Brain Hurricane: A Swarm of Thoughts on the Light of Christ

This was the "NASA Image of the Day" a few days ago. NASA's caption for it was: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph from the International Space Station on Oct. 7, 2015. Sharing with his social media followers, Kelly wrote, "The daily morning dose of #aurora to help wake you up. #GoodMorning from @Space_Station! #YearInSpace"

Due to my weekly Mormon Tabernacle Choir "work schedule" every Sunday, circumstances demand that I attend my regular church services on Sunday afternoons. I heard about a midsingles ward that sounded really good to me. Several of my best single MoTab friends attend it and say they love it, and so I decided I should check it out.

(I think "midsingles" is possibly a pretty-much exclusively LDS/Mormon term. What a midsingles ward is, is a church congregation whose population is unmarried people who are between the ages of 31 and 45. Psst...am I right on that? The max age is 45, yeah?)

I'm not 31 yet; I still have a little while to go till I get there. However, I am relatively close to getting there, and so when I visited the midsingles ward today, I felt at home, especially when I already seemed to know like 40 people there. I'll most likely be attending that ward more often from now on, since it meets at a perfect time for me each Sunday, and that's where oodles of mis amigos are.

Typically once a month, an LDS congregation has this thing called a testimony meeting. What happens is -- there's a significant amount of set-aside time for members of the congregation to come to the pulpit or take the microphone and share their sincere testimonies and heartfelt feelings about the Savior Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father.

As I said before, I know a lot of people who attend that ward. One gal I know and love walked up to the pulpit and started sweetly talking about what was in her heart. Halfway into listening to her, *BOOM!* a thought hit me (not a painful *boom*, for it felt kind of nice). Something whispered to my brain, Alison, you'd better write this down. And so I did:

Why is it, when another person reaches out to you, lifts you up, helps you feel better, that you feel like Deity loves you? It is because the Light of Deity is inside each person, glowing particularly brightly in the person who lovingly reaches out.

I'm pretty darn sure this wasn't the specific topic my friend was presently touching on at the pulpit. Sometimes when you're listening to a person's motivational or inspired message, it opens the mental or spiritual door for something  else totally different to speak its message to you. It's kind of like you've stopped hearing the words coming out of your friend-at-the-pulpit's mouth; however, hearing the words coming out of their mouth seems to be the just-right thing to do the trick of enabling you to experience what turns out to be a fabulous thought-explosion.

One thought about what I jotted down as the "Light of Deity" led to another thought, which led to another, then to another, so on and so forth. I found myself flipping through the pages of the Doctrine & Covenants. I searched for a plethora of particular verses that I knew were there. I found them. Read them. They were in different spots throughout the book. To me they seemed to be all related to each other. I connected dots.

Like delicious pulled pork for sandwiches, I will pull apart the note that jotted down in my phone's Notes app:

...the Light of Deity is inside each person...

I thought of this line to write because of scriptural lines that I think about all the time:

D&C 84:46 ~ And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the world...

D&C 93:2 ~ And that I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world...

Pretty much my absolute favorite thing to read is the Bible Dictionary. Holy cow that reference tool is cool. I think any person of any Christian denomination would love to explore the Bible Dictionary. Seriously so interesting. For real. 

Anyway, I love the Bible Dictionary's entry for "Light of Christ." Here's an extract from the entry that I wish to touch upon:

The light of Christ is just what the words imply: enlightenment, knowledge, and an uplifting, ennobling, persevering influence that comes upon mankind because of Jesus Christ. For instance, Christ is “the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world”...

Two particular lines from this extraction that I want to talk about for a minute.

1) ...an uplifting, ennobling, persevering influence...

2) Christ is “the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (D&C 93:2; John 1:9)

So I guess I'll talk about the second one first. One of my snowball-effect thoughts today was What reason may be behind the fact that Christ's light is in all of us? Well, it may be a lot of reasons. But I think one biggie could be the fact that Jesus Christ is, in fact, our Brother. Our literal brother, but with a capital B: "Brother." Brother Jesus is our sibling ("Sibling" with a capital S? Hehe :) He and we share the same Father (and Mother, certainly). Heavenly Father. We are family. Actual, literal family.

And so what I'm trying to say is... We've got the light of Christ -- the "Light of Deity" -- because it's in our genes. I think it's hereditary. Just as our mortal bodies consist of hereditary traits that our parents and ancestors have/had, today I realize that it makes a whole lot of sense to me that divine light, purely and simply, is part of our makeup. It constitutes us. Just like our bones, muscles, nerves, cells, all of that.

