YE ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD PART 1

"Ye are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle,

and put it under a bushel,

but on a candlestick;

and it giveth light unto all

that are in the house."

- Matthew 5:14-15

"Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated - with one another; with the rainy, sleety weather; with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here. 

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. 'Folks', he said, 'I know you've had a rough day and you're frustrated. I can't do anything about the weather or traffic, but here's what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don't take your problems home to your families tonight - just leave 'em with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I'll open the window and throw your troubles in the water. Sound good?

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who'd been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other's existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?

Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop - just as promised - the driver reached out his hand, palm up,and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up - but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.

We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it's extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and

you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don't know where to find it.

But what if you are the light? What if you're the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?

That's what this bus driver taught me - that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn't some big power player. He wasn't a spiritual leader. He wasn't some media-savvy 'influencer'. He was a bus driver - one of society's most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully  for our benefit.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world's troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can't personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can't control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other's name. How we behave matters because within human society everything is contagious - sadness and anger, yes, but also patience and generosity. Which means we all have more influence than we realize.

No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated - one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river."

- Elizabeth Gilbert, author or Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things

I cannot read this story of the thoughtful bus driver without getting emotional. As Elizabeth Gilbert said, a bus driver is one of society's most invisible workers and yet, to me at least, he possessed more power on that rainy, dreary night than any military leader who conquers nations. Why? Because he lightened people's loads with as little as the palm of his hand. No weapon, no gadget, no instrument, just the palm of his hand. Often we think we are not skilled enough to lift another, to light the path at their feet, to carry their burdens. We often live from day to day wrapped up in a cloud of self interest full of our own problems, troubles, fears, burdens, responsibilities and pressures. We are told in the scriptures that in our day 'men's hearts shall fail them' and the love of men shall wax cold' (D&C 45:26,27). We see evidence of this all around us in public, where courtesy is denied and chivalry is dead. We have forgotten where we came from and who we are and most importantly we have forgotten the mandate that we could be and should be a light in this dreary world. We have forgotten we are our brother's keeper. In the midst of our own troubles and responsibilities, this charge may seem overwhelming but in reality it does not require much more of us than human kindness, a loving gesture, a smile - in short: a connection, an exchanged energy, a bonding with other human beings who are with us in this vale of tears. 

None of us is an island. We all need approbation, human contact, acceptance, understanding. We need someone to say: I see you, you exist. None of us need to do mortality alone, and we shouldn't do it alone. Consider another story from Elizabeth Gilbert:


"Back in 2002, I went away by myself for ten days to a tiny fishing island in the middle of Indonesia. It was the farthest-away place I could find on the map, and all I wanted right then was to be as far removed as possible from all that I knew. My life was a mess. My life, in fact, looked like a dropped pie; everything was on the floor in pieces. I was going through a bad divorce, and in the process I was losing a husband, losing a house, losing money, losing friends, losing sleep, losing myself. So I took myself to this little island 10,000 miles from home, where I rented a small bamboo hut that cost a few dollars a day. My plan was to spend ten days in silence and isolation. I hoped that making myself small and quiet would heal me. I guess what I really wanted was to disappear, and this island seemed the perfect place for it. There was no Internet, and I had no access to a phone. Transportation consisted of fishing boats, or wooden carts pulled by skinny ponies. Here, surely, I could hide from the world. 

Soon, I fell into a routine, Every day, I would walk twice around the perimeter of the entire island - once at dawn and again at dusk. While I walked, I would try to meditate, but usually I ended up arguing with myself, or ruminating over my life's many failures as I fell apart into tears. As for the rest of the day, I believe I slept a lot. I was awfully depressed. I hadn't brought any books with me to disappear into. I didn't swim: I didn't sunbathe; I barely ate. I just executed my two walks a day, and the rest of the time I hid in my hut and wished the sadness out of me.

There were a few other tourists on the island, but they were all romantic couples and they mostly ignored me - I was a skinny, hollow-eyed, solo woman who talked to herself and gave off a freaky vibe. The local fishermen also looked right through me whenever I walked by. Maybe I actually was vanishing from the material world. I certainly felt that way. But there was one woman who saw me - and that changed everything. She was a local fisherman's wife, and she lived in a tiny shack on the other side of the island. Like all the locals, she was Muslim. She dressed modestly, with a head scarf. She seemed to be in her mid-thirties, though she had spent a lifetime in the sun so her age was hard to determine. She had a chubby little toddler who was always crawling about and playing at her feet.

The first morning I walked by her house, the woman looked up from her work in her scrubby subsistence garden and smiled at me. I smiled back, as best I could manage. After that, she always seemed to be standing outside her house when I passed - once at dawn and again at dusk. After a while, it seemed like she was waiting for me to come by. She was my only point of human contact in the world, and her mere recognition of my existence made me feel slightly less lonely. Once, I glanced back at her, and I saw that she was still looking after me, her hand shading her eyes. She was keeping an eye on me, is what it felt like.

