Wow. How nice it feels to break from the paper prep that one is doing for other classes for a nice, light blog entry. Huzzah! And here we are, 12:20 at night in the Library, ready to ruminate on Till We Have Faces.
Have you read this one yet? Probably not. I had no idea it existed until I took the class...but it's phenomenal. I'm blogging tonight about what I took from the first half: What faith looks like, and how easy it is to talk yourself out of operating on faith.
It's gonna take a bit of catch up for you to understand the significance of all this (READ THE BOOK!!), but I'll do what I can. The First book is a tale of two sisters--one Ugly and one Beautiful. The beautiful one (Psyche) is sacrificed to the gods when the kingdom goes through a period of famine, and the drought ends. Orual (the ugly sister) is devastated, and eventually goes off to find Psyche, to see if she can gather anything that remains of her sacrifice. To her shock, she finds Psyche, whole and healthy across the river from where she was sacrificed. Psyche tells her that she is the wife of a God, living in elegance and comfort. She glows to talk of her new husband, and encourages Orual to partake of the goodness of her new home. Orual expresses excitement to see where Psyche now lives, and asks to be taken there...but Psyche, with some confusion, tells Orual to look around her; that they are standing in the midst of her glorious house now. Orual can see nothing, and (with some fear) concludes that the either Gods are tricking her, or her sister is mad. Believing moreso in the second option, Orual and Psyche part, devastated and confused at their extreme break in understanding.
Orual starts to head home...but for one moment, as she's taking a drink from the stream, sees the house that her sister describes: Turreted and majestic, beyond anything Orual believes she could've imagined on her own. In a few seconds however, the house disappears and Orual is stuck again with a limited vision and some major decisions to make.
As she relays the story to her trusted advisors, they convince her that Psyche is being tricked. That her husband is really some great beast or a common robber doping her into believing this nonsense about a house and being the wife of a God. Discounting her vision, Orual believes them, and goes on to destroy Psyche's happiness (turns out the house and God were real after all). Falling into a great depression, Orual returns to her kingdom and never sees Psyche again. Later she writes this book, raging against the Gods for being so unclear. If they want her to do something, why don't they make it obvious? If they're just going to meddle with things, why didn't they leave her alone? Orual is tormented by bitterness against the Gods for taking her sister from her, and being so manipulative in showing her a half vision of right and wrong.
See! That was a lot of Catch up! READ THE BOOK! Anyways...what I want to focus on is that glimpse of the house by the river before Orual goes on to ruin both her life and her sister's. Oh goodness. How often do we get these sorts of glimpses and disregard them, or rationalize them away as we look for more logical solutions to our problems? It's haunting, really. That things could've been different had we just trusted our impressions from the get go.
I know for me that this takes a lot of faith; to continue forth with the plan I felt was previously inspired, though I may not feel so now. I'm a horrible daughter--I continue to supplicate for assurances, and have difficulty saying, Heavenly Father showed me once; I can go forward now. I want the lights on as I continue down the path of life; the spritzy flashlight on the other handis really tough to consign myself to.
However, there are a couple things to remember: 1) That one of the reasons we sometimes get shoddy visions of things is that Heavenly Father doesn't want us to be accountable for sinning against greater light. The better our knowledge beforehand, the deeper our transgression when we choose not to follow that knowledge. The spritzy view of our future is on one hand frustrating, but on the other a protection for us. 2) Though we may always be tormented with what 'might have been' had we listened/trusted/moved with greater faith, through the Atonement any path can be molded to fit our needs and help us reach our potential. One of my favorite quotes as of late (don't know where it's from :/) is that reaching our potential is always possible as long as we keep repenting. No matter how many divergences we have from our most coveted life plan (hopefully that which is closest to Heavenly Father's will for us), these divergences can be reconciled as we do what we can to return to harmony with him. Orual's life wasn't ruined after she forced her sister into betrayal--in the long term at least. It was made harder, and so was Psyche's, but both learned and grew in ways that were still good, if not as easy. Both were forgiven, and restored to former blessings.
The Gospel's pretty awesome guys. Scary scary to live sometimes...but a blessing. Today I've reflected a lot on Lehi's favorite maxim from the Book of Mormon: "Inasmuch as ye keep my commandments ye will prosper in the land, but inasmuch as ye keep not my commandments, ye shall be cut off from my presence." People break Heavenly Father's commandments all the time, and they can still find the way to reasonably healthy, productive lives. However, they find their own way, and suffer without the support of a Heavenly Father who loves them. When we self-correct, come back to a place of resonance with who we are and what we should be doing, we're brought back into harmony with the Spirit, and begin to prosper under the direction of his hand again. And we can do that with greatest ease when we heed the signs--the peace, the directives...even when we're unsure of the path ahead.
