Brethren and Sisters, aloha. Today my goal is to make you homesick. For many of you that will not take much effort. What a beginning! To tell you that I'm going create a depressed atmosphere, or at best some melancholy and inward reflection. Actually, I don't want you to feel bad, instead I seek to offer a vision of hope a confidence to relish the journey "on the way home." I'm not talking about your literal home where familiarity provides a sense of security and well being. Those places we call home, where the setting, people, language, and manners make us feel centered and even confident, provide an apt parallel to our great longings for an eternal home.
We have all felt homesick, and I am sure many of you feel it keenly now. Even those with wanderlust to experience new people, places and ideas, often feel the pull. Perhaps our desire to explore, to expand our minds, relationships, and opportunities have encouraged us to leave, and we may even boast in our adaptability, our capacity to keep moving and reinvigorating ourselves. And yet, we periodically look back and wonder that perhaps what we are looking for was always there ”where we came from. As a great songwriter exclaimed, "I've come home to stop yearning."
This desire for a return is both personal and collective. Individuals long for home, even when home is more of an idea than a reality ever known, especially if what they have experienced at home is negative. And often a displaced people long for a return, either to a home land or a past. The restored gospel of Jesus Christ addresses both of these longings of scale. The historical perspective and purposes of the Lord are in "deep time." The scriptures adumbrate upon a whole people, even nations, not only over generations but millennia, and tie together whole dispensations of time. The Lord keeps track of his people and unfolds his designs across great expanses of time and space. He links disparate ages and geography into a chain of his diverse children. And still, amidst this grand eonic design He attends to the singular individual. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" He attends to the journey of an individual life the weaving together of the rich tapestry of a person among countless others.
Whether whole nations or individuals, the desire to find our way home is created through separations some intended and some imposed. In either case we feel the sense of loss and seek the recovery from whence we came. Finding our way is in part a discovery of the new within ourselves, about others and new places. In discovery we gain different perspectives, not only on where we have been, but on home itself. But may I submit that the journey is only meaningful if we have the risk of getting lost to wander off in forbidden paths. Without such a possibility we cannot, as our Mother Eve asserted, "have known good and evil" (Moses 5:11). Without the option of alternative trails, we possess "neither sense nor insensibility" (2 Nephi 2:11), no thought, no comprehension, no holiness, and the creation itself becomes "a thing of naught" (2 Nephi 2:12) and God's purposes, even mercy and justice must vanish away (see 2 Nephi 2:13). We need to be able to get lost. But that is not the same as saying we should make an effort to get lost. There are plenty glaring bulletin boards recommending, with guile, tantalizing roads to take. But how do we find our way as individuals and as a people? We could hold our breaths with our eyes closed, or we can recognize signposts along the way that give us direction? Christ's declaration of himself - an encapsulating summary, "I am the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6), offers at once that he both provides the way and is the way to follow. It proclaims that he both embodies and points to the truth, that he is both eternal life and directs us to the life he offers. We must become proficient in reading the signs of him and about him.
Allow me to explain a lesson I learned about reading signposts from a Marshallese boat captain. (I will tell you two stories today of being out on the ocean, this is odd since I am not a water person but a land and wilderness person, and make no pretense to be a competent ocean dweller like my Marshallese friends). In any case, in the dinosaur days I served as one of the early missionaries to the Marshall Islands. This experience more firmly rooted my testimony in the Lord and his Church, and I came to appreciate a different way of thinking, experiencing, and engaging with my brothers and sisters of another culture. Subsequent to my mission I returned with my wife and two children at the time to live, work and study for two more years. Our third child was even born there. Again, as a family we were enriched by relationships that enlarged our souls and distilled in us a broader sense of kinship and accountability to others.
