A Most Poignant Poem

I have often reflected upon the highly evocative poem, Maude Muller, by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892).  Perhaps it is because, as I freely admit, I am stuck in veneration of the nobility of character of my 19^th Century heroes -- all of whom were born less than two decades apart and who contributed so greatly to my mind-set, education, and personality.  

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865);  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882); Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-1844); Brigham Young (1801-1877); Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862); Walt Whitman (1819-1892); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) and, of course Whittier were among those giants who left footprints in my soul.

Whittier’s poem, Maude Muller, tells a tale of two young people miles apart on the social scale, but ever so close on the register of their hearts.  It is presented here in highly redacted form:

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A rich young judge riding on his magnificent steed and a poor but fetching farm girl met, by chance (?) in a meadow on a warm summer’s day. 

The maiden sang as she raked her hay and then

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast,—

A wish that she hardly dared to own,

For something better than she had known.

The young people talked briefly as she supplied him with a drink of water from the brook, and then the young man reluctantly took his leave.

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,

And saw Maud Muller standing still.

"A form more fair, a face more sweet,

Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.

"And her modest answer and graceful air

Show her wise and good as she is fair.

"Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay:

In later years the rich young man who married a vain and spoiled woman would often think back on this encounter.  And the maiden, who married another and lived a life of poverty and unrequited hopes did likewise.

A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty and love was law.    Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "It might have been."  100    Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, For rich repiner and household drudge!    God pity them both! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.    For of all sad words of tongue or pen,  105 The saddest are these: "It might have been!"    Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes;    And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away!

Trust

Okay, here’s the reality.  We are not independent actors in living our lives.  We find we must trust the abilities, focus, alertness and claims of myriad other people in almost all that we do.  (But then, too, we must have some doubt until evidence suggests otherwise.)

Take, for example, the common experience of driving our car down any road at almost any time of day.  To go on the road ourselves we must trust the abilities, focus, and alertness of every other driver who comes our way or whom we encounter.  Likewise we trust our surgeon, our dentist, our auto mechanic or service technician, our airline pilot, our religious leaders.  We trust our friend, our spouse, our parents, our teachers. And we should be able to. 

Since we can’t personally evaluate every driver who comes our way; since we can’t test the competency of every ‘doctor’ who puts out a shingle; since we can’t look into the heart of every person who steps up to a pulpit or sits down in the halls of congress we must initially at least trust in the license they carry or the authority with which they were vested. 

 

But life teaches us that some individuals or categories of individuals might be more trustworthy than others.  Some we might or must trust because of their competencies and our need, but wisely repose less trust in their character.  Some categories may even be inherently or historically more trustworthy than others.  Politicians, car salesmen, financial speculators and the like have sometimes categorically been discredited because of the untrustworthiness of some (or many) in their profession. 

One social/spiritual institution that has taken a major hit regarding trustworthiness  in recent years—which formerly had been a bastion of trust—is what is generically called the ‘church.’  Yet we must not forget there are many churches and some are much farther from the truth than others.  Unfortunately, many “teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” 

 

‘In God We Trust,’ we all know, is embossed on our currency and was a foundational pillar upon which our nation was founded.  But there is much to be skeptical about pertaining to the egregious behavior of some practitioners of some of the churches (who are men, not God) and even some of the churches themselves that claim a trust in God.

Sexual predators and pedophiles can rightfully be judged as among society’s most untrustworthy and corrupt people; Jesus himself called them ‘whited sepulchers,’ yet many of them have found a base for their evil operations in at least one well-known denomination.  So too are religious extremists of another religion who resort to terrorist acts in the name of God as a cloak for their perfidy. 

It is sad that trust in God or ‘religion’ in general as a social institution of stability and hope has become so damaged by the actions of some of its adherents that many have entirely drifted away from faith in God because they cannot have faith in man.  But therein lies the problem—man.  We are not expected to have religious faith in man, but rather in God and in his son Jesus Christ.  It is also strange that one denomination, the Roman Catholic Church, in particular, among those of Christian faith has had so many perverts in positions of trust.  And it is strange that among another of the world’s so-called ‘great religions’ that one, Islam, has had so many terrorists in their ranks who do un-Godly things in the name of religion.

   

My plea in this piece, however, is that rather than assume that all religious people or the denominations they belong to are evil or corrupt (for they are not—but some are much farther from the truth, or embrace far fewer truths than others) consider the criteria that Jesus gave us to judge their veracity: “That which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually . . . .  It is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil. . . for everything which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ.” And, of course, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” 

 

In the end there is ‘trust’ and there is ‘TRUST.’  Some people I would trust to hold the ladder I am climbing but I would not trust to catch me once I got to the top if they said to jump.  If it were my Savior at the bottom and He said to jump it would be no problem. 

