Consecration and the Miracle of Multiplication

The day Jesus learned that his cousin John the Baptist died, he went away into the desert, as he often did when He wanted to talk to God. And, as they often did when they wanted to talk to God, everyone followed him. He was tired and sad, and maybe he was thinking fondly of the days when no one knew who he was, but he didn’t tell them to go, not even when his disciples came up and said, “They should head back. It’s late, and they’ll want to buy food somewhere” (Matthew 14:15).

“No,” Jesus said. “They can stay. We’ll feed them” (Matthew 14:16).

“We only have five loaves of bread and two fish,” the disciples say (Matthew 14:17).

I wonder if they said and did not record or just thought what they really meant: that amount of food is not only not sufficient to feed this crowd, it’s not even enough for us.

Read More

To Elle, On Marriage, Because She's Getting Married, and That's a Big Deal

Dear Elle-girl,

Dad says to always ask for marriage advice, because the advice is inevitably about the advice giver’s marriage, and in our family we’re too into ethnography to not take advantage of that. Austin says no one should offer marriage advice, because even if you have a good marriage, doing something well once is not evidence of expertise.

In addition to all of these warnings, I shouldn’t give you marriage advice because I’ve been married for hardly any time at all, and I’m your big sister, and sometimes being a big sister can get in the way of just being a good sister. So I’ll try to limit the advice and stick to theology. I’ll end up giving advice anyway, because I’m bad at not giving advice, but here’s my theology: marriage is practice building Zion.

It’s amazing for a lot of the same reasons. It’s hard for a lot of the same reasons. It’s important for the same reason: God tells us, “For we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect” (D&C 128:18), and He’s talking about ancestors and progeny, but He’s also just singing the song that resonates across scripture. We can’t be saved without other people.

Read More

Emptiness and Wordlessness, In a Good Way

In New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton says, “In order to know and love God as He is, we must have God dwelling in us in a new way… not only in His greatness but in His littleness, by which He empties Himself and comes down to be empty in our emptiness and so fill us in His fullness” (40).

One of the interesting things about mystics like Merton is that they push metaphors until they break down. All metaphors break down, of course, but most of us try to keep our metaphors in tact, to stop before they crumble. Mystics, though, they just plow through. They want to make sure you know that the words they’re using aren’t the reality they’re trying to communicate. “God’s bigger than the words,” they’re saying. “Stop getting hung up on them.” In The Cloud of Unknowing, the unknown author spends whole chapters discussing how when he says “up” towards God, he doesn’t really mean up, and when he says “in” towards ourselves, he doesn’t really mean in. Merton is more concise in his unraveling: God empties Himself to come to us in our emptiness and in His emptiness fills us.

“Fills us with what?” I ask the text. “You said He’s empty?”

“Exactly,” Merton says. “You’re getting it.”

I’m really not getting it.

Read More