WEARETHEWEATHER


WHO IS THE RAIN MAKER?

We have looked at the intimate link between space and time and the deep connection between time and weather in, Introduction to the Thermodynamics and Eternodynamics of Desirepts.1 and 2 respectively. A review of those posts might be helpful to anyone wishing to gain insight from this post.

In the blockbuster sci-fi movie Looper, main character Joe and his future self combine their efforts on an action-packed adventure through time and space, trying to track down a mysterious killer called the Rainmaker who, if not stopped, is/will be responsible for the murder of the love of Joe’s life. It is an absorbing plot that mixes the element of weather control with the more cliché elements of time travel and crime underworlds for a surprisingly deep story of multi-generational cooperation and healing.

The movie takes place primarily in the vicinity of Kansas City, where Joe lives and works as a time traveling hit-man. When Joe finally does track down the Rainmaker on the outskirts of town, he finds that he is presently a child, but not just any ordinary child. This child is telekinetic to an extraordinary degree and can effect drastic changes in atmospheric pressure with his emotions. A part from being capable of affecting changes in the weather, the young boy can cause blood to rain out of the heart of a person who provokes him to anger. Joe recognizes however, that if the troubled youth were to be raised in a loving home with a tender mother and guiding father, he could avoid turning into a cruel killer.

Looper was rated R, and did not follow your typical feel-good formula for promoting family values. It will therefore not be likely to be seen by many mainstream LDS. And its message will unfortunately be missed by those Mormons who do view it. Nevertheless there are many messages contained in the film that directly concern not just modern-day man in general, but which could be specifically relevant to Latter-Day Gentiles. Satan has succeeded in diverting the gaze of many and those who do look to not look with eyes to see. But let us examine a few of the ideas which are more or less subtly presented in this movie, and put them into context for the real Latter-Day Saints of God out there, regardless of religious or non-religious affiliation.

HOME ON THE RANGE – WHERE THE SKIES ARE NOT CLOUDY ALL DAY?

First of all, the film’s setting of Kansas City, smack dab on the Kansas/Missouri border is something that should not escape anyone who has studied Mormon prophecy. The LDS movement in all of its numerous groups of course has extensive and ongoing history in the “Show Me State”. Jackson County, MO is the site of various holdings of the LDS Church and the RLDS Church and the area continues to attract many fundamentalist, as well as mainstream and even inactive members of the various Churches with some type of connection to the Restoration Movement. This, despite the fact that the western part of that state in particular is mentioned in famous prophecies via Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Orson Pratt which have been handed down among the Mormon people and which reference great destruction which will leave the land “swept clean” of its inhabitants (JD, 9:270, Prophetic Sayings of Heber C. Kimball to Amanda H. Wilcox. DEN, 8:265, October 2,1875).

Now I don’t know what all these many religious residents of Jackson County believe in regards to these prophesies. I know that I do not believe that things will play out quite the way that Brigham Young or Heber C. Kimball envisioned them happening. Still, it might be foolish to dismiss them entirely. And it might be especially dangerous to not take them into account along with various other forms of subconscious-to-conscious imaging by way of Hollywood prophets/profits. Apart from Looper’s subtle correlation between this general geographic location and extreme weather patterns, there is also the far less subtle targeting in The Day After – a graphic, disturbing TV movie originally aired in 1983, about the effects of a devastating nuclear holocaust on small-town residents of eastern Kansas/western Missouri. The Book of Eli, starred Denzel Washington as an obvious type for Moroni as a lone wanderer and bearer of a sacred record in the post-apocalyptic wake of a fallen civilization. The main character also draws some pretty clear parallels to Joseph Smith, since Eli purports to have been led by the voice of the Spirit to discover the book under a pile of rubble. And the stark – yet not as apparent to the less enlightened Ephraimite –  symbolism relating to Elijah Abel in the obvious links of name, skin tone, and Eli’s willingness to kill to protect the prophetic message of the book. The conflict and climax of this movie’s storyline take place midway along Eli’s journey from the east coast to the west coast – indicating the same Midwest area in question. And of course who could forget the Wizard of Oz, which firmly and forever highlighted the inter-dimensional aspects of the American drama – a historical vying for dominance by all manner of false zionists – in our subconscious with the line, “We’re not in Kansas anymore!”

