My wife and I held our own service this morning\u2013 we read a scripture, listened to several conference talks\u2013 and it was uplifting, but perhaps less of an investment than on most Sundays; so this evening my wife said, \u201cLet\u2019s sing some hymns.\u201d So we went to the piano, and then she said, \u201cLet\u2019s sing some Primary songs,\u201d so we got out the big blue book and sang for maybe an hour, just the two of us.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan a little child like me\/ thank the Father fittingly?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe sent his son.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel my Savior\u2019s love.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLove one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not much of a singer, but the songs \u201ctook me back,\u201d as they say. Took me back to when my Mom was Primary president and we sang some of those same songs\u2013 back before the Sexual Revolution or the Beatles or even the Beach Boys. Those seem like such simple, innocent times. Took me back to my many years as Primary pianist, more than a decade in all, in more than one ward. I used to sit at the piano and watch the children and think how pure and precious they are, and how innocent– and how things are going to get so much more complicated for them as they grow older.<\/p>\n
By now all of them are grown and mostly gone. A few still live in the ward or nearby, and although I don\u2019t do Facebook, my wife does, so I still hear news of quite a few of them. All of them sang \u201cI will follow God\u2019s plan.\u201d Some have done that; some haven\u2019t. Some have gone through difficult times, through things they thought they couldn\u2019t endure, except what choice did they have? Some are in that condition now. I think about the mostly happy, innocent children and wish they could be back in that period. Singing, whole-heartedly, \u201cWe will be the Lord\u2019s missionaries\/ to bring the world His truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
I partly wish that I myself could go back and enjoy the innocence of a Primary child. My parents or my Primary teachers or the bishop told me about God and the Gospel, and I just believed. (Mostly. I do remember, when I was about seven, looking at a mail-in contest on the back of a cereal box and thinking, we all know the chance of being one of the winners is almost zero; and then I thought, of all the people in the world and all the churches, what are the odds that I would be a winner who was just born into \u201cthe true church\u201d? But mostly I believed.) Today I know that just because an adult says something\u2013 even a nice adult with a good heart and good intentions\u2013 that doesn\u2019t make it true. Things are so much more complicated than they are in the Primary songs.<\/p>\n
Jesus said that we should be like little children. But Paul said that when we become a man or woman, we should put away childish things. I\u2019m not completely sure how to reconcile these instructions. I am pretty sure that I and the kids I watched from the piano bench can\u2019t just go back to being children again. We\u2019ve learned too much, seen too much, for that.<\/p>\n
Even so, I\u2019m pretty sure that the Primary songs are in some sense true. They are true in some sense that is more real and important than all of the doubts and questions that plague my compromised consciousness. I can\u2019t just make those questions go away. In the meantime, though, I can still pray . . .<\/p>\n
\u201cTeach me to walk in the light of His love.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My wife and I held our own service this morning\u2013 we read a scripture, listened to several conference talks\u2013 and it was uplifting, but perhaps less of an investment than on most Sundays; so this evening my wife said, \u201cLet\u2019s sing some hymns.\u201d So we went to the piano, and then she said, \u201cLet\u2019s sing some Primary songs,\u201d so we got out the big blue book and sang for maybe an hour, just the two of us. \u201cCan a little child like me\/ thank the Father fittingly?\u201d \u201cHe sent his son.\u201d \u201cI feel my Savior\u2019s love.\u201d \u201cLove one another.\u201d I\u2019m not much of a singer, but the songs \u201ctook me back,\u201d as they say. Took me back to when my Mom was Primary president and we sang some of those same songs\u2013 back before the Sexual Revolution or the Beatles or even the Beach Boys. Those seem like such simple, innocent times. Took me back to my many years as Primary pianist, more than a decade in all, in more than one ward. I used to sit at the piano and watch the children and think how pure and precious they are, and how innocent– and how things are going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"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-39952","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\/39952","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\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39952"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39981,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39952\/revisions\/39981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}