I’ve been reading news stories about people dealing with addiction and depression, people who have committed secret transgressions that finally broke out of their control and caused public ruin and shame for the sufferers and their families. There is so much pain and heartbreak, both for those innocents who must bear the consequences and for the troubled secret-keeper. Which is worse? To learn that the one you love has kept their struggle and pain secret from you, or to be the one striving, but failing, to make it right so you don’t hurt those you love? One of the most fundamental of human needs is to be known, recognized, accepted, loved. But this runs up against our need to hold part of ourselves secret and the ultimate unknowability of others. Occasionally my spouse of fourteen years and I still surprise each other with revelations, some pleasant (my husband is good at karoke, really?!?) and some more uncomfortable (my blogging has sparked some interesting conversations on the home front). We keep secrets from even the people we know and love best, and they keep secrets from us. Maybe it is through neglect, or perhaps we dismiss some things as unimportant, or we feel shame. And don’t we need to cultivate some privacy? But every once in awhile, one of these secrets will rise to the surface; the truth will out, often as a shock and sometimes with pain that ripples uncontrollably…
Author: Rachel Whipple
Prudence, Altruism, and Curses
Prudence requires that we recognize the reality of times other than the present, specifically, future times. Altruism requires that we recognize the reality of people other than ourselves. Prudence allows us to delay gratification for our own future benefit. We budget, we plan ahead, we save for a rainy day. Altruism allows us to do things unselfishly, for the good of others. If you accept Thomas Nagel’s structuralist case for altruism, you recognize that there is rational justification for doing good for others that is not dependent on ulterior motives. We are able to help others, even if it doesn’t make us feel good or benefit us in any way. Altruism runs the gamut from small things like holding a door open for someone or large ones, like risking our lives to save another from danger. If we combine these two characteristics, we will find ourselves able to delay immediate personal gratification or even make sacrifices for the benefit of future people, perhaps even those who have not yet been born. Prudence and altruism are required to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children (Malachi 4:6), but in this case, we are in the role of the fathers. The sins of the fathers are visited upon future generations, not out of God’s malice, but as a natural consequence of the choices the fathers make (Number 14:18). What sins are we bequeathing to the future? What curse do we give…
How do we say goodbye?
How do we say goodbye to those who choose to leave the Church? We who stay are torn, pulled on the one hand by our faith and hope for salvation, ours and theirs, and on the other hand by respect for their agency and personal revelation. Do we feel better about people who make a clean break and have their names removed from the rolls of the Church or do we worry that they have renounced saving ordinances? Do we compare them favorably or unfavorably to those who take a more passive aggressive approach, the ones who drop out of activity and refuse to commit to living the gospel as we think it ought to be lived? The question has a sacred component–the matter of ordinances–and a mundane component–dealing with the numbers in the church: home and visiting teaching statistics and attendance percentages [fn1]. Somewhere in there money and labor enter the equation as well, in the form of lost tithes and offerings and volunteers to serve in callings. How do we live with true respect and love for others without denying the truth and value of the Church for ourselves? How do we embody the 11th Article of Faith when the ones claiming the privilege to worship differently are those we know and love? And must we even say goodbye, as though we can never see them again? Would a goodbye itself be a disownment, a rejection fueled by…
Object Lessons!
