New temple insights

     In an important 1894 conference discourse, Pres. Wilford Woodruff taught members of the Church that the Lord had revealed the temple ordinances in our day through the prophet Joseph Smith gradually “line upon line, precept upon precept” and that we had “not gotten through with revelation.”  According to Pres. Woodruff, although Brigham Young accomplished all that God required of is hands, he did not receive all the revelations that belong to the work; neither did John Taylor, nor had Wilford as prophet.  “There will be no end to this work, until it is perfected.”  (Jennifer Ann Mackley, Wilford Woodruff’s Witness: The Development of Temple Doctrine, Seattle, WA: High Desert Publishing, 2014, 289-290.)
     The prophet Joseph expressed well the delight that the Lord has in revealing added knowledge to his children:
     “How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.” (D&C 121:33)
     Wendy and I are treasuring the new temple endowment films, that were introduced in the last several years.  While no wording has changed, it seems to us that the new dramatizations confirm or even add sacred insights and understandings about such things as the nature and power of God’s love, good marital relations and roles, the strength and importance of women in bringing about God’s purposes, the over-riding significance of Christ’s atonement, making decisions through inspiration, and counteracting the many faces and forms of satanic influence.
     We are experiencing these insights with a sense of God’s love and generosity to us.

Hungering for the temple

     On a Sunday evening last November, the day after Wendy and I arrived back home from our temple trip while Payson was closed for cleaning, having visited 13 temples in an 11 day period, between us completing 32 endowments and a number of other temple ordinances, I said to Wendy, “I am feeling something I never fully felt before.  I am missing being in the temple.  I am feeling that we need to go back as soon as possible, like tomorrow.”
     I sensed that the Father had blessed me to cross a threshold to a higher level of understanding and appreciation of the temple.  This feeling about the temple has persisted, like being drawn there magnetically, especially to experience the endowment as a patron again and again, each time anticipating new insights and understandings.
     Wendy says that she acquired that same feeling a number of years ago beginning as she utilized the temple to give her strength to cope with the difficult challenges in her family.  But for me, I now wonder if I may have attended the temple for a lot of years motivated more by duty.  The temple has felt like home for a lot of years, but this spiritual passion and hunger seems new.
     I am trying to understand the bases for this motivation.  Here are some of my thoughts:
     1) Continuing commitment to what I have termed the Four Pillars of Family History work, with being present and participating in the ordinances in the temple as a culmination.  These are:
     – Doing research to identify and document family members who have died.
     – Doing temple ordinances for these persons.
     – Helping others develop family history research skills (volunteering at the Family History Center)
     – Serving as a temple ordinance worker, to help others experience temple ordinances for their kindred dead.
     2) Having experienced and being a part of a covenant marriage, where I see commitment, unselfishness, and sacrifice every day for family and for the marriage relationship.
     3) Attending the temple often.  Meeting our current goal of doing two endowments a week each plus performing a weekly temple shift as ordinances workers is helping.
     4) The new endowment film dramatizations now available draw my attention and seem to stimulate additional sacred gospel insights and learning.
     5) Feeling a challenge to try to learn more about the meaning of the ordinances, particularly the symbolic elements, through prayer and study.
     6) Sensing a greater understanding and appreciation for the atonement of Christ as expressed in the temple ordinances.

Lewis Family History Research Objectives and Progress

Here is a brief summary of what I am currently working on and hope to accomplish with family history research in the next few years, focused upon our Lewis surname families.

