The Weight of Priesthood

Not only is the Church a unified work, it is also based on the assumption of eternity. Everything you do has an eternal consequence. That's made more than clear in the temple ceremony. The entirety of eternity is spread out, from the creation of the universe to your own personal entrance into God's kingdom. You make covenants there. And since the temple is, after all, God's house, He's there witnessing every one of them.

But there is also an element of chaos. A popular story used in sermons tells about a young priesthood bearer who watched one of his buddies get struck by lightening. He ran to his friend's side, laid his hands on his head, and healed him. What would have happened, the speaker will ask, had that young man not been worthy at that moment?

Don't get caught with your priesthood down.

The doctors found a tumor growing on my mother's brain a few years after I returned from Toronto. It messed with her gyros and deadened her hearing. And, if it didn't get taken out, it would eventually kill her. My mom has always been a big one for blessings. She once told me that when she receives a blessing, she can feel a conduit reaching from inside her, through the blesser, into heaven.

So naturally, when she found out about the tumor, her blessing rate skyrocketed. And it seemed to work because the doctor's blade didn't slip, he filleted the tumor nicely, and she lived to tell the story. I wasn't close by during this period, so my dad gave her most of the blessings. But a few weeks after the operation, she called on Dad and me to give her another blessing. Recuperating from brain surgery needs all the help it can get.

I entered her dim bedroom. She was sitting in the same chair my dad had been sitting in when I had gone on my maiden priesthood voyage. She asked us to sit down, and then, with a right angle of black stitch marks striding across her head, she asked us to bear our testimonies.

When people have been strapped to a stainless steel gurney and wheeled to the edge of death and then wheeled back to life again, they're changed. It doesn't matter if they didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel or angels descending. There's just something about being there, doing that, having the scars to show, that gives this particular kind of traveler a third eye. The kind, I thought as I sat in my parents' room, that can see into your soul. Perhaps it's all the time they've spent in solitude, pain whittling away their bodies so all that's left is spirit. And now, though my mother's eyes were closed, I thought that I could feel this heightened sense turned on me. And that I didn't measure up. I wasn't the person I had been when I was a missionary. I no longer had that singleness of heart or that purity of faith. It had been alloyed with doubt, disappointment, and questions. I certainly hadn't shaken off any of my Mormonness. When you grow up listening to stories from the Book of Mormon and the Old Testament, they never leave you. The heroes still bang around in their armor, and old bearded men prophesy in Hestonian tenors. But I was different.

I stumbled through a testimony that sounded nothing like the confident assertions of faith we hear every month in testimony meeting. It was full of hopes and wishes, but no beliefs or confessions. All I could call myself was a Mormon by yearning. My dad, on the other hand, said simply, "I know God lives and that through His Son Jesus Christ, I can be saved from my sins." The brevity clinched his surety, and my mother settled into her chair, sustained.

I anointed my mother, placing a drop of consecrated oil on her head and rubbing it into her scalp. But that was all. My father gave the actual blessing; and during it, even though my hands were on my mother's head, I felt that I was watching from outside the circle. I wanted to be inside; but wanting wasn't enough. I couldn't be a pure conduit for my mother. She wouldn't have been able to feel it.

Yeah. The priesthood is a weight.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have this weight. Sometimes I wish I could drop it: the power, the responsibility, the tradition, the expectations. I wish I could cut all the ropes and just fly for a little while, scope out the scenery, and choose a nice place to visit. Sometimes I envy the people who can leave the Mormon Church, who can forget about their priesthood, who can find a new tradition that suits them better, or create their own. What would happen if I didn't have to wrestle this angel anymore?

I admit that one reason I hold on to my priesthood looks a lot like superstition. And it might be. There is a piece of my heart that believes (irrevocably, I think) that this priesthood will one day save either my life or the life of someone I love. And as I've pointed out, perhaps it already has. I can't imagine holding the sick or dying body of one of my children or my wife and not being able to bless them. There's this chance that God will reach down through me, if I have the faith of a mustard seed. Perhaps it is a weakness in character to feel that way. Maybe I'm using my idea of the priesthood as a crutch. As if I'm hanging on to God and my priesthood like an old salad shooter, hoping it will come in handy someday.