Life, Death, and the Rest

Men's take on evolution

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 11:04:00 -0800

I remember a children's book by Aleksandr Men' (the Russian Orthodox equivalent of CS Lewis, see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1879038285/qid=1142707373/sr=1-8/ref=sr_1_8/102-2638075-6464167?s=books&v=glance&n=283155). It was a description of Adam and Eve and the creation of the Garden/the Fall. In Men's story, Adam was the first one to receive Ruakh, the divine breath of life or the sensitive humanizing spirit. He and Eve were cast out of the blissful peace of ignorance, which became in retrospect a dark world only when they realized the higher life of the human soul. The idea of different kinds of spirits activating different degrees of life has a long history in neoplatonism and is not all that revolutionary from Men's perspective.

This was one very pleasant way to combine evolution and God, and it's one that, while not perfect for the traditional LDS, emphasizes Atonement as the answer to spiritual death. This also establishes a parallel between Adam and Jesus that otherwise might be overlooked. Both were born less than they actually were: their physical bodies were no match for the vast spirit which inhabited them.

To borrow polemic jargon, in Men's apparent view, Adam was the first ape with a human soul. Extending points already made on this list, one could argue that the actual onset of death refers to the death of a human soul, ie the potential for that soul to be separated from God, whether terminally or transiently.

My reading of Joseph Smith suggests to me that he personally believed in a mixture that was closer to the religious right than the religious left on this question, but these questions were not really posed directly to him in his lifetime. He was emphatic about the integrity of the (im)mortal body, and I suspect that changes in species would have been heretical to his ear. I say this not to attempt to limit discussion but in the interests of full disclosure.

Men's view also seems consistent with the idea of God as organizer rather than creator which does pervade early and contemporary Mormonism. Evolution can be seen as God's mode for creating a vessel for the eternal intelligences which are his by pneumogenetic association (I'm hinting at a genealogy of spirits as distinct from a genealogy of flesh, and there aren't standard words for it, so pneumogenetic is my stab at capturing this idea of relationship). The death that matters is the death of the soul.

On a vaguely medical note, the current human body is not remotely consistent with the lack of death. The daily turnover of cells in the body is immense, and those cells which refuse to die have a special and frightening name: cancer. Now one can certainly maintain that prior to the Fall the human body had no turnover whatsoever and it was COMPLETELY transformed at the moment of the Fall. But that would emphasize the inability of the body to adapt, progress, and grow rather than the potential to progress eternally. Which may be the truth behind the Fall, this tension between the perpetual stagnation of the immortal, and the anxious rush of growth of the frightened mortal. Elijah (in some Jewish traditions), the Wandering Jew, and the Flying Dutchman are all examples of the tragic immortal, while our beloved vampires are more familiar and a bit less immortal (those pesky skewers and sunbeams).

Necromancy and Family History

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:14:00 -0800

While writing an abstract for a conference, it has occurred to me that the Zelph encounter was an act of necromancy. Joseph Smith took a man's skeleton and revealed some secret insight that was previously unavailable. And what was the content of this necromantic revelation? It was Zelph's genealogy. Whence we spring mattered intensely and mystically to Joseph Smith.

Brieview: Leventhal, The Shadow of the Enlightenment

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 7 Feb 2006 17:38:00 -0800

In the Shadow of the Enlightenment: Occultism and Renaissance Science in Eighteenth-Century America
Herbert Leventhal
New York University Press 1976.
Out of print and expensive/rare

I had to check my copy out of the library rather than picking up a used copy on alibris.com. This is considered the definitive treatment of occultism and parascientific American belief in the eighteenth century. I was very impressed with the coverage and insight. The book is also quite readable. I would buy it if it were reissued.

Leventhal attempts to map the spread and persistence of Renaissance scientific and parascientific beliefs as well as the occult in the British colonies. Astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, rattlesnake charming (the belief that rattlesnakes and blacksnakes had the power to bewitch prey with their eyes, probably derivative from Native American beliefs about certain potent snakes), the Great Chain of Being are all carefully reviewed.

Tidbits of relevance for Mormons might include a quotation on the Chain of Being (the idea that just as humans are greater than animals, plants, and minerals on earth, there is a similar hierarchy of intelligences above humans) from early Ben Franklin:

“It may be that these created Gods, are immortal, or it may be that after many Ages, they are changed, and Others supply their Places. Howbeit, I conceive that each of these is exceedingly wise, and good, and very powerful; and that Each has made for himself one glorious Sun, attended with a beautiful and admirable System of Planets.”

Ditto Ezra Stiles's reference to a vast chain of "intelligences."

Otherwise I think the book is fascinating history, but beyond establishing a cultural milieu into which Joseph Smith was born, the book is not of primary interest to Latter-day Saints.

Firefly Season 2: I couldn't resist

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:49:00 -0800

http://www.fireflyseason2.com/

I would love to see another season made and am eager to see whether novel funding mechanisms will make it possible to see them.

Brieview: David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 18:22:00 -0800

Gregory Prince with Richard Wright
U of Utah Press 2005

I decided to take a break from my research and read a much touted biography of a church president about whom I knew relatively little. I'll be brief.

