The fourth installment of our Becoming Brigham series is now up, and you can watch it (and its three predecessors) at becomingbrigham.com. And did you, by any chance, catch the interview that I did two or three weeks ago with Nathan Lenaghen, of BYU-Idaho Radio? Here it is: “New documentary series focuses on Brigham Young”
And if, by chance, you missed the Becoming Brigham fireside that we held in south Orem on 31 January — and just in case you haven’t yet watched the videotape of the whole thing — the question-and-answer portion of the program (featuring me, Camrey Bagley Fox, John Donovan Wilson, and our director, Mark Goodman) has been excerpted for you. The Q-and-A session runs just slightly more than thirty minutes, and you can watch it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPUr-enslSg.
I’m pleased to hear that some members of the Church in Belgium — the name that I know from among the group is that of Eddy Martens — have organized a screening of the 2024 Interpreter Foundation theatrical film Six Days in August for, I believe, this coming Friday. Not only that, but they’ve created Dutch subtitles for the film. “It’s a way,” says Brother Martens,
for us all to learn something more about the history of the church, to strengthen our testimonies and to bring members and friends together. After the screening we’ll have a drink at the house of one of the members. It’s a great opportunity to strengthen friendships and to befriend new members. And I think it’s nice to do this outside of a church setting, to bring the gospel in our everyday world.
I’m afraid that I don’t know the time of the showing, but the screening will be held at a local cultural center called De Melkerij “(The Dairy”). The name comes from the fact that the venue was a dairy and cheese factory from 1942 until 1981. Now (among other things), it’s a theater where movies are shown and there’s a nice place to have dinner.
I would love to see others organize such viewing parties — and not merely in Europe. Of course, they don’t have to be theater-sized. They could be in somebody’s basement television room, or in a living room. But they could be theater-sized. Such things are certainly doable. And they’ve been done.
We watched the second half of the great 1940 Disney movie Fantasia with a third-generation unit last night; we had watched the first half a night or two previously.
Fantasia wasn’t a financial success for many years after its premiere, apparently beginning to finally turn a profit only when it was re-released in December 1969. That was certainly when I saw it, and it had a great impact on me. Wikipedia says that the film was promoted for that re-release with a psychedelic-styled or -themed advertising campaign, and that it became popular among teenagers and college students who supposedly appreciated it as a psychedelic experience.
I was a child of California in the sixties and I was surrounded by (and actually enjoyed) its distinctive culture, but I never did psychedelic drugs and was never even slightly tempted by them. Still, I guess I was part of the teenage and college-age audience that loved Fantasia. Under the influence of my memorable high school German teacher, Lenore Smith, I was already developing a love of classical music, and Fantasia certainly reinforced that. I enjoyed all of the pieces that were featured in the the film, but I emerged with a particular passion for the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, by Johann Sebastian Bach, and for the Pastoral Symphony (No. 6) by Ludwig van Beethoven. My other favorite sequence, I think, was the combination of the depiction of Walpurgisnacht in Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky with the Ave Maria of Franz Schubert.
It was fun to expose the third-generation unit to Fantasia. The 3GU is much younger than I was when I first saw the film, but I hope that it will have a similar impact on the 3GU’s mind and sensibilities.
Here, completely unrelated to the foregoing, are three passages that I marked while reading Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010). The first is a specimen of the panoramic life review reported by many who experience NDEs:
My whole life so far appeared to be placed before me in a kind of panoramic, three-dimensional review, and each event seemed to be accompanied by an awareness of good and evil or by an insight into its cause and effect. Throughout, I not only saw everything from my own point of view, but I also knew the thoughts of everybody who’d been involved in these events, as if their thoughts were lodged inside me. It meant that I saw not only what I had done or thought but even how this had affected others, as if I was seeing with all-knowing eyes. And so even your thoughts are apparently not wiped out. And throughout, the review stressed the importance of love. I can’t say how long this life review and insight into life lasted; it may have been quite long because it covered every single subject, but at the same time it felt like a split second because I saw everything at once. It seemed as if time and distance didn’t exist. I was everywhere at once, and sometimes my attention was focused on something and then I was there too. (36)
The next two are examples of the conscious return to the physical body:
When I came to in my body it was dreadful, so dreadful. . . . The experience had been so beautiful that I didn’t want to come back. I had wanted to stay there . . . and yet I came back. From that moment it was a real struggle to live my life inside my body, with all the limitations I experienced at the time. . . . But later I realized that this experience was in fact a blessing, for now I know that the mind and body are separate and that there’s life after death. (40)
Before I get a chance to turn around and dive into that heavenly light, I notice a slender hand on my back, from my right shoulder down to my waist. This large hand pushes me very firmly yet lovingly back into my body. For a moment I feel like I’m doing a couple of somersaults in the air. Then I realize that I’ve landed back in my body. Back to the pain and to the doctor’s deafening screams and slaps. I’m furious, incredibly furious! I don’t know if I actually uttered all the insults that came to mind. . . . I think I did, because I felt a sense of relief afterward. I’ve never felt a fury like this rage. . . . (40-41)
I thought you might enjoy them.
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