Anew

Blog Days, Dog Days

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 02:21:00 +0000

Well, it’s time.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I’m finally moving on from this blog.

I’m not giving up on blogging altogether, but I’ve been dissatisfied with the Blogger platform for some time. It’s just clunky and increasingly inconvenient. I’ve been working on a new series of posts, and it just felt like a good time to transition. To start anew, as it were.

Of course it’s bittersweet. I’ve been blogging here for 16 years. I think I only have a few subscribers left, but for those of you who are still around, thank you. I hope you’ll follow me over to my new place.

Speaking of which, here’s my new place: https://createtoserve.wixsite.com/dogdays

I’m going to largely continue the approach to blogging I’ve been using so far, but I’m renaming the site, so as not to step on this one. I’m kicking things off there with the first two parts of a new series on the Book of Mormon, how it’s written for our day, and what that means for us. I hope you’ll join me there, and even subscribe there if you want.

Thanks for everything.

Love,

Adam

Helaman Six And Immigration

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 05:58:00 +0000

A protest sign that says “Immigrants make America great!"

So today I’m dipping my toes into political waters a little bit. But don’t worry. I’m not going too far.

*wink*

I want to talk about the book of Helaman, especially chapter 6, and its implications for our views on immigration.

The thing is, it truly astounds me how people can read the same scriptures I read and then support some of the policies they do. Mass deportation? Family separation? Kids in cages? How do we not only endure, but sometimes even celebrate these things?

And it’s not that my scriptural interpretations are particularly insightful or unique. Quite the opposite, in fact. The scriptures are just so plain about this stuff. Perhaps the problem is this: we aren’t really taught to translate faith into politics, and that’s a shame, as the scriptures provide us with guidance on so many current issues. They don’t consistently side with any given party, and it would be a mistake to claim that any political party is divinely approved, or that its platform is equivalent to the principles of the gospel.

But the scriptures do make plain what positions on moral, humanitarian, and social issues are directly supported by the teachings of Christ. They provide us with stories that illuminate the social and political issues we are facing in our day. There’s room for disagreement and debate, of course, but we so often find ourselves in a situation where any discussion of these things is viewed as contentious or missing the spiritual point.

My brothers and sisters, we are called on to build the kingdom of God here on earth, which brings with it certain political realities. The early saints recognized this. Just read the Doctrine and Covenants. The Book of Mormon is the story of a people’s struggle to structure their society around the teachings of Christ. It shows us how hard it is, what challenges we will face in attempting it, and what it looks like when we’re successful.

Which brings me back to Helaman 6.

This chapter picks up after a long period of intense warfare, shortly after the introduction of the Gadianton robbers, and right after the mission of Nephi and Lehi to the Lamanites, some of whom were in possession of Nephite lands. After being converted due to a dramatic experience, the Lamanites went back to their own lands, allowing the Nephites to reclaim their homes and possessions.

BUT THAT’S NOT THE LESSON!!! Don’t stop there and think that when everyone is righteous, everyone stays in their own country. Keep reading.

Verse 3: “…the people of the church did have great joy because of the conversion of the Lamanites…And they did fellowship one with another, and did rejoice one with another, and did have great joy.”

Verse 4: “…many of the Lamanites did come down into the land of Zarahemla… and did exhort them to faith and repentance.”

Verse 7: “…there was peace in all the land, insomuch that the Nephites did go into whatsoever part of the land they would, whether among the Nephites or the Lamanites.”

Verse 8: “…the Lamanites did also go whithersoever they would, whether it were among the Lamanites or among the Nephites…”

Verse 9: “…they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceeding plenty [of all kinds of riches].”

Going on in the chapter, we learn that it wasn’t just money. They grew rich in food. They were industrious, doing all kinds of impressive craftsmanship and other work. The men and women were employed, each contributing to the success of the continental economy.

In verse 10 we learn that they even stopped thinking of their lands in the same way: “Now the land south was called Lehi, and the land north was called Mulek.” It’s easy to miss, but this represents a major change! For basically their entire history up to this point, both groups labeled those lands differently. The Lamanites lived in the land of Nephi, from which the Nephites had fled for their lives. The Nephites lived in the land of Zarahemla after uniting with the people of Mulek. This history of being displaced is one of the major points of contention throughout the book. But now, after this change in Helaman, that issue is erased.

And what brings it about? Immigration. The “free intercourse” (verse 8, meaning borderless travel and trade) the people have with each other leads to the erasure of the nationalistic identities that have divided them for hundreds of years, and that leads to peace, wealth, and joy. To the point that they even change the way they refer to their country.

This easily overlooked detail is, to my mind, one of the greatest signifiers of just how peaceful things were. They literally gave up the geographical labels that divided them, and adopted new ones that unified them. It’s hard to overstate how huge a change that was, given the previous few centuries.

So how good was it? According to verse 14, they had “great joy and peace, yea, much preaching and many prophecies concerning that which was to come.” It occurs to me that maybe the prophecies could be more future focused and less “repent, or be destroyed” focused because they’d finally gotten more of the here and now stuff figured out.

Unfortunately, this time of righteousness and unity only lasted a couple years, at which time murder and wickedness in the government disrupted the peace and equality of the people again. But it was a powerful preview of the peace that would come a few decades later, after the visit of Christ (this, of course, is the other time they gave up their nationalistic identities and lived in unified peace, though for much longer).

Let me say again how important it is to note that Mormon seems to ascribe the prosperity of the people in Helaman chapter 6 more or less directly to the free migration of peoples back and forth from land to land, so much so that the previous distinction between the lands becomes meaningless.

This isn’t the only incident of immigration in this part of the Book of Mormon. It seems to be a minor theme. In the last chapter of Alma, Mormon tells us of Hagoth, the famous builder of ships that carried colonists northward (and maybe elsewhere) to new lands. In other parts of Helaman we read of mass migrations to and from the lands of the north, and these are not described as dissensions or desertions. They are expansions, or perhaps explorations, and once they’re established, the people have trade and other interactions with each other regularly. Even Corianton, the righteous preacher and son of Alma, goes north in a ship. And, though they’re earlier in the book, we can’t overlook the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, who came to the Nephites not just as immigrants, but as refugees, and were a great strength to them.

What I’m saying is that it’s hard for me to read this book, and especially Helaman 6, without getting the message that immigration is a good thing. Not just that we have an obligation to care for immigrants, but that having immigrants come to us is actively beneficial for us, not just for them.

I’m not the first one to make this observation. Our country is kind of founded on the idea of welcoming immigrants. My friend Sam also regularly comments on this, using his specialized knowledge as a professor of tax law to debunk the idea that immigration is bad for the economy or the social systems of the host country, in addition to making moral and religious arguments in favor of it.

If we consider the Nephites as the people in the book we as church members are supposed to identify with, which I think most Latter-day Saints do, it’s hard to think of a single instance in which an influx of immigrants, or a group of people from outside trying to unite with the Nephites, was anything but a blessing to them. It’s true that disaffected Nephites going over to the Lamanite lands frequently stirred up trouble, but they were often going there for that purpose, not just to live. It’s not quite the same thing.

So maybe this is one of those “too political” posts, but I don’t think it’s twisting anything to say that Helaman 6 gives us glimpses of the political, economic, and religious good of embracing immigration as part of a healthy, functioning society. To do so leads to understanding and peace, builds wealth, and flows from a commitment to the teachings of Christ. In other words, it helps fulfill the fundamental promise of the Book of Mormon: “Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land.”

Amos and “The Prophets"

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 18:13:00 +0000

Here are some familiar words from Amos:

“Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).

These words are commonly used in conversations and sermons about the importance of latter-day prophets, and they seem to speak for themselves. If God isn’t going to do anything without first telling prophets—those ordained to deliver His word to the people—and if God continues to do things today, then it follows that He must still need prophets. It’s a simple logical argument, and seems to have less need for context than many Old Testament verses.

But the context here is interesting. You see, we tend to use these words to biblically source our belief in the ongoing role of Prophets (with a capital P). We cite this verse in relation to the duly ordained presidents of the church: men who are called according to a divinely instituted hierarchical structure that always lets us know who the Lord has placed in the position of chief leader.

Certainly, the Old Testament has Prophets of this nature. Think about Eli for one, and Samuel. Two men whose positions of authority derived from their place in the religious hierarchy of their day. Or think about Isaac and Jacob, who are Prophets because of their patriarchal roles and their status as descendants and successors to the line of Adam and its attendant authority.

But that’s not who Amos is. Amos is just a simple “herdman,” (Amos 7:14-15) who, from all I can tell, became a prophet simply by observing the doings of his day and responding to the voice of the Lord. It wasn’t particularly his business except in the way that large doings are the business of all who are affected by them. He was what you might call a “prophet of circumstance.”

There are other such prophets in the Old Testament too. Consider Daniel, for instance, who was placed in his position of prominence by a secular power, and granted his prophetic gifts through his obedience to God, and not through any formal religious structure. Yet his prophecies are among the most far-reaching of any in the book.

We could name others as well, but perhaps I’ve made my point. It’s interesting to me that these words spoken by Amos, so often used in support or justification of our system of duly appointed Prophets, were spoken by a prophet who comes from outside that kind of system. It makes me think they mean something much broader than we usually use them for.

I’m not saying they don’t apply to formal, capital-P Prophets. Of course when there is one on the earth, the Lord reveals some of His secrets to them too, especially when He needs to do something on a large scale.

But I’m thinking of Paul’s desire that all the saints should prophesy1, and of the many things God does in our lives that don’t pass through official channels because they don’t need to. I think Amos’ words are fulfilled any time someone receives knowledge by the spirit of prophecy, and in so doing learns the “secret” of the Lord. What is a prophet, after all, but one who speaks and acts by that spirit?

I think we too often underestimate our potential, dare I say calling, to become lowercase-p prophets: those who live and act within their spheres of influence and authority2 by direct, personal revelation from God. Those whose words are no less true and acts no less important to God’s kingdom than were the words and acts of Amos, or any of the P(p)rophets.

I think Amos’ teaching frees us to seek this kind of prophecy in our lives. It liberates us from the temptation to fall into hero worship of our leaders that comes from seeing them as the key to our access to the divine. After all, we all can also be among the prophets—fellow travelers and equals with them. It is the spirit of the Lord, accessible to us all, to which we must be obedient.

It may help that this is exactly the kind of approach to life our current Prophet, rather famously, has told us we will need in the days to come.

1. This is all throughout 1 Corinthians 14, where we are even told to “covet” to prophesy, and that we “all may prophesy.” Even that Paul would rather see us prophesy than speak with tongues. Verses 29-33 may be particularly instructive, in which we learn that the “prophecies” of the individual saints should be evaluated and judged by how closely they adhere to the spirit of what has been spoken by the “prophets,” which I take to mean the officially recognized prophets, such as Amos, or others in the scriptural canon.