Kansas City has also become the center of attention in a real-life debate surrounding plans for a NAFTA Superhighway which would link from Mexico to Canada, cutting straight through the U.S. and creating a special international inland container “port” in Kansas City, right on the eastern Kansas/western Missouri border. While modern-day Capt. Moronis like Alex Jones and fellow Texan taxpayers vehemently opposed construction of the portion known as the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC), Latter-Day Secret Combination (LDSC) members like Greg West were anxiously engaged in promoting the project. While admitting upfront that locating an international inland port in K.C. would provide terrorists with a conveniently located hub for smuggling and detonating a nuclear device, he went on to site words on the topic of Zion from early Church leaders and the silence of today’s Church authorities as support for his sly misleading. Of course the brotherhood of Zion felt across the continents will be the result of the Holy Spirit of God shedding itself abroad in the hearts of brave men and women, and not a building project undertaken by underhanded builders of Babylon. The only “superhighway” that will play a role in the establishing of Zion is that highway that will be miraculously “cast up in the midst of the great deep” as prophesied in Doctrine and Covenants 133:27.

Now don’t think that all this has nothing or little to do with weather. The casting up of this highway in the midst of the great deep is heralded in conjunction with immense changes in weather patterns upon the face of the land. The verses immediately preceding and proceeding verse 27’s reference to the highway speak of “barren deserts” and “parched ground” being suddenly quenched with “pools of living water”. They even mention flowing ice and trembling hills accompanying the arrival of the lost tribes from the “north countries”. For all of these things to occur together it is very apparent that a pole shift must take place. The pole shift being described here literally “turns on its head” the entire “body of evidence” collected in favor of the Eurocentric interpretations of these verses concerning the lost tribes typically applied by most Mormons. Even those few LDS who hold that Inner Earth beings resembling Nordic Gods will come to the rescue may want to do as Isaiah says and consider that which they have not heard (Isaiah 52:15). Isaiah says that many nations will be “startled” by this pole shift, but that is just one way of putting it. In the majority of Bible translations including the KJV it is not rendered as “startle many nations” but it is actually written that the Lord’s actions will “sprinkle many nations”. This is in perfect keeping with the thundering theme of this ancient weather forecast for the last days.

GETTING AT THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Long ago, thousands of years before Brigham & Co. spoke of a sweeping destruction along the western border of Missouri, Isaiah had already forecasted a “great forsaking in the midst of the land”. The word “midst” literally means “middle-est”, in otherwords, the most central point. If you take the U.S.A. to be the latter-day Egypt of which Isaiah is prophesying (with such undeniable correlations such as the same national bird flying over red, white, and blue symbolic colors of the civil union of one-time divided northern and southern kingdoms), and if you measure from the eastern most seashore to the other shining sea on the west coast, and from the northern border to the southern most regions; you really can not get any more dead center than Independence, Jackson County, Missouri. As far as precise prognostications go, the word of the Lord to Isaiah, the prophet’s prophet, is reiterated throughout the Bible, Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine & Covenants with the greatest confidence. The first section of the D&C invites us to: “Search these commandments, for they are true and faithful, and the prophecies and promises which are in them shall all be fulfilled.”

To locate something in the midst of a specified space is not the same as identifying its presence as being merely among a collective group or mass. Using the word “among”, connotes a much more vague relation in comparison with the superlative word “amidst”.  So when Joseph, the latter-day scribe pens an echo to the resounding ideas of Isaiah 34, we can ascertain key truths if we will remember the specific function of the word – “midst”.

And the Lord, even the Savior, shall stand in the midst of his people, and shall reign over all flesh. (D&C 133:25)

And also the Lord shall have power over his saints, and shall reign in their midst, and shall come down in judgment upon Idumea, or the world. (D&C 1:36)

”Reign (rain) over all flesh”….“Have power over his saints” – why is it worded that way? The footnotes that follow the echo back to Isaiah are even more specific. Notice that the following verse uses the words “thee” and “thou” to refer to a singular “inhabitant” of Zion.

Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee. (Isaiah 12:6)

The created universe is based on fractals. When the scriptures speak to our souls of momentous events in a place like the heartland of the United States of America, we would be wise to remember that first and foremost, they are speaking to us of the centrality of our own hearts within our spirit and physical bodies. The spinning sphere of the heart chakra, together with its physical component, literally play the central role in our bodies. As one unit they are responsible for harnessing the energies of our Telestial and Terrestrial Bodies. These two energetic bodies spiral out in vortices from the center-stake of our heart with the Terrestrial Vortex spiraling like an upright funnel cloud and the Telestial Vortex mirroring it below like an inverted cyclone. Inversion between the two can cause for some very stormy weather. But when energy flows more easily back and forth between the two layers they can merge together, forming what is known as the Merkabah Chariot, a kind of conical Star of David.