After this I was invited back to serve as a consultant on a development project that took me to numerous outer-islands. On one occasion I embarked on a 25 foot single engine boat loaded with several Marshallese women and children and a couple men along with our captain. We departed with clear skies from Majuro, the capital atoll, towards Arno Atoll. But in the east, the direction we were heading, we could see a dark foreboding bank of clouds moving in. Now on the ocean of Micronesia some rain clouds don't simply drift by releasing their refreshing moisture, some come as a solid sheet and you can actually see them moving like a wall across the water. Our destination point was no more than 15 miles away, but at high tides and with strong swells one cannot see these low lying atolls (never more than 5-8 feet in elevation) until just a few miles out (thanks to the coconut tree tops). So even in the best of weather navigational abilities are essential to a safe journey. At about 7 miles out the wall of rain hit us. It was intense, one of those down pours that soaks all cloths instantly and you actually have to gasp a bit to get air. I was in the front of the boat and as I looked out in the direction we were going I could not see more than a few yards.
The view of any atoll to the forward was completely obscured. I turned to look back at the captain (at the back of the boat) and others but could scarcely make them out so thick was the rain. Many of us began to bail the water furiously because in less that just a minute our boat was beginning to fill. The rain did not let up but continued in a torrent without ceasing. After several minutes I became concerned, not only that our boat may become submerged, but I rehearsed all the worse case scenarios: One, that our engine would stall and we would be left to drift indefinitely, pulled helplessly in a current away from both our point of departure and destination; Two, I feared that even if the engine held steady, we would miss our mark. In such weather, with no visual reference points, it is easy to become disoriented. Only the slightest veering off course will result in seriously over-shooting the intended destination. I entertained the dark possibility that we may skirt past the atoll in this weather and by the time it cleared we would no longer have any visual reference points, and then aimlessly wander until we ran out of gas and drifted. I thought of the 6000 miles between the Marshalls and South America with no islands in between. I had heard the desperate tales of drifting boats and even their horrors.
But the engine sputtered on and we continued to move forward in a deluge that would not let up, but in what direction I was not sure (were we headed south now, or north?) At one point when I turned back peering through the rain to the captain I noticed he was not even looking forward but down, I thought he too could not even lift his head in the rain. A shock of intense fear ran through me. "He most certainly is off course taking us to our demise," I thought. I shuddered as much out of deep anxiety as to the coolness of the persistent shower. Then, after several minutes, perhaps no more than 45-50 minutes (it seemed like hours) I could see a line of demarcation just before us, and then we broke through the other side of the storm into beautiful sunny weather, and there, only about 200 meters in front us was Arno Atoll. The captain had not only found the island, but we were dead on the small inlet where boats come in from the ocean side. I had thought that in our best case scenario we would find the atoll, but would have to navigate along its reefs for miles to find the inlet. But this captain was right on target. He hit the mark, not from sight but through another way. It was then I realized that this modern seaman was actually practicing something very old, an old navigational tradition that his ancestors had developed and had saved their lives numerous times. We were not in an outrigger canoe but a modern gas powered fiberglass boat, but he had drawn upon the wisdom of the past to securely deliver his passengers in what seemed an inhospitable environment.
Marshallese navigators in the past did not leave anything to chance. Because the islands are small low-lying coral atolls, a navigator could not even see his destination until he was nearly upon it. Instead of viewing them as empty spaces, ocean and sky were texts to be read and interpreted; a map and highway to where the navigators wanted to go. Like many Pacific sailors, the Marshallese navigators used the stars as guides to plot their position. But these navigators also interpreted wave and current patterns that identified a course to steer their sailing canoes. They learned that the ocean is an intricate mixing of currents that interweave in predictable patterns. These currents, when they encounter atolls, also bend and refract so consistently that the waves serve as signatures for the location of each atoll. Canoes encountering these wave actions move on top of the surface in distinct ways, and become signs that mark location and facilitate determining in which direction to adjust a canoe's course. This accumulated wisdom was recorded, not in writing, but through oral tales and stick charts that preserved knowledge and served as instructional aides. One of the most important charts was the Wapepe, which literally means, "canoe decision," that is, the chart helps the navigator make the important decisions about where to point his canoe to arrive safely at his desired destination.