I am pretty much exhausted by the discussion of modesty and chastity in both LDS and feminist circles. This is unfortunate timing because my daughter has not yet started in Young Women’s, so I know we’ll be subjected to several more years of these lessons in the near future. Instead of dreading these earnest discussions with their carefully planned object lessons, I’ve decided to prepare for them. I don’t want my daughter to be discouraged and shamed because as normal teenager she feels she is not as perfect as a fresh rosebud or as chocolately as a warm brownie (or whatever it is a girl is supposed to be in the brownie modesty analogy) or is an apple clinging tightly to the most inaccessible branch of the tree. The next time I’m in a YW object lesson that involves passing around a rose or brownie and having everyone manhandle it and then asking who wants it now, I want to say, “Me. I’ll take it. I believe it still has intrinsic value. And did that rose or brownie ask to be passed around and abused? Did it give consent? What role are we playing in this little drama? Passive bystanders? Accomplices? Participants? Unwitting gangbangers? And you, the presenter, you are the leader who has led all of us into committing this crime against nature that violates the autonomy of the rose/brownie. And you knew what you were doing.” Of course,…
Not a Legitimate Rape
I’ve been listening to the radio this morning about the Republican Party platform and abortion and rape. I’ve never had an abortion; thankfully I’ve never been in a situation where that seemed like a viable option. I am thankful that the Church handbook allows for abortion, but even there the wording is “forcible rape or incest” [fn1]. And apparently Representative and would-be Senator Akin meant to say “forcible rape” rather than the terribly unfortunate “legitimate rape.” But what does “forcible” mean in terms of rape? That a woman or girl [fn2] is held down and raped against her vain struggles? That she is forced to comply on imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm? That she is threatened overtly or implicitly with harm to herself or her family if she does not comply with the rapist’s demands? Does a woman have to fight back? How firmly must she say “NO” for any subsequent action to be considered a rape? It’s not everyone’s natural reaction to fight back during a sexual assault. My reaction was to shut down, to be still, and hope he would lose would interest and just stop [fn3]. Playing possum is a survival strategy for those who are small and weak when confronted by a larger predator, and I’m not the first or only girl who has ever tried it. Joanna Brooks writes about feeling detached from her body as a boy felt her up [fn4].…
The Rifts of Rime
Finally, a book by Steve Peck that I can read with my children! At first my husband thought that would be A Short Stay in Hell; it is only 70 pages, but I had to disabuse him of that notion. As much as children enjoy thinking about infinity (How can anything go on forever? But if there is a limit, what is on the other side?), I thought the main character was brutally murdered far too many times to be appropriate bedtime reading material for small children. And I would like to save that little volume for them to read later on, as adults, when they can be well and truly terrified by that particular contemplation of the afterlife. And The Scholar of Moab would be a bit tricky to read aloud. I think too much of the novel would pass over their heads. As much as they would like the story of Hyrum Thayne stealing the dictionary from the library, or the very idea of a two-headed cowboy, too many of the wickedly funny parts, like Sandra’s power plays and her relationship with Hyrum, are beyond their ken. And my children are not yet familiar with the idea of the unreliable narrator. Everything in The Scholar of Moab, from alien abductions to scholarly publications about the faith of bees, must be taken at face value and absolutely cannot be taken at face value. That’s fine; this book will be…
Changes
We talk about our Heavenly Father loving us, and our leaders say they love us, but sometimes it feels like they mean “us” in general, and not “me” in particular. We are told that almost any righteous man and woman can have a successful marriage if they are both committed, if both of them have enough faith to do everything right. [fn1] The particulars of the individuals, the quirks and preferences that make up our personalities, don’t much matter. And many couples in contented arranged marriages can testify to the viability of this idea. In the same way, any given community of saints within any arbitrarily drawn ward boundary has the potential to foster Zion within it. We don’t choose our wards, not really. We serve and worship where we are assigned. We learn to love each other in our particularity as we serve together through years. We are not just numbers, we are fellow saints who struggle and celebrate and mourn together. As we come to know each other, we develop compassion and charity. We learn to love. But we cannot allow ourselves to forget how arbitrary are those boundaries that foster these relationships. On Sunday the ward boundaries were changed throughout my stake. I’ve never experienced this before, and I was surprised at how devastated, how bereft I felt about being cut off from my ward family, the ward I have served in for the last three years,…
Dam Comments
Too much attention to those awkward stones just adds to them and makes a dam, and I seriously don’t want to have to bring out the dynamite and blow it away.
A Song of Embodiment
Anything I’m able to think is because of everything I feel. And everything I feel is this wonderful embodiment, this solid physicality. Everything begins as physical sensations that are then co-opted, abstracted, and re-appropriated by the mind. Love in the abstract began as a warm feeling of security and comfort and a belly full of milk. It grows into trust and affection. From our instinctive feelings of approval and disapprobation we develop judgment, ethics, and morality. Everything we call virtuous began with some action that met our approval, that felt good, was beautiful or useful to ourselves or others and thus became codified by our society as morally worthy. [fn1] Our emotions are derived from our bodies and emotions drive our decisions and our actions. Reason is only used to justify ourselves after the fact. So how could we make any decision before embodiment? Before we felt, how could we know? We are here for an embodied experience: to feel, to learn, to decide, to know. I don’t know what I am apart from my body. It overwhelms my consciousness. And yet my body is not of my choosing. It is the first given of my experience. I like reading Carl Sandberg’s poem Phizzog [fn2] with my children: This face you got, This here phizzog you carry around, You never picked it out for yourself at all, at all—-did you? This here phizzog—-somebody handed it to you–am I right? Somebody said,…
A Finite Population?
