william hamblin

Pilgrimage as a Temple Theme

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Eastern Orthodox Christian pilgrim at Kiev Monastery of the Caves, Ukraine. Women often cover their heads as prescribed by Paul.

Eastern Orthodox Christian pilgrim at Kiev Monastery of the Caves, Ukraine. Women often cover their heads as prescribed by Paul (1 Cor. 11:13). Many pilgrims wear all white. (Photo by Petar Milošević)

William Hamblin and Daniel C. Peterson have a regular religion column in the Deseret News.  Their latest article is entitled “Pilgrimage: A sacred journey in search of God.”  They point out that many religions have their own types of pilgrimages towards a holy place, shrine, or temple, where the pilgrim seeks to connect with God.  Truly, the Temple Mount, or current location of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, is such a location for several major religions.

Latter-day Saints also have pilgrimages to temples.  Many members of the Church throughout the world still have to travel great distances, over a number of days, at the cost of lifetime savings, to reach the closest temple to their home.  In recent years, this has improved as temples have been built in more locations, closer to more members.

The temple itself can also be considered a pilgrimage within itself, a journey from a lower sphere to a higher one, even heaven, where one comes to God.

The article notes the ritual aspect of many religions’ pilgrimages:

Most pilgrimage is associated with special rituals and ceremonies. Pilgrims are often required to don sacred robes and undergo spiritual exercises such as prayer, reading scriptures or meditation. Many pilgrims abstain from ordinary activities of life by fasting, sleepless vigils or sexual abstinence. Sacrifice or offerings are often required of the pilgrim, even if it is only placing of a flower or rock in a special place. In return many pilgrims obtain tokens of their pilgrimages — special clothing, jewelry, books, medallions or relics — which they proudly wear or display as symbolic of their spiritual status as pilgrims.

Read the full article at the Deseret News:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765589691/A-sacred-journey-in-search-of-God.html

Parables & Poems, Literature Springs Forth in Maxwell Institute Discord

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Pasadena Fire Department and local gardeners respond to a house fire

Pasadena Fire Department and local gardeners team up to rescue an elderly woman from her burning home on June 11, 2012. (Click photo to learn more)

It’s amazing how people wax literary in climates such as these.  Sometimes common language just doesn’t do the subject matter justice, and understanding is not well communicated.  Thus the use of parables and poems.  One of the reasons Christ taught in parables was so that people could learn about different gospel topics by using their everyday vernacular, which could increase understanding (for some it actually hid the truth).

Here are a couple parables and poems that have been written in recent days about the current Maxwell Institute events, or because of them:

  • The first is actually a poem, “The Charge of the FARMS Brigade,” by William Hamblin.  Well done!
  • The second is a parable from Hamblin, “The Parable of the Football Team.”  Very well said, and which I alluded to in my analogy.
  • Thirdly, I entered the fore with “The Analogy of the Basketball Team.”  (It’s not really a parable, but an extended analogy.  Perhaps I should have put it in parable form.)
  • Fourth, I was quite inspired on Friday by David Bohn’s article at Times & Seasons, whereafter I wrote “On the Creative Gift.”
  • Fifth, today Pahoran at the Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board (MDDB) wrote “The Parable of the Fire Brigade & Gardener.”  I thought this was very well done, so I asked Pahoran permission to repost it here:

    “Once there was a city that had no fire department.  A group of public-spirited citizens banded together, bought a good second-hand fire appliance, began training together, and pretty soon had a rather good working volunteer fire brigade.

    “There was in that same city a loosely affiliated group of semi-professional arsonists.  Naturally, they were angered by the appearance of the volunteer brigade.  They began opposing its activities, muttering loudly that the fire brigade demolished more buildings than it saved, and that bystanders at fires sometimes got wet.

    “Nevertheless, most of the citizens appreciated the work of the brigade, and eventually the mayor of the town approached the volunteers and invited them to come under the umbrella of the city administration.  The volunteers at first resisted these overtures, but eventually they agreed, and the new fire department was constituted, under the oversight of the deparment of Parks and Gardens.

    “Time passed, as it always does.  The arsonists stepped up their campaign of disinformation.  A new mayor was elected.  The fire department increasingly came under the control of Parks and Gardens people who wanted more resources to beautify the city by planting flowering shrubs.  Some of these listened to the murmurings of the arsonists, not realising their true source.  Eventually they succeeded in getting rid of the original fire chief and began to divert the resources of the former fire brigade to their pet garden projects.”

I should note, sometimes firefighters and gardeners can team up, in very rare circumstances, but it’s pretty unusual when it happens (like a transit of Venus?).  And of course, firefighting and gardening are both honest, requisite, and noble fields of work in our world.

Any other good literary works emerge from the past week?  Please let me know, and I’ll add them to this list.

P.S.  On the other hand, if you want to see a remarkable piece of truly refined ad-hominem literature, certainly an epitome in the genre, take a look at this by Edwin Firmage.

The Rise and Fall of FARMS

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The Rise and Fall of FARMSI’m sure many of you are by now aware of what happened this past week at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.  I don’t want to rehash everything again here (you can read about it here, here, here, here, here, and here).  Suffice it to say that I am extremely disappointed, deeply saddened, and frankly appalled at the actions of one M. Gerald Bradford, Executive Director of the Maxwell Institute, as well as others at the Institute (some unknown), most specifically for the unimaginably rude and utterly undeserved public firing of Daniel C. Peterson, Editor of the Mormon Studies Review (formerly the FARMS Review), who has served fervently and with untiring dedication for the past twenty-three years since its inaugural issue in 1989, as well as his entire team of associate editors, including Louis C. Midgley, George L. Mitton, Gregory L. Smith and Robert White (some of whom are out of the country and may still not even know yet that they’ve been summarily handed their coats).  There aren’t words to describe how unprofessional, uncalled for, and how exquisitely ungrateful these actions are towards these devoted scholars, and the many other FARMS scholars who have been a part of the organization since 1979, and who in many ways have given their lives in sustaining and defending the kingdom of God.  For that, this is the curt note they got.

One view that has been mentioned several times by those involved is how these inconceivable few days of events has in reality arrived as the exclamation point on a very long internal struggle at the Institute over the last decade in defining its core mission.  That mission has consequently evolved in recent years.   [Read more…]

Authentic Ancient Metal Plates

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Since the recent events surrounding the seeming forgery of the Jordan Lead Codices, I thought it would be good to bring back to mind the authentic discoveries made within the last century of ancient writings on metal plates. There are literally hundreds of examples of such plates all around the world.  I’m indebted to William Hamblin and John Tvedtnes for there scholarship on these findings.

Of course, in Joseph Smith’s day, such discoveries had not been made yet, and so Joseph was mocked for his story of having discovered gold plates with the writings of ancient people inscribed on them.

Today it is becoming commonplace to find such ancient texts, which is why in the dozens of media reports on the emergence of the lead plates this past week, not one questioned the fact that the writings were on metal.  In fact, one scholar specifically noted that there were examples of ancient metal tablets made out of copper, bronze, and gold.

Here is a summary of only some of the most prominent findings.   [Read more…]