fasten up your earthly burdens you have just begun

This renegade’s on the chase again, clinging to whatever scraps of light. It’s so different just being out in the open... I had thought religion must always be associated with bureaucracy, with function being above the soul.

Church... um. Haven’t been in a month or so. I get curious about the ward in my new area but... It just stays a curiosity.

My mother is beginning to crack down on me for not recieving my patriarchal blessing yet. She’s been telling me it will be a blueprint to my path in life... I hate to watch her religious flutter, it actually scares me how she can appear to be so spiritual and be so rash and set in her ways.... Why is it that I feel so dangerous saying these things? Why have I always been so pressed to not look anywhere else but in one small corner?

John wrestles with Christianity, but whenever he and Tammie have troubles, he wanders off to the Lutheran church near the apartment. Says it’s peaceful. It is actually. So are the different church houses I’ve been to in my life. At the Buddhist temple you can definitely feel an energy. As far as feeling the ‘spirit’ goes it’s surprising on how I feel it and where. I don’t think I’ve lost it, many would say before my telling them of my church activity that I do have it. I love the quote ‘ the less I seek one source for one definitive, the closer I am to fine’. But it’s not always easy...

My struggle of the soul is not just limited to Mormonism, but to Christianity as a whole. The ideals of Salvation complex me, just the whole urgency of it... The motions of Salvation as well, it is either good or evil right or wrong. Is finding the value and depth of one’s soul such a uniform process? Can it just be found by looking at the stamps on each action and making a collective desicision to see if you’ve flunked out or not? Is it really about earning love and redemption from the father???

An obstacle I have to understanding any black and white process is it is heavily based on direct associations. Whatever happened to due process? Too many factors exist for such uniform establishments, even there are too many factors within factors. It leaves too much room for discrimination and less room for thinking for one’s self. It assumes we all have same goals. Yet there is that ticker in my head again ‘beware of he who is learned’.

It’s like running your bubble test sheet into one of those machines. In less than five seconds you have your score. It does not take into account your putting down (b) when you actually meant (c). It is a machine, it can never read your mind. Divine forces should be able to understand you as you are, an atypical mold. We can’t assume that every member of humanity has the same purpose.

Draining filters. In church they are taught that there is much that our carnal minds cannot begin to comprehend. Once we are in an eternal sphere our comprehension is expanded, not simplified. I believe that after this life our comprehension will be broadened and not condensed. Eternal descisions should not be made by an earthly order. Yet we are taught that it will all fall into good or evil, white or black. Well I’m sorry we’re not dealing with a posterized black and white portrait here. We are not even dealing with a grayscale image. We are dealing with life – an endless colorwheel of beautiful complexities.

It does sound appealing. To completely eliminate the evaluation process and replace it with but one law. But that leaves too much chance to prejudice.

I am not saying it is wrong to have a focus. It is very important to have and embrace basic values, but the essentials should not choke the framework and the framework should not bury the essentials. This can’t be seen in a rigid system fueled by opposing extremes because there is no room for factors of who one is. I do not believe there is evil out there, just imbalances, just confusion as to what to do with the complexities of one’s self. There was an amazing allusion in my book. The soul is like a packaged fixture, all the parts are included but some assembly is required. Sometimes we can make bad combinations. Individuals’ purposes become a mosaic, and if all are in balance with themselves. I see little embrace of diversity of thinking for oneself. Doing that is marked as a danger. However I look around and all dangerous functions try to sever the thought of an individual. Individuals are mediums in themselves, their own songs and palates of color. We are not scaled by some universal toner that plots us out into black and right.

I’ve never been the ideal student. Most of my life teachers have talked about my delayed homework. She needs to focus more on completing assignments. Little did my teachers know how much I took from those classes. I would get so intense in art and music lessons as you can probably imagine. Back then was when the sciences still fascinated me. I would trace the rings of Saturn, and told the substitude teacher maybe the gaseous planets were created by the trails of gases other planets left behind. When we did a section on the black rights movement I imagined myself out there marching, fueled to be speaking out with the crowds. Sometimes I was considered dull because I wouldn’t respond, I wouldn’t turn in homework. Because learning is judged by paperwork, five letters and a range of percentages that I did not earn, they measured my education by what I completed, never by what I learned. The system would not allow it’s own flexibility because setting standards was far more important than communicating the essentials of education.

Sometimes the education system reminds me of my previous religion. I would keep a still, quiet place in my soul hoping to listen. I would see others who would partake in ‘unrighteous’ acts tear up in the lessons when I was waiting patiently for my understanding to unfold. It was like others could pick up on it so quickly when I’d have to strain myself to understand the nature of God and righteousness.

In seminary class, Brother Evenhuis told us a story about a mother trying to illegally cross her country’s borders through a river with her small children, and new born in her arms. The young child could not handle the trauma and began to cry. Worried that she would be exposed and her children shot, she frantically tried to calm the baby. She stroked his cheek and brought the child to her breast to try to feed him, but his crying did not stop. With tears in her eyes she knew she had no choice. She looked at her other children who were clinging to her in fear.

She covered the baby’s mouth, it wasn’t enough. Broken and reluctant, she held her infant in her hands for the last time and held him below the icy waters as he struggled feebly confused by this act in his mothers caring arms. Hysterical tears rolled down her cheeks as her child took his last breaths. She could not even whimper else give her family away. If she had not done this, her other children and herself would have been caught and tortured by the guards. She wanted freedom of religion as a Mormon convert. Even still it was considered a sin- murder. She was granted repentance by the prophet after following a long process of interviews and...

