Faith Earthquakes

Hush and I were asked to give talks last week in church.  Here's mine.  I'm putting it on here for my records and to share with my family, but if you gain something from it then coolio. 
And because it's important, here were my outfit choices:

 And this is what we ended up lookin' like.

I have 4 kids, one husband, two parents, five colors in my hair, seven siblings, 9 pairs of boots and 1 faith.  As you know if you’re here, faith is not easy to come by.  Rosemary Wixom spoke of faith in her talk “Returning to Faith” on Sunday morning of Conference, which I wager is the session most widely heard, especially if you came from my family of nascence.   My younger brother tells a story of entering the mission home in the fall and on the Saturday of Conference weekend he was mystified by all the people getting suited up in their church clothes.  He couldn’t figure it out, were they going to take sacrament to people or something?  His companion told him they were going to the Saturday Conference session, and he scoffed in disbelief.  There’s no church on Saturdays!  Whoops.  We always spent Conference Saturday visiting our grandmother and evidently the “talk radio” my dad played in the car and we were unable to hear because the seven of us were bickering in the back seats was actually LDS Conference. 

I was, however, raised in the LDS faith.  I was taught about Christ and about the Plan of Happiness, then called the plan of Salvation, we were fully active and I had a fairly reasonable testimony.  My religious upbringing was not unlike that of the woman Sister Wixom discussed on Sunday morning:

She shared a story that involved a woman who was raised in the gospel, married in the temple, and loved to learn and discover truths.  While searching for truths her questions became harder, and so did the answers.  Sometimes there were no answers – or no answers that brought peace.  Eventually, as she sought to find answers, more and more questions arose, and she began to question some of the very foundations of her faith.

This story is very familiar.  Every adult who chooses to continue in the faith of their father’s goes through a process of owning that faith, and our faith evolves.  Perhaps it’s because I am currently living in the nexus of the LDS faith and therefore hear more about the faith challenges of the community, but it seems to me that many pieces of LDS history are becoming more accessible and therefore more problematic for some members.  Most of these elements are familiar – polygamy in the early church, the translation of the BoM, the history of the Pearl of Great Price. Even more recent issues such as the Book of Mormon musical coming to town, all the discussion around gay marriage, the new sizing of garments – all of these things can be stumbling blocks to even the most faithful members of the church.

I was in the SF bay area last week visiting my family.  One night around midnight the quiet house suddenly jarred.  For those of you who have been in an earthquake you are probably familiar with the rapid fire analysis your brain does when an earthquake starts.  First you think, did something hit the house or was that an earthquake?  A second more of shaking confirms earthquake.  Then you gauge the size – is it big enough to cause problems like the 1989 quake?  Or just a little bump?  Do I need to grab all four of my children and go outside?  Earthquakes are extremely disarming because you don’t know how serious it is and you have to make very quick assessments.  The earthquake last week was a few seconds long and only a 3.6, which is fairly minor.  Light fixtures swing but that’s about it.  The only injury was sustained by my sister who ran to my children.  She stepped on a Lego. 

When we are plodding along in our spiritual journeys we often run into what I like to think of as Faith Earthquakes.  These are the little shocks, the jarring bits of conflict that for some reason cause us to stumble.  Maybe something from the pulpit rubs you the wrong way.  Perhaps a member behaves in a way that is frustrating.  Maybe it’s a lesson about families and you’re sitting there being all single.  These are our Faith Earthquakes.  Now I know that the children are ready for Earthquakes because this week they participated in the Great Shake- Out earthquake drill (and earthquakes hardly ever happen in Utah).  They are prepared for any kind of shake-ups because they are taught in primary that Christ brings peace and comfort.

3^rd Nephi 14 provides the counsel we need in these situations, and I want the primary children to think of a song that talks about the exact same thing: A wise man built his house upon a rock and the rain came down and the floods came up and the house on the rock stood firm.

I believe the rock in this story is Christ and the basic tenants of worshipping him: reading the scriptures and saying prayers.  Those are the foundations of my belief and personal experience has taught me that Christ, prayer and reading scriptures can help me through difficult times.

When we run into Faith Earthquakes we can take a step back and think ourselves through them:  is this an earthquake that has the power to shake my faith?  Is the earth moving under my feet, is the sky tumbling down?   Do I need to grab my children and flee?

Most of the time the answer is no, this is minor and cannot shake me away from my faith.  But in all of our lives at different times the big ones inevitably come.  And we need a plan.

A few years ago my faith was seriously shaken in a most unexpected way. 

I was again visiting my parents and staying at their home when a few police officers knocked at our door.  When I saw them I was not alarmed, I have an older brother who used to get in trouble from time to time and I expected it to be something related to him.  He’d caused my parents a lot of grief.  When they came in they told me that there had been a car accident and that my brother Nate was dead.  I’d seen Nate about a half hour before and I told them they’d made a mistake, he was just here.  But there was no mistake and the officer told me to find my parents and siblings and let them know.  I then walked up the longest staircase I’ve ever walked to tell my dad that his eldest son was dead.