2. It’s interesting that Amos’ words aren’t confined to local matters, despite his lack of institutional authority. He speaks to all of Israel. As I say in the main body of the post, the doings of kings, presidents, Prophets, and rulers are of concern to all who are affected by them.

When Being More Godly Means Not Doing What God Would Do

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 05:02:00 +0000

“Behold what the scripture says—man shall not smite, neither shall he judge; for judgment is mine, saith the Lord, and vengeance is mine also, and I will repay.” (Mormon 8:20)

We’ve been studying Alma 42 this week, in which Alma finishes his counsel to his son, Corianton. Specifically, he’s addressing the question of whether it's just for God to punish the sinner. His argument is as follows:

Without punishment, there is no law, because the consequences of disobeying the law provide the motive for keeping it. Where no law is given, there is no mechanism for repairing any harm that is done. To use Alma’s example, if we never learned that murder was illegal and would be punished, we would not be afraid of legal punishment if we murdered. In fact, we might be justifiably shocked if the law tried to punish us for doing something that wasn’t forbidden by the law.

In other words, without law, there can be no justice, because justice relies on the law for the authority by which to enforce its demands. But there can also be no mercy, because in the absence of a punishment based on the law, there is nothing from which to save the transgressor. There has been no legal transgression, even when there has been harm, because there was no law to transgress.

Now, some of God’s law (and it’s important to remember we are talking about divine law, not human law) is written in our hearts, or learned from reason or experience without being explicitly taught. But that doesn’t apply to all of God’s laws, and anyway, Alma is talking theory here.

So that’s why punishment is necessary. Without it, the whole concept of justice doesn’t function. If God gave laws but didn’t punish those who broke them, we would be unable to rely on divine justice, and as Alma said, “God would cease to be God.”

However, there is law, and punishment, and justice, and all this creates the need for repentance. Alma does a good job explaining how by personally atoning for our sins, God does the only thing that could possibly have worked to allow mercy to function without robbing justice. There’s a lot I could say about that, but it’s enough for now to say that both justice and mercy must be satisfied for God to accomplish the work of saving us, and repentance is the condition upon which God’s mercy can have claim upon our souls. If we don’t repent, we can’t access that mercy, and we must bear the full weight of our sins. If we do repent, Christ has paid for our sins, and redeemed us through His mercy.

This is where my thoughts diverged from Alma a bit, into my own life. How do I, in my various roles of authority, follow the pattern of God’s justice and mercy? For example, as a parent I have a lot of power in my kids’ lives, and I try to be careful with it. Sometimes they do things when they know they shouldn’t, or they don’t do things when they know they should. Do I punish them for that? Do I lecture them about their motives? Do I institute immutable consequences, to make sure they learn their lesson?

What about with my students? My primary class? Others I may find I have some authority over?

And what about when others sin against me? What if a coworker, family member, leader, or a stranger intentionally does something that hurts me? Do I set my heart on full restitution, of the kind God’s justice demands? What if the offender doesn’t repent? Should I turn against them in enmity? Should I withdraw my friendship? Should I look on them with love, but withhold my association, compassion, or kindness, even if it pains me to do so? Shouldn’t I do what God would do, seeking to emulate the divine method in my own judgment?

I don’t have every answer for every situation, but I believe the answer is generally no. I should not do those things.

You see, God has two advantages that I don’t have. First, God has perfect knowledge of us and our circumstances. God knows when we have truly sinned (remember that sin is not “making mistakes,” it’s willful rebellion against God—intentionally going contrary to what we know is right), and also when we have truly repented. As humans, we lack that crucial insight. “For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7) In other words, I can’t always be sure I know what God would do.

Oh, sure, we can sometimes discern things through the spirit of God that we wouldn’t otherwise know, but we lack the perfect knowledge that is necessary to pass perfect judgment on another person. It is not for us to decide what punishment someone else deserves, because we don’t know enough.

Second, God has moral authority as a judge. Remember that part about God having personally atoned for our sins? Remember how we all have sins? Jesus Christ can be a righteous judge because He lived as one of us, and did it sinlessly. No one else can say that. Jesus taught us this perfectly with the woman taken in adultery. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7). It’s not for us to decide what punishment someone else deserves because how dare we, hypocrites, when we need the very mercy we were thinking of withholding?

So, if we, as imperfect lawgivers, aren’t to be exactly like God in this thing, what are we to do? Simple: we are to forgive. Always. Readily. As immediately as possible. No matter the offense. Without waiting for repentance. Perhaps these verses will sound familiar:

“Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin.

I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.” (D&C 64:9-10)

Why do we have the greater sin when we refuse to forgive? Does that hold true for the really egregious sins? Murder? Abuse of any kind? Unrighteous dominion that leads others away from God? Are not those sins more grievous than simply holding a grudge?

Well, they are serious, and cannot be minimized. I’m not saying that finding it hard to forgive sin is itself a sin. Remember, sin is willful rebellion against God. The sin is in utterly refusing to forgive. Refusing to seek to forgive. Turning your heart from the desire for forgiveness. Our forgiveness doesn't mean there will be no consequences for those who hurt us. Our forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting, or restoring instant trust to one who has deservedly lost it. It doesn’t mean remaining in abusive relationships, or pretending everything is right when it is not.

But forgiveness is mercy. It’s healing. It’s the decision to leave the judgment to the Lord. We do it because WE need it, if nothing else.

“For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:2).

“And ye ought to say in your hearts—let God judge between me and thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds” (D&C 64:11).

If we don’t do this, we allow that unforgiven sin, however large or small, to continue to work its harm in us. Maybe the offender will never repent, and if so, will never be forgiven: at least not by God. But by forgiving, we open the doorway to our own recovery from the hurt that was done to us, and perhaps we benefit another soul as well.

By turning from forgiveness, we set that harm in cement. We allow it to grow roots in our soul, fracturing our firm foundation. It turns us further from the light of God, and plants in us a dark desire to see further harm done, or perhaps to do it ourselves. It not only preserves the initial sin, it incubates more.

This is why we are guilty of the greater sin when we refuse to forgive. Because in doing so we deny the atonement Christ made for that sin, and we refuse the healing He offers us. Instead, we add to the weight of sin in the world. And isn’t there enough of that already?

The Garden That Ate Our Yard: A Retrospective

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 20:27:00 +0000

I was sitting out in my backyard this morning, sweating, after having done some much-needed cleanup in and around the garden, when I was struck by one of those sneaky blankets of smothering nostalgia that creep up on you from behind suddenly, then fling themselves over your eyes and wrap you up in reverie until something mundane comes along to throw them off so you can breathe again. This time, the blanket looked like my yard, before I started gardening.

It occurred to me just how much the place has transformed, and how much work I’ve done since then, back in the spring of 2022. I also occurred to me that I haven’t really documented that too much. I’ve done a little, but not really in an organized way, so I thought I’d take the time today just to make a list of what we did each year. I might have pictures, but I don’t have the time to go and hunt for them, so this list will have to do for now. Maybe it will be helpful to someone else looking to start something, and maybe it will just help me wrap up in that blanket again on some cold day in the future.

We started gardening to try to reduce our grocery bill. There are ten people in my family, and eating healthy is hard and expensive, and supply chains aren’t guaranteed. The goal was to make it a little easier, a little more secure, and (hopefully) a little less expensive.

Our yard is hardly ideal for it, though. It’s small. The house sits on a 1/4 acre and has a huge driveway, a detached garage, and rock retaining walls. It’s west-facing with tall trees shading it for a lot of the day. It’s on a pretty steep slope, seeing as we live on the side of a mountain in northern Utah. There are deer. There are slugs. There are grasshoppers. We still needed room for the kids to play outdoors. All we had was a mostly dead lawn (thanks to a once-in-a-century drought) and two terraces overgrown with vines and weeds. Here’s what we did:

YEAR 1 (2022):

Decide to start gardening.
Watch a lot of YouTube videos and read some stuff.
Decide on the organic, no-dig approach.
Clear away the stuff on the terraces and sheet mulch with cardboard boxes and free wood chips that later turned out to have been full of grubs.
Build 5 shallow, wooden raised beds and fill them with spare dirt and grubby wood chops, topped with not enough compost and a little raised bed mix.
Build a couple sets of wooden steps for easier movement between terraces.
Build a rainwater harvesting system (restrictions on city water thanks to drought) that holds about 350 gallons (one IBC tote).
Plant a bunch of starts from the only local nursery we knew about in both the raised beds and the in-ground “bed” where we still had some exposed dirt.
Build a wire fence at the top of the yard to try to minimize deer traffic. Add motion-sensitive solar lights.
“Condition" some of our clayey soil to be more sandy by adding actual sand—DO NOT DO THIS!
Immediately regret adding actual sand.
Try growing in containers.
Have an unexpected encounter with palo verde beetles, which aren’t supposed to live this far north! Maybe it was the wood chips?
Stumble our way through the first season, relying heavily on YouTube and dumb luck.

The result? A mediocre harvest of tomatoes, peas, potatoes, and assorted plants (I don’t really remember what) that definitely did not pay for itself, but was very rewarding and fun. There’s something addictive about being able to walk out your back door, pick a vegetable off the plant, and immediately eat or cook with it.

YEAR 2 (2023):

Deepen one of the existing beds and build more. Now both terraces have defined beds (at least on half of their length)!
Shore up the in-ground bed on the top terrace with rocks from the yard.
Remember that we can get cheap compost from the dump.
Borrow my parents’ truck to get massive amounts of compost and fill the beds.
Remove the fence separating the side yard from the back so we could plant in the side yard (the worst place on the entire property, but we didn’t know that yet).
Use the rest of the compost to make in-ground beds in the side yard, and an herb garden by the kitchen. This required clearing a lot more vines and weeds.
Learn how to use straw as mulch, and to grow potatoes.
Use straw as mulch and to grow potatoes.
Experience volunteer plants from last year.
Find out about several more local nurseries, and start to develop favorites.
Order seeds from a catalog!
Lean into perennial foods, like herbs and Egyptian walking onions.
Watch a ton more YouTube videos.
Try companion planting.
Double the capacity of the rainwater system.
Start to see the value of flowers, and plant some on purpose.
Add a bird bath!
Fight grasshoppers ALL SEASON LONG.
Learn about organic pest control methods (YouTube).
Stumble slightly less.
Start to feel like we know what we’re doing.
Be wrong about that.
Think far enough ahead to plant things in the fall for next season (mainly garlic).
In early winter, plant a couple currant bushes and some raspberries in the FRONT yard. This is getting serious.

The result? Homegrown herbs are AMAZING. Seriously, we need more space for this. I can’t live without it anymore. Also, a much better harvest. This was the year we had our first full meal sourced entirely from the garden. That’s grocery replacement, baby! No going back now! Also, yes, our kids do like squash, whether they think so or not, and we managed to grow our pumpkins for Thanksgiving pumpkin pie! Though not in time for Halloween, regrettably. But it was great progress, and the garden was really starting to feel like part of who we were. Plus we got way too many tomatoes, and homemade salsa!