So how many people do we think will exist in the whole of humanity throughout our history?
O Pioneer! Book Review of Villages on Wheels
The 4th of July is a week of intense patriotic celebration in Provo. Freedom Festival is the biggest party of the year here. People go all out with block parties, fireworks, parades, races, and art contests. We end the week exhausted. As a relative newcomer to Utah Valley, I’ve wondered why is Independence Day is such a big deal here. It turns out that Provo is simply upholding pioneer tradition: “Both Mormons and American travelers commemorated July 4th with elaborate patriotic observances. They generally stated at daybreak with gun and cannon salutes, and continued with cheers, speeches, toasts, feasts, parades, dancing, and drinking whatever spirits were available” (Kimball 82). As we come up on the 24th, it is the perfect time to return to a few books about pioneers. My favorite has for years has been Wallace Stegner’s The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (1964), which I never have in my home because my copy is always on loan to one friend or another. I love Stegner’s writing and his straightforward approach to the struggles and faith of the pioneers. By telling complete stories, Stegner allows us to see the pioneers wrestling with doubt and faith as they wrestled their way across the plains, and as a result, those early saints become more real and more worthy of veneration than I find them to be in more selective, faith promoting accounts. The one drawback for me…
The Threat of New Order Mormons
I’ve been struggling to articulate to myself the difficulties that true blue Mormons have with new order Mormons. I’m not satisfied with what I’ve been able to come up with, and I hope you will be able to help me work through this. The struggles of Mormons going through a faith transition to become new order Mormons or ex-Mormons is well documented within the bloggernacle. Through online communities they are able to find support and understanding that they may even be afraid to ask for in their families and congregations. My concern in this post is the true blue Mormon. Are new order Mormons justified in being hesitant to come out to them? While some saints will be welcoming and loving of all people who want to be affiliated with the church in any capacity, I think a great deal of regular saints feel threatened by new order Mormons, and as a result have less than charitable reactions. I can think of three areas in which a regular saint may feel threatened by a new order Mormon: 1. By being selective about which doctrines and practices to believe and adhere to, the new order Mormon is in effect denying the authority of the church (and by extension, God) to guide or mandate them in those aspects of their lives. This is seen as an act of blasphemy, and may be a taken as a personal affront by those who have…
Gendered Unity
Every ward or branch I’ve lived as an adult has struggled with the dilemma of how to increase a sense of unity among the Relief Society sisters. In some places, demographics have dictated a natural split between the transient (a few months to a few years) young college and graduate age students, wives, and mothers and those who live in the ward on a more permanent basis: more established families, families with grown children, and retirees. We’ve also lived in a branch split by language differences in which about half of the members spoke English as a native language, about half spoke some form of Spanish, and a few spoke other languages like Portuguese and Tagalog. In all cases, there was an obligation felt by the Relief Society presidencies to increase unity among the sisters. We tried planning enrichment meetings that would encourage cross-generational and cross-cultural interaction. Some things, like potluck dinners with recipe exchanges worked pretty well. But we couldn’t ever make it stick; women naturally segregated themselves by common interests or backgrounds, and always a few women were left out. Those lonely women were generally not actively excluded, but because there was no strong sense of inclusion, they often felt rejected and unwanted, or worse, completely anonymous. (There is something to be said for personal responsibility here: if you want to be included, you need to make an effort. But it may be that for some people that…
Church Centers: Multi-use Buildings?