I enjoyed the picture of McKay as a peacemaker and someone whose focus on loyalty and the integrity of his word was paramount. He was very much a gentleman in the old sense of the word. I was heartened by his openness to private beliefs and his interest in souls rather than politics. The approach the authors took was somewhat scrapbookish, necessitated by their research approach which was unfortunately less synthetic than might have been hoped. Their approach also led to occasional repetition and duplication.

Much of the treatment of Wilkinson's BYU and Benson's political activity is familiar material from other venues and adds little to the subjects beyond giving a sense for the complexity of interacting with a charismatic leader in the sense of a burgeoning organizational infrastructure required for an enlarging church.

Overall I was left with the sense that McKay was the most like Joseph Smith Jr. of his successors. I speak particularly to charisma, the focus on personal loyalty, a vast enthusiasm for projects he saw as building the Kingdom, and the complex relationships that surrounded him as a result of his strong emphasis on defining friends and maintaining perfect loyalty to those friends. I was a little surprised by the lack of comment in the introduction or epilogue about these similarities.

And I should note that I felt immensely inspired by McKay, by his incredible love for people and his great elegance. I loved the sense that he touched personal lives significantly by his persistent kindness.

Brieview: Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 12:02:00 -0800

2d ed., 1991.
Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington
Cambridge University Press

Read the book some months ago, but just finished extracting research notes from it, so there are a few elements that have become slightly hazy with the passage of time, but for what it's worth, this is what I remember of it.

The introduction to the second edition is a long and rather tedious academic debate with the critics of the first edition. I would probably just skip it, although there is some introductory material of use to the student there. From this starting point, they present a reasonable survey of funerary and mortuary ritual, with a focus on the societies they know best in Southeast Asia. They are particularly interested in secondary treatment, those rituals that relate to disinterment of decomposed remains, but they run the full gamut.

The pieces I found most interesting were the discussions of what they call collective immortality (I call it genealogic immortality, emphasing the fan of connections through generations rather than just the coherence of a synchronic society), the complex of rites and propitiations required to enlist the aid of the powerful dead for the newly dead, thus providing guides to the world of the dead, and of course ideas about decomposition and final states.

There are some similarities to Mormon rites that, while not taxonomic by any stretch, are pleasant to consider. I would not take these similarities as evidence of a further Jewish diaspora in the islands of Indonesia, but rather an expression of the surprisingly limited thematic range of human reactions to universal events (whether from apostasy from Adamic preaching or through application of general human cognition, I defer to others to decide).

I think in early Mormonism, collective immortality is of vital importance, though individual immortality also exists. Joseph Smith did claim that he would rather be in hell with his true friends than in heaven alone, and I think that folk expression cuts to the heart of it, subsuming even individual immortality with the confines of the grand human family.

While Mormons may look askance at prayers for salvation to Catholic Saints and would possibly wrinkle their noses at feasts and sacrifices to the dead designed to entice them to escort the newly dead to heavenly realms, I would note that Alvin and Joseph Sr. (as well as Lucy Mack's father Solomon) were escorted by just such angels at the moment of their passing, and the temple work for the dead is in fact necessary to assure salvation.

Finally, in secondary treatments, the idea is that the corpse needs to be purified by the loss of blood and the transient elements. What is left, and what is disinterred for final treatment, is the skeleton and the hair. This reminds me of the idea that blood is left out of the resurrected being. Somehow it's the dark fluid, representative of the transience of life, that must be expunged. The idea of the permanence of hair is also seen in antebellum America as well as Mormonism, and several people retained lockets of hair from Joseph Smith (or canes cut from his initial coffin).

Ultimately this is an engaging and reasonable book, and undertaking, as the authors suggest, an examination of our own funerary ritual in the light of these (largely Indonesian) traditional cultures may prove quite illuminating. I rather enjoyed the book and would recommend it.

Paean to Libraries

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:15:00 -0800

Took my kids to the library today for the first time in a while. Spent the morning reading books, placing objects in bins from which they were promptly extracted, and collecting stuffed animals qua book ends from the children's section. For whatever reason this was the time that I chose to notice the library as an institution.

They are public spaces that are quiet. The media are politely silent in the library, unobtrusive despite being the stated reason for the existence of the institution.

Libraries are a rebellion against the market. While I am all for supporting (financially as well as morally) the publication of quality ideas and stories, I am also heartened by the existence of these places that democratize and demarketize access to information and knowledge. Everyone from my toddling child to an aging homeless intellectual has access to the printed information in the libraries, which flagrantly, almost petulantly, refuse to charge their patrons for access to ideas.

Writing this reminds me of my initial adult encounters with a university library. Dim stacks fraught with the sweet scent of glacially obsolescing paper, libidinous stories about mutually conquered virtue late at night in said stacks, the sense that any written argument ever made could be accessed with my own hands within ten minutes. I remember sometimes camping out in the Linguistics reading room, a private study filled with non-circulating ancient volumes and hidden behind a locked door to which I as an undergraduate aspiring linguist had access, sometimes just slipping onto the cold floor, my back against the stacks in the Mormon history section or the Russian literature area. There's an extension to the old library that takes the intrepid scholar deep underground, along a utility hallway filled with huge white tubes like posthuman intestines. Finally, deep underground, stands a concourse of automated stacks that open and shut like rectangular mouths. Fantastic voyage indeed.

