{"id":34087,"date":"2015-10-05T07:29:24","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T12:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=34087"},"modified":"2015-10-05T07:29:24","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T12:29:24","slug":"reading-the-book-of-mormon-for-the-first-time-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/10\/reading-the-book-of-mormon-for-the-first-time-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading the Book of Mormon for the First Time Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The giant, angry pterodactyl makes sense at the end. Wait for it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I read the Book of Mormon all the way through several times as a teenager. Between multiple readings and a knack for remembering anything that comes in the form of a story, by the time I was 19 I knew the Book of Mormon as well as any other 19 year old I met.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m 34, and I routinely meet people whose familiarity with the text far, far outstrips my own. Sure, some of that comes from the fact that I know more Mormon studies folks now than I did as a teenager, but I\u2019m not talking about the pro\u2019s and the semi-pro\u2019s out there who are doing great devotional and scholarly work. I mean just in terms of your average member: my command of the text is just nothing to get excited\u00a0about.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t surprising, because in the past 13 years since I came home from my mission, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve completed a single cover-to-cover reading of the Book of Mormon. Other folks kept going. I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

When I was in the MTC, I started reading the Book of Mormon with a notebook open and a pen in one hand. I jotted down notes of anything that I found interesting and also of questions that occurred to me as I read. I loved doing this, and I kept it up throughout most of my mission. I still have stacks of these notebooks in my garage, and I went through the entire book several times.<\/p>\n

And then one day, I couldn\u2019t do it anymore. It\u2019s one of my most vivid memories from my mission. I was looking through old photos a couple of months ago in preparation for my first trip back to the country where I served and I saw a picture of the room where I lived at the time.\u00a0I was there for several months, but\u00a0the very first thing that occurred to me when I saw the photo was the precise moment when I finished reading the Book of Mormon, flipped back to 1 Nephi 1:1, began reading, \u201cI Nephi,\u2026\u201d and suddenly realized I couldn\u2019t do it. I couldn\u2019t read it again.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always had a low tolerance for repetition. It\u2019s something my wife and I squabble over\u00a0on almost every single road trip. She wants to listen to Cake. I\u2019ve got nothing against Cake. I like Cake. Who doesn\u2019t like Cake? And it\u2019s great road-trip music<\/a>, but every trip<\/em>? No, thanks. I\u2019d prefer to listen to some obscure what\u2019s-it that I picked up from NPR bumper music or the recent Samsung commercial. (Seriously, have you heard Leshurr\u2019s Queen\u2019s Speech (Ep 4)<\/a>? Cannot stop listening. But I will, soon enough.) \u00a0This is such a strong aspect of my personality that I often intentionally stop<\/em> listening to music that I really love before it hits that point. I have to protect it from triggering my \u201cnot again\u201d reflex.<\/p>\n

