Finding Zion

Fellow Musers; I am happy to announce a return to Mona's Gospel Musings each Sunday. I hope you will join me again, and as we used to, muse together here. The romantic side of our time overseas (nearly a year now) has been mused upon at Mona's Musings with a Hint of Romance, which blog I will continue - featuring YOUR romances and more specific ideas on strengthening marriage. I have also been invited to become a regular contributor to Mormon Mommy Blogs (at least monthly). However, here we are at gospel musings, and its a Sunday, and so we begin. I love you and look very very forward to your thoughts.



As a new expat in the United Kingdom, I found I could regard people like postcards, idly turning them over in my mind with mild interest: three-dimensional-me did not expect to be included in a world that felt like a guidebook. At church though, I assumed I would be find instant and comfy assimilation.

Cue the proverbial-culture-shock: we stood on, what to me, felt like an island called the Staines Ward: the most ethnically diverse group of Saints in all of London. Sunday after Sunday, I buzzed round the middle like a flustered bee hitting glass until at last we cross-pollinated: a magic moment that dissolved the window between us.

When I walked into the chapel that morning, I felt drawn to the woman on the other side of the room. She watched me with a shy smile, perfect teeth and wide eyes glistening against a chocolate face. After Relief Society, she inched her way to me, ready to make contact, her beauty even more breathtaking at close range.

"I love your hair," she said.

What? It took me a split second to process her Nigerian spin on English. My hair? My hair is a mass of coarse curls, once brown, now streaked with unruly silver. I dislike it very much most days.

"I love your eyes and face and make-up," she continued passionately.

Blue eyes, white face, Bare Minerals.

"I love the way you talk -- and I loooove," (emphasis on love), "the way you dress."

Without taking my eyes off hers, I mentally compared a blue blazer and black skirt with her flowing...Flamboyant... FLORESCENT --

Oh my! She thinks I'm EXOTIC!

Sound of break glass.

A week later I was called as Relief Society President of two hundred women from twenty different nations: a village with too many windows to look like 'Mormonville' to me, but nevertheless, built on the foundation of apostles and prophets; one faith and one baptism (Ephesians 4 & Mosiah 18). My sole journal entry for 11 July 2010 reads: "God help me.God
help me."

He did. He showed me that you cannot pack a box with scrapbooks, funeral potatoes, and snicker-doodle props, stamp it "Mormon Women" and ship it overseas. He taught me about the real Zion, a phenomenon that will not be defined or contained that way: it is organic. It breathes and grows and if necessary, shatters silly notions in order to expand (D&C 82:14). The tiny pane from which I used to view the world has, after a year amongst my sisters, morphed into a great glass conservatory and I contentedly dangle like a prism there, spinning in the sunlight.

Muse with me: What does Zion mean to you? What experiences have you had in the church that relate to the ideal of Zion?

Belonging

I accidently left myself all of twenty minutes to get ready for my wedding on December 16, 1977. The Oversleeper begins his day in the move-it-or-lose-it mode and my best friend and I having been “moving” with hardly a breath ever since. We married very young, with foolishly little experience or education to prepare us for the stormy weather ahead: a firstborn with severe disabilities, multiple interstate moves, repeated periods of unemployment, numerous hospitalizations and surgeries, lost pregnancies, oppressive debt, business failures, loved ones who have left the church, sibling divorces, family deaths and, for the last ten years, a job which requires frequent, unpredictable, often extended separations. There is no way our union should have survived over three decades of such dramatic ups and downs, spurts and starts, rain and sun, collisions and repairs, trouble and peace, heart-rending losses and hard-won gains. Yet our exclusive club is tighter and more exclusive than ever.

And this triumph, I believe, can be credited to the principle of "Belonging".…

In the eternities before time, we loved our Father. Our greatest desire was to become like Him so that we could serve with Him. We agreed to give up our life in His immediate presence in order to have the opportunity to gain the knowledge necessary to Godhood and to prove ourselves to ourselves, our Father and the Universe. As a result of that choice, all humankind comes into this second estate with the innate desire to "belong". It is the driving force in all our psychological landscape. What we long for is a complete sense of belonging - ultimate security and acceptance. We find this in our mother's arms as infants, but search and ache for it all the rest of our lives. It is obviously the beating of our pre-mortal "heart" - the spiritual pain at being separated from our Father in Heaven. If this sacred aching is treated with understanding and tenderness by our families, we gain some comfort and peace and relative security in this life. On the other hand, if this longing is fueled by cruelty, neglect and betrayal by our families, the hunger can become so wretchedly acute that it either drives us to sin (pride and immorality) in desperate attempts to fill it, or to depression and hopelessness. As the Spirit has helped me to better comprehend this principle, and the fact that it operates in every human heart, I feel more charitable toward people in general.

I have thought a great deal too, about how this all relates to marriage. Marriage is clearly the greatest opportunity in this life to experience, at least in human relationships, a satisfaction of our ancient longing. It is the highest, most glorious order in the hierarchy of human relationships. Sensing its potential, everyone aspires to it, in one way or another. Of course, Satan has replicated the shallowest appearances of marriage, promoting the idea there are shortcuts to achieving this great thing that we desire above all things. So people indulge in immorality, living together, etc., and for a moment in time, they feel like they "belong". But what damage is done to the spiritual heart when they discover that it’s all a sham! In their hunger for emotional security - belonging - they find that their sacred trust was established on the very principles of insecurity. The heart cannot rest or plant itself. This is not the authentic human love they were desperate for because it does not replicate God's love which is constant, committed, consistent, merciful, long-suffering, patient, hopeful, ETERNAL.

Only marriage (ultimately a celestial marriage) which pays the price of patient preparation, self-discipline and irrevocable commitment to another person's happiness can come close to God's love and therefore to the sense that we are secure in our belonging. With that security we then have the emotional freedom to share authentic human love with others - most importantly, with our children. Of course, this is the great miracle and purpose behind the Atonement - to bring us into a "oneness" not only with our Heavenly Father, but with one another. As we allow the miracle of the Atonement to plant itself in our hearts, making it the centerpiece of all our relationships - particularly our marriages - our hearts balloon with the sense of belonging, security and acceptance. Our capacity to love is magnified so that we may lead others to identify their own Need and to The Source that can satisfy it.

Above all my blessings -- which are more numerous than can ever be counted -- I thank God for my marriage. Happy Anniversary honey. Here’s to 4,000 more.