A. Perform a complete descendancy study of each Lewis family living in Rockingham Co.
    NC and Henry Co. VA vicinity in the period 1775-1825,  documenting persons living up to
   about 1950 to present, and meeting National Genealogical Society standard of
   “reasonably exhaustive search”:
      1. Children of William Langston Lewis according to listing by Daughters of American
          Revolution,  "Early Families of the North Carolina Counties of Rockingham and
          Stokes with Revolutionary Service", 1977, pp. 148-150:
            a. John Penn Lewis (our ancestor)  
              – 6 proven children                – The Lewis Family,  Vols. 1-3 completed, 2011
                                                            (Vol. 3 includes our direct ancestral line, that of 
                                                            William Lewis who md. Sarah F. Robertson)
              – 2-3 others, possibly:
                   James Madison Lewis      – Heidi and I working on, nearing finish
                   Nacy Lewis                       – Heidi and I working on, nearing finish
            b. Theophilus Lewis                 – The Lewis Family,  Vols. 4-7 completed, 2014
            c. Robert Pinkney Lewis          – The Lewis Family,  Vol. 8 completed, 2017 
            d. James Martin Lewis             – Emilie and I working on, nearing finish
            e. Katherine Lewis Barnes
            f. Mary Eleanor Lewis Barnes
    2. Other Lewis families in vicinity
            a. John Lewis (of Haw River/Troublesome Ck, Rockingham Co., NC) large family, 
               may have been a brother of William Langston Lewis.
            b. John A Lewis, tailor in Rockingham Co, NC, b. in France, md Mary Rue Osburn
            c. John Lewis, farmer in Rockingham Co. NC, wife Anny Barnes?
            d. Peter Lewis     1890 Rockingham Co NC census
            e. Shadrack Lewis      1890 Rockingham Co NC census

B. Create a Consolidated Index for persons listed in all published volumes above.

C. Study of William Langston Lewis life and ancestry
    1. Analysis of Rockingham County area Lewis-related land records (1760-1830)      
                                                             – Draft finished and published, 2017
    2. Study of Revolutionary War service of William Langston Lewis in the Guilford Rangers 
        Militia
    3. Study of records about William Langston Lewis marriage, family, and ancestry

I would welcome the involvement in this research area by any other family member and would find a place for you to help.  There are, of course, many other areas of our ancestry about which you could concentrate effectively.