On my eighth night on the island, I got terribly sick. It could have been food poisoning, or contaminated drinking water - or maybe it was just that I had finally reached the bottom of my grief and everything bad was coming out of me at last. I was shaking and feverish, vomiting and scared. It was terrifying to be so isolated and so ill. Also, the generators weren't working that night; there was no light. I remember crawling toward the bathroom in the darkness for the tenth time and wondering, 'Why did I come here, so far away from anyone who cares about me?'

I stayed in bed all the next day, shaking and sweating and dehydrated. I had a dreadful thought that I might die on this island all alone, and that my mother would never know what happened to me. That evening, after sundown, there was a knock on the door. On trembling legs, I walked and opened it. It was the woman from the other side of the island - the fisherman's wife. She din't speak English, and I don't speak Bahasa, but it was clear that she was checking on me and that she was worried. When she saw my condition, she looked even more worried. She put up a finger, like: Wait. Less than an hour later, she was back. She brought me a plate of rice, some chopped-up herbs, and a jug of fresh water. She came into the shack and sat on the side of my bed while I ate every bite of this healing food. I started crying. She put her arm around me, and I folded myself into her as if she were my own mother - even though we were almost the same age. She stayed with me for about an hour, until I was composed. She didn't say a word: she just sat with me, arms around me, as if to say: I see you. You exist. I will stay with you. I will make sure you are safe.

Only after she had departed did I have the clarity to piece together what must have happened. This stranger had come to find me because she'd noticed that I had missed both my morning and my evening walks, and she could clearly see: something is not right with this one. And because this was her island - her territory - and because she knew I was alone, she took it upon herself to look after me. She, who had so little to share, made me her responsibility and took the risk of reaching out.

The distance I had traveled may have been vast (10,000 miles from home), but the distance she traveled was vaster (all the way across the island, to knock on a stranger's door) and the kindness of her actions opened my heart to awe and amazement. And that's when I realized that my entire impulse had been dead wrong. I needed the exact opposite of isolation; I needed connection. This stranger had seen my need, and she had offered fellowship."

We are the light of the world. A light that transcends language, nationality, race, class. A light that speaks to all who belong to the human race. A light which was placed within us when we left our heavenly home. May we remember to keep it burning as we traverse the shores of mortality in hopes of saving a drowning soul.

Brightly beams our Father's mercy

From his lighthouse ever more,

But to us he gives the keeping

Of the lights along the shore.

Dark the night of sin has settled;

Loud the angry billows roar.

Eager eyes are watching, longing,

For the lights along the shore.

Trim your feeble lamp, my brother,

Some poor sailor, tempest tossed,

Trying now to make the harbor,

In the darkness may be lost.

Let the lower lights be burning,

Send a gleam across the wave.

Some poor fainting, struggling seaman

You may rescue, you may save.

- Philip Paul Bliss

BY THE GRACE OF GOD PART 2

".....I will go before your face. 
I will be on your right hand and on your left, 
and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, 
and mine angels round about you, to bear you up." 
(D&C 84:88)

As disciples of Jesus Christ we have been given the mandate to become perfect. This perfection will be reached long after we pass on from this mortal life, nevertheless, whilst we are here we are to strive for excellence which will one day qualify us for godhood. Along this path however, we frequently, if not constantly, lack patience to cope with our sense of personal inadequacy. This impatience makes us prone to discouragement and a belief that because of our inadequacies perfection seems an unattainable goal. The gap between the ideal (perfection), and reality for some of us seems like a painful place to exist. In this gap we tend to encounter extreme guilt which makes many of us believe that we will never 'make it'. Women especially are susceptible to feelings of guilt to the point where some dread family-oriented lessons in Relief Society because emphasizing the ideals of motherhood makes them more aware of their own shortcomings and failure to live up to them. The truth is, all of us are falling short of the ideal for who among us could not relate to this family's scenario of the gap between reality and the ideal: "Then there are the family home evenings and scripture study sessions in our home. Somehow it has not been altogether natural for our children to glide reverently into their places all at once and all on time, prepared to ponder thoughtfully the wonders of eternity. More than likely, especially when they were young, they seemed to come swinging into the family room on the chandeliers like Tarzan on the vines, then would stand on their heads or flip themselves over the back of the couch during most of the lesson. During that stage of our family's history, our bishop lovingly referred to our children as curtain climbers, rug rats, and house apes. There were times in those days  when the gap yawned as wide as the Grand Canyon" (Bruce C. Hafen, The Broken Heart, p. 178). 