When we lived in La Jolla, the kids and I were members of the La Jolla YMCA. There was a child care center that would watch my little preschoolers for a couple of hours while I exercised and showered. I worked with a trainer and learned to use machines and free weights. I took aerobics, tai chi, yoga and pilates classes. My kids took swim, dance and gymnastics lessons. They went to preschool. I volunteered at the preschool, got trained and taught kids and adult yoga classes, and helped in the annual fundraising efforts that provided reduced membership and class fees for low income families like ours. That Y was great because there was a true sense of community. The early morning aerobics class had a core group of women who had been working out together for 20 years. On Thursday afternoons, the ballet class parents held a potluck dinner in the courtyard, while the children danced and played. We were all together, young and old, each with our own place and purpose. I still miss those kind and supportive people who helped me through the years of young motherhood and postpartum depression to become physically strong and confident in a way I never had been before. For many members, the YMCA was their community center. Though they came with the individual purpose of exercising or taking a class, they stayed because common friendship. They were needed, missed in their…
O My Father
“My father, thou art the guide of my youth” (Jeremiah 3:4). We turn to him for guidance, for help and counsel as we age and learn our own fallibilities. It is Father’s Day. Today, we recognize the important role that men play in loving and caring for children. Too often, I get caught up on a few words in the Proclamation on the Family and the idea that “fathers are to preside over their families.” It sounds distancing to me; that the father is somehow uninvolved in the day to day work of family and home life; he is, at best, a benevolent administrator. It makes me think of my paternal grandfather’s generation, who were not allowed to be in the hospital at the birth of their children, who were shaped by the culture of their time to not be overly affectionate; to be the authority figure in the home. There was no “My daddy is my fav’rite pal” type of dynamic possible (Children’s Songbook #211). As time went on, my grandfather, who I remember as large and strong and gruff, was able to melt somewhat, to enjoy his grandchildren more than he could his children’s childhood. Society is changing. These changed expectations are reflected in the Proclamation. Yes, it says that the father presides: it also says that husbands and fathers are to love and care for their children, “to rear [them] in love and righteousness, to provide for…
In Memoriam
I spend the morning with my children at the cemetery. The high school band played, the mayor placed a wreath at the war memorial, and servicemen, including a veteran of Pearl Harbor, spoke to us. We bought red paper poppies to pin to our shirts. We didn’t talk about Memorial Day in sacrament meeting yesterday. The only mention was that the scouts would be placing flags on lawns. It seems that we should want to remember and honor those who have fought and fallen in our worship services. How many times in the Book of Mormon are the people exhorted to remember and always retain a remembrance of the the faith of their forefathers and the mercies God has shown to them? I am not a huge fan of the war chapters of the Book of Mormon; I’m not terribly interested in battles and strategy in general. But I do love the passion of Captain Moroni and his bold and heartfelt reminder to the people that there are things worth fighting for: our God, our freedom, our religion, our peace and our families. I love the sincere repentance of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis, their abandonment of war, even to the point of death. Their story of non-violent acceptance is powerful and heartbreaking. I love that the Nephites took them in and protected them, sacrificing their lives for the new converts to their faith. I remember these stories, and my heart breaks. I…
Post-structuralist Mormon?
I played with deconstruction a little bit this semester. It probably wasn’t a good idea; I didn’t feel I had a firm grasp on Derrida; his ideas squirmed away from me like slippery little fish. But it seemed like so much fun, like such a powerful tool; how could I resist? It was like fire beckoning, or the primitive call to throw rocks off a cliff, or the closed box full of some unknown something. It was seductive to be sure; that didn’t stop it from being a bad idea. One paper I wrote shortly after attempting to read Derrida was about conversion and the binary between internal and external reasons. Internal reasons are one for which an agent has something in his or her subjective motivational set, some desire or inclination, that gives him or her motivation to act. An external reason has no such component in the agent’s subjective motivational set, so while the agent may recognize the logical validity of the external reason, he or she has no reason to act on it. Here is the pertinent argument: McDowell’s counterexample of conversion is similar to Williams’s example of the reluctant soldier. In both cases, the agent is initially unmotivated to do something which others in his social group thought he should do. Williams solves the problem of the soldier’s change of heart by saying his internal reasons changed through deliberation. McDowell proposes that the community standards which…
The Same 10 Families