Alma 36

     Wendy and I just passed Alma 36 in our reading of the Book Mormon.  I was remembering how useful this chapter was to me, while serving as Bishop, in helping persons who came to me for counseling about repentance.  Remember that when I was first called, I inherited a whole stack of paperback versions of Pres. Kimball’s Miracle of Forgiveness book, that I never used because the Book of Mormon, with Alma 36 as the main reading, seemed more effective.  I loved the before and after contrast between the extreme feelings of guilt and then the wonderful joy when the Spirit returned.  I loved how quickly this change occurred, not waiting for evidence that major changes in behavior had occurred but immediately as he cried out “O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me.”  The love and mercy and generosity of the Lord became so evident in the lives of these members just as Alma described.
     I loved how descriptive Alma was in describing the horrors of guilt.  Alma was harrowed up in his feelings.  As a boy from the farm, I knew about harrows.  When you wanted to replant a field, first you plow, then disc, then harrow, which finished preparing the soil for planting.  A harrow was an implement that tractor pulled along the ground to finish breaking up the soil.  The harrow was made up of spikes, weighed down so they poked down half a foot or so and scraped through and broke up any dirt clods that remained.  I thought there was a metaphor here of sharp spikes scraping across one’s heart as the way that guilt is sometimes experienced, and also that it is the final step in preparing the soil for planting of seeds for a new crop (of faith? of a new life?).
     Alma 36 is also a favorite because it supplies such strong evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.  This chapter is one of the world’s finest examples of chiasmus, a complex ancient Hebrew or Middle Eastern literary form.  The Chi in chiasmus is Greek for X, and the pattern is an inverted form of parallelism in which parallels exist between the first and last element, between the second and the next to the last element, and the third element from the start and the third element from the end, and so forth.  The X appearance is demonstrated if in writing the text of the passage, each pair of elements is indented successively from the left hand edge of the page.
     A second feature of the best chiastic passages is at the turning point of the X, the middle of the passage.  This might contain the most significant or important thought in the passage and gives power to the message of the whole passage.   In the case of Alma 36, the first half details his wickedness,  his confrontation by an angel, and his response and tremendous sense of guilt.  The turning point is his remembering having been taught earlier about the coming of “one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world” and crying out for the mercy of the Savior.  In the second half, where each item is detailed in parallel to those of the first half, he describes his experience of great joy and turns his life to the service of others in the Gospel. 
     The entire passage, occupying a whole chapter of the Book of Mormon is a wonderful poetic experiential description of the process of repentance and forgiveness, the latter coming through the atonement of Christ, which is the featured center piece of the whole, and the whole writing a masterpiece of ancient Hebrew poetry.
     How then, could such a passage find its way into the Book of Mormon?  First, Joseph Smith an uneducated farm-boy published the book in 1830, claiming to have translated the book from ancient records.  At that point nothing or next to nothing was known about Hebrew poetic forms. Next, during the latter part of this same century and continuing to present, scholars of the Bible and other ancient Hebrew and Near Eastern writings began to identify, classify and name various kinds of parallelistic forms and poetry in these works.  As time went on , several dozen different forms were identified.  Someone gave the chiasmus its name.  Most of the scholarly research on these literary forms was performed since the middle of the 20th century.
     In 1967, there was a young missionary named John Welch serving in Europe (Germany??).  He had an academic orientation and was excited to see an advertisement for a conference in a university in their city about new scholarly findings regarding some Biblical literary forms, hitherto unknown.  They slipped into this conference long enough to learn about chiasmus and its existence in the Bible.  Believing that the Book of Mormon was an ancient record with Hebrew origins, they wondered if they could finds any such passages in the Book of Mormon.  Amazingly, they found several within a short time, including the whole of Alma chapter 36.  Returning home Elder Welch matured as a scholar and shared and published his discovery to a wide LDS audience.  He also had interactions with scholars of other persuasions.  I recall his description of flying back from an international conference on these matters and sitting by a young scholarly Jesuit Priest.  He went through his findings in the Book of Mormon and particularly Alma 36.  The young man seemed impressed and told him that “Your [Mormon] scriptures are very beautiful.”
     How then, could such a passage find its way into the Book of Mormon?  I think there is no plausible answer except for what the Book of Mormon claims for itself–that it is an ancient record with Hebrew origins.
     Here is the main chiastic structure of Alma 36 with formatting that shows visually the parallel components:

a My son give ear to my words (1)
    b Keep the commandments and ye shall prosper in the land (1)
        c Do as I have done (2)
             d Remember the captivity of our fathers (2)
                  e They were in bondage (2)
                       f He surely did deliver them (2)
                           g Trust in God (3)
                               h Supported in trials, troubles, and afflictions (3)
                                   i Lifted up at the last day (3)
                                       j I know this not of myself but of God (4)
                                           k Born of God (5)
                                               l I sought to destroy the church (6-9)
                                                   m My limbs were paralyzed (10)
                                                       n Fear of being in the presence of God (14-15)
                                                           o Pains of a damned soul (16)
                                                               p Harrowed up by the memory of sins (17)
                                                                   q I remembered Jesus Christ, a son of God (17)
                                                                   q' I cried, Jesus, son of God (18)
                                                               p' Harrowed up by the memory of sins no more (19)
                                                           o' Joy as exceeding as was the pain (20)
                                                       n' Long to be in the presence of God (22)
                                                   m' My limbs received strength again (23)     
                                               l' I labored to bring souls to repentance (24
                                           k' Born of God (26)
                                       j' Therefore my knowledge is of God (26)
                                h' Supported under trials, troubles, and afflictions (27)
                            g' Trust in him (27)
                        f' He will deliver me (27)
                                  i' and raise me up at the last day (28)
                e' As God brought our fathers out of bondage and captivity (28-29)
            d' Retain in remembrance their captivity (28-29)
        c' Know as I do know (30)
    b' Keep the commandments and ye shall prosper in the land (30)
a' This according to his word (30).
          *from the writings of John Welch

