My favorite movie of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life, and one of my favorite scenes from the movie is when George Bailey is sitting in a bar, distressed over the five thousand dollars that has gone missing from his business, and prays for some help. Immediately after he finishes praying, a man punches him in the mouth. When his guardian angel asks about his fat lip, he says, “This is what I get for praying.” I have felt like George Bailey many times in my life.
One of the concerns that has weighed most heavily on my mind since moving out to Boston has been finding employment. I have been living off of school loans, and while I’m grateful that I have that means to support myself right now, I can’t help but think with every dollar that I spend that I’ll have to pay for it again, with interest. I’m not used to not working, and it made me very uncomfortable.
I had been applying for jobs, but with the job market the way it is, I wasn’t getting many responses. I was qualified for these jobs, but people who were far more qualified were getting them. I was starting to think that I’d have to take anything, even waiter jobs--which I swore I would never do again--in order to survive.
I made my job search the focus of my prayers when I went to the temple about a month ago. With the reverence and comfort I feel in the temple, it is far easier to focus my payers and really communicate with God, and when I left, I felt like I had made my case sufficiently clear. I had had a phone interview for a job earlier that week, and as I drove home, I wasn’t expecting to get a call that very day saying I’d gotten the job, but I also wasn’t expecting to have an email telling me I hadn’t got the job waiting for me either. As you can probably guess, the latter is exactly what happened. I looked up into the heavens and sighed, “So, this is what I get for praying.”
I think that God likes to laugh at our shortsightedness, much like a parent may laugh when their child bites off more than he can chew. But since God is a perfect parent, He doesn’t just laugh for His own amusement, He laughs to help us see with a wider vision. The punch to the mouth wasn’t the answer to George Bailey’s prayer (I know I’m using a fictionalized story to illustrate my point, but I think it works). Everything that comes after that is the answer to his prayer, and even then, not all of it is pleasant--if you don’t know what happens, I suggest you see the movie at your earliest convenience. Likewise, that email wasn’t the answer to my prayer, that wouldn’t come until later.
That very afternoon, I got another email in my inbox. This one was from a fellow ward member and she was letting the members of the ward know about a job opening where she works. The job was advertised as a “great way to get into publishing.” Since that is exactly what I want to get into, I jumped at the possibility. Even at this point I didn’t want to assume that this was the answer to my prayer because there was no guarantee that I would get the job. I calmed myself and took it all one step at a time, trying not to assume that I knew what God’s purpose was until He decided to make it known.
To make a long story short, I know work at Boston Common Press, publisher of Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, and various cookbooks, as the office manager. I’ll be making enough money to cover my expenses, and I have the possibility of moving into the editorial side of things. Now God is probably laughing that I even wanted a job right now. My schedule is as full as it has ever been and I will be running myself ragged until the end of this semester, but I’ll laugh along with Him. I know that the business won’t laugh forever, that it’s a means to an end. And I know that with His help, I’ll reach the end I’m working toward.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
God Laughs
My favorite movie of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life, and one of my favorite scenes from the movie is when George Bailey is sitting in a bar, distressed over the five thousand dollars that has gone missing from his business, and prays for some help. Immediately after he finishes praying, a man punches him in the mouth. When his guardian angel asks about his fat lip, he says, “This is what I get for praying.” I have felt like George Bailey many times in my life.
One of the concerns that has weighed most heavily on my mind since moving out to Boston has been finding employment. I have been living off of school loans, and while I’m grateful that I have that means to support myself right now, I can’t help but think with every dollar that I spend that I’ll have to pay for it again, with interest. I’m not used to not working, and it made me very uncomfortable.
I had been applying for jobs, but with the job market the way it is, I wasn’t getting many responses. I was qualified for these jobs, but people who were far more qualified were getting them. I was starting to think that I’d have to take anything, even waiter jobs--which I swore I would never do again--in order to survive.
I made my job search the focus of my prayers when I went to the temple about a month ago. With the reverence and comfort I feel in the temple, it is far easier to focus my payers and really communicate with God, and when I left, I felt like I had made my case sufficiently clear. I had had a phone interview for a job earlier that week, and as I drove home, I wasn’t expecting to get a call that very day saying I’d gotten the job, but I also wasn’t expecting to have an email telling me I hadn’t got the job waiting for me either. As you can probably guess, the latter is exactly what happened. I looked up into the heavens and sighed, “So, this is what I get for praying.”