With the exception of student wards, every ward or branch I’ve attended seems to rely on a few families to fill all of the major callings. We’ll call them “the same ten families.” In our Long Island branch, there were about six families that carried the load. The branch president was married to the young women’s president. The young men’s president was married to the Relief Society president. The Elder’s quorum president was married to the primary president. We weren’t president level material there: my husband was a counselor in the young men’s presidency and the gospel doctrine teacher while I was a Relief Society counselor. Even so, we were exhausted by church and looked forward to moving away just to get a break on Sundays. (It was hard to leave, and we still miss the people of our branch.) So we moved to Provo. We thought that here, in the middle of happy valley, we would be extraneous and possibly ignored. We looked forward to settling down into an anonymous calling like nursery leader. But it turns out that by purchasing a home in an area that is mostly occupied by students and renters, we got fast tracked into the same ten family status in our new ward. As soon as our records arrived, I got called to be the primary president. A year later, my husband was called to be a counselor to our new bishop. He’s over…
Lent
We are now in Holy Week, and Lent is ending. I’ve been fasting. It’s nothing onerous; just giving up sweets and meats. I’m not a huge fan of penance and self-flagellation, but to be honest, I probably eat too much of both categories for both my conscience and my health. But even if a little guilt is in order, I don’t see any profit in wallowing or groveling. Lent is the perfect time to reset my habits. It is a well-defined period of fasting that, if not observed, is at least recognized throughout Christendom. And it is that very definition, the fact that it is so widely recognized, makes the fast easier and more bearable. I know Mormons don’t generally observe Lent; I was raised Mormon. But I am surprised by how many derisive reactions I receive from my fellow Mormons during my fast. I’ve already mentioned the practical reasons for fasting through Lent. But the primary reason to fast is spiritual. This extended fast, this period of prolonged mild self-denial builds anticipation for Easter. In my 40 days, I remember the other 40s of the Bible: Moses fasting on Sinai, Elijah walking to Horeb, the great deluge, the 40 years of exile in the wilderness. I remember Christ fasting in the wilderness for 40 days at the beginning of his ministry, and how hungered and weak, he overcame temptation. I look to the wilderness surrounding me, my mountains and…
Snow, Citizens, and Stewards
It has recently been announced that Steven E. Snow will replace Marlin K. Jensen as the new Church historian. Elder Jensen has been a wonderful historian for our church, bringing both compassion and honesty to the work.I expect this good work will continue under Elder Snow’s direction. I am curious to see what his areas of emphasis will be. I wonder if one of those areas might deal with the pioneers’ settling of West and environmental issues because in the past, Elder Snow has written on this particular stewardship topic.Elder Snow wrote an essay published in New Genesis entitled “Skipping the Grand Canyon.” In it, he reflected on the struggle to survive his grandfather Erastus faced when colonizing the St. George Valley under the direction of Brigham Young. He wrote that although those “early settlers didn’t appreciate the beauty of southern Utah, they preserved it” (243). That preservation was done out of necessity, not out of an aesthetic appreciation. Without careful stewardship, especially of the agricultural lands, those pioneer settlers would not have survived. We are no longer an agrarian society, no longer tied so closely to the land that we feel immediately the effects of our stewardship, for good or bad. Part of that may be because we own such tiny little pieces of land instead of family farms, grazing ranges, and ranches. Even if I do everything I can to improve on my own .21-acre lot in downtown Provo,…
Post Holiday Reflections
I enjoyed the holidays this year, but I am glad they are over. The tree is no longer shedding needles in our living room, and the few lights and garlands we hung have been taken down. We celebrated a simple Christmas here, with very few decorations other than the nativities and the tree. We exchanged few gifts. We are trying to teach our children to be thoughtful and discriminating in what they choose to give each other rather than buying every single thing they think (rightly) that their siblings would enjoy. I remember a Christmas ten years ago. We were staying in our graduate student apartment for the holidays because I was too pregnant to travel. It would be our first Christmas alone with our little toddler, and I was so excited. We made origami and crocheted ornaments for our little tree and I sewed and stuffed a nativity set for our son to play with. We picked out two gifts to give him–one book and one toy. A few days before Christmas, our Relief Society president called and asked if she could drop off something for us. I was shocked when she started unloading the back of her SUV, which was filled with food from the Bishop’s Storehouse, diapers, detergent, and wrapped gifts. I protested that surely, this must be a mistake, there are other families who need this more than we did. I was hurt at the thought…
O Come, All Ye Faithful
“O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant.” My eyes started welling up as we sang in church this morning. I want to answer the call to come, but I don’t know that I can call myself faithful. So often, I feel my lack of faith, my doubt, my cynicism. And I work all the harder for it. I cling to my covenants, for that is keeping the faith, even when I cannot rationally affirm articles or propositions expressing the faith of my fellow saints. I serve in good faith, with all my might, mind, and strength, even when I am without the faith, the belief, that gives assurance that these efforts are an acceptable offering to God. So come, all ye faithful, and come all ye faithless. Come all ye who struggle to hope, you who hope through great struggles. Come and adore Him. Bring your gifts of devotion, work, service, belief. What you have is what you can offer. There is no need to begrudge others their gifts that they may bring. Give Him instead your life’s work and your tear-wrought questions and receive the silence that is not an answer, but is peace. And as we worship, even some of us who are not faith full, will feel joyful and triumphant, as we raise our voices and come to adore the Christ child together.