When I woke him I told him that there was terrible news, the worst possible news about Nate and that the police were downstairs.  And then I prayed. 

My brother was a lot of things – clever, charming and super cool.  He was a pro skateboarder and snowboarder.  He was not married and had no children.  Nobody else was killed in the accident and there were no drugs nor alcohol involved.  Three years ago yesterday he was basically just plucked from this earth. 

Now we are taught a lot of things about death and life after death and I thought I believed and understood them.  But at this time my faith fell flat.  I didn’t know where my brother was.  He had been baptized but stopped attending church in his twenties.  He wasn’t living a righteous lifestyle – he was righteous but not righteous.  My religion tells me that he is in some version of an afterlife, but frankly my faith had not followed that leap.

The months following his death were a dark time for me.  How could my brother and I be headed to the same place if he had made so many bad choices? How could life continue with one of the eight of us just gone?  What had Nate’s 37 years meant?  I wondered if Shakespeare was right and I could not get that part of MacBeth out of my head: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.  Out out, brief candle!  Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.  It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”  Nate’s life had not followed the traditional plan that we are taught.  Did he fail the test?  What happens when your family member fails? 

It was a pretty major faith earthquake for me.  It felt weird having his funeral in the church building where we were raised amongst the Young Men’s teachers who had worried about him.  I wondered if he had ever felt comfortable there, being a black sheep.  I wondered how much the religion divided our family.  I doubted.

But there was still light.  There were my children and my family, and we were in it together.   There were good friends.  There was the sun in the morning and the moon at night.  There were so many blessings in my life and the day still dawned whether or not I knew for sure where my brother was.  My brother’s death was a major faith shaker, but it wasn’t enough to shake me from Hope. 

My children still needed someone to take them to primary so that they could learn about Christ and hope.  Elder Uchdorf counsels us to doubt our doubts.  And so, with a heart laden with questions and doubts, we continued to go to church. 

Sister Wixom shared a story from the writings of Mother Teresa.  In a 1953 letter, Mother Teresa wrote: “Please pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself—for there is such terrible darkness within me. It has been like this more or less from the time I started ‘the work.’ Ask Our Lord to give me courage.”

Archbishop Périer responded: “God guides you, dear Mother; you are not so much in the dark as you think. The path to be followed may not always be clear at once. Pray for light; do not decide too quickly, listen to what others have to say, consider their reasons. You will always find something to help you. … Guided by faith, by prayer, and by reason with a right intention, you have enough.”5

I like to think of faith as a pyramid.  There are pieces of religion and truth that I do not yet know or understand about my faith, there are holes in my pyramid.  Goethe wrote, “It is the nature of grace to fill the places that have been empty.”  That’s why I’m here – to find a way to fill those holes and make my pyramid impervious to Faith Earthquakes.   I believe that Christ fills in those holes – that He is the bridge over the troubled parts and that I can be strong in Him.

So I don’t have perfect faith, but Christ said in 2^nd Corinthians “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  We are all far from perfect, but the scriptures are full of imperfect people.  Jacob was a cheater.  Peter had a temper.  David had an affair.  Noah got drunk.  Jonah ran from God.  Paul was a murderer. Martha was a worrier.  Thomas was a doubter.  Moses stuttered.  Zaccheus was short.  Abraham was old.  And Lazarus was dead.  That is the type of ward I want to belong to: spiritual giants, followers of Christ despite their weaknesses, flawed people who come to church seeking to be made whole.  The Church I want to belong to isn’t a museum for good people, it’s a hospital for the broken and humbled. 

Christ surely has enough grace for the rest of us who come upon Faith Earthquakes.  I belong here, learning about Christ and worshipping Him, and so do you.

In the meantime, between now and when we know everything and are totally perfect, we have to find what President Monson calls “Joy in the Journey” which is similar to the Japanese concept Wabi-sabi.   Wabi-sabi represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.  I think this world view beautifully applies to faith: our faiths are works in progress, continuously changing – for the better if we nourish them, for the worse if we dwell on the things we do not know.  Elder Jeffrey R. Holland counseled “Hold fast to what you already know and stand strong until additional knowledge comes.”⁹  The standing strong is the part that impresses me most.  Wabi Sabi essentially means to find beauty in the “imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.”   

If Mother Teresa could live her religion without all the answers and without a feeling of clarity in all things, maybe we can too.  And maybe we can find the beauty in our weaknesses and imperfections because those weaknesses are where we need the light of Christ most.    “Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

I bear testimony that I need Christ to fill in all of my cracks and to carry me through my earthquakes.