You Are What You Remember

This title comes from a statement made by one of the characters in the modern science-fiction classic Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card (in my opinion a very good and interesting book that I would recommend). The title is a provocative thought, but hardly the whole picture. 

  

In addition to what I will argue below, I likewise believe we are what we remember—with one merciful twist:  King David in the Psalms pled for the Lord to “Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: [instead], according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord” (Psalm 25:7).  It is clear that David remembered his sins and was troubled by them.  But it is also clear that David knew that God could, upon his (David's) sincere repentance, choose not to ‘remember’ them. That the Lord will do that for the truly repentant is indeed the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  That is one good reason why Christianity matters. 

I, too, believe God knows and remembers everything about us (or can easily access our 'record')—except what He chooses for our sake not to remember.  Forgiveness on His part is choosing not to remember the bad parts about us based upon our repentance. Caution on our part is remembering and then acting appropriately based on what we have learned from what we remember—and then trusting God’s grace through the Atonement of His Son to perform the miracle of forgiveness. 

In addition to what you cognitively  remember, you are also what you can do now and can yet do in the future; you are your competencies (present) and your potential (future).  A baby seemingly initially  remembers nothing, but all agree he or she is an eight-pound bundle of potential, and some of us believe there is imprinted on his tiny soul a divine heritage (as a spirit child of God) which, through appropriate and receptive stimulus can recall at least echos of its pre-mortal past.

Moreover, I also have had, and I think most people have experienced this, a sort of déjà vu experience of remembering something from the distant past.  The poet William Wordsworth said it this way:

                    Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

                    The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar

                   Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had this related insight:

Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.

 

This knowledge, this resonance with truth when we hear it, I believe is a restoration of that which we learned in our pre-mortal past.  This is a doctrine of my Church and I have personally experienced it.  

So yes, we are what we remember. And as we live our lives in congruence with the truth that we know, we will be added upon with more truth and with a remembrance or suggestion ‘of things as they really are,’ and really were, ‘and as they really will be’ (Book of Mormon, Jacob 4:13). 

Guidelines for Living on this Earth

Over the years I have wondered about the tension between leaving things as they are or trying to capitalize on or improve upon nature—to convert ‘resources’ to the use of man.  Civilization, of course, has won the battle.  Nature often has suffered.

It has been man’s battle to make civil or to subdue that which is untamed or, in its natural state, is not useful for humankind. That is the nature of ‘progress,’ I suppose. It is the process of rearing a child from infancy to maturity; of protecting it from harm and educating it from ignorance to self-sufficiency.  It is the process of clearing the land and planting and harvesting the crops; of eradicating disease; of building cities; of subduing those who violate the rights of others. 

Taking such a stance presupposes that mankind is more important than nature and that the ‘natural’ or uncivilized man is a threat.  For the most part I agree.  I believe that God provided this earth as a place for man to come to take a step in his eternal progression.  In the beginning (of this earth) God gave man “dominion”—stewardship—“over all the earth” and told him to “replenish the earth and subdue it,” to take good care if it. Why?  To better serve man in his needs and in his probation. So, we should not do 'battle' with the earth, but rather work with it and respect it and consequently it can work for us.

Since the earth man lives upon has finite resources, yet man has the unalienable right to exercise agency--which he often abuses--a tension exists.  We must remember that you and I are not earth's only inhabitants.  Resource management devolves upon all of us—not just the agencies and managers and regulators.  The need for conservation and respect for the web of life must always be part of our consciousness.  (I urge you to continue this essay in writing or verbally in your family or with your friends.)

For today, in closing,  I tender a few common things to think about regarding our personal responsibilities in sharing this planet with others: 

·        It is much easier to consume than it is to produce.  It takes but a minute to cut down a tree; it takes decades to grow it.  Water is pure at its source but becomes more contaminated as man pollutes it.  The farther air is from mankind’s pollutants the purer and more breathable it is. Examine your consumer practices with regard to your use of trees, water, air, petroleum products, etc.

·        A couple of good guidelines to more responsible living you might consider are some dicta I have come to believe in:

Ø Ask yourself, ‘Is it sufficient for my needs?’ Accumulating more than that may be conspicuous consumption that will ultimately do you and others more harm than good.

Ø ‘Do no harm.’  This is a dictum of the medical profession.  It could and should be extended to every sort of human endeavor.  Take good care of what you’ve got--relationships with people, material things, your health, our earth, etc.

Ø Leave the place better than you found it.  As we have built upon the contributions of others, let those who follow us build upon what we have left--and not to just clean up after us. Be part of the solution--not part of the problem.