\"792<\/a>Meals were\u00a0always a problem on my mission as well. There were not a lot of members, so missionaries were on their own for food most of the time, and I had neither the time, inclination, nor the talent for decent cooking. Eventually I found a great solution: spaghetti, sour cream, and vegeta. It was delicious, and I ate it every night for months. Until one evening I took my first bite and realized I couldn\u2019t do it. I could not eat it that meal again. There was just no way. I threw it out, brushed my teeth, and went to bed hungry that night. (I didn\u2019t have anything else to eat.) I brought some vegeta back with me from my most recent trip. I have a vague notion that some time soon I\u2019ll cook up some spaghetti, mix in some sour cream, and try it one more time. It\u2019s been almost 15 years. Nearly half my life. Surely I can try it again, right? So far, I haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t read the scriptures. For starters, I\u2019ve read an awful lot more of the Old and New Testaments than I ever did before my mission. I\u2019m particularly enjoying the NSRV version of Paul\u2019s letters (following Ben’s recommendation<\/a>). I\u2019ve also read from the Book of Mormon quite a lot, but generally I read the selected chapters to prepare a lesson. I\u2019ve also tried to read it again start-to-finish. I don\u2019t know how many times I\u2019ve started with 1 Nephi 1:1 since I got back from my mission, but somehow I never make it out of 2 Nephi. (Insert Isaiah joke here, I guess, but really that\u2019s not the issue.) It\u2019s not that starting somewhere else\u2014say in the middle of Mosiah or Alma\u2014hasn\u2019t occurred to me. It\u2019s just that it feels like cheating.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also not that I have lost my love of the Book of Mormon. I believe in it as much as ever, and I still love it. I think of favorite\u00a0stories, favorite passages, and favorite people from it\u00a0on a regular basis. In a lot of ways, the Book of Mormon defined my adolescence, and I still know it well enough that I can think of a verse or a story or a sermon and then find it on LDS.org when I need it for a talk, or a lesson, or a blog post and\u2014while I\u2019m at it\u2014I almost always read a chapter or two around the quote that I looked up.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t even tell you exactly what it is that makes it so hard for me to read, other than that I think it has to do with the exact words. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t like them. It\u2019s just that they are too precisely embedded in my brain. \u201cI, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents.\u201d It\u2019s like those specific words wore a sharply defined\u00a0groove in my brain with every reading. Eventually the groove got so deep it exposed raw nerves. (Since there are no pain-receptive nerves in the brain itself, this is a terrible analogy, but work with me.)<\/p>\n

My wife and I went back to Hungary in August. It was my first time back since my mission. I was very nervous for a lot\u00a0reasons, but the main one was that I was very self-conscious about the extent to which my language skills had atrophied over the years. I worked feverishly in the months leading up to the trip: re-reading grammar books, practicing conjugations, even finding folks to practice with via Skype and\u2014in one lucky coincidence\u2014at my kids\u2019 swim practice. I also started reading Harry Potter<\/em> in Hungarian, because naturally that\u2019s what one does.<\/p>\n

\"792<\/a><\/p>\n

While we were visiting the beautiful city of Eger during our trip, we ran into some missionaries. I asked them for a copy of the Book of Mormon in Hungarian because the one I had at home was all marked up and falling apart from when I used it to study on my mission. As it turns out, not only did they have one for me (of course they had one!), but there had been a new translation since I served. Even the cover was different! (Old version translated \u201cAnother testament of Jesus Christ\u201d into \u201cEgy m\u00e1sik bizonys\u00e1g J\u00e9zus Krisztusr\u00f3l.\u201d Newer translation: \u201cEgy m\u00e1sik tan\u00fabizonys\u00e1g J\u00e9zus Krisztusr\u00f3l.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"791<\/a><\/p>\n

I was very curious about the new translation, so when we got home I started reading it. Without even really thinking about it, I switched from reading Harry Potter for my daily dose of Hungarian to reading the Book of Mormon. Why not kill two birds with one stone?<\/p>\n

I had a notebook and a pen out while I read to take notes of new words or interesting grammar. The passive voice is particularly interesting to me, ever since I learned that Hungarian sometimes translates English passive voice into third-person plural (without a third-person plural pronoun). If I ever knew that on my mission, I had forgotten it, and I don\u2019t think I ever knew it. The quality of materials is vastly<\/em> better now for studying Hungarian, and I\u2019m jealous of what I could have learned if I\u2019d had access to this stuff. The only grammar book anyone knew at the time was this old behemoth from the 1960s called \u201cthe Green Monster\u201d that includes notes about the proper usage of \u201ccomrade.\u201d These days there are all kinds of great textbooks you can pick up, to say nothing of finding folks to Skype with online to keep up your language skills.<\/p>\n