I'll talk about the first one second. An uplifting, ennobling, persevering influence... That's one way the Bible Dictionary defines the light the Christ, and I totally believe it. I know it. I know that's how the light of Christ is. Because why? Well, because... think about it. What was recorded in the scriptures about Christ's life? In what way did He live? What did He do? How did He treat people?

He uplifted. He lifted people up. He lifted hands that hung down. He healed people -- not just their physical maladies, but their spirits as well. Their souls. He comforted.

He ennobled in the sense that He helped people feel like they were worth something great. He helped people come to understand their infinite individual worth. He helped people realize that they belong to a loving Heavenly Father and Heavenly Family. He helped people feel hope -- hope for a better world; and hope that repentance can be done, and that they can always have a heavenly helping hand each step of the way to improvement.

He Himself was an amazing example of perseverance. The best example, actually. A humongous part of what His Atonement means is that, while He is exalted to a throne majestically high above, He also has descended below all things, meaning He has a completely perfect understanding and empathy towards the person -- the child of God -- who is acquainted with the absolute lowest of lows. Most definitely He knows what "rock bottom" feels like. He knows what everybody's "rock bottom" feels like.

He knows what everything in between feels like, too. Every possible level of struggling He is all too familiar with. He knows how to help every single person, who has ever lived, to persevere through trial, for He too persevered. He persevered through all of it.

And so this is what the light of Christ is. This is its essence. Since the light of Christ is in all of us, too, as well as in Christ, what does this say about us? About what we can do?

In the LDS Church's Young Women program, young women are given a number of different "values" to ponder and develop on a continual basis. One of the values is called "Divine Nature." The program has an assigned beautiful color to accompany each value, and Divine Nature's color is blue... And blue is on my Top Two list of favorite colors ever, and D and N are two of my most favorite letters of the alphabet (I never said I wasn't a nerd), and sooo... Divine Nature was possibly my most favorite Young Women value, and when I was a young girl I would think about Divine Nature allllll the time. I still think about it all the time, even though my Young Women era of youth was more than ten years ago.

What I'm thinkin' about our divine nature right now is... Our "divine nature" is the light of Christ that's in each of us. And it's not an abstract idea, but it's also not just a thing that we happen have that is just sitting there inside of us not doing anything. It's got a purposeful function, just like most everything else that comprises our bodies. Like blood, like skeletons, like our anatomies and physiologies, the light of Christ -- which is also very much a part of us -- actually does stuff. Really cool stuff, actually, that benefits not only the person whose light it is, but other people as well, because the light can be used to serve mankind.

Why is it, I asked, when another person reaches out to you, lifts you up, helps you feel better, that you feel like Deity loves you?

When another person reaches out to you, lifts you up, and helps you feel better, the tool they are actually using is the light of Christ that's inside of them. They're using it. They're applying it. The light can be used to do stuff.

I know that I've used it to bless the lives of others. Most of the time I have no notion that I'm using it. Most of the time I don't realize what I'm doing. Most of the time I bet the fruits don't even get seen. I think that, most of the time, the acts of uplifting, ennobling, and encouraging -- from soul to soul -- are so incredibly subtle, that they go sort of undetected.

But every once in a while, you get the lucky chance of being able to share a wonderfully sweet moment with a friend whom you've helped, or who's helped you, and earnest thanks and you're-welcomes are exchanged, and you'll always remember the experience, and you'll carry the good memory with you in your pocket everywhere you go.

But I take back what I said about those types of experiences being "lucky chances." I think it's not luck. I think it's what God wants you experience and remember. It's one of His numberless various types of blessings that He bestows upon you.

There. Was that enough blah-blah-blah for you? That was about 1,773 words. If you read all that, good job. :)

"Ye hope for things." Yes? Well, what are the things?

I have no idea what got me started thinking about this certain thing that I'm about to start talking about. Maybe it's just 'cause I like to think about Jesus. I find that I catch myself thinking about Him quite frequently.

I was born and raised in a certain Christian religion, and I feel happy to state that that religion is still so meaningful and important to me. Thus I have been hearing about, learning about, and talking about Jesus Christ basically ever since I could start forming words as a tiny tike.

A tiny tike gets to a certain age where he or she acquires the ability to remember life events, and consciously take note that he himself or she herself is, in fact, thinking about something with his or her own mind. I suppose about myself that, as the years have gone by, from my tiny-tike days until this present day, I have gradually become more and more consciously controlling of my own thoughts. Little by little, I have become more and more aware of the specific things I think about.

