The Weight of Priesthood

David and I locked eyes -- just daring each other to look. I unzipped mine. He unzipped his. As long as I watched him, I was sure he wouldn't do anything funny. One arm. Steady. Down the torso. Hips. Oh my gosh. Underwear doesn't come on easily when you're sopping wet. But we made do.

Dang. Did this mean I had already committed a sin? It was kind of hard to tell. David better just keep his mouth shut.

But here I was, Sunday, sitting on a hard chair at the front of the chapel in the center of the circle of men. I was staring at their belt buckles and smelling their Old Spice. They went into blessing stance: left hand on one another's backs, right hand on my head. The weight of the priesthood was upon me. My dad started praying, telling me to receive the Holy Ghost. I waited. Nothing palpable -- except the weight. There must have been ten right hands on my head, all charged with the priesthood of God, and a few pounds each. He said more, but I didn't quite catch it all. Then the prayer ended, and the second, unessential, but traditional ordinance started: the shaking of hands. Why did we feel compelled to do this? Well, first, all Mormons do it after a blessing. Kind of a thank-you gesture. The blessing just doesn't feel finished otherwise. Perhaps it's another contact, in case the head wasn't clean enough. One more circuit for the Spirit of God to enter through.

I bore my testimony that day. I don't remember what I said, but the weight of the priesthood stayed with me. Mostly in my neck. That was the thing I remembered. To receive God is to receive weight. It had been in my wet clothes and in the hands of the priesthood bearers. And then, ten years later, in my bones.

I was an elder. They announced me in stake conference. I stood so everyone could see me. I had a new white shirt and tie for the occasion. The whole extended family was there, because, once again, I was the first. We gathered in our living room a few hours later. I sat in a chair and the men moved in around me, forming a circle and placing left hand on backs, right hand on my head. Now I looked at their chests. But the weight was exactly the same, though my neck held up better. This time it wasn't the spirit of God I was receiving, but His priesthood. An eighteen-year-old with God's power? It seemed as likely that He would give an eight-year-old His spirit. But that's what they had told me for years. Those men, so ponderous and steady, had latent power rippling under their skin. The kind of power that could heal the sick, comfort the downtrodden, and call down the might of heaven. As the prayer began, the fear entered me again. An active fear of a God who was acting upon me. Their hands lifted from my head, and I was returned to my normal gravity. I stood to complete the circuit. And felt something. The marrow in my bones seemed heavier, solid. Normally a skinny, geeky kid, I suddenly felt as if there was a live wire strung through my joints. I sat down and put my arm around my girlfriend's shoulders. And for the first time, I felt that I could actually protect her. That I was a real man. A priesthood bearer.

Except it took a while to turn on the juice. This happens to me a lot. I get all psyched -- spirit in my britches -- and then the laundry needs doing for the next six months. The boil slows to a simmer. For a long time after my ordination, there weren't any dead who needed raising. The sick, having heard of my new powers, had not shown themselves at my door. The gravity melted slowly, or else my muscles adapted. Whichever. But I knew there was a catch to getting the priesthood. The Church just doesn't go around ordaining eighteen-year-olds to be elders for nothing. You have to sign your name to something else first: mission papers. In order to be a real man, you've got to head out into the world for two years under the Church's flag. You have to join that army of boys with black nametags and ties. And when you go out into the world to preach the gospel, you really should have some idea of how to use the priesthood.

At least, I thought so. There are two great story settings in the Mormon Church, the pioneer trek and the mission field. In both of these dramatic settings, a person is not surprised to hear about miracles. They are those uncharted countries where ordinary life is exploded. Where there be dragons and cherubim. What Mormon has not heard of the packs of demons attacking Heber C. Kimball and his companions as they proselytized in England? How the hooked shapes leapt at them, and how the elders fought them off with their own fists and the priesthood. Who has not heard of a child being brought back from death's door by the ministrations of two twenty-year-old missionaries? But it is one thing to hear those stories from the mouths of missionaries returning home from the mission field or from teachers in Sunday school. It is another to actually enter them. God has to fill your bones.

I wanted to rev the divine engine, prime the priesthood pump. Get that power moving. I figured, since God gave it to me, maybe He'd also give me a chance to use it. So I asked Him about it for a few weeks. It was a half-hearted request because, frankly, the thought of administering to someone scared me to death. Large, Old Spiced men with heavy hands gave blessings. I was as close to the Atlas Body Building Program's derided ninety-eight-pound weakling as one could be, and I wore Speed Stick. Certainly I didn't qualify. But the fact was, I had the priesthood.