God bless the library.

Seeing again: a hidden memorial poem

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 10:48:00 -0800

I've been reading Joseph Smith's writings closely for some time. There is an entry in the so-called Book of the Law of the Lord referring to Alvin which I have read dozens of times, each time hunting out different words and phrases for use in different settings. Today when I finished reading it (I needed to flesh out a quote in a paper I'm working on), I noticed that Joseph ended with something of a disclaimer. "These childish lines I record in remembrance of my childhood scenes." Wondering why he thought they were childish, I read the lines again and realized that they are actually a memorial poem (I'd call it doggerel if I didn't think people would misunderstand).

Here is his poem written as a stanza of mostly rhymed couplets.

In him there was no guile.
He lived without spot from the time he was a child

From the time of is birth,
he never knew mirth

He was candid and sober and never would play;
and minded his father, and mother, in toiling all day

He was one of the soberest of men
and when he died the angel of the Lord visited him in his last moments

Funny how patterns will elude you for so long. This new approach to reading it confirms Joseph's penchant for amateur poetry and is now a documented example of a memorial poem (these were very popular in antebellum America).

Core vs. Roots of Mormonism

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 06:11:00 -0800

I was asked to speak at the baptism of a family joining our ward. They have been searching for spiritual direction for their children and their family as a unit, and they have found it in our church. I was pleased to be able to participate in their special day and delighted to welcome them into our church community. As they bore testimony afterwards of the joy at finding a path together, a path that could take them all the way through death on into a glorious afterlife, it occurred to me that I was experiencing the core of Mormonism.

But my avocation is to research the roots of Mormonism. At first I thought about the irony that the core (the experience of a personal and communal salvation) and the roots (intricate ritual and theological structure of the early 19th century) were at odds, that a discussion of the complexities of Nauvoo religion would destroy the sweet atmosphere of the baptismal ceremony. I was struck by a potential insight from my metaphor. The core really isn't the roots, not in a plant. The core is either the seed nucleus which sent the tiny roots into the ground, or it's somewhere deeper within the mature plant. And to have one where the other ought to be is unlikely to be good for the long term fitness of the plant. And of course the plant couldn't survive without either one.

So in the interest of pretending to learn truth from the overapplication of metaphors, I derived a certain pleasure in considering this idea from a fresh perspective. And I'll continue to try to keep my roots and my core in healthy but not overly intimate approximation.

All in Favor...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:34:00 -0800

Funny little excerpt I noticed in William Clayton's diary (published as Intimate Chronicle by George Smith/Signature). this is on page 240

Elder Kimball moved that no man tell his wife what he has seen. President Young said "all that are in favor of this signify it by holding your tongues when you go away from here." P. P. Pratt, "Contrary mind by the same sign."

Fun to see a sense of humor along with the stress they were experiencing as a result of the rollout of the Nauvoo Temple while they were embattled and preparing their mass exodus along the Mormon Trail.

Brieview: Morain's the Sword of Laban

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 09:24:00 -0800

American Psychiatric Press 1998.

I should comment that I like William Morain and enjoyed a very pleasant time with him at MHA 2005 where he chaired the panel in which I presented a paper. I mean no offense in my discussion of the book. I also would disclaim that I lack the time necessary to have all the quotations and citations necessary to make this a rigorous review.

To my eye, there are two books combined in one. One of the books is quite intriguing and had my attention from start to finish. The other appears to be simply the latest offering from the Viennese delegation espying and descrying human genitalia in every memory, dream, landscape feature, and striving of the human psyche.

The compelling book is one that seeks to describe the bone debridements of young Joseph's tibia performed by Nathan Smith and colleagues and to think about the possible echoes such horrifying trauma might have had on Joseph the adult. Morain's descriptions are heart-rending and a useful reinterpretation of what transpired around 1812-15 in Joseph Jr.'s life. A less compelling but still intriguing corollary is the attempt to associate the Alvin Smith death and disterment with the trauma of the debridement. Morain's core insight can be productive. I suspect some of Joseph's awareness of the eternities did arise from or respond to intense emotional trauma. I don't envy him those experiences, and it's hard for me to imagine that they would have left no imprint on him. Joseph is open about the effects of Alvin's death but somewhat understated in terms of the debridement, an approach Morain sees as indicative of dissociation as a response to trauma. Overall I enjoyed the opportunity to consider various possible sequelae of these traumatic experiences.