If this here supposition about myself is correct, I also suppose that I have always been thinking about Jesus, possibly ever since I was born. However, because I have been getting older, my remembrance of Jesus has become more pronounced with time. Yesterday (or perhaps it was the day before yesterday?), I feel like my pondering of Him has actually reached a whole new frontier, which may be interesting to absolutely no one but me.

Ever since I became learned enough to get a super-basic conceptual grasp of what Christ's "atonement" is, I've been telling myself that "I have faith in Christ's atonement."

And I do. I do have faith in it. I feel like I can almost literally touch the thing that is my faith in Christ's atonement. Almost tangible, it is.

But yesterday (or the day before), like a bolt out of the blue, some mysterious/philosophical/hypothetical being or force asked me a question, and I'm thinking I may never forget that moment: "What are the specific things that you have faith in?"

And that was it. That was the question: short, sweet, pure, simple.

I think about this verse of scripture from the Book of Mormon: "And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." (Alma 32:21)

I'll extract a phrase from that: "ye hope for things." That phrase now speaks to me. I'm sure it's spoken to me before, but never like this.

Remember what the hypothetical force asked me? What are the things...? For me, that question matches up with the phrase that Alma conveyed in 74 B.C.

After some earnest mental effort, I made a short list of what are some of the specific things (about the atonement as well as other gospel aspects) that I have faith in -- that I believe in:

- How an event in a Jerusalem garden, which apparently lasted for only a few earthly hours, was a long enough time for Jesus Christ to be able reach out to and perfectly lovingly and courageously redeem each and every living soul that ever existed in the universe at any time: past, present, and future. Just a few hours? For millions, billions, possibly trillions and beyond? Is this logical, according to even the most genius human mind? Does this make any sense? I can't figure out how it's all possible. I don't know if any person can explain... But it's still something that I believe to be true. Something that I have faith in. I've really seen divine redemption and heavenly help give aid to not only myself, but to countless other people, and it's enough to validate that what I'm believing about Christ's atonement is good and right.

- How God (the three Godhead members) can keep perfect track of everybody at all times ("waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light" ~ "Be Thou My Vision") -- in an incredibly individual fashion -- especially when there's so many gall darn people . . . and God is just always there for everybody . . . He is so very omnipresent, and so faithful and loyal to each of us! Like, this is the most dumbfounding thing of all the things... To me, anyway... But I believe in it!

- How there is a life and a world after this, where I'm going to see loved ones I've lost here on earth

- How, after we die, we will live again and never die again. We will become immortal and our bodies will be perfectly restored

- How, in the life and world to come -- rather, in the eternity to come -- families can be unbreakably close-knit families forever. Forever!

And like such as. For me, these all are things that are not only nice things to think about... Ya know, like, Ah well, ya know, like that would be nice and all, buuuuut...... Nah, nah, there's not any "but" about any of it; it's all stuff that is true! Granted, I don't have a "perfect knowledge" about it all (look back on that Alma verse). But it is all stuff that I hope for, that I can't see with my own two eyes, but nonetheless are still very true.

And so, Mr. or Ms. Hypothetical Inquisitive Force, here is the answer to your question. These are the things I hope for. This is where my faith lies. This is what I believe.

I would've wanted it to be a Coby Persin prank.

There's a certain YouTube video that has become über viral in just the past 48 hours. It now has 14.8 million views. Among its 68K+ awarded "thumbs ups" is my own upward-pointing thumb.

I've read numerous commentaries on the video -- in the various places online where I've noticed it -- where people are saying that the parents shown in the video are "traumatizing" their daughters, or simply just acting too harshly. I was surprised (yet sadly not too surprised at the same time) that some people also commented that the issue serving as the central focal point of the video's message is not really a big deal, and that there really aren't that many kids who would actually fall into the dangerous "stranger danger" traps. They say that this type of occurrence is not as common as we may think.

But let me tell you something here. Let me tell you a story real quick:

When I was 16 or 17 years old, I was in the Nevada All-State Honor Choir. Hmm...or hadn't All-State happened yet? Maybe it was the preceding regional Honor Choir? Heh. No matter. The point is that a few friends and  I were on lunch break near the UNLV campus, at the local In-N-Out burger joint.

There were two, maybe three of my friends (they were girls) eating with me at my table. We were minding our own business until these two guys -- they looked college age -- walked over to us and stood at our tableside. They said, "We're selling some perfume, and we've got a bunch of samples outside, in the trunk of our car. Would you like to come smell some and see what you think?"

I felt a jolt in my stomach. I think my friends did too. Fortunately we were feeling wise enough to politely decline the guys' offer. They left us alone. (Thank our lucky stars!)

