Newsweek article on "Mormons: Heavenly Prophecy"

Get ready. Eliza Souka and the team at Newsweek are getting ready for another Newsweek article for the Dec 26 - Jan 2, edition, Mormons: Heavenly Prophecy.

Eliza writes, "'You're not going to mention polygamy, are you?' I was asked by more than one fellow Mormon when they heard I was working on a story about the church's founding."

My vote is that it would be more interesting if they did devote some space to the issue. After all, not writing about it is like mentioning Joseph Smith without mentioning Mormonism. It ain't quite all there.

A built in weather tower for water readings

Science is about asking the why's and wherefore's. For example, why does a narwhal have such a long tusk coming out from under its mouth? I've always thought it was for some macho thing like fighting for a mate, but then why do the females have it? Well, it turns out that this is a unique organ for detecting the slightest changes in the aquatic environment, such as ever so slight changes in salinity. As amazing as that finding is, the question now is why would a Narwhal need to know if the barametric pressure is rising or if salinity levels are dropping?

It is hypothesized that it may be an arctic mechanism to tell it if ice is freezing in the area. I would have thought seeing the ice with their eyes or feeling the water like the rest of their cousins would be good enough. This opens a whole lot more questions.

Fascinating.

Singers in renowned Mormon choir revel in anonymity

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is on a roll this Christmas season, and some papers are featuring their local singers. Judging from a Casper, Wyoming article featuring one such choir member, it is better to blend in, to be part of the group. And oh what music that heavenly blend of voices make.

This particular Casper Star-Tribune reporter queries about their Wyoming choir member singing solo. It is such a natural query - when is our local boy going to get his chance to shine for the boys back home? We are a culture of individualism and individual heroism, probably accentuated by the Greeks and their Olympic games long ago.

When I worked with Nike in Asia-Pacific, our sports marketing team had a tough time persuading a Korean soccor team to join us. We wanted to sponsor teams but to highlight and give extra compensation to super star individuals -- you know, we wanted a Mia Hamm of Korea. Our Western sentiment and commercial savvy told us that people rally around individuals more than anything else.

The Korean point of view was that any individual that shined did so because the team made it possible for that individual's talents to be so brilliant. Each individual was only a part of the whole and their contribution alone could NOT create a win. Such notions were as silly to them as playing baseball with a one man team. No individual was greater than the team and so (here's the killer) all should receive equally of the benefits. There was a clash of perspective and culture. We wanted to create the Yao Ming (the Chinese basketball star) of Korean soccor but the Koreans were too collective in orientation. We wrestled with them for quite some time. Finally, the money, our efforts and our perspective won out but not after a long time of not being able to sign the team, much to our chagrin.

The Choir is an institution -- an organization of collective Christian voice and song. There is something of a clash of cultures here to the modern beat, albeit subtle. Nonetheless, we find ways to accomodate such modernity. The Choir accomodates the roar of us moderns by featuring individual world-class singers to let their voices shine, with the choir accompanying them. Yet, the choir and its very size is a testament to earlier days of supressing the individual to the needs of the whole body of Christ.

John 17: 21. That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

In a lifetime of receiving one church calling after another (after all, our local clergy are all lay clergy of volunteers) many of us relate to this choir member's sentiments. To get a sense of how busy we members can get, think of your local priest or minister, besides their ministerial duties, think of them having another 40 to 60 hour a week job and a family to support. That's us and that certainly is our clergy. We are a church that has a church calling for everyone.

In a busy world, we all want to help but we also relate to the pleasures of doing it anonymously and with less of a hefty calling. Blending in can be a virtue.

What some people will do for frequent flyer points

This guy has way too much time on his hands and must have one really healthy body. It's hard to imagine being able to accumulate one million frequent flyer miles in 56 days. Ouch!! After two months of zig-zagging across Canada by plane, frequent flyer Marc Tacchi has reached his goal of accumulating one million miles of credits -- and become something of an Internet celebrity in the process. The 30-year-old embarked on his venture using Air Canada's North America Unlimited Pass -- a C$7,000 ticket that allowed passengers limitless travel within the continent between October 1 and November 30.