My major complaint about this "first book" is that Morain has attempted to apply contemporary psychiatric theories of childhood trauma, hopelessly muddled by freudian (I refuse to capitalize the adjective) fictionalizations and imaginings and more importantly almost hopelessly culturally conditioned. Morain hopes that human culture has not changed in the ensuring 150 years, but he has neglected the huge changes in American death (and health) culture from around 1830 to around 1940. Pretending that Joseph Jr. was one of the burn victims that Morain (a plastic surgeon) has personally treated in New Hampshire is unlikely to help us understand this early nineteenth-century boy. My second concern about the book is the extent to which these traumas are taken (almost) to be necessary and sufficient. One is left with the impression that any boy who had a typhoid osteomyelitis debrided followed by the death of an older sibling would become the prophet of a new sect. Unfortunately for Morain, those are pretty common occurrences. Nathan Smith was busy operating for years, often on young men, and given mortality rates then, it's hard to imagine anyone surviving to adulthood without losing a sibling along the way. Historically, he has also failed to appreciate the extent to which the corpse was distinctly understood by antebellum Americans vis-a-vis their descendants in contemporary America. Disinterring Alvin I suspect was much more likely to be a relief than a trauma, as it allayed Smith fears of a fate more horrifying than death, the loss of the mortal remains of the beloved.

My own view, informed by my reading as well as Morain's careful treatment, is that the debridement did affect Joseph Smith, but that it was one influence among many and is far from either necessary or sufficient to generate his religious and secular activity.

The "second book" I won't talk much about. Suffice it to say that its climax (I am here aping the freudian prose style of portions of the manuscript to give a sense for how little I like it) is the concept that the granite obelisk (sorry, "shaft") honoring Joseph Jr.'s first centennial (38.5 feet high) is an enormous obdurate penis and is the most fitting monument to Joseph's life. And the stone crypt in which the Nephite relics lay is obdurate genitalia, this time female.

As regards the Viennese delegation, I'm with Nabokov. Enough of this nonsense; let's have some perspective about genitals (ours and others') and get to more important discussions.

As far as recommending the book to fellow Mormons: this book will be seen as heavily anti-Mormon and is unlikely to find a following among faithful Mormons. I personally think it's less anti-Mormon than it is embarrassingly freudian (the generalizations and premature closure and treatment of evidence and statement of theoretical axioms is just as vehemently apologetic of that worldview as the rebuttals I imagine occurred from Mormon apologists) but still would not recommend it for the average faithful Mormon. I enjoyed reading the book for its close reading of the surgeries and their aftermath and because I get a kick out of reading freudian interpretations, primarily for a few good laughs (not "belly" laughs, as the belly is located perilously close to the loins).

Kith and Kin

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 11:58:00 -0800

I was searching for the word kith without knowing its name then hoped that by its common pairing with kin it had the meaning I intended, basically of "willed (ie non-genetic) family." And that was basically what I found. Kith are close friends and neighbors that are not blood relatives. It's occurred to me that in our current society those relationships are a potential for re-creating the intimacy of the village in the complex of the city.

As I read more about Joseph Smith's vision of the afterlife, I am also struck by the extent to which kith were integrated into his kinship networks. Whether via formal temple adoption or by involvement in the Quorum of the Anointed or the Priesthood infrastructure of the eternal hierarchy, Joseph had a way of bringing the people he loved into the world traditionally inhabited by the family.

There is of course some tension there. How do we mediate conflicts between kith and kin? How do we apportion our time among all of the people to whom we felt bonded? Can we support this fuller idea of kith without neglecting our kinship duties?

Whatever the solution, it occurs to me that Joseph Smith had in mind a broad understanding of the celestial networks that would valorize the celestial community. My inclination is to embrace this expanded notion of family by creating kith networks of longstanding significance, particularly if it can be done without adverse effects on kinship networks. I believe that Mormonism has significant potential in this regard, even though several of Joseph's original innovations have been phased out.

Brieview: The Nauvoo Endowment Companies

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 11:17:00 -0800

Compiled and edited by Devery Anderson and Gary Bergera. Published 2005 by Signature Books.

Anderson and Bergera have done a thorough job of collecting available documentation related to the ritual work of the Nauvoo Temple during the dizzy two months of its actual usage. I have found the process of reading about this period both spiritually exciting and academically useful.

Though a large portion is republication of the journals of William Clayton and Heber Kimball, there are a variety of previously inaccessible sources made available here. The book is essentially bifurcate. On the one hand there are seemingly interminable lists of people who received any of the relevant ordinances. On the other there are firsthand accounts, most of them contemporary, of the experience of the temple during the winter of 1845-6. These range from the familiar and pleasant (eg Brigham Young evading the police by dispatching William Miller in Young's overcoat; the fact that Brigham Young left the temple once a week and slept about 4 hours per night) to the unfamiliar and sometimes unsettling (the swearing of blood oaths to avenge the loss of the beloved Prophet, the threat to exclude women temporarily from the endowment if they disturbed the peace). In places there are also excerpts that would never have been intended for publication by their writers, as they were recording details of the function of the temple in their private diaries, right along with an awareness of the penalties for publishing this information.

I should make this clear by reiterating: portions of this book include specific reference to temple rites that the diarists whose work is reprinted here would have rejected as an unholy sacrilege. I do not recommend this book or its companion volume to readers who are not comfortable with reading this material in a published format outside the walls of the temple. If your experience of the holy rites of the temple does not include reading about the structure of the endowment or the early implementation of it, then I would avoid this book.