I think that God likes to laugh at our shortsightedness, much like a parent may laugh when their child bites off more than he can chew. But since God is a perfect parent, He doesn’t just laugh for His own amusement, He laughs to help us see with a wider vision. The punch to the mouth wasn’t the answer to George Bailey’s prayer (I know I’m using a fictionalized story to illustrate my point, but I think it works). Everything that comes after that is the answer to his prayer, and even then, not all of it is pleasant--if you don’t know what happens, I suggest you see the movie at your earliest convenience. Likewise, that email wasn’t the answer to my prayer, that wouldn’t come until later.
That very afternoon, I got another email in my inbox. This one was from a fellow ward member and she was letting the members of the ward know about a job opening where she works. The job was advertised as a “great way to get into publishing.” Since that is exactly what I want to get into, I jumped at the possibility. Even at this point I didn’t want to assume that this was the answer to my prayer because there was no guarantee that I would get the job. I calmed myself and took it all one step at a time, trying not to assume that I knew what God’s purpose was until He decided to make it known.
To make a long story short, I know work at Boston Common Press, publisher of Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, and various cookbooks, as the office manager. I’ll be making enough money to cover my expenses, and I have the possibility of moving into the editorial side of things. Now God is probably laughing that I even wanted a job right now. My schedule is as full as it has ever been and I will be running myself ragged until the end of this semester, but I’ll laugh along with Him. I know that the business won’t laugh forever, that it’s a means to an end. And I know that with His help, I’ll reach the end I’m working toward.
One of the concerns that has weighed most heavily on my mind since moving out to Boston has been finding employment. I have been living off of school loans, and while I’m grateful that I have that means to support myself right now, I can’t help but think with every dollar that I spend that I’ll have to pay for it again, with interest. I’m not used to not working, and it made me very uncomfortable.
I had been applying for jobs, but with the job market the way it is, I wasn’t getting many responses. I was qualified for these jobs, but people who were far more qualified were getting them. I was starting to think that I’d have to take anything, even waiter jobs--which I swore I would never do again--in order to survive.
I made my job search the focus of my prayers when I went to the temple about a month ago. With the reverence and comfort I feel in the temple, it is far easier to focus my payers and really communicate with God, and when I left, I felt like I had made my case sufficiently clear. I had had a phone interview for a job earlier that week, and as I drove home, I wasn’t expecting to get a call that very day saying I’d gotten the job, but I also wasn’t expecting to have an email telling me I hadn’t got the job waiting for me either. As you can probably guess, the latter is exactly what happened. I looked up into the heavens and sighed, “So, this is what I get for praying.”
I think that God likes to laugh at our shortsightedness, much like a parent may laugh when their child bites off more than he can chew. But since God is a perfect parent, He doesn’t just laugh for His own amusement, He laughs to help us see with a wider vision. The punch to the mouth wasn’t the answer to George Bailey’s prayer (I know I’m using a fictionalized story to illustrate my point, but I think it works). Everything that comes after that is the answer to his prayer, and even then, not all of it is pleasant--if you don’t know what happens, I suggest you see the movie at your earliest convenience. Likewise, that email wasn’t the answer to my prayer, that wouldn’t come until later.
That very afternoon, I got another email in my inbox. This one was from a fellow ward member and she was letting the members of the ward know about a job opening where she works. The job was advertised as a “great way to get into publishing.” Since that is exactly what I want to get into, I jumped at the possibility. Even at this point I didn’t want to assume that this was the answer to my prayer because there was no guarantee that I would get the job. I calmed myself and took it all one step at a time, trying not to assume that I knew what God’s purpose was until He decided to make it known.
To make a long story short, I know work at Boston Common Press, publisher of Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, and various cookbooks, as the office manager. I’ll be making enough money to cover my expenses, and I have the possibility of moving into the editorial side of things. Now God is probably laughing that I even wanted a job right now. My schedule is as full as it has ever been and I will be running myself ragged until the end of this semester, but I’ll laugh along with Him. I know that the business won’t laugh forever, that it’s a means to an end. And I know that with His help, I’ll reach the end I’m working toward.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Mormon Art and Babies
I have a love/hate relationship with Mormon art, which includes painting, sculpture, music, fiction, movies, etc. (I will focus in this post more on fiction and film, because that’s where I have more experience, but I think that what I write below applies to painting and sculpture as well. I won’t even touch music because I don’t know enough about it to write about it.) I want to like it. After all, it is from and for the demographic that I belong to. It addresses concerns that I share and speaks the language that I speak. From all objective indicators, the indicators that marketing people would use to determine the audience for a given work of art, I should like it. But, most of the time I don’t. I don’t think that it is worth my time when there are great works of art to be enjoyed by people outside the Church. Yet, I feel like if I don’t support these fledgling artistic endeavors to create something wholesome and good, I’m betraying my beliefs.
