{"id":94052,"date":"2022-01-30T23:29:19","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T06:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=94052"},"modified":"2022-01-31T23:14:39","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T06:14:39","slug":"reflections-on-a-sunset-in-maui","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/01\/reflections-on-a-sunset-in-maui.html","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on a Sunset in Maui"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"\"<\/a>
A view from our balcony across to L\u0101na\u02bbi at sunset, taken by my wife with her iPhone<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Earlier this evening, we watched the sun go down over the island of L\u0101na\u02bbi, not quite nine miles away across the \u2018Au\u2018au Channel to our west.\u00a0 Beautiful hues of orange, red, and blue.\u00a0 A few days ago, I saw the famous sunset \u201cgreen flash\u201d<\/a> from a cliff at Corona Del Mar, in California.\u00a0 Not tonight, though.\u00a0 If nothing else, L\u0101na\u02bbi got in the way.\u00a0 Earlier in the day, we watched a very active pod of whales out in the channel, spouting and occasionally breaching.<\/p>\n

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I know.\u00a0 I know.\u00a0 Life is tough.\u00a0 But travel is something that my wife and I both love to do \u2014 our hobby, actually \u2014 and we\u2019ve been socking money away for a very long time in order to make trips like this possible for us in our latter years.\u00a0 (We didn\u2019t spend on certain other things, because this was a priority.) We\u2019ll see how long we can keep it up.\u00a0 These are really working vacations, though.\u00a0 I have several articles to write while I\u2019m here, under deadlines, and a conference presentation proposal that is also under a strict deadline.\u00a0 \u00a0(I finished my initial portion of a forthcoming joint-authored book last Monday.)\u00a0 I read Ist die Kirche Noch zu Retten?<\/em> (by the late dissident Swiss Jesuit theologian Hans K\u00fcng) on the flight over the ocean.\u00a0 I have a very large new book by Francesca Stavrakopoulou to read.\u00a0 (I\u2019ve committed to reviewing it.)\u00a0 And there is a lot of business related to the Interpreter Foundation and to our forthcoming docudrama to get through, to say nothing of the film project that intend to undertake thereafter.\u00a0 (We\u2019ll announce it on Friday evening, 4 March, at the 2022 LDS Film Festival<\/a>.)\u00a0 On the whole, though, I would just as soon attend to such things from a balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean as to be working on them in my basement office.<\/p>\n

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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Which reminds me of something:\u00a0 I mentioned here yesterday that we had just visited the tiny but fascinating cemetery that is currently known as Westwood Village Memorial Park.\u00a0 On one of the tombstones there \u2014 I don\u2019t remember whose \u2014 was an inscription reading \u201cAll things considered, I\u2019d rather be in Malibu.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I thought that pretty funny, of course.\u00a0 But it occurred to me almost immediately that, if the accounts often given by near-death experiencers are true, that person instantly realized upon his actual death that, all things considered, he certainly wouldn\u2019t<\/em> rather be in Malibu.\u00a0 Those who report on their NDEs very often try, and fail, to describe the sheer beauty and wonderful peace of the place where they found themselves.\u00a0 They say, for instance, that there were colors that they had never seen on earth.\u00a0 And at least a few have commented how very dreary and drab this world seemed to them by comparison upon returning to consciousness here.\u00a0 Washed out.\u00a0 \u201cSmoky,\u201d I think one called it.\u00a0 And, very commonly, experiencers have related that they didn\u2019t want to return from the \u201cother world\u201d but that either they were told by an authoritative person that it wasn\u2019t yet their \u201ctime\u201d or they realized that they had responsibilities (often to children) that they simply couldn\u2019t abandon.\u00a0 Some have been angry at the medical personal who revived them.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll mention one specific example from Latter-day Saint history:\u00a0 When Jedediah M. Grant, second counselor to Brigham Young in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, was dying in 1856 at the age of forty, he told Heber C. Kimball, the first counselor, \u201cI have been into the spirit world two nights in succession, and, of all the dreads that ever came across me, the worst was to have to again return to my body, though I had to do it.\u201d\u00a0 Speaking at President Grant\u2019s funeral, President Kimball recalled Grant telling him about his returns to the body, and reported that \u201che felt extremely sorrowful at having to leave so beautiful a place and come back to earth, for he looked upon his body with loathing, but was obliged to enter it again.\u201d\u00a0 (See Heber C. Kimball, in Journal of Discourses<\/em> 4:135, 136 [4 December 1856].).<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m guessing that not even the \u201cgreen flash\u201d or a sunset over the channel between Maui and L\u0101na\u02bbi can compare with the world to come.\u00a0 \u201cBut as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him\u201d (1 Corinthians 2:9).\u00a0 As he very often does, C. S. Lewis offers an interesting thought along these lines:<\/p>\n

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It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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I suppose that I had that passage from Lewis in the back of my mind when, speaking at the graveside service in Miami for our firstborn grandchild back in 2014, I said this:<\/p>\n

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We lament what we\u2019ve lost. But perhaps we\u2019re focused too much on our own pain. Perhaps, if the words of prophets and apostles and of those who have glimpsed the next world are true, we\u2019re like people living in a slum, sad that one of our friends has been taken away. We think of all the experiences that our friend won\u2019t have with us\u2014but our friend has been invited to live in the palace of the king. Our friend is living a life far better, in a place far more beautiful, than we can even begin to comprehend.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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But I\u2019ve caught myself committing that error many times.\u00a0 I\u2019ve found myself wishing, for example, that I could tell my mother a joke that I\u2019d just heard, or thinking how much my father would have been interested in an experience that I\u2019d just had, or wanting to share something with my brother \u2014 I still have these moments, even after years of separation \u2014 and feeling sorry for them that they\u2019re missing out on the amusing or fascinating thing that just happened.\u00a0 And then I realize that, from their vantage point, they would probably be far more justified in pitying me<\/em> than I<\/em> in pitying them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Posted from Ka\u2019anapali, Maui, Hawai\u02bbi<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Earlier this evening, we watched the sun go down over the island of L\u0101na\u02bbi, not quite nine miles away across the \u2018Au\u2018au Channel to our west.\u00a0 Beautiful hues of orange, red, and blue.\u00a0 A few days ago, I saw the famous sunset \u201cgreen flash\u201d from a cliff at Corona Del Mar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1727,292,1104,5817,3793,482,27828,27840,8730,27789,1008,8727,24814,27843,22925,27831,18631,18568,18565,1011,27792,18752,9392,903,9916,5847,5814,15724,27786,27834,27837],"class_list":{"0":"post-94052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-afterlife","8":"tag-brigham-young","9":"tag-death","10":"tag-eternal-life","11":"tag-hans-kung","12":"tag-hawaii","14":"tag-heber-c-kimball","15":"tag-heber-kimball","16":"tag-hugh-hefner","17":"tag-immortality","18":"tag-jedediah-grant","19":"tag-jedediah-m-grant","20":"tag-jedediah-morgan-grant","21":"tag-kaanapali","22":"tag-kung","23":"tag-lahaina","24":"tag-lanai","26":"tag-life-after-death","27":"tag-marilyn-monroe","28":"tag-maui","29":"tag-ndes","30":"tag-near-death-experience","31":"tag-near-death-experiences","32":"tag-next-life","33":"tag-spirit-world","34":"tag-survival","35":"tag-westwood-village-memorial-park","36":"tag-auau","37":"tag-auau-channel"},"yoast_head":"\nReflections 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