What do stars and hearts have to do with weather patterns and the fulfillment of prophecy through time? The answer becomes surprisingly clear upon examining latter-day scripture, though not largely appreciated or accepted by Latter-Day Saints. Sadly, one of Joseph Smith’s revelations most overlooked and ridiculed by LDS and non-LDS alike is that of the partially interpreted Theban Hypocephalus better known as Facsimile No. 2 in the seriously misunderstood, disputed, and derided Book of Abraham. fac2Yet the concept of a governing star/planet called Kolob mentioned in the facsimile, has captivated the imagination of writers who have included it in hymns, television series, and novels. The word Kolob has very old roots similar to the Arabic triliteral root KLB which is pronounced like “Qalb” and means “heart” or alternately “star”. For the ancient Egyptians the concept of a centrally located, universal, heart-star was associated with the measurement of time as well as distance or depth and was represented by drawing a human heart as the bob on a cosmic plumb-line. But notwithstanding this extremely ancient precedence, from beer breweries to Broadway musicals, the idea of a shining star by the name of Kolob has been “made light of”. Those who make a serious study of Kolob as an astronomical reality have sometimes stumbled upon their own seriousness and faltered equally along with those who esteem Kolob lightly. Both camps are imbalanced and, for the most part, totally miss the literal and intellectually enlightening rays of this bright star. The light that Kolob liberally offers all men can only be fully received through an understanding of Kolob as a cosmic heart of the universe.

the-plumb-line
One of those serious (Sirius?) scholars, Hugh Nibley, has written on ancient Khemetic ideas about the “hypocephalus as a preserver and transmitter of light and heat between the worlds”. Indeed this strange and wondrous artifact which comes to us from the Egyptian Book of Breathings is a type of resurrection talisman that was commonly known as a “head warmer”. But alas, most people’s heads will not accept the reality that light and heat and by extension weather, are simultaneously physical and spiritual manifestations of the endless intercourse between chronological and spatial principles. And because, as the Yoruban proverb says: “Spirit cannot give what head won’t receive”, this Pearl of Great Price has been cast before smart but selfish swine. A head stuffed with worldly knowledge must be occasionally submitted to Kolob’s purging emanations, so as to refine that knowledge into wisdom. Even Nibley has much to learn from beyond the grave because his accumulation of knowledge was so wrapped up in apologetics on behalf of a pride-ridden institution, that his mind was veiled from learning the “greater things”. But mingling with gods Nibley can finally take a break from nibbling incessantly at the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of this and that. He is now free to focus on the Oneness.

Another of those so-called serious scholars was W. Cleon Skousen. Straddling, as he had his whole life, the line between God and Mammon, Church and State, science and fiction, his split loyalty left Cleon floating somewhere between Clingon and Peon. But his heart was good. The heart of man is technically the first physical structure to begin formation during his embryonic gestation – the brain following closely as a tiny bundle of nerve endings beyond the already forming heart. This falls in line with Joseph’s interpretation of the Kolob hieroglyph as “signifying the first creation, nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God” and being “First in government”, but “Last pertaining to the measurement of time”. In similar fashion, Smith was purported to have said, and Skousen supported the theory, that Kolob was in fact the birthplace of our planet Earth. The idea that the earth was formed elsewhere and then migrated to her current orbit is not so difficult to accept if one looks to the fractal nature of the created universe and realizes that the planet is equipped with its own inner-sun and in many ways may not be so developmentally separate from the Sun we see so relatively close to us in outer-space. The fractality continues when, reflecting on certain anomalies of the precession of the equinox, we consider that the Sun may very well be in a binary relationship with a second sun hurling through deep space.

The Kolobian concept validates this progressive heart to heart connection perfectly. In the Book of Abraham’s explanation of Facsimile 2 there are many stars/planets listed as receiving and passing on light originating from Kolob. The whole immense and intricate light-sharing process is performed via revolutions. Pulsars in space are rapidly spinning neutron stars. Our hearts do not merely pump blood; they put a spin on it. They say money makes the world go ‘round but emblematic sounds pulsing from the City of Brotherly Love during the 70s set the spinning record straight with the Stylistics classic – People Make The World Go ‘Round. While the daily revolutions and yearly course of our planet may be more set by the Kolob of this solar system acting as a portal for the power of other Grand Governing Creations leading back to the Kolob closest to the Throne of God, we should be very clear that the Times and Seasons of what happens in this world, as well as how, and when it happens is completely a matter of the personal revolutions of our mini kolobs/hearts. The Kolobian concept invites us to discover the loving bond between astronomy and anatomy, and to put it to good use. Meteorological phenomena reflect the cooperative or non-cooperative interaction between humans and their gods. If we are unhappy with the current conditions we need to focus on the revolving our hearts. Turning our hearts back to the Lord is crucial at this time if we are to reach out beyond the false gods that writhe and churn like deadly gases in the atmosphere, raining blood and terror down upon our heads.