Alas, poor Yorick

In my discussion of Hamlet and his journey through life and death, I would be remiss if I left this famous speech out. The once familiar funny court jester that Hamlet runs into on his return home is not at the top of his form. What's left of him is a skeleton next to a grave. The humor of his old looks and for that matter his life are now long gone.

I include the modern English text instead of Shakespearean English. I find the contemporary vernacular for this excerpt easier in following Shakespeare's line of thinking.

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite fun, of most excellent imagination. He has carried me on his back a thousand times, and now, how repulsed it is in my imagination! I want to vomit. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I don’t know how many times. Where are your jokes now?"

"Your games? Your songs? Your flashes of laughter that always make the audience roar? No one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite jaw−fallen? Now, get you to my lady's bedroom, and tell her, let her put on make−up an inch thick, she must come to this party, make her laugh at that." (Hamlet 5.1)

Source: Hamlet e-text with modern translation (pdf file)

Hamlet's profound questions on life

I watched Franco Zeffirelli's movie version of Shakespeare's Hamlet with Mel Gibson as Prince Hamlet and Glenn Close as Queen Gertrude. Zeffirelli -- you know, the director of Romeo & Juliet, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Taming of the Shrew (think Elizabeth Taylor).

I’m not a literary critic nor have I been a particular fan of The Bard but that is changing. I’m smitten by the power of some of Shakespeare’s plays, particularly Julius Caeser and now Hamlet -- of their themes of life, ambition and death. Shakespeare frames it this way, "All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity." (Hamlet, 1. 2) I just wish the language was a little more modern and understandable so that I would not have to think so much about what was being said. One shouldn't have to think when someone says "hi" or "goodbye". Fortunately, the old tongue has been modernized (Hamlet text in pdf format).

The play starts with Hamlet returning to the castle after his father’s death and his uncle’s immediate ascension to the crown and quick marriage to the Queen, thus further solidifying his position as the new king. Things are fishy in Denmark, which is, afterall, a pretty fishy place. Ever encounter a smiling jackal who schemes their own ambitions at your expense? For Hamlet, the world combines to be unjust, and his response is anger, depression, scheming and a touch of madness.

Hamlet speaks with depression and anger at the unweeded garden of this life (see photo).

O that this too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self−slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

Returning from a university education, which is quite an accomplishment back in those days, Hamlet is a thinker who weighs things out before acting on them. An apparition of his king father appears and asks his son Hamlet to seek revenge. There are those of us who wouldn’t give this otherworldly instruction a second thought. We simply obey. Hamlet can’t help but ponder – to think of the justice of such actions, of the meaning of the instructions and the source itself. Is that really His Father or is it a devil? Maybe his life would have been simpler and not a tragedy if he straight-forwardly carried out his father's wishes, but Hamlet's humanity must wrestle with such things.

He addresses the question that we sometimes think as we turn out the lights and lay in bed at night.

“What the hell am I doing with my life?” To live. To die. What's the difference? Is it best to not rock the boat of an unjust world or should I fight the fight? Are we stubborn in the things that we believe will make a better world, which will surely bring resistance? Or do we bend and not rock the boat so as to make the smoothest course possible? And what’s all this suffering for?

To be, or not to be,−−that is the question:−−
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?−−To die,−−to sleep,−−
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,−−'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die,−−to sleep;−−
To sleep! perchance to dream:−−ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,−−
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,−−puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

I'm not doing the play much justice in my description of what touched me. It does skirt through about as profound a theme as it gets -- life and death. Shakespeare was on top of his game when he wrote Hamlet.

There are probably answers to each of Hamlet's questions in LDS and the broader world of Christian doctrine, but Hamlet again questions neatly packaged answers.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Hamlet, 1. 5)

Certainly, God is all-knowing but there is a huge chasm of what we know and what He knows. And there are things that we think we know that we do not. But even more fundamental than our lack of answers, we are still discovering the very questions to be dreamt of.

References: Shakespeare in Classic and Modern Texts
Wikipedia on Hamlet