YEAR 3 (2024)—SO FAR:

So many YouTube videos, but now I have favorite channels, and OPINIONS.
Get started earlier.
Enjoy the early fruits of perennial herbs.
The Egyptian walking onion survived!
Discover the difference between first year herbs and second year herbs (Like a 300-1000% increase in size, depending on the plant).
Finish converting the terraces to raised beds.
Successfully use netting to discourage bird damage.
Have a late snow weigh down our netting and squish all the delicate plants underneath it.
Discover that delicate plants can still be quite resilient!
Ditch the netting, for better or worse.
Try starting warm season plants from seed.
Fail abysmally.
Build a sturdy but portable tomato trellis.
Build a flimsy and portable bean trellis.
Plant twice as many tomatoes.
Expand the herb garden all along the side fence (I’m addicted to herbs now, and I’m not going to change).
Move the bird bath, making it much more successful.
Discover just how many pollinators like to have a nice place to get a drink.
Add three bird feeders of different kinds.
Plant native flowers and shrubs to provide food and habitat for birds.
Lean harder into companion planting and interplanting.
Add another currant bush out front (the others actually survived the winter!)
Clear space in the front yard for two more beds, mainly for more herbs and flowers. Pollinator friendly-stuff!
Add a flower bed around one tree.
Try to be consistent with an organic fertilizer schedule.
Let our grass grow long in some defined areas to support local wildlife.
See a HUGE increase in local wildlife.
Get very excited about that.

The result? We’ll see! But so far we’ve had more meaningful harvests much earlier in the season, we’ve been thrilled at the response of the local wildlife, and we’re more hooked than ever. There are now TWENTY-SIX (26) dedicated garden beds: some in-ground, most raised. Some for flowers, some for food, many for both. Most are small. We also have a handful of containers and a multitude of plants intentionally growing in places that aren’t defined enough to call “beds.” And I have ideas for where to put more.

Like I said in the title, this is slowly eating my yard, and I’m ok with that. My kids still have some room to play, and we’re close enough to local parks to go there often. Plus we have a quiet neighborhood where they can run around to different houses without a problem.

So what’s next? Well, this year, we’re still focusing on building wildlife habitat and converting some our sprinklers to drip irrigation. We do rely on the rainwater collection a lot, but the sprinklers cover our remaining lawn (which we’re slowly converting away from turf grass toward more sustainable alternatives) and help supplement the garden.

But truthfully, we really want to move to a larger, better situated space. As our kids get older they need more living space (who knew?), and while we’re incredibly grateful for what we have, we’d like to establish a home that our kids can come back to for support as adults. A place for grandkids to gather and young, struggling families to fall back on. Heaven knows what we would have done without that kind of help, and this generation will likely have it even harder.

We also want to be able to really replace more of our groceries. We’d like to grow fruit and nut trees, but that’s not possible with our current yard. We’re considering trying out chickens, but there’s hardly room for that now, either. I’d also like to be more serious about compost than we are. We have the waste for it, but not the square footage.

If there were fewer of us, or if our yard got more sunlight, we could probably do just fine with what we have now. But I also have larger, more community-focused motives for this desire that I won’t get into now.

Let me just wrap up by saying that the changes of the past few years show no signs of slowing. The garden is a transformative force in our yard and in our lives. Just as we’ve shaped it, it’s shaped us, and that cycle feels very healthy and rewarding. I hope it continues for many years to come.

In My Hometown

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 20:01:00 +0000

I live in Bountiful, UT. I mostly grew up here, and graduated from Bountiful High School. I moved away, and then back here as an adult. Last night, as I was going to bed, I came across this (content warning: racism and swearing):

Do so much better, Bountiful. pic.twitter.com/B21PJywdYs
— Dan McClellan (@maklelan) November 2, 2023

It makes me sick. No one deserves this, least of all a child, and I hope the people who did it are found and dealt with appropriately, because this isn't just a harmless, "kids will be kids" situation, and it's not the kind of thing the victims can easily shake off. Now they have to go to school and live their lives wondering which of the many faces around them belong to people who see them this way, who felt they deserved this treatment. Nothing they could have done, no context, makes this act of racist harassment acceptable. I'm embarrassed for my community. I hate so much that this can happen here, in a place where I've met so many kind and decent people. In the place where I first learned to love those who weren't like me.

This makes me feel awful, But it also made me reflect on some of my own experiences, so I'm going to tell a couple stories and express a few thoughts.

First of all, let me say that I am very happy to have a mixed racial heritage, including people from various parts of Europe, but also from the Hawaiian islands, and going further back, from Tahiti and China. I was raised to remember and cherish my Hawaiian ancestry, but in a crowd with any kind of diversity, I generally pass as white. A lot of students think I'm Latino, but that's probably because I have a lot of Latino students, so they see the signs of non-white genes in me.

Growing up in Bountiful, I would say it was 50/50 whether someone thought of me as white or something else. I had very few experiences with racism. I had a teacher or two who referred to me as one of the "ethnics," or other things in that vein, and I had some trouble with the multicultural student office at the first college I went to, because while my family history let me qualify for their services, they kept questioning my racial identity because I didn't look diverse enough for them.

As an adult in Bountiful, I've also had a couple of run-ins with racist comments. For instance, I wear a kukui nut lei a lot of the time, including at church. When I moved back to Bountiful, after a few weeks of doing this, a man I knew growing up said something like,"What's with the beads? I appreciate your culture, but there's something to be said for the fact that we're on the mainland." That's about the worst I've had directed at me, personally. It displays a an attitude of not wanting too many reminders of the presence of other types of people, but it's also extremely mild. In general, I have met very few people in Bountiful who have exhibited racist tendencies, and I stand by that, despite what I'm about to say.

Of course, I know about the investigation from a couple years ago about problems with severe, systemic racism in Davis County School District. I'm not dismissing that or saying it's not a problem, especially in the light of what happened yesterday.

The problem is that people in Bountiful don't generally think it's a problem. A few years ago I taught an Elders Quorum lesson at church about combating racism. This was right after the General Conference where the president and prophet of my church specifically called on us to do what we could to root out racism in our midst. Later, I was criticized for this by some class members, and by our Elders Quorum President at the time. He told me to focus on things that were actually issues. "Do you really think people in our ward need to hear that?" he asked me.

Well, now we can see that they do. Or at least, some people in our town do. I've been thinking all day about what could lead people in my community specifically to have this kind of attitude, and do this kind of terrible thing.

Reacting to the New and Different

One obvious thing is unfamiliarity. Take a look at this data from 2021, showing the racial breakdown of people in Bountiful.

Those two tiny yellow boxes in the lower right corner? Those are Black people, whether Hispanic or of African descent. There are more people with my specific racial Pacific Islander mixture in Bountiful than there are Black people. I have to wonder if that would still be true should my family move away, which makes my point. Going to Bountiful High School, you have almost no opportunity to meet anyone who isn't white.

That means that young people's attitudes about African Americans are mostly shaped by a few things: the attitudes of others (especially parents, teachers, religious leaders, and peers), what they learn in school and at church, and what they see online or in entertainment/news media. None of those things involve direct experience with people who aren't like you, but they all tend to have something to say about the topic.

Take into account that Bountiful dwellers are predominantly members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (estimates are usually about 70%, but I've heard as high at 90% in some neighborhoods), and you can see that youth in Bountiful have very little chance to practice coexisting with anyone who isn't like them in appearance, heritage, or belief. Sometimes all three.

Under these conditions, ignorance and intolerance grow like weeds, not because the people involved want to be racist or cruel, but because they rarely have to face the question, and so have little guidance on it. They don't know how to handle it when someone is different, and human nature too often defaults to prejudice, fear, or suspicion in that case. This, by the way, is part of the reason it's not enough to just not be racist, but that we must be actively antiracist. No child can be faulted for not having had a given opportunity, but proactive teaching against racism can prevent it from springing up through the cracks in our experience.

Speaking of Specific Teaching

Another factor worth questioning is whether the teens involved in this acted in a racist way because they didn't know how to act, or if they were actively taught racism by others. The dominant religion in Bountiful—my religion—has a troubled history with race relations. There are things in the scriptures that are easily interpreted in a racist way, and racism is a significant topic in the Book of Mormon. This has led to certain ideas being circulated in the church that promote racial intolerance.

I do not believe the doctrines of the church are inherently racist, but it would be foolish and irresponsible to pretend these ideas don't exist and aren't part of the problem, especially in a homogeneous community like this one. For some reason, mainstream Christians and Latter-day Saints alike have historically not always been great at applying the inclusive aspects of Christ's teachings. This is something you see the saints struggling with from New Testament times onward, and it's still one of the biggest limiting factors in the church, as I see it. We are so ready to exclude people based on their race, their beliefs, their economic status, their sexuality, or any other factor that makes us uncomfortable, while at the same time preaching how much we love those people, and would accept them, if only they would change.

There's no excuse for this, especially because we in the church should collectively remember what it's like to be persecuted for your differences, and because our scriptures make the wickedness of this attitude so abundantly plain. In my opinion, the only ways to read the scriptures we have and a) not see the presence of racism, b) not recognize that it's being addressed as a major problem, and c) come away thinking God wants you to reject others out of hand for any reason are to read them halfheartedly, incompletely, or with an effort to twist them to support your existing worldview. That's not exclusively a Latter-day Saint problem, but it is a Latter-day Saint problem.

Of course, it's not just in church that racist teachings can happen. They can happen at home or in school as well. They can (and do) come from internet personalities and other sources. When things like this racist attack happen, I can't help but wonder what is being taught in my neighbors homes. I wonder how certain subjects are taught in schools. I wonder if we in Bountiful are doing enough to monitor our children's online experiences, and if we're trying to be involved in how our kids process those things.

In Malice Be Ye Children, But in Understanding Be Men

Which leads my to my final thought about how this can happen in Bountiful, where people should know better, which is really more a restatement of my first thought. When I was a missionary, one of my companions accused me of having lived in a "Bountiful bubble," so that I was innocently ignorant of important facts about the world. Well, he didn't seem to think it was so innocent, but never mind that. At the time I obviously rejected the idea, but it stuck with me all the same.

Now, more than two decades later, I think he was right in part. I was not as innocent or as ignorant as he thought I was. But there were things I had never had to deal with, and as a result had never thought seriously about. Bountiful is a community where people try very hard to create an environment of safety for themselves and their children. A lot is kept out, for better or worse (it's both). On one hand, few of the people I knew growing up ever had to contend with some of life's harshest circumstances. They had loving families, safe homes, and at least enough worldly resources to survive without too much worry. They focused on having fun, making good memories, and building towards a good life for themselves in the future. This is what most parents want for their children.