Almost as well as I know that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, I know that those guys weren't up to any good that day. It was too odd and out-of-the-ordinary of an invitation for it to be normal, wholesome, and harmless. Surely it would've been a dreadful situation for me and my friends, had we chosen to go with those guys to their car.

I've never really taken any time to think back on that day and imagine what it would've been like, had my friends and I chosen to accompany those guys. I guess I never *wanted* to think about it. But when I saw this YouTube video for the first time yesterday, I finally did imagine -- for the first time. If the guys would've drugged me (and/or my friends) (probably with the "perfume"), grabbed me, and driven away with me... Oh! How I would've desperately longed for my parents to be there to save me. And I am absolutely certain that, if it were to have actually been this here Coby Persin prank played on me to teach me a lesson... Sure, I would've been scared silly to tears and scarred for a little while. But I know I would've been so very, very grateful.

My opinion is that the shock factor was key, in this Coby Persin social experiment, to drive the point home to the young girls' hearts (and to viewers' hearts), to help them realize, in a pretty tangible light, that the terrible choice they were willing to make truly would have had the most awful and freakiest of consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, this stuff is real and it happens all the time. All. The. Time. It could've happened to me that day at In-N-Out.

Teach your children about these dangers. Teach them that scary stuff like this can happen not only online, but "offline" as well. Teach them what to do, and be their loving and continual guide. Now that this video is here, I highly recommend showing it to your kids who are showing interest in social media.

We've all got to be careful, to be wise. We must teach what is right and be open to learning. This is serious stuff.

Ragnar is Like Life

A month and a half ago or so, I ran my first Ragnar. People ask me how it went, and this is the best way I can think of to describe it: miserable fun, fun misery.

Ragnar. Really, it is so awful. But what it also really, really is? Beautiful, and a lot of it is so delightful. In fact, for me, all of it was delightful, with much of the delight actually being disguised as "eightch-ee-double-toothpicks." There's a term that one of our teammates introduced to the rest of us, at some point towards the end of our Ragnar adventure: "Ragnesia." Ragnesia happens to you when you realize that you have forgotten all about how intensely miserable you were during Ragnar, and you only remember how awesome it was.

I testify that it is real. Ragnesia is real. It really did happen to me. I think it happened to all of us on our team.

THE MISERY

What are the Ragnarian things that are pure, sheer, untarnished misery?

- When you're running your longest, hardest leg through heavy heavy heavy, hot hot hot late-June sunshine, and you're trudging through swarms of lake gnats, mayflies, all the nasty bugs that fly... Meaning, you're by a lovely lake the whole time, BUT... ("But" what?) BUT your eyes wistfully view, off in the distance, many happy, blissful, carefree non-Ragnarians swimming in the water and having a gleeful time, and they are WET AND COLD, and YOU can't jump in there and play with them, no matter how much you want to, because YOU, my PERSPIRING AND HOT friend, have a race to run!!!

This is what "HOT" looks like... Gaaahahah. I slay myself. ;)

- When your amazing and amazingly large and deep blister welcomes itself into your life not on your final leg towards the extreme tail-end of your 200-mile journey. Oh no. Nooo nonononono. Somehow your blister arrives on your third-Ragnar-mile-ever. Yup. Very beginning. And when you first saw that it was there, it was making your right sock gooey. And you've got miles and miles to go, on foot. And the blister is bulging with grody goo relentlessly and unceasingly, and you doctor it all the time, and every time you do doctor it, you have to look at it, and you can see actual skin layers. And you are pretty sure you are looking down into your dermis...... (No photo, because you probably just ate lunch...)

- When 2:00am rolls around and you all have been up running around -- literally -- all day long. It is now time for bed. But you're too tired (or wired) to sleep... And you're too anxious about your next rounds of legs... And you perhaps think that, when you do end up falling asleep, it may take an hour to actually do that...or longer than that...and you'll only end up having a night's sleep that is a grand total of 45 minutes. HECK. Luckily, I think we each ended up getting 2.5 hours of sleep. Nice, huh? (Uhhhh......) Well, at least those of us who slept outside on the grass, under the stars, slept 2.5 hours. And at least I was warm... But those who slept in the car? Ironically (or maybe not ironically?), they were the ones who were freezing, and I'm not sure how long they slept... Poor things...

- Speaking of sleeping... Ripping the entire seat of one of your favorite pairs of pajama pants -- on the way to bedtime -- when you had to hop a fence in order to get onto the grass. R.I.P. Ripped Pants.

- Always always always using honeybuckets and never never never normal toilets for literally almost 40 hours straight. It got old. And you pined for porcelain and flushing mechanisms.