My captain had his head down, not to shield his eyes from the rain, nor out of desperation or fear, but to feel, to feel the motion of our boat more carefully, to detect our direction from feeling wave and current patterns that his ancestors had known and that he had learned. He paid attention to how our boat rocked and moved in the water. He did not need to go by sight; he felt his way to our destination by following age old signs. My brothers and sisters, the way to our destination may not always be easily discerned. But there are signposts, there are maps, there are those who have gone before us who know the way. In the storms of our lives, there is no need to panic, no need to despair, no need to lose hope or even become distracted by other things. What are the signposts or maps? Who are our guides, who do we allow to captain our boat of life?
Let me recommend four signposts that we may use "on the way home," even if the path may appear obscured. They are so obvious that I risk boring you. But they are simply profound.
Let's listen and trust the captains on earth, the prophets. At some point in our quest to know, to be, and to act deliberately, we come to realize the limits of our own understanding. We find that as we pursue the big questions of meaning and purpose we are left with an endless trail of philosophies upon philosophies, words upon words, and representations upon representations, all the constructs of men. And while sometimes they may resemble the way, we find they come up short, unable to help us navigate home. At some point we become humbled before God, and come to more poignantly understand these words of Isaiah, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9). Prophets rescue us from what the Greeks called hubris (pride). We need not dismiss the power of reason or the poetic imagination to pursue the truth. But I do revere the prophets who see beyond my parochial vision, who free us from the trap of our own minds and wills. The great philosopher Karl Popper wrote, "Religion saves us the embarrassment of being a child of our times." Religion articulates that which is enduring, that which speaks across the ages with a sublime continuity. I wish to appropriate Popper's line at little, to suggest too that, "[Prophets] save us the embarrassment of being children of our times." Instead of being swept by the current of a most recent trend they look back to reclaim the virtues of past knowledge and lives. Instead of being burdened by the weight of ignoble pasts, they see forward. As seers they help us participate in a great unfolding of individual lives and whole nations. Prophets proclaim the meaning of what has been, what is, and what may be. They pattern the very nature of truth, as "knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come" (D&C 93:24).
A second significant signpost is the scriptures, the words of Christ and his prophets. The scriptures are great texts to be mined for their mother-load of gems. Whether articulated as narratives, metaphors, psalms, symbolic revelations, explanations, correctives or direct commands, these echoes of past prophetic and divine utterances offer a different vantage point on the human condition and inspire us to live better, more complete, more in harmony with light and truth, they more clearly demarcate the path home. They are broad enough to apply to all people, places, and times, and they are specific enough to speak to individual cultures and lives. The world provides us with scripts to live by, that we match our lives to a variety of images, even ironically conforming to the idea of individuality itself. The scriptures (note the root word script) provide us alternatives roles to emulate, to act, think, do and be. Some may assert that the commandments are restrictive, that they limit our freedom to be who we are or control what we wish to experience. But on the contrary, commandments are liberating, they free us from the cultural and social scripts of the world that truly limit our freedom. They liberate us from the bondage of attachment to desire, to things, to rationalization and self-indulgence. They are warning signs that boldly proclaim, "Danger, Peligro, Kauwatata." Warning signs let us know of the risks not seen, but nonetheless there. They keep us from becoming victims. Like warning signs, scriptural commands signal the path for individuals and a people. They are like Marshallese stick charts, keeping us free from catastrophe on the seas of life. As with a Marshallese sailor we may ignore these maps and go our own way, but at our own peril.