But because we were so protected, we missed some key lessons. We knew there was evil in the world, but we didn't really know what it looked like or how to prevent it, except for a few specific evils that we were constantly warned of. Racism was not usually among them, except in its most obvious and historically removed form: slavery. We all knew that was wrong, but we didn't really feel how seriously wrong it was, and why. We were taught to treat all people well and equally, but didn't have much chance to practice it, so it was largely academic. Or else, we thought we were already doing it with our friends who lived on the other side of the tracks, or those who wore different clothes or had unusual hairstyles, but were otherwise just like us. There's quite a bit of economic inequality around Bountiful, but a large segment of the BHS population is rarely exposed to it (which creates other problems, and worsens this one). We congratulated ourselves on our broad-mindedness for being friends with that one kid who was Greek Orthodox instead of LDS, but we were still friends, so it was okay! We must have been insufferable to some people.

This kind of bubble is only possible because of the homogeneity of the community. For the people who don't fit the mold, their experiences will vary, depending on how drastically they depart from the formula, and how much they care. For some, Bountiful is working its way toward being a bit of Zion, where most, if not all, is well. For others, it's purgatory, or maybe limbo. For yet others, it feels like eternal torment. I couldn't see that then, because all you had to do to enjoy it was to be like the rest of us. But it's not so simple.

I'm not blaming our parents for working to create a safe, sheltered environment for us to grow up in. What parent wouldn't want that? They did us a lot of good, and I honor them for that. But the definition of "safety" needed some fine-tuning. We needed experience outside of our bubble, and we needed to wrestle with the realities of that larger world. We needed to see that the kind of safety provided by innocence only serves you while you're a child. As you grow, you also need to mature. That means taking risks and encountering new things, still with guidance, but also without training wheels, and with accountability.

Children need to grow up free to make mistakes without having those mistakes determine their identities. The victims of this attack deserve apology. They deserve safety. They deserve every form of reparation that can be made to them. But the perpetrators also deserve healing, and to grow beyond this: to do and be better. They won't have a good chance to do that if they're shielded from accountability, but neither will they if they are cast out. If that happens, what is probably the most shameful act of their lives (one hopes) will come to define them in their own eyes and the eyes of others. This will lead to more festering racism, which they will probably pass on to the next generation.

You can't heal a poisoned wound without removing the poison, and the poison here is racism, not people. The ones poisoned are the perpetrators as well as the victims. The thing about a bubble is that it keeps things out, but it also keeps them in.

It's Not Just Bountiful

Let me finish up by saying that this troubling event is not confined just to Bountiful or Davis County. I teach at a school in Ogden, a city that is often seen as more liberal, worldly, or even corrupt than many in Utah (it's a whole thing... don't get me started). Even there, at a place known for being more inclusive and welcoming than many Utah schools, I've seen an alarming increase in this kind of thing.

It seems like every other day a student tells me about someone calling someone the n-word. We've had kids cosplay Nazi officers at school (we put a stop to that). I've heard other racial slurs thrown around, and it's not just the white kids. For some reason, a lot of the slurs tend to be from the Latino/Latina kids towards the Black kids, or the kids who have mixed ancestry. I'm dealing with this constantly in class. Our school used to be a haven for bullied and disliked children, but now it's becoming infected, and every new year brings worse problems. The kids aren't learning how bad this is at home. They may be taught about it, but they aren't learning it. They're growing up with enmity towards other racial, social, and political groups. In our increasingly polarized world, is it a surprise? How to combat it is a constant question for us on the faculty.

I've also noticed that whenever I, as a teacher, speak passionately about values and the need to respect others, the students listen. If I express my distress at the state of things, or if I seem overwhelmed by it, they notice. They get quiet and pay attention. They want to be taught about the real world and how to navigate it. They're hungry for guidance, not just information. In the absence of that, and with only a vague understanding of the world but growing alarm at what they see happening in it, they often choose to act in extreme ways. It's childish, but by itself it's not evil. The evil comes in when they follow the bad examples around them.

Here's to being better examples.

We're Safety Now Haven't We

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 18:50:00 +0000

This is the most hilarious thing I've seen all week.

In case you don't know, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has just dropped a new album featuring six safety themed songs from real, active artists in various genres, all based on some of the CPSC's most boring material.

Yes, that's the album cover, featuring some of the CPSC social media mascots and complete with KIDZ BOP level design and a PSA "warning" where the explicit lyrics one would normally go. And yes, all the songs feature a soundbyte from a 70s video of a man saying "Thanks to the people at the CPSC..." as well as other samples from past PSAs.

To me, this is on a level with the LA graphic designer job posting from a few years back. Great stuff.

A Conversation Overheard in Stage Crew Today

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 20:41:00 +0000

STUDENT 1: "Son of a nugget, man!"

STUDENT 2: "What?"

STUDENT 1: "I can't cuss in Figueira's class. Figueira's one of the only teachers I won't cuss in front of!"

The Face of the Sky

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 03:49:00 +0000

Tonight in 1 Corinthians 15 (verses 35-38) we read where Paul answers questions about the resurrection by talking about how plants grow. He mentions the way seeds come off a plant, shriveling up and seeming very dead before growing again into new life. Paul treats this as common knowledge among his audience, which it undoubtedly was. He even goes so far as to say "thou fool" to those who use the decay of the mortal body to question where the bodies of resurrected beings come from.

Nature, Paul demonstrates, gives us the type for how it works. By observing the plant world we can easily see how God takes a dead body and, from it, raises a very different body that is new and full of life.

Not only does this seem to answer the question sometimes posed about whether or not our resurrected bodies are composed of the same elements as the bodies we possessed in mortality (a problematic proposition, given the cyclical nature of elemental systems), but it also has some interesting implications for just how different a resurrected body might be from what we currently inhabit.

But what most struck me tonight was the reminder Paul's words gave me of this, from Jesus:

"O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?" (Matt. 16:3)

In this passage from Matthew, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees and Sadducees for comprehending the natural world and its workings, but not comprehending the workings of God. He uses the very strong word "hypocrites" for this failing, and that's what gave me pause tonight. Why that word? It doesn't seem to be one Jesus uses idly. Apart from potential translation shenanigans, two non-mutually exclusive possibilities occur to me:

1. Maybe he's rebuking them for putting in the time and effort to understand worldly things but not doing the same for spiritual things. This would be a biting criticism of those who are supposed to be spiritual leaders, and it seems to be in line with his critique of the Jewish rulers in general (they're too worldly, they love power and praise but not devotion, etc.).

2. But what if he's calling them hypocrites because understanding the natural world (the face of the sky) and understanding the workings of God (the signs of the times) are the same thing, or at least related applications of the same skill? Because God is the author of nature's laws, the world's architect, the master scientist of the cosmos and all that they contain, the natural world is full of examples of how He works. If we can discern His movements and patterns in the way the elements function, we should also be able to discern His spiritual workings, because they follow the same principles.

I found that thought fascinating tonight. Over the past year and a half I've been trying to grow a better garden by learning more about how plants and ecosystems function. In the process, I've had many light bulb moments—many little glimmers of greater, more fascinating things at work than I had previously supposed. More than once I've seen in those glimmers a principle that seemed more far-reaching than just how to know when your tomatoes need watering or what the growth cycle of garlic may be. I've learned a lot, and often been awed by completeness of the system God has established, or overwhelmed in my efforts to re-establish something like it in my little patch of suburbia.

I've learned that people, like plants, let you know what they need if you take the time to listen to them. God always listens, and provides for all who trust Him just as He does for the lilies of the field. I've also learned that sometimes with us, as with garlic, what seems like a period of decline is more like a period of incubation and preservation in preparation for fuller realization of our potential.

What I'm saying is, both of the interpretations above make sense to me, and because I've experienced it lately, the second one excites me. It means the way to comprehend our divine creator is all around us, if only we have eyes to see it.

The Universe

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 22:18:00 +0000

Around the time I was in high school I started noticing people using the term "the Universe" as a non-specific way to refer to whatever ultimate power or principle people believed in. I guess the idea was to be more inclusive. "The Universe" must contain whatever it was you believed in, whether it was the divine, the sublime, or the scientific, and so we could all presumably agree that saying it this way would allow us to share ideas without running afoul of our differences about the specifics. At the time, it made sense.

Over the years, I've soured on that idea for a few reasons. First of all, it seems to divorce the subjects being spoken of from the motive for their expression. The language we use when saying "the universe" is the language of science, not of faith, but it's generally when discussing things pertaining to faith that we feel compelled to use this phrasing. If I'm not a person of faith, then this is fine for me. But since I am a person of faith, I struggle to feel that I'm saying what I really mean if I have to say "the Universe" instead of "God" or "Jesus Christ," or something along those lines. Worse, I sometimes feel that I'm betraying that faith by refusing to acknowledge of my worship of God for the sake of not offending. I feel that I'm acting ashamed of my beliefs.

Which leads me to my second reason: there is a difference between the divine and "the Universe." The universe may (or may not) contain what I believe in, but that doesn't make it the same thing. At best, it's a lousy euphemism. At worst, it's wildly inaccurate and arguably dishonest. The nation contains the executive branch of the government, but it also contains many other things. If I want to talk about the U.S. President, then saying "the nation" or even "the government" probably isn't very useful. Words can be specific for a reason. I know that languages evolve and meanings change, and of course language is as much art as science, but generally speaking, words mean something, here and now. Synonyms are often only close in meaning, not precisely equal. Part of the fun is appreciating the nuances of words and exploring the richness of expression that is possible because of those fine distinctions. I want to say what I mean, and mean what I say. Otherwise, how can I stand by my words?

Finally, and perhaps least persuasively because it's an emotional reason, it feels unequal. I'm not one to see phantom attacks on religious liberty every time non-religious people try to exercise their rights, but insisting on "the Universe" still sometimes seems like it's saying to religious people "you can't talk about this in ways that are consistent with your beliefs because someone might not like it." It seems like people with one worldview dictating how conversations have to happen just because they don't want to hear about other worldviews. But freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from religion. The goal is to protect everyone's right to be openly true to the things they believe in, not to act like nobody believes in anything so we don't have to be uncomfortable.

I get that there may be times when this isn't straightforward. I'm a public employee in a position of authority over children. I am legally constrained not to promote one set of beliefs over any other. But I still have a right to my own beliefs, and so the question becomes, who am I speaking for? This can get complex and thorny. There's always nuance. But for me personally, "the Universe" just doesn't cut it as a way to talk about God, even with people who don't share my faith.

Thoughts on Being "In Far Enough"

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 17:51:00 +0000

At a recent stake conference, one of the speakers told a story about a young child who fell out of bed. When asked what happened, he replied "I fell out because I wasn't in far enough." The speaker drew a parallel to those who leave the church, saying that most of the people he knows who have left, have done so because they weren't "in far enough."

The question that bears asking, though, is why weren't they in far enough? Did they have time to discover the most enriching and sustaining doctrines of Christ? Did they have help with that? Did they feel welcome? Did they struggle to let go of ungodly influences? Did they encounter some in the church that pushed them out? Were they ever serious about being "in" in the first place?

