![\"Blake](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/12\/800px-Blake_jacobsladder.jpg\")
<\/a>Wikimedia Commons public domain image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
I\u2019ve lately begun reading a new book by Robert Christophor Coppes entitled Impressions of Near-Death Experiences: Quotations from Over 100 Experiencers<\/em>. \u00a0Dr. Coppes is an economist who is now retired from a career spent at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, a French bank, and eventually the Dutch Central Bank, which is roughly comparable to the U.S. Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n There are several things of interest on every single page. Here\u2019s a passage from the book that that I\u2019ve chosen almost at random.<\/p>\n She floated outside her body up to the ceiling from where she could see a great consternation unfolding around her body. \u00a0She continued floating. \u00a0She floated out the hospital and came to rest in a \u201cdense, velvet-black space\u201d in which she felt at ease. \u00a0There was nothing there, but she felt free from all pain and fear, enveloped in a profound sense of peace and tranquility.<\/p>\n She had no body, but no pain, either. \u00a0Time did not exist. \u00a0Moreover, she realized that she was thinking and, therefore, that she must still exist. \u00a0She knew it was real. \u00a0She wrote that it was<\/p>\n as true, as palpable, and as certain as had been my life on Earth . . . \u00a0 I was remembering something I had forgotten, something that had been erased from memory when I was born. \u00a0(Thornton, 2014, pp. 94-95)<\/p>\n What she had forgotten was that she already existed before her life on Earth began, that is, before her birth into her current lifetime. \u00a0She had returned to her source, which she recognized as her real home (Anonymous, 2013, June 17).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s striking to me how very many out-of-body experiences include floating up to the ceiling (if they commence indoors, of course) and looking down from there onto what is transpiring below. \u00a0And, of course, it should be no surprise that, as a believing Latter-day Saint, the mention of a pre-mortal life instantly caught my attention.<\/p>\n Just so you\u2019re clear on this: \u00a0Whatever The Usual Suspects may claim, this story actually has no connection at all with the Interpreter Foundation: \u00a0\u201cWhat you need to know about the Shohei Ohtani interpreter scandal\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n But this<\/em> item is<\/em> connected: \u00a0\u201cHugh Nibley Observed<\/em>: Hugh Nibley and Joseph Smith,\u201d<\/a> given by Richard Lyman Bushman<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cI am honored to inaugurate the Maxwell Institute lecture series on Hugh Nibley, surely the spiritual godfather, along with Elder Neal A. Maxwell, of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Nibley\u2019s mind was capacious enough to encompass nearly all of the institute\u2019s multifarious projects. He may have been the first to grasp the scope of the scholarship required to comprehend the Restoration.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Hugh Nibley Observed<\/em>, edited by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock. For more information, go to https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/books\/hugh-nibley-observed\/<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A friend called my attention to the fact that I recently misidentified this week, rather than next, as \u201cHoly Week.\u201d \u00a0I don\u2019t quite know why that happened but, although I\u2019ve been corrected on the date of Easter at least twice, I\u2019ve somehow had it stuck in my mind that Easter Sunday was this<\/em> weekend. \u00a0Which would, obviously, make this week Holy Week. \u00a0Perhaps it\u2019s because my attention has been focused on Easter earlier than it usually is: \u00a0Because of a certain exceedingly cute presence in our home, for example, our house has been festooned with all manner of Easter decorations for a couple of weeks now. \u00a0And because the person invited to write this year\u2019s Easter essay for Interpreter<\/em> suffered a serious last-minute family emergency, I was obliged to step in to write that essay this year, getting it in just under the, umm, drop-dead editorial deadline.<\/p>\n In any case, this week isn\u2019t Easter week. \u00a0Next<\/em> week is and that\u2019s actually a relief. \u00a0When I announced here on Tuesday that this was Holy Week, I was dismayed to \u201crealize\u201d that we were already well into it and that I hadn\u2019t been thinking<\/em> about it. \u00a0But now there\u2019s been a reprieve. \u00a0Easter Week is next<\/em> week, and the 2014 piece that I wrote on Holy Week for the old Hamblin\/Peterson \u201cHigher Things\u201d column in the Deseret News<\/em><\/a> is still timely.<\/p>\n So, well, alright. \u00a0I\u2019m fallible<\/em>. \u00a0Who knew<\/em>?<\/p>\n Friends, I regularly plumb the terrifying depths of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122 so that you don\u2019t have to. \u00a0It\u2019s most likely the uniquely profound personal depravity that is regularly attributed to me by a small coven of my fiercest anonymous critics that has equipped me to do so. \u00a0(No normal person could cope with it.) \u00a0Personal reveries aside, though, here is a quintet of items that I\u2019ve recently retrieved for your appalled but nonetheless gratified enjoyment:<\/p>\n Deseret News<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cHow the Church of Jesus Christ Cared for Those in Need in 2023: Caring summary shows more than US$1.3 billion in expenditures\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Deseret News<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cReligion is often a safeguard against family abuse. And that\u2019s not just my experience:\u00a0I\u2019m not the only one who has found my faith community a sanctuary from abuse. Plenty of research confirms the same pattern.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Journal of Affective Disorders<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cMental health at religious and non-religious universities: Examining the role of student religiousness and sexual\/gender minority identity\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Deseret News<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cMembers of the Church of Jesus Christ Provide Aid to Families Affected by Chile Fires\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
(Photograph from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship))<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a>
Vincent Van Gogh (1886)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a>