Gradually, however, I started inserting my thoughts and questions in between the vocabulary and grammar notes, just as I had first done back in the MTC. It\u2019s been two or three weeks since I started (this time with \u201c\u00c9n , Nefi, j\u00f3sz\u00fcl?kt?l sz\u00fclettem\u2026\u201d instead lf \u201cI, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents\u2026\u201d), and only tonight did it occur to me: Hey, I\u2019m reading the Book of Mormon again. I\u2019m reading it and I\u2019m enjoying<\/em> it. I look forward to it every day. Sure, some of this is for the language practice. Pronouncing Hungarian is sometimes like learning to do tongue-twisters (although not as bad as Polish from what I can tell), and there\u2019s a kind of pleasure in practicing a difficult skill, even an obscure one. But more and more I just want to read the Book of Mormon again.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s possible that language can get in the way of meaning. That repetition can breed a kind of, if not contempt, aversion. Maybe I\u2019m alone in this, maybe not. I don\u2019t know. But when this aversion comes between us and the words of scriptures, it\u2019s a serious problem.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t even really fully realize how bad the problem was until I started to slowly work my way past it. I thought I\u2019d kill two birds with one stones, but it\u2019s starting to look like one of those birds was a pterodactyl. (I told you I’d get to the pterodactyl.) Hungarian is a bear of a language to learn, but now I can come to the Book of Mormon with new eyes. I can read it for the first time again.\u00a0I\u2019m starting to think that this alone is worth all the time I\u2019ve spent trying to learn the language.<\/p>\n

The most exciting thing, for me, is the moment when I\u2019m reading the Hungarian and I ask, \u201cNow, how exactly<\/em> did that go in English?\u201d Sometimes, again, it\u2019s just for the language. But more and more it\u2019s also for the meaning. I\u2019m starting to want to read the English again. That’s an old feeling that I haven’t had in a long time.<\/p>\n

When that happens, I want to open up the English immediately, but I haven’t yet. For now, I’m sticking with only the Hungarian.\u00a0So far, the desire to read the English again seems to me like small,\u00a0flickering sparks. They have the promise of a healthy flame, but the heat isn’t there yet. Even a breath could extinguish them. I\u2019m reading the Hungarian and stoking the embers, hoping\u2014for the first time in many years\u2014to experience that sense of love and immersion that I used to feel when I read the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n

It feels a little like realizing you have a chance to go home again, when you didn\u2019t even know how homesick you were.<\/p>\n

Spiritual health is like that; we can get so desperately weak without realizing it. Sometimes, at periods of stress, I forget to eat or sleep and wonder why I suddenly feel so weak. But the symptoms are always pretty obvious, and the solution is just as trivial. Eat something. Take a nap. Spiritual symptoms can be so much more subtle. As glad as I am at the prospect of working my way through this, I am sad it has taken so long.<\/p>\n

A long time ago, I felt that I knew more about Christ than about Heavenly Father. This seemed like a problem, since Heavenly Father is the one I\u2019m actually addressing in prayer. I\u2019d like to know who I\u2019m talking to, you know? You can say that to know one is to know the other, but that seems like a terribly technical approach to a personal relationship. And so I spent a lot of time praying to understand Heavenly Father more in a personal and immediate sense. Eventually, I learned that He was patient. It\u2019s the first thing I learned\u00a0directly, for myself\u00a0about God. To me, it is still the most important. It\u2019s the most important because I depend on his patience so very much throughout my life. This experience\u2014going thirteen years without reading the scriptures that so many gave so much for so that I could read them\u2014is one of those times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read the Book of Mormon all the way through several times as a teenager. Between multiple readings and a knack for remembering anything that comes in the form of a story, by the time I was 19 I knew the Book of Mormon as well as any other 19 year old I met. Now I\u2019m 34, and I routinely meet people whose familiarity with the text far, far outstrips my own. Sure, some of that comes from the fact that I know more Mormon studies folks now than I did as a teenager, but I\u2019m not talking about the pro\u2019s and the semi-pro\u2019s out there who are doing great devotional and scholarly work. I mean just in terms of your average member: my command of the text is just nothing to get excited\u00a0about. This isn\u2019t surprising, because in the past 13 years since I came home from my mission, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve completed a single cover-to-cover reading of the Book of Mormon. Other folks kept going. I didn\u2019t. When I was in the MTC, I started reading the Book of Mormon with a notebook open and a pen in one hand. I jotted down notes of anything that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1156,"featured_media":34091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/789-Angry-Pterodactyl-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34092,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34087\/revisions\/34092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}