We live in a 'feel good' day and age. Modern day psychologists and spiritual gurus advise strongly against any negative feelings that have the potential to harm our self-esteem. One such therapist claims that being seriously religious "is significantly correlated with emotional disturbance" and goes on to say: "People largely disturb themselves by believing strongly in absolutistic shoulds, oughts, and musts, and most people who dogmatically believe in some religion believe in these health-sabotaging absolutes....The less religious people are, the more emotionally healthy they will tend to be" (Albert, Ellis, "Psychotherapy and Atheistic Values", Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (1980), p 635-7). The world's solution to coping with the gap between the reality and the ideal is to eliminate the ideal and make peace with your reality. By doing this, we are meant to be free from frustration, guilt and unhappiness. This solution is an appealing one to many who are encouraged to accept themselves as they are. Because not having to change is a more comfortable place to be, we convince ourselves that we are not 'celestial material' and fall out of the race. 

Our modern day pre-occupation with self-acceptance limits severely our possibilities for growth and change restricting the power of repentance. Many of us go so far as to believe that we cannot change human nature at all and that we are what we are. Those of us who are of that belief deny the power of the Atonement and are in effect saying to the Saviour, I don't need you, you have no power to do anything for me. When we come to that point we believe the world more than we believe Him. We then lose all faith that we can ever attain godhood because we know our own capabilities cannot get us there. The other choice we have in this matter is to focus on Him who overcame the world, resisted every temptation and avoided every sin. We must understand that the only way perfection is possible at all is through the grace of Him who has paved the way. Through His grace we too can overcome the world, resist every temptation and avoid every sin because His grace enlarges our capacities and turns our weaknesses into strengths but the most important gift of grace "along that path is the gift of hope, which is a source of comfort and strength for those who move courageously forward toward the perfecting ideal of the Saviour" (Bruce C. Hafen, The Broken Heart, p 183)

It astounds me to hear an active member of the Church exclaim "oh, I know I will never make it". This proclamation indicates a lack of understanding of the Atonement and a lack of acceptance of its' power. To me this belief is akin to sin. Contrast that mentality with active members of the Church in Jacob's time: "Wherefore, we search the prophets (scriptures), and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy (testimony); and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea. Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things" (Jacob 4:6-7). It is clear from this scripture that those who believe that they will never 'make it' are the ones who put their faith in their capacities alone rather than in the grace of God which is the only way we can ever make it. If we can by the grace of God command the trees, the mountains or the waves of the sea to obey us, surely we can by this same grace also change the human nature. 

The spiritual endowments of hope are perspective, patience, serenity, peace, insight and endurance. When we press forward with steadfastness in Christ (2 Nephi 31:20), we do so with a hope that we can make it for the one who has made it is before us, behind us and by us (D&C 88:84, 49:27). We desperately need these endowments of hope because they help us to see that development toward spiritual maturity and godhood "is a process and not an event....it is a distance race, not a sprint....it is thus no race for the short-winded. To develop toward a Christlike character is a process, not an event. There may one day be some crowning event, in which the final endowment of grace completes a process that may take longer than mortal life. But to qualify for such a conclusion requires patience and persistence more than it requires flawlessness. It is indeed, our own groping and reaching in the struggle for growth that qualifies us for divine help." (Bruce C. Hafen, The Broken Heart, p 184, 186)

In our quest for the ideal, we are like a toddler just learning to walk. The closer we get to the ideal, the more that ideal expands and creates new aspirations and a new gap, until we finally reach godhood: "When our capacities are small, God's expectations are not very demanding.......but just as we master these elementary demands, we discover greater expectations that we didn't quite see before. Gradually our capacity grows, but so does our understanding of what more we must become, 'For of him unto whom much is given much is required' (D&C 82:3). The Lord would have us stretch - but not out of shape.....in the midst of this process, the blessing of hope keeps the gap at a manageable distance. Our perceptions and attitudes really can be shaped and lifted by a gift of divinely given insight that lets us feel, even with some anticipation and optimism, that we can do it.....Hope, a divinely given blessing of atoning grace for those who seek it, after all they can do on their own, establishes in the way our mind sees things just the right distance between where we are and where we strive to be. It also reassures us, somehow, that the ever-receding ideal is not a trick, but part of a growth process that can be not only acceptable but exhilarating" (Bruce C. Hafen, The Broken Heart, p 187,188)

We need only search the scriptures in order to know the God we speak of; to know that to Him man is the underlying and over-riding purpose of all His works, that to Him we are everything (Moses 1:39); that it is for our sakes' He willingly laid Himself on the cross; that beside Him there is no Saviour; that the extent of His doings none can find out; that there are none who can stay His hand; that great is His wisdom and marvelous are His ways; that He is gracious and merciful unto those who fear Him and that He delights to honour those who serve Him in righteousness and in truth unto the end (D&C 76:1-5). This is the God we worship, this is the God we serve and this is the God we should believe.

"Behold, I have graven thee 

upon the palms of my hands;

thy walls are continually before me.......

come unto me thy Saviour"

(Isaiah 49:16, D&C 19:41))