet and communicate across stake boundaries — something that doesn’t happen much out here. Without such communication, members have struggled creating any kind of regional community of Mormons. Arts and cultural activities in particular suffer, as does our local New York City LDS History Committee.

Despite my own and others attempts to make these associations work locally, I sense a general apathy among LDS Church members about these programs. While being a BYU alumni isn’t always required (as I understand it, both the BYU Management Society and the BYU International Society don’t require an affiliation with BYU — anyone can join), members don’t seem very interested in participating to any significant degree.

If I take a step back away from the problem, and try to look at it objectively, I’m not even sure what benefit these organizations are supposed to provide to members. Are they any different than other fraternal and service clubs like the Elks, Lions or Knights of Columbus?

In a way, I think the Church itself provides most of the functions that fraternal and social clubs would otherwise provide for members. While Church is certainly more than just a social club, we certainly have a lot of social activities and there are many social aspects to Church. I think most members find the Church their principal charitable outlet as well.

I’m not saying that Church members don’t need additional fraternal, social and charitable outlets. Nor am I suggesting necessarily that Church members shouldn’t join these organizations. I’m just wondering what is the value of these BYU-related associations and does it make sense to have so many of them?

Where’s the value in these associations?

Little did I know.

Nobody told me about that wrenching scene at the MTC when they cheerfully announce “Parents and families go this way; missionaries go that way.” Like we were going to two different Disneyland rides instead of two different lives.

Or the millennial wait for the first letter from the field assuring me my child is not, in fact, dying of starvation, stuck with Cruella de Vil for a companion, or the victim of a terrorist plot.

Or the nightmares – how can they just skip over the nightmares? – about her getting Dengue Fever or disappearing like they do in the opening scenes of Without a Trace.

Okay, so I’m a little paranoid. But really. Whose idea was this anyway?

I guess I should confess that all three of my children returned safely from their missions. Nor did it prove necessary to hospitalize me for reverse-homesickness. I know it doesn’t always go that way, but it did for me, and more often than not it does for others. The mortality rate is lower for missionaries than for comparable groups of young adults not on missions, and that holds even when those comparable groups are not living on a remote island with no medical attention or sweating in the jungles of Ghana – or Boise.

So, you ask, how did I survive this unnatural assault on my every maternal instinct?
I survived the way my mother survived when I left on a mission, and her mother, and her mother before her. I worried and prayed. I wrote letters and sent packages. I talked to others who had also said goodbye for a long time to the people they loved most in all the world. Then I simply lived long enough to see them come home, and when they did I was grateful beyond words.

A few things I’ve learned from our experience and that of others:

1. It’s just as hard with the third one as it was with the first. Sorry.

2. Don’t be surprised if there is a blow-up in the weeks before they go. It is very common for families to figure out some way to have a big fight just before a beloved child leaves for college or a mission – perhaps a way to loosen the ties a bit and avoid more tender feelings. If it happens, don’t panic. Do apologize and make things right.

3. Trust them. We weren’t perfectly prepared to launch into adulthood, and we survived. Chances are good they will also. If they can figure out the new cell phone faster than we can, maybe they can figure out the rest of the world without us too.

4. Trust yourself. The home teacher speaking at a missionary farewell in my ward said, “I know the Pliler’s have honorably fulfilled their stewardship for their son.” I’m quite sure that’s true. But Pliler’s are probably the last to know it.

5. And finally, trust the Lord. Those rude non-members, blundering mission presidents, lackluster companions, and incompetent church leaders are also His children, as precious to him as this precious child of ours. He knows how to save us all, whether or not He protects us. This is the message we send to the world on the smiles and hopes of our sons and daughters.

6. Some of them will come home early, come home broken, or come home on the way out the doors of the church. In many cases these challenges would have caught up with them anyway. In other cases there is still something to be learned or gained from the experience, even if it takes a long time. And in those cases where the loss seems irreparably soul-shattering, even life-ending, surely there is some special medal of valor in the eternities for those who lost their lives, physically or otherwise, in the service of the Lord. And for those who loved them and let them go.

It felt sort of weird.

Which made me realize that I don’t laugh nearly enough.

I gave a talk once for a Relief Society conference and I guess I was in a pretty because one woman came up to me afterwards and said, “You are really funny.” I reported this to my daughter when I got home. She looked at me blankly, then said, “Don’t these people get out much?” I am not known as the family comedian.

But I also know humor and happiness can be cultivated. Happiness – like love – is more than a warm and fleeting feeling driven by someone else’s charm. Love and happiness are things we can work at, practice, plan for. Things we choose, not things that choose us.

When my son was a teenager he was a little on the sober side. Like Yao Ming is a little on the tall side. But then he started to change. He started announcing “It’s a beautiful day” in multiple languages. His voice took on an enthusiastic lilt. He acquired a killer sense of humor. Years later I learned why.

When my husband was a bishop, his counselor Bob was an unusually positive and cheerful man. Without warning, Bob was killed, a devastating loss for our entire ward. At the funeral everyone talked about what a happy person Bob was. My son was only fifteen, but he was listening. And he made a decision. A decision to be like Bob. A decision to be happy.

An entire new field, positive psychology, has developed on the premise that the pursuit of happiness deserves at least as much scientific attention as learning how not to be miserable. For decades psychology assumed its only role was to fix what was broken, to return people from acute misery to the ranks of the “worried well.” People could pursue happiness on their own time. Now we are learning that people are more apt to stop drinking, cope with bipolar illness, get out of depression, or improve their relationships if they directly pursue happiness in its own right, along with working to reduce their symptoms.

This field of positive psychology was spearheaded by an agnostic who nevertheless turned to the world’s great religions to tap humanity’s collective wisdom about what it takes to live a meaningful, purposeful, happy life. These are some of the things positive psychology has discovered make a scientifically verifiable difference in people’s happiness: expressing sincere gratitude, regular exercise, good social networks, counting one’s blessings, helping people, pursuing goals, acting cheerful.

“In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured,” said President Hinckley.

I can work at this. And meanwhile, let me know when Mrs. Jones plays Salt Lake.