I'm in the process of building a loft bed for my kids. It's mostly finished, but still lacks a railing and a few finishing touches. Fortunately, the loft is large enough and the kids are small enough that they can still sleep on it safely as long as they stay away from the edge. However, as kids do, they have a tendency to bring a lot of stuff up onto the bed, packing it into the back corners, and reducing the overall size of the usable area. They clutter up their safe sleeping space so the only places left to sleep are near the edges. Unless I go up there regularly and make sure their beds are in good order, they quickly become dangerous. I would love for my kids to be the ones who do this but, well, they're kids. They need help with that kind of thing.

Of course, I also still need to finish the railing.

The bed in question at one stage of its construction.

On top of that, there was a point in the bed's construction at which some of the surfaces of the bed were uncomfortable because of exposed rough wood that was prone to inflicting splinters or scrapes. The kids were never expected to sleep or play directly on those surfaces, but they like to try everything. Because they're kids. It also gets hot up there unless we make sure the air is circulating well.

Now, before you all report me for endangering my children, you should know that none of these dangerous phases lasts long, but building something like this is a process, and I'm exaggerating the hazards a bit for the sake of the metaphor. I don't let them up there if I think there's any chance they'll fall off, and I make sure it's as safe as possible every time.

My point is that the responsibility for being in far enough is a shared one. If people want a safe spiritual home, they must be willing to order their lives in a way that makes that possible, not bringing in a bunch of stuff from the larger world and cluttering up their spiritual spaces so they can't access the deeper safety and richness available there. I think this is mostly what the speaker who gave this talk was focused on: the choices we make to be "in." That's not a choice anyone else can make for us.

But like my kids, many of us need help learning how to do this, and it should be given patiently, consistently, and without complaint. And we should be aware of the rough edges others may encounter in our spiritual spaces—the places where we have yet to build sufficient spiritual guard rails—and we should work to improve those places. If the church is unwelcoming, or doesn't offer needed support, or worst of all, is hypocritical about its teachings, it's harder to commit to, whatever the virtues of its other offerings may be.

Consider this example from an article I recently read about a former Southern Baptist leader who found himself an outsider after criticizing that church's growing tolerance for white nationalism and sexual abuse, as well as publicly criticizing Donald Trump. He's recently said he thinks Christianity is in crisis. Here are his words about why:

It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.

It's not universal or exclusive, but many of the young people I know who have abandoned organized Christianity in general or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular, have done so because they have seen this kind of thing happening. The teachings of Christ are powerful and appealing to them, but people they know in the church believe and promote things that seem to run directly contrary to those teachings. This is confusing. They think they have misinterpreted Christ, or that others have. Either way, they can't get the spiritual nourishment they need. They struggle with the constant pressure to agree with and support opinions or teachings that feel wrong to them. So of course they leave, unfortunately often abandoning the gospel along with the church members who may have represented it poorly. And when that happens, often our only response is to criticize them for not being "in far enough."

Another example is this: we are in a time of political and social upheaval, but are largely discouraged from talking about these things in any detail at church, unless it's to shake our heads at the general wickedness of the world, and then always with vague enough statements that no one will think we're disagreeing with their personal views on how exactly the world is so wicked. But we need spiritual guidance on these very issues. And while do we do get some of that guidance, we don't get to talk about it very much.

Years ago when I taught elders quorum, I brought up President Nelson's statement that we should be proactive in eliminating racism and other such biases from our congregations. I asked how we could do that, and we had a discussion. Not long after that, the elders quorum president said people were complaining that my lessons were too political and that I should keep it to issues that are relevant to our congregation. He specifically brought up the racism topic (a topic I know was appreciated by some of the more racially diverse members of the ward, because they said so). I was literally "corrected" by my quorum president for facilitating a conversation about how we could apply a direct instruction given by the prophet in general conference the previous week. One that I had felt spiritually prompted to bring up.

Contrast this approach to that seen in New Testament books, where Paul and others repeatedly bring up the specific challenges faced by believers in localized areas and offer counsel and clarity: this is wrong, this is right. This is of God, this is of the devil. This was a necessary guard rail to make sure the early believers were not deceived, and did not fall off the spiritual bed. My quorum president also wanted that approach, but he thought the issue I chose was irrelevant, despite a direct instruction from the prophet to be proactive about it. It may have been controversial, but isn't the controversy a good reason why we should bring it up? Because we need guidance to figure it out? Isn't that why the prophet spoke about it with such directness?

This is the part of the metaphor I might call keeping the air in circulation. If we can't talk about these things safely in our congregations, where can we do it? We always talk about how we want our members to stop going to worldly or antagonistic sources of information to learn about our beliefs, but do we consider that one reason they feel compelled to do so is because we are reluctant to have hard discussions about it ourselves?

Another recent article I read (about the declining importance of religion in Americans' lives) indicated that "Black Protestants are the only Christian group in which a majority — 63% — believes that congregations should get involved in social issues even if doing so means having difficult conversations." This seems lamentable to me. Because of the historical link between Black congregations and the civil rights movement, the article says, those conversations may be more familiar to this group. But they should be available to all of us.

Personally, I think there are a number of social and political issues that lose some of their relevance when a person becomes a committed disciple of Christ, but there are others that gain importance. Questions about family life, about aggression, about how to serve the least among us, about inequality, about our stewardship of the earth: these are all of central importance to people trying to build up the kingdom of God. Not every issue needs to be framed in terms of official church doctrine, but our faith should be present and relevant in all aspects of our lives. This is especially true on a local scale. If for no other reason, these issues are important because they impact the lives of our members, including those who are trying to get further into the church, perhaps to a place where some of those things no longer seem like they have to be the major focus. They're trying to figure out how to be in fellowship with us without abandoning the teachings of Christ that they feel so deeply in their bones. Or maybe they're trying to figure out if the teachings of Christ still apply to modern life, like the people in the Southern Baptist example. We should help them with that.

If the teachings of Christ don't help us know how to live, then what are they for?

I am in no way saying that church meetings should be political fights, or that our church leaders should endorse specific candidates or tell members how to vote. I'm also not saying every lesson should be focused on this kind of issue. But the freedom to discuss these things in a loving environment in which it's okay to disagree and we all understand that we're working through the issues together with the goal of understanding how our faith can and should inform our lives is a priceless guard rail to those trying to get further in. If we keep treating those who seriously mention ideas we're uncomfortable with as though they're "going off the deep end" or succumbing to the world, how can we ever hope to keep our converts, or even our children as they grow up and inevitably encounter these things in their lives? If we ourselves haven't wrestled with these issues and come to a thoughtful, charitable, faith-based conclusion, how can we expect anything but dismissal from others who are in that process?

I'm not trying to criticize the stake leader who gave this talk. It's true that we have to make spiritual choices that no one else can make for us. But when I hear talks that criticize the spiritual choices of others, I try to ask myself what I can learn from it personally. If I'm already committed to staying in the church, then the relevance of this talk for me is about how I can help others make that same commitment. After all, Lehi says we can't choose unless we're enticed by one side or the other, and sometimes it seems like the other side is the only one doing any enticing.

No one can, or should try to, force conversion on someone else or in any way coerce a person into spiritual growth, or a specific belief. God himself doesn't save people by force, but "by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile" (D&C 121:41-42). Anything else is unrighteous dominion.

But isn't that exactly what we engage in when we casually expect our members to be fully committed to their faith, and when they struggle with that, refuse to consider that we may bear some responsibility for why they fell off the bed?

New Music: Prayer in the Nighttime

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 13:00:00 +0000

This is the second original song I've written since starting back up that part of my life over a year ago. Even though I recently published the first one, I've been working on this one passively for months, and actively for weeks. I'm not trying to start a career or a following as a musician, but music is just something I've always done. I figure it's time I preserve it, and there are those who assure me that at least some other people will like my music, so I guess it won't hurt to share.

Anyway, rather than being a revamped version of a song I wrote as a teenager, this is a totally new one, although the influences that inspired it do reach all the way back to my childhood. The story is below, but you can listen to the song and download the sheet music here.

Growing up in Utah in the 90s, I heard a lot of Afterglow songs. One of them, “A New Heart,” stuck with me. I liked how the singer in that song expresses his struggle to feel the change in his heart as he tries to become converted to Christ, and I wanted to write a song on a similar theme.

Fast forward to the fall of 2022. I’ve barely written any music for the past 20 years, though I’ve started reworking an old song of mine at my brother’s request. One night, I’m studying the Old Testament with my family, when I read this passage from Psalm 51:

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

It’s David pleading with the Lord to forgive him after going in to Bathsheba, and it practically sings itself to me. I feel the words of this and other psalms swirling together with my Afterglow influence and the chorus just pops, fully formed, into my head:

Create in me a new heart. O God above, forgive me. Teach me the way to live. Be my tower and my refuge from mine enemy.

The notes won’t stop repeating themselves. I’m afraid I’ll forget, so as soon as possible I open Garage Band and plunk it out. Awkwardly, since I don’t play piano. But eventually I figure it out.

I think about it all night. The next morning I’m singing it to myself on my commute, looking for more. At some point I get the second chorus, though I don’t know it as such at the time. I spend several more commutes singing through it in the car, my teenage daughter asleep (hopefully) in the back seat, as I search for a connective thread or anything that feels right, but nothing comes. I don’t know what the rest of this song needs to be.

Fast forward again to around May or June of 2023. I haven’t forgotten this song, and now I feel like I have time to finally work on it. So I do, and the rest of it comes readily. I start with figuring out the order of the two choruses I have. I write some verses. I realize the accompaniment shouldn’t be a piano, but a harp. I don’t know how to write for a harp, so I enlist the help of my sister-in-law, who plays that beautiful instrument. The lyrics go through revision after revision. I decide it needs a violin. I ask my poor wife to listen to endless variations of it. I share it with my brother, whose inspiring music is what got me going on songwriting again in the first place. It takes a number of weeks, but eventually it gets to where it is now:

This song tells the story of a person sincerely turning to the Lord in prayer for the first time in a while. I imagine

a dark room in the middle of the night. Everyone else in the house is asleep, but our singer’s heart is in agony,

and he can’t rest. The violin is the spirit of the Lord, prompting our protagonist to pray. The harp is his emotional resonance with the spirit: his heart’s song. It’s halting at first, and thin. Once he gets going, the spirit just listens. He confesses his unworthiness and humbles himself with awkward but sincere words of faith. He pleads for forgiveness.

As he prays, his heart resonates more fully with the spirit, and starts to change. He shifts from abject apology

and finds a desire to align his will with God’s. He wants to be led now, rather than to lead. He no longer needs to approve of or even see the destination. He trusts God to lead him aright. Throughout this, the spirit propels him, approves his words, and gives him more. As he responds to the spirit, the spirit responds in kind. And then it’s the supplicant’s turn to simply listen. The spirit takes over as the voice falls silent, speaking to him without words, straight to his heart.