I personally found the book immensely inspirational, and I had an image of the intense and loving commitment of an entire people to receiving the blessings of heaven in the way prescribed by their martyred prophet. Arising before dawn to stoke the stoves that would warm the sagging structure of the Nauvoo temple during a bitter midwestern winter, dancing together for an hour near midnight, then collapsing exhausted onto sofas and floor for a few hours of rest before gearing up for the next day. All this while their leaders were on the lam for charges of counterfeiting (apparently related to a counterfeiting ring within Nauvoo that was not directly affiliated with the church, although sceptics may disupte Brigham Young's answer to the charges as the Mormons felt themselves robbed by a fallen nation and in desperate need of funds to emigrate and care for their poor).

I have a rekindled admiration for Brigham Young and his colleagues. They amaze me. I'm grateful for the compilers for bringing this material to me, though I would only recommend the book to non-Mormons or those Mormons whose experience of the temple does not exclude perusing events recorded in private diaries and not intended for publication.

Love and Hygiene

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 10:05:00 -0800

Took the kids to McDonalds for a treat (nothing like the dollar menu to make America feel royal) and had a confusing encounter with another customer. Closer to fifty than seventy, I had seen him before. Homeless, alcoholic, probably mentally ill. Sitting quietly, almost statuesque in a gothic way, he only moved when one of the kids danced toward his table, then he uncoiled his arm quickly to pat her head. Another man had done a similar thing after they had made playful eye contact. My initial reaction was a common one, revulsion. Then I tried to be both charitable and rational about it. This worked for the few seconds for me to remember that in fact scabies and body lice can be shared in this way. Then I was just resentful.

It occurred to me (however theologically inept this may be) that Jesus definitely didn't have his own biological children as he would never have spent his ministry preaching among the homeless and dissolute. He'd have been constantly worried about whether his children were going to get infected: leprosy, tuberculosis, lice, what have you.

After trying to get the kids ready to brave the rain outside for a couple of minutes, the man charged our table, his hand outstretched, muttering something foreign-sounding. I stared back, struggling with my conscience but wanting to shield my kids from another possible scabies encounter. It didn't help that I noticed a piece of toilet paper hanging from his pants' waist. Finally I understood that he was saying "it's good" and wanting to shake my hand, so I extended mine limply into his fierce grasp. The skin was dry and weathered but felt intact. I covered the kids and rushed into the rain.

I remember the comment from a homeless patient of mine a couple years back, which I will paraphrase for lack of an exact memory. "People here are all sorts of friendly until you try to shake their hand. Jesus was the only one ever shook hands with the homeless."

Evolution and the Chain of Being

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:45:00 -0800

Read a fascinating comment by Elijah Lovejoy in his Great Chain of Being. The Chain of Being was the idea that the universe is filled with a continuous spectrum of intelligent existence that ranges from angels (somewhere near God) down to the tiniest little flake of dust. In a complex sense this was a response to the awareness of the vastness of creation, the recognition, at least as old as Aristotle, that there are similarities across different species, suggesting a nearly infinite gradation from one type of existent being to another. Lovejoy argues that in the 18th century this idea came to have a somewhat denigrating aspect for humans. Specifically, given the infinitessimal gradations in existent beings, we are little higher than whatever it is that comes next to us.
Evolution seems to have the same influence. It both places us in a complex taxonomy and suggests that we are little better than everyone else in the system (though we are certainly better).
I had a flash of insight that these really do end up being fairly similar ideas. One was designed to show the great bounty of God and the other to show his complete absence. But the fact that people were (and are) trying to get their minds around is the complexity of existence and the place of humanity within it. Seems to me that on a microcosmic scale we engage in some pursuits in our own lives.

I have no particular huge conclusion to draw, only a certain comfort in seeing how different ideas have responded to the same problems over the years, and to borrow from the Biblical pessimist of Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun." (At least I hope I'm remembering the allusion correctly.)

