The closing talk in our sacrament meeting today was devoted to the subject of “repentance.” As I looked around at the congregation while the sister was speaking, I was happy that the bishopric had assigned her that subject. Plainly, they were inspired in doing so: It was instantly obvious to me at a glance that everybody sitting around me badly needed to hear it. I couldn’t help but think of an entry in Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary:
Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
On a somewhat more earnest note, the previous speaker told a horrendous story of going out rock-climbing in southern Utah with longtime friends, including one who, he said, was a kind of personal hero of his, a faithfully spiritual father of four (including one with severe disabilities, to whom he was wonderfully devoted) and evidently a role model in many ways. The friend was also in excellent physical condition and an expert rock-climber. But the speaker, who is himself still relatively young, kept speaking of his friend in the past tense, and I began to worry about where the story might be going. Sure enough, owing to some sort of freak accident during their late-afternoon return to the trailhead — an accident that, I get the impression, they still don’t fully understand — the friend fell two hundred feet. He was evidently still breathing after the fall, but died while enroute to a hospital. The remaining climbers, who had been looking forward to a relatively routine descent and a pizza dinner, were directed by rescue workers to remain suspended on the cliff until morning, and, although they feared for him, they didn’t yet know for certain that their friend had died. I can scarcely imagine so deeply shocking and distressing an incident. But the speaker went on to tell of the faithfulness and resilience of his friend’s now-widowed wife and their four children, and he managed to draw inspiration for us from an extraordinarily painful story. Among other things, life is pain and loss. How will we respond?
My wife and I enjoyed a very pleasant dinner on Saturday evening on the veranda of a cabin in Mill Creek Canyon (or Millcreek Canyon), above Salt Lake City (and directly beside the pleasantly burbling Mill Creek itself or, at least, a tributary of it). We were invited to their cabin by a couple whom we hadn’t previously known, but of whom we had heard for decades, a couple who had spent many years abroad (including lengthy periods in Cairo and Jerusalem). We talked about a number things, including, unexpectedly, some remarkable stories out of the Second World War. (He summarized for me an article that he has now completed about a rather famous bit of Latter-day Saint folklore related to World War Two; I hope that it will find a publisher soon.) It was also fun to reminisce about common friends and acquaintances — and we were surprised to discover how remarkably many such common acquaintances and friends we have. There are few better things in this life, I think, than good conversation with good people over a good meal in beautiful surroundings.
I’m not exactly an admirer of the late Henry VIII of England, but he put it well in a song that he is said to have written shortly after his coronation (possibly for his new wife, Catherine of Aragon):
Pastyme with good companye
I loue and schall vntil I dye;
Gruche who lust, but none denye
so God be plesyed thus leue wyll I.
Or, in other words,
Pastime with good company
I love and shall until I die;
Grudge who will, but none deny
So God be pleased thus live will I.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
Some critics have tried for many years to puzzle out why it is that Utah is such a terrible state in which to live, and they have typically concluded that the cause is the malign influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Here is a substantial article, retrieved from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, that nicely illustrates the comprehensive toxicity of religion and, specifically, of Utah’s majority faith: “National sexual violence data suggests Utah is one of the safest states for girls, women: The nation’s highest-quality, representative survey on sexual violence found that Utah had some of the lowest sexual violence rates”
BYU professor Justin Dyer said the results are not a surprise.
“It fits with other things we know about Utah — the benefits of faith and family generally — including other research about violence and religiosity. So, none of this is particularly surprising.” . . .
These findings above also align with the broader international research on vulnerabilities for sexual violence against women and children.
A Deseret News review of 500 studies found that sincere, healthy religious faith — and the habits spirituality often promotes, such as lower alcohol and drug use, fewer risky sexual behaviors, and greater emphasis on marriage, education, and financial responsibility — can have a protective effect. Many of these patterns are more common in Utah.
Certain critics, of course, are now likely to say that I didn’t actually read the article and that I’m misrepresenting its contents. (This has been alleged several times over the past few days.) Permit me to anticipate the responses: The article actually argues, they may perhaps say, that national sexual violence data depicts Utah as the most unsafe of the fifty states for girls and women. The nation’s highest-quality and most representative survey on sexual violence, they will possibly say, actually found that Utah had some of the highest rates of sexual violence in the Union. I’m just too lazy to have noticed and too dishonest to fess up.
But the article above scarcely exhausts the Hitchens File. Here’s another specimen, for example, that was recently recovered from it: “How the Church of Jesus Christ is caring for women, children and vulnerable communities in Mexico: The church’s humanitarian efforts in Mexico are addressing health and social needs across vulnerable communities”
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