A third signpost to help us find our way is the temple and the ordinances contained therein. Temples, these sacred edifices, represent an axis mundi, where heaven meets earth, where the eternal and sacred penetrate through to the ephemeral and profane. Most cultures sacralize or recognize sacred spaces in which we can enter sacred time. In such spaces we enter into the world of the gods or locations of their potent actions and creations. They are the portals to a grander cosmology and help humanity keep things in perspective. Those who officiate in such spaces serve as mediators between heaven and earth. The rites in sacred spaces contrast the pure and the banal, man with divinity, the here and now with eternity.
"And this greater priesthood administereth the gospel and holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God.
"Therefore, in the ordinances thereof the power of godliness is manifest.
"And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh." (D&C 84:19-21)
In the temple then, we come to see things, "the mysteries" as God sees them. Through the temple we again become liberated from attachments to things of this world.
In temples we experience a journey from premortal life, through creation, on through mortality and into eternal worlds. It is a story of getting home that we replay over and over. It draws our attention to the Savior as the preeminent sign that makes the journey possible. It calls forth, "come, follow me" (Luke18:22) Christ is the ultimate escort. The temple ordinances and ceremonies serve as a complex of signs by which we "get there." The temple is not only transferring (to another place and time) but transformative with the potential to make us into different creatures, into different saints. The temple rites are not just for us as individuals, they also have a social agenda, to create Zion, a people of one heart and one mind, dwelling in righteousness and with no poor among us. The temple brings heaven right to us, or better, it takes Zion into heaven "and from thence went forth the saying Zion is Fled" (Moses 7:69).
The fourth signpost to home I wish to consider embraces the promptings of the Holy Ghost. This extraordinary being, this witness and comforter, provides a deeply personal compass home. Sometimes the Holy Ghost speaks in specifics, what to do and what to avoid. Sometimes the communications come in general terms, "you are on track move ahead." The Holy Ghost does not determine our choices, but helps to see things clearly - Brings things to remembrance, and actually offers us choice so that we can then be agents to act for ourselves and not (simply) be acted upon by our biology, societies, and any external forces large and small. The Holy Ghost helps carry us through our sorrows, frustrations, doubts and confusion. He points us to the source of all light, even Christ himself, the beacon of our destination.
Sometimes we may insist from the Lord a spiritual confirmation of a singular path, when he is willing to give us much more room to make our way. Once, when Joseph Smith and his company were traveling from Missouri to Kirtland Ohio he wondered about which course he should travel. In revelation the Lord declared,
"And it mattereth not unto me, after a little, if it so be that they fill their mission, whether they go by water or by land; let this be as it is made known unto them according to their judgment hereafter" (D&C 61:22).
Here the Lord was letting Joseph decide, to use his own judgment, for the route he and his company would take. The course did not matter, the destination mattered. It is not always the route we take to get there but that we get there, that we fulfill our mission. Decisions are not always between black and white, although sometimes they are, this or that, but this and this. He leaves us to our agency. We sometimes mistakenly think there is only one person to marry, one career path, one way to comprehend the truth, or one way to get the Lord's work done. There are time honored methods that comply with the doctrines, but I am refreshed by the diversity of ways we can all come unto Christ through our different cultural and individual lenses. The Holy Ghost is a path finder and will lead us in our unique ways back to Christ when we open ourselves, become worthy, and learn to respond to his promptings. He is also in many ways a gatherer, bringing us from distant locations to join Israel. The Holy Ghost leads us to fulfill the Lord's errand as individuals and as whole nations. We need to be open to the variety of ways we can be led and realize the Lord's purposes. I am encouraged by President Kimball's expansive statement, "We need people who can dream of things that never were, and ask, 'Why not?'" (Spencer W. Kimball, "The Gospel Vision of the Arts," Tambuli, Feb 1978, 1). The prophets provide the big picture, but as President Eyring claimed, we need collective revelation to fill in the details with our individual lives and accountabilities.
I recognize that we often feel overwhelmed by challenges that restrict our vision of what we may be more than what we are. Personal peace, the collective Zion, or the gathering of Israel may seem "like a smoke ring day when the wind blows." Or, we may feel we have lost our bearings on the high seas of life, that the darkness or storm is too ominous to find our way.