Brieview: Peterson's (1995) Story of the Book of Abraham

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 18:03:00 -0800

Just finished this book, part of my research on the dead in early Mormonism. This book is a metafictive discovery, the posthumous publication of the three-decades-in-preparation study of the origins of Joseph Smith's Book of Abraham by a BYU religion professor. Abraham is the posthumous publication of the work of Joseph Smith, Jr., an inspired translation of a text which was wrested from the arms of a corpse and a record of that man and his ancestry.
A few quick thoughts from this intriguing, informal scrapbook of material on the origin of the Lebolo mummies and related papyri.
First, I caught a glimmer of the reason why BYU exists. No one else would undertake such a book but a relative amateur who had the flexibility to devote his energy and professional career to gathering affectionate trivia about scripture. No one else would give someone like that an academic job, and how sad and flat would the world be if there weren't para-academic researchers whittling away at the corners of big issues, if everyone publishing were fully credentialed, scholastically grounded theoreticians? That will sound like satire, but I actually mean it. Whether I would like to consume it or not, I think there ought to be a place in the world for para-scholarly research. I don't think it belongs in the hard sciences, nor do I think it belongs in public schools, but in the right setting, as in this case in a church-owned school, I think it ought to be appreciated as part of the diversity of human responses to the worlds of nature and supernature.
Second, I received an image of the workings of the church in this chatty manuscript. There is one particularly strange image when a secretary to the First Presidency resists showing a devoutly faithful apologist a relevant passage from a minute book that was over one hundred years old, finally, at the insistence of his superior, allowing the inspection, but under pretty strict conditions: all other portions of the material was covered with books, and the secretary hovered during the entire inspection. Such earnest secrecy.
Third, I finally found the portly figure of the devoted Brother Peterson in a wide variety of geographical and social environments--almost a BYU professor Where is Elmo collage of images--rather affecting. I have developed an image of this sweet man trotting the globe in search of the further light of revelation that he thought might arrive if only additional fragments of the original Chandler/Lebolo/Smith papyri could be found. Those of us interested in the truth business could take an example from his assiduous pursuit of detail, regardless of whether we agree with his ultimate assessment of the papyri, their contents, and their translation.

Brieview: Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 15:12:00 -0800

Jon Butler, Harvard Univ Press, 1990.

This is a brieview given personal time constraints. I finally made it around to this much-lauded text. Butler writes a controversial but compelling story of the process of making America Christian. He challenges a lot of traditional ideas (the Puritan legacy, Puritan coherence, the persistence of early African spiritual traditions, the existence of the two Great Awakenings as coherent periods, the "great Christian past" of America) and does so in a way that will draw complaints of revision and liberalism, but I think he does so in an intriguing and well-documented way.

Certainly each generation recasts history in its own image, and it's not surprising that a relatively recent work on American Christianity would explore issues of pluralism and diversity, ideas about the conflict between notions of Republicanism and Democracy and various aspects of institutional Christianity. Having said that, I think each generation has something to offer an understanding of the whole human family, and I rather enjoyed his work.

In his descriptions of several American syncretic movements (early Methodists, resurgent African American Christianity, spiritualists, and chez nous, the Saints of the Latter Days) he spends a few pages glancing off Mormon history, largely by reference to Quinn's _Magic_. Within his overall framework of the interactions of lay occultism, magic, astrology, spiritual fatalism, and actual institutional Christianity, I think his picture of the early Mormon church is useful. This approach does open up some parallels with other groups trying to navigate the spiritual complexities of life in a tumultuous (dare I saw terrestrial?) environment, though it is easy to quibble with his characterization of Mormonism as inaccurate or poorly fleshed out.

While the work on Mormonism seemed superficial, the overall arc of his discussion was coherent and intriguing. In a personal, presentist vein, I thought of current attempts to boost global activity rates of 20-30% (I hear 10% but who knows?) within Mormonism. Up until the Christian explosion in the century after the Civil War, christianizing this here country of hooligans and free thinkers was a thankless and only intermittently successful task.

The emblem of a distorted America

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:52:00 -0800

I tried to buy some soap for our soap dispenser today and when I finally found the right shelf I discovered that there were no liquid soaps available without an antimicrobial additive, in this case triclosan. I didn't want the antimicrobial additive, but there was no choice. We have an alcohol handrub for those circumstances where we actually need to sterilize our hands; I just wanted some soap to get grime off.
I remembered an editorial in a CDC journal discussing the antibacterial craze and mentioning what I have now taken as the emblem of America: antimicrobially impregnated plastic children's toys.
I should explain.
First, antimicrobials only work when they're dissolved in water, so an antimicrobial plastic is fully useless; it provides no protection.
Second, antimicrobials express a fear of the natural world, ever lurking to destroy, and they are a false reassurance, as even if we constantly used antimicrobials, we would still be constantly beset by microorganisms.
Third, there is mounting evidence that excessive sanitation may underly a variety of complex immune phenomena, including a condition as familiar and frustrating as asthma. We have spent many millennia with microbes; we are biologically familiar with them in important ways that the fear of microbes has in part interfered with.
Fourth, there is something horribly safe and faddish about the proliferation of antimicrobial products in America. Individual consumers are not addressed--the market dictates what everyone will use.

It's all there: distrust of nature, a capitalism that provides faulty products based on faulty premises in a positively reinforcing response to manipulation of public sentiment, fear of the malignant world outside and the potential of death and decay, and populist misapplication and distortion of science. Can there be a more American product than that?

I'm thinking about asking that an antimicrobial impregnated Big Wheel be added to the current flag. I'll be taking signatures for my petition soon.

Disclaimer intended for whatever organization is currently providing surveillance for ideological purity: this is intended as a loving reproof of the cultural corruption rampant in the nation currently rather than a rejection of my American homeland, which I love dearly and would never betray. My thoughts on this subject are heavily informed by my Christian faith.