I should make it clear that I don’t think that any Mormon has any obligation to financially support anything that they don’t want to support. It doesn’t matter if it is made by a Mormon, sold by a Mormon, or packaged to appeal to a Mormon, business and faith should never be combined and anyone who says differently shouldn’t be trusted. However, one thing that Mormons tend to complain a lot about is decadence in the mass media. Movies are too violent, there’s too much sex on television, and most magazines are borderline pornographic. We complain, yet we still fork out or money for that super-violent, ultra-crude summer blockbuster (cough…Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen) or tune in every week to see television bring out the worst in people (cough…reality tv).
And when a good wholesome movie made my people who share our faith comes around, we intend to put it on our Netflix queue someday, but never seem to get around to it (I’m talking about myself, here). The literary part of me wants to say that if Mormons bothered to make good movies or write good fiction, I’d be more willing to lay down my hard earned dollars for it. The moral part of me argues that if I support these artists, their art will get better--after all, Mormon art is young and is still developing.
I think we kind of have to treat Mormon art as if we were a parent and it were a baby. In a global perspective, taking a step is no big deal. Billions of people do it thousands of times a day. But for a baby, it is a big deal. It shows that the child is developing into a healthy child. So you congratulate that child much more than you would congratulate your uncle if he were to do the same thing. However, if that baby chose not to take any more steps for the rest of his life, but decided that the one was enough, you would do something to motivate him to walk because you don’t want him to be stuck as a baby. As much as you like baby’s, a human being cannot be a baby for its whole life.
Mormon art is currently in the baby phase. It’s taking a few steps and I think that we should reward those steps by buying tickets to those movies or copies of those books. But if we ever get the feeling that it won’t progress beyond those few steps, if we get the sense that it has decided to not progress, then we should indicate that we are not pleased. It’s a hard balance to maintain, just as it is hard for parents to maintain the balance between rewarding success and demanding further achievement, but I think that Mormons with discerning tastes, and I know that there are a lot of us out there, can start to make that happen.
I should make it clear that I don’t think that any Mormon has any obligation to financially support anything that they don’t want to support. It doesn’t matter if it is made by a Mormon, sold by a Mormon, or packaged to appeal to a Mormon, business and faith should never be combined and anyone who says differently shouldn’t be trusted. However, one thing that Mormons tend to complain a lot about is decadence in the mass media. Movies are too violent, there’s too much sex on television, and most magazines are borderline pornographic. We complain, yet we still fork out or money for that super-violent, ultra-crude summer blockbuster (cough…Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen) or tune in every week to see television bring out the worst in people (cough…reality tv).
And when a good wholesome movie made my people who share our faith comes around, we intend to put it on our Netflix queue someday, but never seem to get around to it (I’m talking about myself, here). The literary part of me wants to say that if Mormons bothered to make good movies or write good fiction, I’d be more willing to lay down my hard earned dollars for it. The moral part of me argues that if I support these artists, their art will get better--after all, Mormon art is young and is still developing.
I think we kind of have to treat Mormon art as if we were a parent and it were a baby. In a global perspective, taking a step is no big deal. Billions of people do it thousands of times a day. But for a baby, it is a big deal. It shows that the child is developing into a healthy child. So you congratulate that child much more than you would congratulate your uncle if he were to do the same thing. However, if that baby chose not to take any more steps for the rest of his life, but decided that the one was enough, you would do something to motivate him to walk because you don’t want him to be stuck as a baby. As much as you like baby’s, a human being cannot be a baby for its whole life.
Mormon art is currently in the baby phase. It’s taking a few steps and I think that we should reward those steps by buying tickets to those movies or copies of those books. But if we ever get the feeling that it won’t progress beyond those few steps, if we get the sense that it has decided to not progress, then we should indicate that we are not pleased. It’s a hard balance to maintain, just as it is hard for parents to maintain the balance between rewarding success and demanding further achievement, but I think that Mormons with discerning tastes, and I know that there are a lot of us out there, can start to make that happen.
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Love Thy Neighbor...
I gave a talk in church a few months ago and I'm finally getting around to posting it to the blog. Enjoy! Judging by what we see, hear, ...