Our "Sexual Harrassment" by Hollywood

     I applaud Valerie for her strong statement about the importance of families, “A Call For the Resurgence of Family,” in her blog in the last few days (http://valerie-chandler.blogspot.com/ Monday, February 26, 2018).  I also call your attention to a Deseret News op-ed by Michael and Jenet Erickson yesterday, which interestingly was timed to be published on Hollywood’s Oscar day “Its #TimesUp for Hollywood’s sexual addiction” (https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900011948/michael-and-jenet-erickson-timesup-for-hollywoods-sexual-addiction.html).  This article goes beyond the complaints about misdeeds by some Hollywood male sexual predators to advocate that national dialog is needed to address Hollywood’s “broader addiction to objectification and sexualization,” because of the risk the latter brings of more far-reaching damage to our society and our children.  Objectification is a term that is used to mean not seeing the whole person, but treating them, particularly women, as mere objects of sexual desire, treating them as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity, the action of degrading someone to the status of a mere object, one whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.  Sexualization means a preoccupation with sexuality, including when persons, especially women, are regularly portrayed in a sexual manner (e.g., dressed in revealing clothing, with bodily postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness), a narrow (and unrealistic) standard of physical beauty is heavily emphasized, or when male-female relationships are portrayed exclusively with a sexual character.
     If any of you have seen photographs of participants in or watched or saw on the news any of the last Sunday’s television presentation of the Oscar ceremony, you would have seen the extent to which the Hollywood ladies have bought into sexualization theme by the way they dressed.  While the uproar over the awful behavior of some of the worst actors has caused a partial reckoning regarding negative Hollywood values, I have reached the conclusion that the whole system is so corrupt that I try to avoid any participation with its products and output.
     In their op-ed piece, the Ericksons call this general addiction to objectification and sexualization Hollwood’s “sexual harrrassment” of our whole society and culture.  “For years Hollywood mogals have defended nudity and sexual scenes as “art” and “reality”... Hollywood’s harassment spreads as these scenes are mass distributed, reaching ubiquitously into public and private spaces where a highly sexualized vision of humanity is displayed and internalized, particularly by impressionable and sensation-seeking youths.”  The authors cite evidence that many children are obtaining their learning about human sexuality, not from their family, not even from instruction in schools, but from Hollywood: “The majority of American adolescents between the ages of 14 and 16 report that media is their “primary source of sexual information.”
     According to these authors, studies find that “adolescents exposed to sexual content in movies are more likely to have sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners and engage in more risky sexual behaviors.”  They also point to other trends, including sexual harassment and assaults “reaching staggering levels [in our overall society].  In 2015, one in four college women reported having been sexually assaulted by force or when they were incapacitated. Although this cannot all be blamed on media, young adults, often fueled by alcohol and other drugs, are likely to model the sexual “scripts” they’ve consumed. And many who have internalized these scripts often feel powerless to say no to unwanted sexual behaviors, as evidenced by recent research on young women responding to sexting requests.”
     Are there ways in which we can we counteract Hollywood's destructive influence?  The Ericksons suggest the following:
     1) Believe change is possible.  They cite in support of this the cultural shift that has occurred in the large reduction in movie characters seen smoking cigarettes.
     2) Don’t tolerate “secondhand exposure” to sexualization (and violence) through movies, in the same way that we no longer tolerate being exposed to secondhand smoke.  Some suggested strategies for this are interesting.
     3) Make sure your children learn about human sexuality from you.
     4) Ask public servants to get involved and support campaigns (to warn of the dangers of consuming media that objectifies and sexualizes women) in the same manner as people are addressing other public health issues, like smoking, drunk driving, teen pregnancy, teen suicide, etc.