Beware antibiotics

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 3 Dec 2005 10:31:00 -0800

I don't normally use this venue for medical information, but this week there's an early release of some articles on clostridium difficile colitis that are quite sobering (www.nejm.org). This is meant as social commentary rather than medical advice, and though I am a physician this is in no way meant to replace or function as the advice of a medical professional, and this should only serve as secondary information to be discussed with your own physician. Refusing needed antibiotics can be dangerous or even deadly; only you and your doctor can determine whether antibiotics are truly needed in any given circumstance.

With that caveat,

Basically there's a new form of an old bug on the prowl in North America (and we assume the world soon if not already) that's ultra-resistant to antibiotics and in fact gains power from them. In a series of elderly patients in Quebec, 10% of those infected died, despite treatment.

Sobering. I'm hoping someone will publish something in the Enquirer about "Whole community killed by antibiotics" or something like that, something for a reality check. Refusing to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics may be an act of great kindness and compassion on the part of your physician.

Luzhin's looks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 3 Dec 2005 10:22:00 -0800

Last night was a slow night at the hospital, so I read Luzhin's Defense for several hours before dawn. We saw the movie a few years ago and remember the earnest Italian actor (the poor guy from Quiz Show, can't remember his name), rail thin, playing the madman/chess genius.

What impresses me is the difference in the physical character of Luzhin. Nabokov paints Luzhin as a man who has lost all contact with the outside world and in the course of his loss, rather than becoming the stereotypically cachectic artist he becomes a corpulent madman. Such different phenotypes of insanity for us. There is one, the classic neurotic or schizophrenic who is thin as a rail (as the actor was): this is the madman we relish. The obvious refusal to eat seems to separate the madman from human experience, as if s/he were an ascetic refusing human pleasures for a higher cause in this case madness.

Then there is the torpid madman, the fleshy, bejoweled slob. His body mirrors his dissolute mind. No control, no energy or spirit from above to shave off those extra pounds in pursuit of higher consciousness. I suspect we feel more revulsion for this madman than for the other.

I interact a great deal with both types during my work as a physician, and I sense that this is true of many of our interactions. To a certain extent (confounded by various aspects of personality and social skills) the morbidly obese mentally ill are if possible less respected than the cachectic ones. Perhaps the cachexia reminds us of cancer patients who elicit almost universal sympathy, while the obese seem less well controlled or less tragic.

I think there's more than just the anorexia-obsession of Hollywood at work in the casting of someone so physically different from the protagonist. Though in a fitful alliance with the postmoderns, I suppose I don't really care, as the point is a fascinating one regardless.

Righteousness of the Self

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 3 Dec 2005 10:16:00 -0800

Reading P Greven's Protestant Temperament and thinking about self-righteousness. For Puritans and then 18-19th c. American evangelicals Arminianism (the idea that the human will was free and by extension the human could accumulate the necessary righteousness required to enter heaven) had the potential to represent quite a threat. In some writings evangelicals identify self-righteousness with Arminianism, that is a righteousness born of the self.

What fascinates me is the change in the semantic content. Nowadays, we seem to mean by self-righteousness either a righteousness that is self-emphatic as opposed to externally focused ("Those self-righteous conservatives preach Christianity but don't think for a moment about those who suffer"), or we mean someone who uses righteousness or religious identity to the exclusion of others, or we mean someone who looks down on others for failure to measure up to their standard of righteousness or piety.

These are all focused on human communities, whereas the original was focused on God vs. human, the self meant the independent human self as opposed to the personality swallowed up in the munificence of God. It is now possible for an anti-Arminian (eg current "evangelicals" or Charismatics) to be seen as self-righteous even though they are adamantly opposed to the very notion of the self as opposed to the grandeur of God.

Brieview: Living in the Shadow of Death

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 1 Dec 2005 11:44:00 -0800

Sheila Rothman wrote a reasonable history of the experience of TB, though the book ends up being a few things mixed together. She gives a protracted account of Deborah Fiske's death which feels somewhat Victorian but is still illuminating, and then she talks about sanatoria and the settling of eg Colorado Springs. Fascinating to realize how much of Colorado was settled by consumptives seeking a climatic cure.

Ultimately readable if a little light theoretically. I learned a few things. Fairly quick read.

Negotiating Certainty

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:43:00 -0800

There is a disease called thrombangiitis obliterans, also known by its eponym, Buerger's Disease. It's one of a couple of well-known diseases (a subtype of interstitial lung disease, RBILD, is the other) that are direct, generally reversible complications of smoking tobacco. Buerger's is by far the worst. Slowly digits--fingers, toes--are lost to inflammation in the small arteries. If the patient continues smoking, the next to go are the feet usually, then the legs, and finally, sadly and ultimately, the pelvis and arms.

These are the unlucky few who are forced to deal with the certainty of tobacco's curse. What amazes me about both of them are the number of times I see patients continue to smoke. This isn't the same thing as the patient with emphysema who continues to smoke through the tracheostomy incision in his neck--these patients can actually reverse their disease, often with complete remission as soon as they quit smoking.

But somehow the certainty of watching your limbs fall off is too overwhelming to be correlated with actual behavior change, and they continue to smoke. As if certainty is too much to process, and it has to be actively and stridently ignored. These people are the poster children of our poorly tamed wills, and though they are dramatic I'm never quite sure how different they are from the rest of us except that they are decidedly unlucky.