In these kinds of systems actions can only be seen as actions, but there was no room to take into account her love for her children. It was truly a sorrowful situation, how could God not see this woman’s sacrifice? How could that inflexible system take this into account. Murder is murder. What pain this woman must have felt to do the best that she knew and in one desperate situation still be reprimanded for her loving concern and pursuit for her family.

I don’t know if you had watched the Torino Winter Olympics last year. I watched the team skating sessions. Having two left feet I have an appreciation for those with grace and the beauty of delicate movement. They appear to glide over the ice as if friction and gravity do not exist to them. I believe it was one of the Chinese pairs that were out on the ice. There was so much spirit contained in this dance. It appeared that the two were in perfect animated balance. As the man spun her through the air, she positioned her knee in the wrong alliance with her ankle and the balance was broken for a moment. After she fell she curled up on the ice, she had strained a muscle. She would have been in the lead, but that spin was crucial. She was carried to the normal ground, She tried again while in excruciating pain. Upon that difficult spin she landed right with some difficulty but landed all the same. What made her do this? Just ambition or was there something behind this? It was her sheer spirit there that allowed her to dance on a damaged leg, aside from pain. This was not included in the rubric, there was no way to incorporate spirit and a focused determination within the Olympic evaluation process. If you saw this, do you remember how powerful this was? Where was the room for spirit or passion? Doesn’t spirit and passion remove it from being just an act, just a movement?

Such processes ban inward values because they do not appear to be absolute or easily measured. I believe however that these should be taken into account. I can never support a self serving system which functions on blunt and rigid framework. Something as profound as the salvation of a soul cannot be charted out by measurements. I have a hard time seeing the view of any duality, in this cause that of black and white because of it’s bureaucratic funtionings.

I realize that salvation is based on boundaries of the sacred and profane. It leads to many who will fume and preach all mighty speeches of brimstone and fire when they can’t solve problems with the black and white formula.

I do not understand the nature of sin or the nature of a sin’s consequence. I recongnize that there are acts that can be commited that can deform one’s spirit. I recognize that anything that transcends this life will call for one’s ethics. What I do not understand is Christianity’s response to sin. A sin still remains a sin and that’s where the Savior comes in. If we recognize it, then Christ will complete it for us. Sins must be suffered for. Wrong deeds deserve correction, yes. But I cannot agree with the definition of correction. If a man commits an act harmful to his soul’s growth, but later recognizes the measures of this act and does his best to understand the nature of the act and truly takes accountability why should he still be punished? What if it made him stronger?

My shortcomings have built me in ways I cannot begin to describe. The process of which I look at my mistakes and correct the thinking -/ feelings that led to them is so much more valuable. Why should sin still remain a cost after the fact, after one has evaluated a wrong doing, and resolved the issue? Are sins really permanent black marks that cannot be corrected without a call from the big guy? Aren’t sins the nature of the act or ‘crime’ a failing of the heart? Or is it still the fact that a ‘crime’ was put down on a track record? WHY SHOULD IT BE TALLY MARKS ON THE WALL??? This Universal Law that is functioned on does not take this into account, so how is this love if it is so ignorant to this? This system’s basicness is actually frightening to me. It can never be observed deeper than the face value, because that would be robbing justice? My question is why does justice rob so much from mercy?

How is this justice? I believe that all are born good, but along the ways in our lives we are confronted with conflicting parts of ourselves and all sorts of complex situations. Some are lucky enough to be given wise parents who encourage growth, but many are not. Many adults are still trying to grow themselves. In fact some religions try to encourage marriage as early as possible... Children raising children? I could accept a lot more of this system if churches were more established, Be it Mormonism or Christianity. That way all could have an equal chance. This would be great if everyone could be born into what they were able to handle or an environment that would not block their growing. Look around do you see this? Does everyone have an equal chance? No. I do not believe that every one is only given challenges that they are able to handle. This is not justice. This justice continues to rob mercy. (How in the world were these two virtues considered opposites in the first place?) What makes it like this? Does commiting a sin really pollute the universe’s atmosphere? Offset some cosmic balance by virtue of track records???

On a side note I can’t believe as one general authority has said that we are only given trials that we are able to face. Okay... So what about toddlers who are beaten bloody and senselessly by their crack head mom?

I do not directly understand a universe’s requirement for blood and torture. In this respect I do not understand the Crucifixion, or the Atonement. This system of religion seems to communicate someone must pay for this and sacrifice. Why do wrong doings need to be suffered so gruesomely for? As I said earlier why is resolve not enough? I think personal resolve is very spiritual, powerful. Why beat someone who has suffered profusely at knowing they have made a grave mistake and actually worked build themselves better ethics?

If this universal law is higher than God than God is not all powerful. I do not understand it. This says we cannot learn by experience but I believe that experience is the most profound teacher. If you make a mistake, and feel that mistake and assume responsibility, and make a respectable effort to change why does one still need to be slapped around? We should be judged by heart and intent. Not because we spiritually misspell words or use improper grammar. But by the content of the message in our souls.

Excuse me if this appears to be blashemy. I am finally speaking from my heart when it comes to religion now, not fear of a deity. I mean not to harm anyone’s beliefs and think that Christianity is beneficial to some. But I do not feel that it need be pressed as the only path to growth and personal betterment.

I want to learn how to improve, to be able to embrace values larger than I. To have firmness in all that I do. To look deeply into all that I see and try harder to seek what I may have missed. I have nothing but respect for the power of the earth and existence itself. It is a journey, and this renegade has once again packed for more nomadic trails.