{"id":34445,"date":"2015-12-02T14:57:55","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T19:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=34445"},"modified":"2015-12-02T14:57:55","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T19:57:55","slug":"reading-nephi-81-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/12\/reading-nephi-81-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Nephi – 8:1-8"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"068-068-the-liahona-full\"<\/a>Verse 1: it seems clear that they lived in the Valley for quite some time.<\/p>\n

Lehi\u2019s dream. This labyrinth makes the whole book worthwhile.<\/p>\n

I too have had dreams that make me deeply question the future and my relationships, that do not simply manifest but engender worry and joy. But here we see a dream that not only spawns reflection in the dreamer, but gives future credence to Nephi\u2019s narrative and theocratic reign, shapes a people, is buried for fourteen hundred years, comes to light, and once again shapes another people. This dream is as iconic as anything in Mormonism.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think we pay nearly enough attention to the very first part. Lehi walks in darkness. For hours. Taking the account straightforwardly, this walk in darkness is the overwhelming bulk of the whole dream. Doing as Lehi and Nephi do and extrapolating this vision as a metaphor of our mortal lives, those lives are almost entirely\u2014or perhaps I should say they are built on the foundation of\u2014walking through darkness.<\/p>\n

Lehi had a guide, but didn\u2019t seem to know if the guide was trustworthy (at least, he says nothing of the guide beyond noting a white robe and that he was beckoned to follow). I also have guides I frequently do not trust, or at least am unsure of; they give me no comfort, just as this guide gave Lehi no comfort. Retrospectively, some of them have been angels. For example, this is the role Stanley Kimball played for me (though at the time I was unsure).<\/p>\n

I suspect Lehi was conscious of the significance of the dream while he was having it. Neither he nor Nephi expound (in our record) on the darkness. This darkness, though\u2014I can\u2019t get past it\u2014that was the\u00a0majority<\/em>\u00a0of the dream. And what is the first thing that he says he sees after the darkness, after praying for deliverance? A spacious field. How true to life this is. We walk and walk in darkness, until we cry out for deliverance from it, for change, for something. And our pleas are answered with a vision of emptiness. A field. The manifest potential<\/em> for more (a field can<\/em> be filled), without there being anything there.<\/p>\n

These thoughts\u2014are they legitimate? Already I begin to detract from Lehi\u2019s experience, inserting myself. This is unavoidable in scripture, at least to some degree. But it\u2019s conspicuous here, because of the distinct break between our experience of this scene while awake, when Lehi\u2019s experience was in dreaming. There\u2019s a huge difference. In fact, it\u2019s even further removed, because Lehi had the dream, told his family the dream (which of course changes the dream and removes one from the experience of the dream), and then wrote the dream. Nephi later copies it. Now I\u2019m reading it. Wide awake. What I wouldn\u2019t give to dream<\/em> Lehi\u2019s dream rather than merely read it. But there\u2019s no other way for us to get at it\u2014barring a miracle. This I think, together with Lehi\u2019s consciously articulating the dream, justifies our pulling the dream apart and putting it back together in very un-dreamlike ways. As I\u2019ve already started to do.<\/p>\n

Again, I still can\u2019t get past the opening. Darkness. For hours. It\u2019s terrifying. Mortality. Struggle. Self-conscious ignorance. Unknown guides who only lead you through more of the same. Darkness. Lehi\u2019s dream begins\u2014and in some ways ends\u2014as a nightmare.<\/p>\n

Ruminating, perhaps it\u2019s not mere emptiness that Lehi gets after praying for deliverance. The tree also comes immediately into view. And here we have a great contrast. Enlightenment here (as in Eden as Lehi later so eloquently articulates (II Nephi 2)) is an awareness of contrast, one that activates our agency. Beyond the terrifying darkness in which we\u2019re always initially immersed, there\u2019s emptiness, nothingness and the contrasting tree. There\u2019s continued wandering contrasted with an anchored, shareable joy. There\u2019s nihilism, contrasted with a divine loving relationship. This relationship springs up out of the emptiness. There\u2019s no foundation beyond the vast emptiness of the cosmos (what Nephi later calls the world). But this emptiness is enough to background a foreground relationship that allows for joy. When we seek it, we\u2019re delivered from darkness\u2014not to enlightenment or salvation, but to choice. This is what the reality of eternity provides us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Verse 1: it seems clear that they lived in the Valley for quite some time. Lehi\u2019s dream. This labyrinth makes the whole book worthwhile. I too have had dreams that make me deeply question the future and my relationships, that do not simply manifest but engender worry and joy. But here we see a dream that not only spawns reflection in the dreamer, but gives future credence to Nephi\u2019s narrative and theocratic reign, shapes a people, is buried for fourteen hundred years, comes to light, and once again shapes another people. This dream is as iconic as anything in Mormonism. I don\u2019t think we pay nearly enough attention to the very first part. Lehi walks in darkness. For hours. Taking the account straightforwardly, this walk in darkness is the overwhelming bulk of the whole dream. Doing as Lehi and Nephi do and extrapolating this vision as a metaphor of our mortal lives, those lives are almost entirely\u2014or perhaps I should say they are built on the foundation of\u2014walking through darkness. Lehi had a guide, but didn\u2019t seem to know if the guide was trustworthy (at least, he says nothing of the guide beyond noting a white robe and that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"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-34445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34445","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\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34446,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34445\/revisions\/34446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}