Re-activating the inactive

I have been effectively rendered inactive by life's events (and my own lack of complete devotion).

I am working out of town a great deal which has made Sunday a strange day for packing, driving, last minute chores, etc. Add to that the fact that occasionally we spend the weekend out of town for visits to family, trips to Disneyland, visits to other wards and the occasional out and out, old-fashioned, god-given right of skipping church.

Finally, we have remodeled our home and B'Andra moved every item we own into storage and we have been forced to live with her sisters since the middle of December. We have finally moved back into our home, unpacked enough clothing to dress up for church (I couldn't find a tie, however...).

In all this, Gidian is the one who has suffered. The young boy needs weekly doses of indoctrination, I mean doctrination. Doctrination of convenanting.

So, we open the hymnal for the opening song and B'Andra tells Bub to read along, since the boy has recently become a CRAZY good reader. Here were the lyrics of the opening song:


1. Hope of Israel, Zion’s army,
Children of the promised day,
See, the Chieftain signals onward,
And the battle’s in array!

[Chorus]
Hope of Israel, rise in might
With the sword of truth and right;
Sound the war-cry, “Watch and pray!”
Vanquish ev’ry foe today.

2. See the foe in countless numbers,
Marshaled in the ranks of sin.
Hope of Israel, on to battle;
Now the vict’ry we must win!

3. Strike for Zion, down with error;
Flash the sword above the foe!
Ev’ry stroke disarms a foeman;
Ev’ry step we conq’ring go.

4. Soon the battle will be over;
Ev’ry foe of truth be down.
Onward, onward, youth of Zion;
Thy reward the victor’s crown.

Gidian kept looking up at me with a "are you kidding me? these songs are about fantasy, swords, cutting of arms and winning battles????" look.

He thought it was pretty cool. The sacrament hymn didn't quite capture his attention in the same way, but low and behold, the closing hymn was a classic: IF YOU COULD HIE TO KOLOB. Which is basically a song about the inner longing of all men to travel at Warp Speed, and how even if you could, you would not be able to see all of creation. What is smartly summed up in a single hymn was addressed in 5 TV shows (Star Trek, Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise).

The lyrics of Hie to Kolob, as a reminder: (Hie actually means "warp" in old english... I think)

1. If you could hie to Kolob
In the twinkling of an eye,
And then continue onward
With that same speed to fly,
Do you think that you could ever,
Through all eternity,
Find out the generation
Where Gods began to be?

2. Or see the grand beginning,
Where space did not extend?
Or view the last creation,
Where Gods and matter end?
Methinks the Spirit whispers,
“No man has found ‘pure space,’
Nor seen the outside curtains,
Where nothing has a place.”

3. The works of God continue,
And worlds and lives abound;
Improvement and progression
Have one eternal round.
There is no end to matter;
There is no end to space;
There is no end to spirit;
There is no end to race.

So we covered Science Fiction and Fantasy themes in church. Not bad. Gidian was pretty entertained.

He asked about the last line about no end to race. I wasn't sure, so I said "It is about the spaceship race through space that never ends." That answer satisfied him. But I have to admit that it left me scratching my head. There is no end to race? So our skin pigments get resurrected with us? That seems strange. What ever happened to unity?

I wonder what ol' WW Phelps was thinking. I have a suspicion that he just ran out of words that rhymed and went with the easy target.

I can't wait to read Ether 15 to Gidian. Of course, it isn't PG-13, it has a full R rating for violence when the headless Shiz does a push up and gurgles blood out of his headless neck as the corpse reflexively tries to take once last breath. Coooool!

Don't believe me?


"Ether 15:30": 30 And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz.

"Ether 15:31": 31 And it came to pass that after he had smitten off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised upon his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for breath, he died.

Yeah. Gidian is going to love that. When he is old enough to handle the gruesome nature of some scripture. :)