Finally, the voice comes back in. Quiet. Humble. Grateful. Clean. Our supplicant now seeks only one blessing: the continued presence of the Lord. With the message received—the heart changed—the prayer ends.

New Music: Ammon's Boast

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 03:40:00 +0000

Don't remember if I've mentioned this already, but I've started writing music again over the last year and a bit. It's been coming on slowly for a long time, I think, but the catalyst was my brother, Jake telling me in no uncertain terms that if I wasn't going to rewrite a song I had written and then lost about twenty years ago, he wanted to. I decided to do it. Then I decided that if I was going to go to all that trouble, I might as well share it. What follows is a fuller version of the story. If you're interested, you can listen to it and download the sheet music here.

There are a lot of things I don’t remember. One of those things is whether I originally wrote this song just before or just after my mission, but it was definitely around that time. Another one is whether or not we ever sang it in public. I really should remember both of those, but for some reason I don’t. All I know is that I wanted to sing it in church with my brothers, and I can’t remember now if we ever did.

Here’s the story: my older brother left on his mission about 18 months before I did, and my younger brother left about 6 months before I got home. That means there were approximately five years between the time the first

of us left and the time we were all reunited again. I wrote this song looking forward to that reunion. Our service stretched from the late 1990s until the early 2000s, when contact between missionaries and their families was limited to physical letters plus two phone calls a year, so it felt like we would be on different planets until we all got home again (instead it was merely different continents).

To my young mind, the parallels to the Book of Mormon account of the sons of Mosiah were pretty easy to see. We were brothers, leaving their homes to serve the Lord at more or less the same time, and it would be a while before we all came together again, at which point we’d no doubt have lots of stories to tell and much rejoicing to do. Never mind the fact that Mosiah’s sons served eight years longer individually than we did put together. Mosiah also had four sons, not three, but I also have a third brother, so that one’s not as different. His mission didn’t overlap ours in the same way, though. That’s it’s own story, and maybe the subject of another song someday.

I remember looking forward with great anticipation to the moment all of us would be together after our missions, and wanting to write a song about it using the language of Ammon.

So I did that. And then I lost it. It was a combination of my computer dying, back when online backups were rare and storage media changed frequently (remember minidiscs?) and me not ever being very good at keeping track of papers.

Some 20 years later, my older brother, Jake, said to me something like “Remember that song you wrote about the sons of Mosiah? You need to write it again, or else let me do it, because people need to hear it.” I hadn’t written much music for a couple decades, but it had been on my mind, and that was all the prompting I needed. This is the updated and, in my opinion, much improved version of the song, which I never regarded as finished anyway. It’s a lot harder to get together wih my brothers these days, but maybe we’ll still get to sing it sometime.

About the music:

In the scriptures, Ammon starts talking to his brothers about all the things they’ve gone through for the Lord, how blessed they’ve been, and the abundant fruits of their labors as evidenced by the love of the Lamanite converts. His brother Aaron scolds him gently, saying his joy is carrying him away into boastfulness. Ammon responds that he’s boasting only of the Lord, rather than of himself, and that he has no intention of stopping such a boast, because nobody could praise the Lord too much. So that’s where the title comes from.

All of this happens as the sons of Mosiah are on their return journey, so I’ve tried in the accompaniment to give a sense of constant motion. I imagine the undercurrent of eighth notes as the brothers’ footsteps. As they walk they take turns rejoicing in the Lord, and the piano reflects both their physical journey home and the spiritual walk they’ve been on over the past few years. You can hear the places where their pace is disrupted by the memory of their trials, or where they stop and turn to each other to celebrate a particularly sweet blessing.

The voices are each meant to be one of Mosiah’s sons, necessarily including Ammon, but you can take your pick for the other two. Maybe go for Himni. He doesn’t get a lot of attention. Apologies to Muloki and Ammah, but they don’t really fit the paradigm of this piece. I hope you enjoy it.

Think For Yourself

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Thu, 25 May 2023 19:26:00 +0000

This morning on my commute I passed a truck that had this slogan cut into a steel ladder attached to the bed: "No God. No Master. Think for yourself." I don't have a picture, because I was driving. I guess this is a somewhat common saying among atheists.

But it also suggested a question: where do you draw the line? At some point, presumably, you have to take someone's word for something, or be willing to learn from a professor, mentor, teacher, or someone who has more experience or knowledge than you do (what you might call a "master"). You can hardly expect everyone to independently rebuild the entirety of human knowledge from scratch. At least, not if you want humanity to move forward. The more advanced we get, the more we rely on the masters of the past: the more we have to just take their hard work and discoveries as assumptions to base our work on. It's not that they can never be questioned, but there's always a baseline level of belief in those who lay the foundation for you. For instance, you don't need to question fundamental math, but you do need someone to teach it to you. Or take physics. The discoveries of Galileo, Newton, and others aren't perfect, but we learn them for a reason, and few people feel the need to recreate the great experiments of the past before they will trust what we learned from those experiments. And once you do start to see where those laws break down, it doesn't mean you need to hold Newton or Galileo in contempt. They're still the same geniuses—still the masters—but because we believed them them we can learn more than they were able to in their time.

This is much like believing a trusted person who has faith in God and tells you the reasons for that faith, or who teaches you moral or religious principles. It may not be in the same realm of knowledge, but the implicit trust in the teacher is the same, as is the ability to build on what you've learned through independent experience, study, and seeking. So I guess atheists who use this slogan must be making frequent pilgrimages to the leaning tower of Pisa with assorted spheres in order to retain their intellectual integrity, or something.

Also, doesn't including "No God" in the slogan also imply that if you think for yourself you will necessarily come to a certain conclusion (namely, that there is no God)? But if you really wanted people to think for themselves, you would gladly allow them to take any position on God's existence, including the believing one. After all, thinking for yourself means you don't automatically accept the conclusions of others, but instead come to your own, whether they're the same or not. And some of the great scientists who made the astounding discoveries we base our understanding of the universe on were theists, and their discoveries didn't undo their beliefs. They may have even reinforced those beliefs. What if thinking for themselves leads a person to believe in God? It would be far from the first time that happened, though I wonder if the guy driving that truck would be happy to admit it.

To me, "No God. No Master. Think for yourself" has the same energy as when online conspiracy theorists say "do your own research" instead of relying on the news (not that any one news source is always right). Often, the only "research" they do is listening to different pundits or different news outlets than the ones they consider to be mainstream. So what they really mean is "buy the lines I buy instead of the ones you buy." Or to put it differently: "I don't like what you say, so you're wrong."

That's fine, we can disagree. Many religious people like myself hold allowing others their own ideas to be a tenet of their faith, though it doesn't require us to stop share our own. But the argument that faith is an unthinking position and that "free" thinking or empirical learning destroys religious faith is tired and obviously false. Talk to the proponents of that idea, and once you start probing how much of their "own research" or how much thinking for themselves they've actually done, it quickly becomes clear that in many cases the answer is unsurprisingly little. Instead, their position is based more on emotion and biases than on any careful intellectual work.

To be fair, that same thing is true of most people. Most of us base a lot of our daily mental work on how we feel or what we unthinkingly assume. We often use our experiences as pieces of our personal compass, and take it for granted that the lessons we learn should apply equally to everyone. We decide things based on incomplete evidence or partial information. It's hard to criticize that. To demand that we do differently all the time would be impractical. No one could do it in every part of life, and to do it well in any part is a lifelong endeavor: one we should be engaged in about the most important things, by the way. But it certainly doesn't require that we reject notions of God out of hand, or refuse the help of the masters who came before us. Instead, we all need to decide where to put our trust, and how to build from there.

Something A Little Gursky Going On

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 03:52:00 +0000

Captured this shot of my daughter taking a break during a theatre competition this week.

It wasn't until afterward that I noticed it bears a kind of resemblance to this famous image by Andreas Gursky, if Gursky's had a lounging thespian in the middle of it, or if mine had sold for millions of dollars.

It's not that similar, I guess, but enough that I thought of it while I was editing. Whatever, it made me smile.

Color Stereographs From Our Anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 17:23:00 +0000

One of the things Noel and I did for our 20th anniversary was go on a little photo expedition. She wants to learn photography, and I'm occupationally inclined to help her with that. Anyway, we had a lovely time in which she started learning the basics of a digital camera, and I experimented with color stereography. This was only the second time I've shot stereographs on color film, but at the time I still hadn't gotten the other roll developed, so it was effectively still the first.

I shot these with the Kodak Stereo Camera on CineStill 400D film. If you're unfamiliar, CineStill takes motion picture cinematography film and makes it usable in still photography cameras. I...am a little in love with the way it renders colors, and I think with a little practice I can get it to do even better. These are digitally edited a bit, but only to make the two sides match more closely. I've noticed some discrepancies between the two lenses on my stereo camera, and it's hard to get a perfect match, especially when my scanner isn't always consistent with colors either. But these are pretty close, and I don't think the slight differences interfere with the stereo viewing experience.

Anyway, here are a few of the shots from that day: If you happen to have a stereoscope, you can view these by zooming your browser in (ctrl + or cmd +) and looking through the scope at the right distance from the screen. It works fine, but it might be a little pixellated. The originals don't have that problem, fortunately.

This might look plain, but through a stereoscope it has incredible depth. Also, I think this the first time I've tried a stereograph with a lens flare. Didn't know if it would be a problem or not, but it worked out. This is at Farmington Station, where we were about to have dinner. We learned by experience that we needed a press pass even for casual photography there, but getting one was free, and no trouble.

Another one that jumps out at you when viewed properly. Also, I love these eagles. This is from Gilgal Sculpture Garden in Salt Lake City, which everyone should visit at least once.

Yahaha! You found me! This little guy was sitting in the front seat of our car. We decided to take him home for the kids. He didn't give us any seeds, though.

Also from Gilgal. This is a depiction of Nebuchadnezzar's dream from Daniel 2, in case that wasn't obvious. Lots of Old Testament inspired work at Gilgal.

A Few New Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 19:50:00 +0000

I went out shooting with my class this week on 25th Street in Ogden. Here are a few shots from that trip. I was shooting with my Sony a6000 and a classic Helios 44-2 lens.

How would you feel if Marilyn Monroe, Bernie Sanders, and Santa Claus were all watching you from the second story window?

Jake from State Farm trying to cut through the hustle and bustle to grab your attention.

Just a guy taking a break on the corner.

Not sure which group is The Beatles.

I've photographed this gate probably a dozen times. I don't know why, but it always grabs my eye.

Our News Scripts Are Getting Intense

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 15:45:00 +0000

Since about November I've been running a daily news broadcast at my school. It's something I've wanted to do for almost ten years, but the first time I tried there just wasn't the interest among students to do it. Also we didn't really have the infrastructure for it, and it just died before it could get off the ground.