One more story I promised about being on the water. Several years ago when my wife Elaine and our two oldest children lived in the Marshall Islands we visited the atoll of Mili and stayed with some dear friends in their uncomplicated thatch home. Life in this atoll is simple with no electricity or running water. At that time of the year the winds were heavy and there was a persistent cloud cover giving a dull grey against the immense ocean during the day and obscuring the stars at night. On this particular occasion it was also new moon, so at night, with no artificial light to push back the shadows, it was intensely dark. Each home had a simple kerosene lamp in which a small wick could be lit. When walking down the trails at night from the bush or along the lagoon the only thing visible to get one's bearings was the occasional flicker from the lamps coming through the doors or low windows of a thatch house.
One late afternoon the government fieldtrip ship had anchored out in the lagoon about two miles. This ship would only come around twice a year to carry goods and people. When the ship comes it provides the local residence their only opportunity to sell their dried copra to receive cash that must last them for another six months. That afternoon I helped the men load the large gunny sacks of dried copra into a deeply hulled wooden boat with a powerful single motor. We had to carry these bags out into the low surf to load them. Some of the men invited me to ride the boat out to the field trip ship to watch the copra be unloaded and stored in the great belly of the ship. I eagerly joined them. But the two miles to the ship were arduous with intense winds, salt spray, and very rough seas. I was very relieved when I climbed aboard the ship, noting the sharks circling about. I thought we would stay only a short while, but we remained some time, clear after nightfall. The pressing waters at the bottom of the ship were dark and furious and I loathed to reboard the wooden motor boat to return to shore. But the ship would be pulling up anchor that night and I needed to join my companions back to their village. We lowered into the swelling sea, the small boat about to be dashed against the side of the ship. Fortunately we were able to push off into the darkness and headed west, but again, we could not see the island or shore due to the darkness. Then a wispy but sharp rain began to descend upon us. The boat rolled over the waves in the darkness headed to what now was a very faint outline of the islet. About 500 meters out men began calling in great warning about the approaching coral reefs that spot the inner lagoon. Then their voices became alarmed and the captain made an abrupt turn to port to avoid hitting a coral outcropping. So instead of flowing with the rolling waves they hit us broadside. The boat began to rise in the air and the captain called out, "jump." I hesitated just for a moment then launched into the air and into the dark rolling sea. The boat landed back on its belly and the captain sped the other way back towards the ship. The water was chilling and intimidating, and I immediately fought for the surface. When I came up I sought frantically for any bearing or the heads of my companions. I could not see them and called out. Their voices were faint and then I lost them all together. I was disoriented and turned frightfully around seeking any reference point; I did not know the direction to the shore or the ship. I was completely desperate.
Then as I rode to the top of a swell treading in panic, I spotted in the distance a small light barely visible in the immense darkness, but it was there, the flicker of a kerosene lamp coming through the door of a thatch house on the shore. I began to swim towards it, losing it as I sunk into the trough of the waves and then getting my bearings again as I rode to the crest of the waves. Up and down I went, each time re-calibrating my direction and moving toward the light. As I swam the scripture came boldly to my mind, "The light shineth in darkness." The light led me to shore. It led me home. When I finally drug myself on the beach I was exhausted and bewildered. I plodded over to the path that runs parallel the lagoon and stood in the wind and rain looking at the light emanating from that little house that had been my beacon. I saw the family sitting in the one-room home going about their business, and was so grateful that they had placed this light just at the threshold of their door so that it shone out into the darkness the small yet piercing ray. I walked back to our home through the needling rain and wind, overwhelmed by the miracle of light that helped me make my way home to my family.
I testify that we can arrive safely. That Jesus is the light that shines forth in the darkness of our lives and leads us home. That he calls to us, beckons us as individuals and as nations and cultures, He calls out "to all Israel come home." In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.