{"id":37533,"date":"2018-01-08T05:00:25","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T10:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=37533"},"modified":"2018-01-08T06:44:26","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T11:44:26","slug":"eight-years-to-eternity-in-the-wilderness-reading-nephi-171-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2018\/01\/eight-years-to-eternity-in-the-wilderness-reading-nephi-171-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Years to Eternity in the Wilderness – Reading Nephi – 17:1-4"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

This post is part of a series of reflections on I Nephi. If you’re interested, the introduction to the series is here.<\/a>\u00a0To peruse earlier entries, click the authors tab at the top of the page and then click on my name. I welcome your own thoughts on these specific verses (or on my reflections) in the comments below.<\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

I Nephi 17:1-4<\/a><\/p>\n

Sandwiched in between the Daughter\u2019s of Ishmael\u2019s complaints about their afflictions and Laman\u2019s complaints about the women\u2019s afflictions (16:35-36 and 17:20-21), Nephi acknowledges that they were indeed afflicted. It\u2019s an indirect acknowledgment, however, offered with a positive spin: Look! God blessed us to be able to eat raw meat! And not once did our women have to watch their babies starve without enough milk! I laughed when I read it this time. Nephi was clearly impressed, but I wonder what the women thought about becoming like unto men. Perhaps, if we had their account, the women too would\u2019ve appreciated it. Perhaps, lacking a gendered discrimination of duties for wilderness survival, everyone simply took part in the hunting and gathering and camp making. Perhaps it was a time of great empowerment for the women. That\u2019s me, following Nephi’s lead, and putting the most positive spin that I can imagine on it.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the key phrase: \u201cAnd they began to bear their journeyings without murmurings.\u201d It\u2019s true, humans adapt. We move on from the death of a child or the crushing loss of betrayal, we adapt to impoverishment and disease and to the heartache and bitterness and the suffering of exile and emigration in the wake of political violence. We ought to see the miracle of that fact and be grateful. But everything about their journey from Lemuel to Bountiful was clearly a miserable slog (analogous perhaps to our own cradle to grave journey).<\/p>\n

Here, though, is a different paradigm. I think by and large we see things very differently than Nephi\u2014which is quite understandable given our different circumstances. We tend to think that life should<\/em> be good, in the sense that Laman soon goes on to describe (vs. 23): comfortable, stable, such that we can enjoy our possessions, free from serious sacrifice and loss (Laman would hardly qualify as a hedonist by our standards; his hopes sound wonderfully moderate). Nephi\u2019s baseline seems to me to be very different. Life is hard. Life is precarious and full of affliction and pain. Tragedy\u2014or at least suffering\u2014is the default. That\u2019s the background, the clearing, the constant field against which our lives take shape. God\u2019s commands, however, are inexorable. But if we follow them, we\u2019re nourished and our hardship becomes bearable. Following them, I can become strong like unto a man, and I can nurture my children as a healthy woman.<\/p>\n

There we have it. Eight years in exactly 34 verses. What does Nephi describe in those years? Hunger, affliction, the Liahona, the voice of the Lord, more hunger and affliction, Nephi\u2019s own leadership, growing strong. And then a final reminder that these were an afflicted eight years, even more than Nephi can write. It\u2019s a well-crafted narrative, undoubtedly it was a powerful political tool, and functions today\u2014as to some extent it may have then\u2014as faith generating scripture. It also reflects a grim existence. I can\u2019t help but think of my pioneer ancestors, whose lives and hardships I can\u2019t help but romanticize now. Pioneering, however, is what we all remember and talk of; it\u2019s what serves as our foundational narrative today. But of course, the pioneering was merely the forging. Carving out a life in early Utah was hardscrabble at best. With the exception of a story about Seagulls when many of our people perished from hunger related causes, we don\u2019t build much of early Utah into our faithful narratives\u2014we simply say that the desert blossomed as a rose. Pioneering was a necessary rending and reforging that allowed our ancestors to survive and become a people. These eight years of hardship in the wilderness are undoubtedly what gave Lehi\u2019s people the means to survive and carve out a life in the New World. Or as Jacob later notes, as one of those born during this passage of scripture, \u201cWe [were] a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hated of our brethren . . . wherefore, we did mourn out our days.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sandwiched in between the Daughter\u2019s of Ishmael\u2019s complaints about their afflictions and Laman\u2019s complaints about the women\u2019s afflictions (16:35-36 and 17:20-21), Nephi acknowledges that they were indeed afflicted.<\/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-37533","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\/37533","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=37533"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37577,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37533\/revisions\/37577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}