Immediately after the Covid shutdown, however, the school was half in-person and half virtual, and administration was willing to invest a bit in live-streaming technology. We couldn't have assemblies with the full student body, so we would stage them in the theatre and my film classes would do three-camera broadcasts of them to the rest of the school. We also did most concerts and performances this way, because we weren't allowed to have a live audience. One long-term thing that came out of this was that we now had enough equipment (between the school and my personal gear) to do a competent looking news broadcast.

So this year I pitched the idea that we could do the morning announcements as a student news broadcast instead of over the PA speakers, and everyone was on board, including the kids this time. I put together a small news set on one side of my classroom, using curtains at first, then pieces of old theatre sets (sometimes teaching film, photography, and stage crew has its perks, since I didn't have to ask anyone if I could use their stuff). Here's what it looks like now:

We only have one camera that we can dedicate to this full time, but they let me buy a teleprompter and we already had a live streaming switcher from the Covid stuff. It's not really a proper studio—the control table almost touches the news desk and there's nothing like controlled sound—but it works. We've been having a great time, and it's truly one of the highlights of most days. We've even got an interview show in the works that we're shooting for the first time next week.

The kids do most of the work here. They're the talent, they run the broadcast, they design some of the graphics, and they do a lot of the planning. I do the work of collecting and organizing the content of the announcements and writing the scripts, and I design the rest of the graphics. We also send out a daily email that has a link to each day's broadcast and a newsletter version of that day's announcement.

Today as I was watching the kids do the broadcast, it struck me just how complex some of our scripts have gotten, and just how challenging some of this material I was asking them to handle was. We have an intro segment followed by the pledge, then we feature a special celebration going on that day and use it as a framing device that we reference (sincerely or humorously as appropriate) throughout the rest of the broadcast. For example, today's was National Napping Day, which is a real thing.

After that, we transition to a This Day in History segment, where we present two or three historical events from credible sources, and end by relating one of them to our own times, usually with a joke, but always with sincerity. Then we move on to current announcements, which vary a lot based on what's happening, but we vary their presentation each day so they don't become too repetitive, and we try to make them flow well while also ordering them so the most urgent ones seem the most important.

We have scrolling text that supports our spoken words. We feature birthdays and student artwork. One of our recurring announcements is formatted as a new haiku every day. Sometimes we run student-made ads. Most days we have over a dozen separate graphical elements (today there were 17). And we end it all with a consistent but not always identical sign off that ties back in the framing device from the beginning (today, the kids fell asleep immediately after signing off).

In other words, it's a lot. These kids range from 7th to 11th graders, and they are doing a fantastic job with what has become a really nuanced and challenging daily production. I sometimes forget how young they are and just how much I'm asking of them, but they always rise to it. Sure, they make mistakes, but they are committed, and on the whole are engaging on screen. They get far more right than they do wrong, and when they do get it wrong, they usually catch it and correct themselves.

I guess what I'm saying is I'm just really proud of them, and happy that this thing I've wanted to do for about a decade has gotten off to such a strong start.

The Elements of Art Are Always Present

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 06:32:00 +0000

There are a lot of ways to talk about art from a structural perspective, but one common way is to break it down into its fundamental elements and analyze how they are used. Again, there are different paradigms for what this means, but here's a list of seven elements frequently considered the basic building blocks of art.

Line
Shape
Form
Space
Color
Value
Texture

You might have a different list you like to discuss, but these seven elements can be used to describe basically everything a work of art is doing. They are always present in visual arts, and I would say even in other, non-visual art forms too, though you may have to reinterpret the terms to notice. For instance, in music, patterns of sound and silence serve a similar function to space in visual art. Tempo or even pitch might be analogous to line, and so on. But that's a topic for another time.

For some reason, I hear and read people talking about these elements as if they were a toolbox to choose from, rather than the inescapable, atomic substance of a work (I recently read an article about these elements that was just the worst, and it's a common misunderstanding students have). Someone might see a shapeless abstract painting and say it doesn't use the principle of line, simply because they perceive no obvious literal lines in the painting. Or perhaps a 2D graphic design with no attempt at shading doesn't use form because it has no realistic depth. And yet, the choice not to include clear lines is a use of line. Not to mention the edges of the painting, which must exist somewhere. The 2D graphic design uses form, it simply chooses a flat form. When a pool is empty, we could say it has a depth of zero, but that is still a description of its depth.

Speaking of depth, and this may be more understandable to some people, I see the same thing with depth of field in photography all the time. People will see a photo with an extremely blurry background and a very narrow focus and comment on the great depth of field. But they will see a photo with everything in focus and say it has no depth of field. From a technical perspective, this isn't just off, it's the opposite of what's happening. The picture with everything in focus has much greater depth of field than the first photo—that's why everything is in focus. That's literally what the term means. The one with the narrow focus has very little depth. But the point is that depth of field is a property that all photos have, regardless of the degree to which they have it.

It's the same way length is a property of all pieces of string, even though some of them have a lot and some have a little. If there's no length, there's no string. If there's no DoF, there's no photo. And if any of the aforementioned elements of art are not present, then neither is the art itself. A black and white drawing uses color by leaving it out. A smooth surface has just as much texture as a rough one. A painting of a solid color uses space by filling all of it. An unrecognizable mass has a shape, even if we refer to it as shapeless because it's not a pre-defined one.

These things are elemental. They are structural. They are not always used intentionally. They aren't alway a focus of any given work, and it's not always important or helpful to discuss each one of them, but they are always there. They are a part of what you see. They are what you see.

Eating Flesh and Drinking Blood: Hearing Jesus While Creating Sweeney Todd

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:06:00 +0000

My school is opening our production of Sweeney Todd tonight. It's a show I've struggled with since I first saw it a few years ago. On the one hand, it's horrible, grotesque, violent, and dark. On the other hand, it is all of those things in service of a compelling story with a theme that I truly believe in.

If you're unfamiliar, Sweeney Todd tells the story of a barber named Benjamin Barker who returns to London after escaping an unjust imprisonment overseas. This is during the Victorian era, when transporting criminals out of the country was common enough practice in the British empire. Having been saved from a shipwreck, Barker adopts the name Sweeney Todd and, since it's been 15 years, hopes to find his wife, Lucy, and now teenaged daughter, Johanna, and reestablish his life.

He is almost immediately recognized, however, by a pie shop owner, Mrs. Lovett, who was secretly in love with him before his troubles began, and who kept his barbering tools all these years as a keepsake of her obsession. She explains that Judge Turpin, who condemned Benjamin Barker, did so to get him out of the way, in order to woo Lucy. When Lucy resisted him, he lured her into a vulnerable position and had his way with her. Depending on how the production is staged, this is either an implied sexual assault or an overt rape. Regardless, it's clear the judge is a very, very bad man.

As Mrs. Lovett tells the story, Lucy then fell into despair and eventually poisoned herself. As for Johanna, the judge adopted her, presumably out of guilt for destroying both her parents, and raised her as his ward.

Believing that his family is now out of reach, Sweeney swears vengeance on Judge Turpin and his accomplice, Beadle Bamford. Mrs. Lovett returns Sweeney's razors to him and he sets up a barber shop in an empty room above her pie shop. There he looks for opportunities to lure the judge and the beadle into his shop and do away with them.

Various events conspire to repeatedly raise Sweeney's hopes and then dash them. He is recognized by a rival barber who tries to blackmail him. Anthony, the sailor who rescued Sweeney, meets and falls in love with Johanna, then enlists Sweeney's help in a plot to get her away from the judge, who has decided to marry Johanna in order to protect her "from the evils of the world" (Anthony doesn't know Johanna is Sweeney's daughter). Sweeney's first (and in his view, only) opportunity to kill the judge fails when Anthony bursts in, which also foils the rescue plot. Mrs. Lovett seems to vacillate between supporting Sweeney and delaying his desire for vengeance (she is still smitten with him and, like everyone else in this show, is only working her own angle). There is a filthy old beggar woman who keeps turning up at inconvenient moments, and Tobias, the young boy who worked for the rival barber develops a juvenile crush on Mrs. Lovett, which gets in the way.

By the end of act 1, Sweeney has been so bruised by the violence and abuse of others that he breaks. He has already succumbed to violence when he killed his would-be blackmailer. He seems to feel no remorse for this, but it presents him with a problem: what to do with the body. Mrs. Lovett proposes a novel solution, which is of course what the show is best known for. There's a meat shortage, you see, and hers have hitherto been the worst pies in London. Sweeney has never behaved scrupulously, but now he embraces violence as a basic fact of human history. He sings:

What's the sound of the world out there?
Those crunching noises pervading the air!
It's man devouring man, my dear!
And who are we to deny it in here?

And then later:

The history of the world, my love —
Is those below serving those up above!
How gratifying for once to know
That those above will serve those down below!

Mr. Todd has become the embodiment of injustice: the avatar of the casual violence of humanity towards itself. His and Mrs. Lovett's actions are shocking, unconscionable, but they provide cheap, hot, delicious food for the masses. Business booms for Mrs. Lovett, and Todd misses his family less and less with the passing of each murderous day. But his peace is due more to a deadening of his emotions than any true healing, and the stench of Mrs. Lovett's ovens at night troubles the city. The people don't know they're feeding on each other, but as far as anyone can tell, they also don't care to know.

In the end [spoilers], Todd gets his revenge, but in taking it he destroys what he had most hoped to regain. You see, Lucy was still alive, as Mrs. Lovett well knew, but Sweeney doesn't learn it until after Lucy has died by his hand. He then tosses Mrs. Lovett into her own oven before allowing a now insane Tobias to execute him with his own razor. Anthony, Johanna, and Tobias survive, but none of them comes through untouched by the events.

Perhaps you see what I mean. It's awful, but only as a mirror of some truly awful realities that exist in our own world. The play seeks to open our eyes to the casual violence (personal, cultural, systemic), that haunts our daily lives. Far from celebrating Sweeney, it warns us against the perils of taking judgment and vengeance into our own hands. But it equally warns us about the danger of considering ourselves too righteous, or of ignoring our complicity in the violence of the systems around which our everyday lives are structured. It condemns the hypocrisy of the rich demanding service from the poor instead of abasing themselves in service to the poor. It shows the folly of pretending to moral correctness while participating thoughtlessly in a society that allows such injustices to persist, and demonstrates the way our own abuses of others come back to destroy us, and also those around us.

So this is the show that I've been immersed in bringing to life for the past few months, and deeply for the past few weeks. And this is the context in which I heard these words this morning:

I am that bread of life.
Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. (John 6:48-58)

Shocking. Violent? Difficult. A reversal of everything in the show, but thematically consistent, as though Sweeney himself had become the first and only filling of Mrs. Lovett's pies, which brought not horror but redemption, and an end to cruelty instead of its perpetuation. It's an opposite but parallel proposition. We eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God in order to end violence and injustice, though his violent suffering for our wrongdoing seems the ultimate injustice. To do so is troubling—not easy to comprehend or accomplish. The disciples of Jesus' time reacted understandably. They said, "This is an hard saying; who can hear it?"

Who indeed? But, I think Sweeney is helping me hear it with new ears.