- Arriving at the point where you've all become so incredibly exhausted that you have lost all ability to outwardly express any emotion whatsoever. In fact, you've lost ability to truly feel any emotion whatsoever inside your soul. There is nothing left at all, inside or out. You just want your bed. For 20 hours straight.

That just about covers the basics of what is awful about Ragnar. Along with that is another trial that is to be undergone during Ragnar: the sorrow you feel in your heart for your teammates, when they are on their personal toughest leg. Runner #7 (who was in Van #2 with me) was always the runner to hand off the "baton" to me (it was a slap-bracelet). Her toughest leg was almost 11 miles long, up a mountain, at the hottest time of the day, in that blasted heavy sunshine. Hello that's practically an entire half marathon UPHILL (half marathons -- especially in Utah -- are usually downhill...in the cool of the early morning). When it came to be time for Runner #7 to pass the baton to me, all substance that ever was, is now, and ever will be in my heart went out to her. Guys, that was HARD. Hardest for her. Hard on the rest of us too, imagining just how difficult her journey was on that leg.

And just so you're aware, that leg that she did was the Grandfather Leg of all Ragnar races ever, all across this huge country that is the United States of America. It was the Master Leg. Runner #7's legs conquered the King of Legs. Every person who is the designee to accomplish that leg gets their own medal for it. Yes, the leg has its own medal, and it's actually bigger and better than the one that everybody gets at the conclusion of the entire race.

THE FUN

So your question might be: "So, with all this pain and anguish and languish that you're telling me about, what could possibly be fun and delightful about Ragnar? How can Ragnesia even be real? Why would anyone even do a Ragnar?"

I admit: there is mystery behind why Ragnar is wonderful. I do not yet understand it fully. I don't know if I can explain it very well, but I'll explain the best way I know how. The wonderfulness is weaved into the following:

- The fact that you are constantly in close proximity to some really fun and great people, and you all become great friends by the time you're all done.

- The benevolent charity you show each other throughout the whole grueling process that is Ragnar. Like a loving parent, big sister, or big brother, you're looking out for and earnestly cheering for your teammates -- as well as everybody else you see on the trails! I personally was super thankful for those who called after me: "You can do it!" "You're almost there!" "Do you want me to spray you with this cold water?" (And, to that latter one, I said, "Uhhh OF COURSE!") During Ragnar, you find that you are surrounded by angels who root for you, encourage you, and have prayers in their hearts for you.

- The fact that you're exploring the fantastically beautiful and beautifully fantastic fairylands that comprise the side of the mountain range that many-if-not-most people's eyes have never beheld. All these completely lovely little towns whose names I had never previously heard of in my life. It was so thrilling to be there, and to traverse southward in that countryside with my teammates, each of us on our own two feet!

- The fact that you complete a 200-mile footrace with your friends. Through the outdoor beauty that God has created. TWO-HUNDRED MILES. It is so cool. Such such such a cool feeling to know that you contributed to this marvelous achievement. You achieved this greatness with your people. These are possibly lame words with which to describe the coolness... But that's just because there may not BE any adequate words to describe it!

RAGNAR IS LIKE LIFE

And so... Look me square in the eyes and honestly tell me that this is not what life is like. All of this Ragnar stuff.

I submit to you that the Ragnar experience -- especially the one that I just had -- can be a freakishly valid analogy to how life goes for plenty of us.

For each of us, life has its crummy seasons, and it has its happy seasons. Speaking of seasons and outdoor temperatures... Just like Ragnar, life has its wintry cold times, its scalding hot times. There's sadness and joy.

You rip your pants. Your worldly possessions get broken, lost, stolen.

You become exhausted and say to yourself: "I can't adult today. Please don't make me adult today."

You reach points where you feel like you have no more emotion, or you feel like you lack control of your emotions. Sometimes you feel like you have nothing left to give, or you feel like you lost control and you perhaps did something or said something you wish you could take back. Or this could be something coming from someone else's end, and it's being directed towards you, and you're the one being oppressed. We give a little, and we get a little.

But we also give love and get love. We give goodness, and receive goodness in return. The goodness cycle is such a beautiful cycle. We are blessed when we do what is right, and when we care for each other as friends and family.

All in all, Ragnar's main point was that we did something truly great together as a team. I think that's life's main point too: that you endure, enjoy, and accomplish life together with the people you care about. You're all in this together. WE are all in this together. We help each other, be each other's cheerleaders. With sincerity and no guile. We stick together in the high times and the hard times.

Together, we win the prize when our race is run.

This is life.