If Jesus came for dinner…
What would you serve the Savior if he came to your house for dinner? Would you give him beans and rice? Or would you buy a good steak and make a nice meal?” I sat there, thinking about this. My conclusion was that, yes, I actually would serve the Savior beans and rice if he came to my house. Especially if He came unannounced.
Meditation
This world is not conducive to contemplation, to meditation. We are encouraged to read the scriptures, fast, pray and meditate. But how do we meditate? There are some simple steps we can take on a regular basis to clear our minds. Some of these meditation techniques are borrowed from other traditions.
Thrift as a Principle of Stewardship
In my post last month, I wrote about fundamental scripture based doctrine that lead us to value the earth. Now I would like to demonstrate that Mormons care for the earth through their stewardship, primarily in the management of our own homes and families. The first principle of stewardship is thrift. If we as a people live by the principle of thrift, we will as a natural result consume less and be in a position to serve more. Using our resources, financial and otherwise, wisely is the first step in becoming the stewards that God expects us to be. If we all are economical about the use of our time, money, and resources, then we will be, in practice, a very green people.
Chicken Little Eating Crickets: When a mindset turns a windfall into a catastrophe
The panic prone little bird concluded the sky was falling, heralding the end of all creation when a nut fell from the tree above him, bonking him on the head. Something had indeed fallen, giving him a slight injury, but it was not the sky. It was actually lunch–vital sustenance handed to him, a grace independent of all merit on Chicken Little’s part.
The Hundred Dresses
Not being able to apologize may be worse than admitting you are wrong.
Daily Bread
“Give us this day, our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” This is the prayer in my heart, the words my mind speaks each time I cut a slice of bread. I don’t bake bread every day, but all of the bread my family eats, I have baked. This is cause for gratitude. I am able to make bread, good bread, to feed my family. I am home enough to wait through the rises. I am strong enough to knead the dough. I have a reliable oven in which to bake, sunny warm spots free of drafts for rising. I have a grinder for my wheat and a carefully stored up abundant supply of ingredients. I have a dozen recipes I use regularly, switching breads as whim, weather or ingredients on hand dictate. Some of my slow rising breads I only make in summer when my house is warm. Made in winter, those end up as dense, compact loaves. I am thankful I’ve been baking long enough to build up this repertoire, this knowledge of accumulated experience. And the bread is good. My husband took a class in baking artisan bread during grad school. He loves good bread and enjoyed working the dough. But he’s never had the time to develop the feel for the dough that he needs to produce consistently excellent bread. It’s hard to do if you’re an occasional weekend chef.…
Mormons Do Care about the Earth
Mormons do care about the earth. We care about preserving, protecting, and maintaining it. We care about the earth because 1) We love God, 2) We care about other people, and 3) We believe in the intrinsic value of the earth.
Charity Unbidden
Saturday night, several talks of the General Relief Society Broadcast addressed charity. I was left with the general impression that we should want to cultivate feelings of charity towards others, and that as we desire to have charity, we will gain it. I carry a sketch book and pencils with me. An adult only church meeting like the Relief Society broadcast is the perfect place for me to sit quietly and sketch portraits of the people around me. I like to study faces and postures, to see the effects of life written on the body. I like to look beyond the damage and wrinkles to the child who was, unblemished and innocent, full of hope and potential. To see other people in this way is to mourn the troubles that have shaped them and recognize the strength of character that has allowed them to triumph. It is to see others charitably. I agree that we should desire to feel charitable, that we should cultivate that way of seeing others contrary to our selfish natures. But I also believe that charity may come on us unasked for, as a grace. It happens in a breathtaking moment, when you suddenly see a glimpse of another person as God sees them, flawed, yes, but also vulnerable and beautiful. I distinctly remember one kid in my Hebrew class at BYU. He was one of the most annoying people I have ever met in my…