Morning Thoughts: So Much Money, So Little Reason

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 13:41:00 +0000

I'm about as far as possible from being the first person to observe this, but this morning (and last night), I've been thinking about just how much money there is floating around in this world, and how frivolous many of its uses are. How much good could be done if it were distributed more equally. How much suffering averted or cured, how much goodness brought to pass. How much cultural enrichment added, how much spiritual and physical safety provided, how much hope offered.

Not that I'm an expert, but I studied business and economics in college. I've paid attention to the world since then. I understand some of the systems that control this sort of thing. What I don't see is any good reason why those systems should be as they are. Plenty of bad reasons, but no good ones.

Sometimes I fall into the trap of wanting money so I can make lots of charitable donations and help with people's problems, but that's really a selfish desire. I want it because it would make me feel good about helping, and also because of other people. What I truly want, or what I think I should want more fully, is for everyone to have enough, so those problems don't exist in the first place, without having to be the source of that help myself.

I'm not a self-reliance nut. I think we desperately need to be interdependent. But there are lots of ways we would still need to rely on each other, even if we all had our monetary needs met. We have other needs that money can't fully address. More important needs. I wish that financial security was the norm. The baseline, so we didn't have to worry about these simple questions of physical safety and survival, or of having the resources to make the great contributions that lie within each of us. Then we could use that security as the foundation it should be, and build better things from there.

Ye Shall Teach Them to Abhor Such Wickedness: Discussing the Topic of Evil in a Latter-day Saint Context, Part 1: Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 23:02:00 +0000

What is evil, and how should we talk about it at church and at home?

I’ve been thinking about it a lot. In my youth, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it seems that every few years there was a change in how lessons on the topic of evil were presented. Sometimes, we were warned not to think about it too much. Our leaders seemed worried that we would spend our time dwelling on evil, making it easier for us to be seduced by it. We were often quoted these words from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man:

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,1
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”2

We would be cautioned against the very appearance of evil in our actions, and especially in “the media.” There was a common parable told, the truthfulness of which I’ve never verified, about how agents or officers in training to recognize counterfeit money would not be taught about all the ways the currency could be faked, but instead tirelessly studied every detail of authentic coins and bills so that they would recognize even the slightest deviation from the true pattern. The application was obvious. If we filled our lives with goodness, meticulously coming to know the truth of God in every way, we would be able to recognize when we encountered one of Satan’s deceptions, and thus avoid the pitfall.

And then, for whatever reason, we would make almost a complete pivot into a Sun Tzu like phase where we would receive very serious presentations soaked in militaristic language about the importance of understanding the tactics of the enemy in order to avoid his traps and counteract his strategies.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”3

These words from The Art of War may or may not have been directly quoted, but their essence was felt. I say almost a complete pivot because I doubt we were ever fully told to become acquainted with the devil, but we were definitely taught how essential it was to familiarize ourselves with the way he worked. Then we were to clothe ourselves in the armor of God and go forth to battle.

After this, the pattern would repeat, and we’d go back and forth between the two approaches. I’m not trying to be critical of this. The subject of evil is a tricky one to approach. For one thing, while we all agree that evil is bad (truly the hottest of takes, I know) there’s a lot of disagreement about what it actually entails. Things that seem to be obvious evils to some, others will tout as unqualified good, and if you try to bring the scriptures into it, be prepared to have others flung right back at you, sometimes even the selfsame verses, interpreted in unexpected ways. It’s enough to make one despair of ever being able to tell good from evil. Brother Joseph, famously, could relate.

Secondly, each of the approaches I’ve described has weaknesses that are at least somewhat complemented by the strengths of the other. The “know it when you see it” approach has the obvious requirement to be directed at an actually perfect source. For example, existing customs, cultural assumptions, or institutional practices can go unquestioned if they form the basis of the “true pattern” one is supposed to come to know. In other words, it must be directly God that we strive to know, and not any intermediary, be it prophet, church, or body of published work, because all of these can be corrupted by human imperfection. Even with the correct target, any knowledge we do gain is filtered through our human understanding, and is therefore still likely to be imperfect. By showing us some diabolical devices, the Sun Tzu approach helps to fill in gaps that may exist in our aspirations to righteousness. The counterfeit approach also ignores the fact that many significant sections of scripture seem designed to focus our thinking directly on the specific threats and evil tactics we may face, while others lay bare the evil actions of those who are corrupted or deceived, sometimes as part of the rewards of their evil, and also presumably so we can be watchful for those same evils in our world. We are clearly meant to heed these warnings and be watchful, and not just ignore potential evils until they jump up to bite us. Imagine if medical training consisted entirely of studying idealized human physiology, or if social studies education ignored the failings of the past and just focused on the the times and issues societies got right (oh, wait).

On the other hand, despite its strengths, the Sun Tzu approach risks going too far, both in spirit and in application. In spirit, it can make us overly militant or else overwhelm us with a sense that everything around us is a threat. I don't love clothing the gospel in the rhetoric of violence, nor do I think Christ's teachings often take a combative stance by nature, and never against other children of God. For application, I’m thinking of two examples. First, the secret combinations in the Book of Mormon that Helaman was commanded not to reveal the details of, but very much to reveal the fruits of, as a warning of what could come if the people walked in wicked ways. The Lord didn’t want to provide a manual on how to sin, but He did want to show us what to be wary of, and what specifically to avoid. The first part of that impulse (to avoid presenting a manual for would-be sinners) is also part of the rationale behind the motion picture production code of the 1930s, as it has been of many censorship efforts, but the result then was a cinema of missed opportunities. One that could make you feel good, but was limited in its ability to address serious problems, or reach those in the throes of certain kinds of despair. Alma’s more holistic commandment to Helaman avoids some of that, and so we see that the study of virtue and the study of vicious tactics and consequences are handy complements to each other.

Both approaches, however, can lead to intolerance and even cruelty if handled carelessly. The latter approach, by an incorrect designation of the enemy, and the former by suggesting that the uncomfortable feelings we may experience in the presence of those with different beliefs or lifestyles is sufficient grounds for withholding our friendship, charity, or support. Both of these impulses can also translate into feelings of superiority, which leads to even more pitfalls, so obvious that I need not list them here.

So how are we to approach the subject of evil? That’s what I’m hoping to explore in this series of posts here, not by prescribing a formula, but by attempting to work through some problems and questions on the topic myself. First up, I want to ask what we even mean by “evil.” What do the scriptures mean when they use that term, and is it the same as the common, modern usage? Next, I’ll ask where evil comes from. Can all evil be ascribed to Satan personally, or are there a variety of sources? If so, what are they? Finally, with our hopefully improved understanding in hand, I want to consider several defenses against evil, and explore some practical ways of putting them into action. In doing this, I don’t expect to contemplate specific evils in any depth, though I’m sure I’ll use examples. Instead, I’m going to move from abstract and theoretical to concrete and practical, focusing on better understanding the problem of evil (not in the philosophical sense), and encouraging a better life, more full of the virtuous, the praiseworthy, and the good.

1 I want to acknowledge the apparent bias inherent in the use of the female pronoun for vice here. Before I looked up the exact text of the quote, I had remembered the pronoun "its" in this position. I don't really know which way my leaders quoted it to me in my youth, but as far as I can tell, in his poem, Pope uses female pronouns for all of the virtues, vices, and other influences, while male pronouns are reserved for humanity and maybe for God (though I'm not sure of that last). I haven't done an extensive audit of this, but a brief search seems to indicate this as a consistent practice throughout the text.

2 I have not read all of Pope's Essay, but I have read Epistle II, from which the selection above is taken. It's a long, often satirical, sometimes straightforward, and intentionally provocative piece about dualities in human nature, both harmonious and contradictory, and how inextricably interwoven they are. Perhaps the overall statement of the epistle is that God is wise, man is foolish, and we should keep our studies to the realm of which we are a part. Pope discusses self-love and reason as opposing, balancing forces in human nature, then makes a similar claim about virtue and vice. The quoted lines come from a section in which he discusses how virtue and vice blend together confusingly. We each must behave in virtuous and vicious ways, he says, but imperfectly in both cases, because the processing of these forces through the human self results in neither perfect good nor perfect evil. In any case, according to Pope, we can't seem to agree on where the extremities of vice lie, but always seem to be able to point to someone who is worse than we are. He also argues that each vice has a complementary virtue that it makes us more receptive to, even as it precludes us from possessing its opposite. All in all, the piece has some delightful gems, but I'm not sure it's any wiser than the wretched subjects of Pope's scrutiny, nor am I sure it's intended to be.

3 In case you're wondering, yes, I have also read The Art of War, but I'm not about to give it a summary in the footnotes. I assume this quote is straightforward enough to stand on its own in this context.

Unexpected Forms of the Holy Spirit

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 14:39:00 +0000

Most of the time the Spirit is depicted as a dove, but apparently a seagull can have the same effect.

I was shooting with my photography class on the roof of the school parking garage, and some seagulls were flying around, eating things people had left behind from lunch. My camera was not well suited to photographing small, distant, moving subjects, but I thought, "why not try?" Last night as I was scanning my negatives, I saw this photo and immediately thought of Matthew 3:

"And lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon Jesus."

I guess "like a dove" doesn't require that it actually be a dove.

Shot with a Kodak Stereo Camera on Ilford HP5 Plus in Ogden, UT. This photo is one half of a stereo pair.

So I Finally Destroyed Those Candles

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 16:25:00 +0000

I've been wanting to do it for weeks. I've had the place prepared for them, but I didn't yet have the candles to destroy or the necessary parts to rebuild them with.

You see, I needed to put some candles on a set, but they needed to be integrated with our DMX system. And they needed to dimmable. And not a fire hazard. And decent looking. It's been on my list forever, and I finally did it.

I bought a couple of LED candles and tore out the guts. Then I carved a hole in the top and mounted a candelabra socket in the bottom. I wired them with a plug and found some candle shaped dimmable LED lamps. That was about it. It wasn't a big project, but it was a fun one. Now I have two nice bright candles that look pretty good and can be controlled in sync with all the other lighting. About time.

A Little Too Normal

noreply@blogger.com (Adam K. K. Figueira) — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 16:07:00 +0000

In the past month or so, as everyone seems to be dropping the last of their pandemic restrictions and reports about the ongoing impacts are seen less and less frequently, I've noticed something at school: people coming in who are clearly sick.

I don't know if I'm just more sensitive to it now, but it seems to me that I've witnessed a truly shocking number of students sitting in class or walking the halls while dripping from the nose, hacking up a lung, or wheezing through congested airways. I've seen it in teachers too. There seems to be no expectation that kids (or adults) stay home when sick anymore. I guess everyone figures we've done enough of that? Instead, the expectation seems to be that you come in even when sick, unless you're incapacitated or dying. That's what commitment to your education looks like. That's a mark of loyalty to your employer and the students you serve.

So, congratulations, everyone. I guess we're back to normal.