This type of behavior seems so persistent that I wonder whether it's a trait of human consciousness.

Ecclesial vs. Genealogic Mormons

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 14:00:00 -0800

This arose in response to a thread at Times and Seasons trying to expand the old dichotomy between Liahona and Iron Rod Mormons.

I think people have given short shrift to liahona and iron rod distinction. Remember that this was meant to be a description of people actively committed to the Gospel. If the schemata were superimposed, liahona would be caffeinated and iron rod would be obediac. The original dichotomy was not meant to address “cultural” Mormons. So the actual contribution of this new schema is that we include as “Mormon” people who are not at core committed to the spiritual basis of the faith. While I think that’s reasonable to do, I don’t know that it’s a huge leap in our understanding of approaches to being Mormon.

I do think the antagonisms are a fascinating idea, but I don’t know how well they hold up. At some level, I think the obediac would like the caffeinated to abjure any claim to spiritual commitment. The problem is that for the “obediac” (or equivalent Mormon archetype) the belief is that the spirit, true spiritual commitment will yield a uniformity of belief, and when someone says “I believe deeply in the Church, and I think George Bush is the anti-Christ,” it’s harder for the obediac to believe that his social beliefs spring directly from his religious faith. the thought of compromise over this topic as a milder form of conflict does not seem to me to be philosophically sound.

Another group not yet carefully considered by either schema is the deeply spiritual group who feel a profound attachment to the faith community of Mormonism, to key aspects of its teachings, to the religious experience of being Mormon, but who have not found adequate evidence to support a “testimony” in, for example, the Book of Mormon. This group, something like Unamuno’s San Miguel, Buen Martyr, are not really “caffeinated.” Their distinction from traditional believers is relevant, as is their distinction from the stereotypical “signaturi” (I know and like many people who work for or publish with Signature and mean no disrespect–I think it’s a useful emblem even if it’s not actually true of the publishing house represented) who are eager to reform their cultural faith tradition but at some important level are not committed at all to the spiritual essence of Mormonism. I think of Marquardt and Metcalf as poster-children of this extreme.

Finally, I think a useful schema will need to include more explicitly the interface between Mormon and non-Mormon society or between dominant and minority society. Posts have talked about it, as did the accompanying paragraph, but perhaps it could be more explicit. The conciliation with secular society (or academic or whatever), the attempt to hammer away at the “kosher” walls that separate some from others is an important impulse within Mormonism, and it’s no accident that “caffeine” as the shibboleth of ultra-kosher Mormonism should come up.

I wonder whether a reasonable spectrum might have something to do with the distinction between family and community of the blessed. Some could see the church as family and have an attachment to Mormonism as instinctive and non-religious as to one’s own cousins and grandparents. It denotes associations without ideology.
On the other hand the community of the blessed is hand-picked and can easily leave out wicked family members. There are tests of membership other than simple genealogy, and the commitment required is much higher. There is also more a sense of a patriarchal system in which God, via priestly messengers, directs the criteria of membership in important and taxing ways, whereas in the family view membership is forever independent of behavior or belief. The “ecclesial” Mormon might then be in favor of excommunication, while the “genealogic” Mormon would be more likely to favor counseling with at most disfellowshipment. An ecclesial Mormon might care more about state restrictions on marriage or reproduction, while the genealogic Mormon might focus more on nourishing ties of any description. an ecclesial Mormon might cherish caffeine/R-movie anathemata as signs of blessedness to be cherished, while the genealogic Mormon might not.

Second Coming as Death of the Peopled Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 6 Nov 2005 13:39:00 -0800

Our Sunday School lesson was on the Signs of the Times and the Second Coming.
I was reminded of a comment that Philippe Aries made about the way that the early vision of the deathbed was a time of intense spiritual contest, when the soul and fate of the dying hung in the balance. Angels and devils were battling, and the faithful sick had primarily to stay calm and accepting of God's will, but it was considered supremely difficult, a time fraught with much danger. To Aries' eye this model was the individualized version of the Last Judgment and Second Coming.

It's not clear to me that history has followed any particular line in the development and codevelopment of these various approaches. In both, there is the death agony (these splitting rocks and earthquakes and fires and cataclysms all seem to me to be the earth's version of the pain and gasping of a human's death agony), in both there is an attempt to purify out the evil from the organism (whether a human or a society), in both a judgment is pending, and in both there is no longer any time to get things done. It is that sense of mortality, that there will never be enough time, that we cannot know, however much we think we would like to, the moment of our death (or of the earth's death).

For Mormons there are tantalizing comments such as Joseph Smith's belief that the earth will truly die and be resurrected. Hard to get more literal than that.

Theologically, I think this perspective provides some insights otherwise unavailable, and it's possible--though I will admit it is a difficult scientific problem--to believe that some of the anxiety about death that must be sublimated in light of clear teachings about the beauty of the afterlife and the impuisance of death has found its expression in the anxiety about the Signs of the Times.