EARTH MOTIONS = ENERGY MOTIONS = E-MOTIONS

Remember the young boy in the movie Looper who could in some tentative future become the vengeful killer known only as The Rainmaker? He was able to manipulate the weather using only his raw emotion. Weather control is essentially a question of emotion control. Whoever controls the emotions controls the weather. Don’t believe me? Then why do you believe that Jesus was able to so calmly command the wind and waves in the storm while his companions were so emotionally out of control? Did he really not care if his disciples perished? The calm that existed in the heart of Jesus and the calm that He was able to manifest on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of a raging storm have a direct correlation to one another.

Humanity has placed itself in great peril by allowing religion to disregard the true lessons of the Master Teacher. Devious doctrines appeal to our hardened hearts and put the sayings and doings of Jesus outside our vain, restricted realm of accepted ability or responsibility. We don’t have the nerve to brave the billowing waves. We don’t have the nerve to abandon Babylon in favor of acting on the deepest desires of our hearts. But somehow we have the nerve to fault God for not seeming to care enough to be moved by the suffering of innocents in the world we have created. And we have the nerve to quickly ascribe the destructive effects of our schizophrenic society upon the earth to some punitive god who apparently (judging from S.E. Asia Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Haiti Mega-quake) does not like poor and humble people. Well, honestly, what do we expect, when all of our worship is entirely based around the concept of a poor humble man dying so that the world might live on? But this kind of utterly misguided worship/warship has run amok for so long now that the words “Jesus Christ” have come to be synonymous with the words “Status Quo”. We need to start remembering and reviving the Status Quo Ante Bellum – the state in which things were before the war. For, as it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end.

People like to talk about the signs of the times but no one wants to point to the fact that time moves through space and the friction between the two generates the very stirrings they see as signs being sequentially checked off of some mystery god’s grand agenda. The less you concentrate on trying to figure out that mystery god, the more the mysteries of the True and Living God unfold to you. As we divest our worship out and away from the god of this world we come to know and have faith in the God of not only Heaven, but Heaven and Earth together. If you ever find yourself wondering why god doesn’t move to bring about solutions to the suffering in the world, you should stop and wonder why you worship the wrong god – a god who is not in alignment with the righteous desires of your heart. If God is the one who situated our hearts in space, dangling as it were from divine plumb-lines, then we need only follow our hearts for direct encounter with God. The problems which plague us are completely atmospheric. Low lying cloud cover created from eons of distracted thinking makes for blockages which interfere with and scatter both incoming and outgoing signals to and from the beating pulsars and quasars of heart-star systems.

I do not want to give the false impression that meteorology is only a metaphor for emotion or visa-versa. When we mentally break up reality into so many unrelated arenas we have a REAL problem. I stand in solidarity with inspired restorationists of long suppressed truths, like Joseph Smith and Clarence Smith. Both of these men were inspired of Heaven to take valuable knowledge and revelation to those whom such things had typically been denied. Two experiences, from each of their lives respectively, show the importance of continuing these great men’s missions of delivering this message to the poor and working class, to the youth and to the disinherited.

Joseph Smith, opened this dispensation by disclosing many secrets from Free-Masonry, Kabbalah and Gnostic Christianity, and adding to them “new” wisdom extracted personally from the eternal mind of God. Neither the established religious cults nor the state governments liked his maverick spirit and he was eventually assassinated. During his life, he once led a group of men known as Zion’s Camp in an attempt to recover stolen lands in the aforementioned area of Jackson County, Missouri. When mobs of misinformed men came, intent on annihilating Zion’s Camp, a flash storm suddenly rolled in on a big black thunder cloud and blew rain and hail upon them till they had to retreat. The would-be attackers were unable to even cross the Missouri river as it rose approximately 40 feet in a matter of hours. When a black woman had first come and notified the camp that many white men in the area meant to do them harm, some members of the camp wanted to take up their guns and fight. But, Joseph told them, “Stand still and see the salvation of God”, and later he let them know “God is in this storm.”

Most people do not know the exact details of Clarence Smith’s official excommunication from the Nation of Islam where he had studied under Malcolm X, who in later years would also become disillusioned with the religion. In any case, Clarence Smith took the things he had learned from this American branch of Islam, Kabbalah and Free-Masonry and built upon them with additional revelation and insights. Before taking his lively message to the streets, he was a quickly advancing priest in the ranks of an inflexible organization. But like the young Jesus, Clarence agitated the religious heads of that institution while teaching at Temple #7 in Harlem, New York. He was teaching a class of young men from one of the Nation’s 120 lessons – the specific lesson which deals with a religio-scientific break-down of such forces of nature as rain, hail, snow, and earthquakes. Clarence was teaching outside of the manuals and approved lesson materials and he bore witness to those youth that all of these things were caused by man. A visiting authority by the ironic title of Capt. Joseph sat in on the class and did not like what he heard. Like Joseph Smith, Clarence Smith was eventually assassinated for his controversial message. But before FBI agents could kill him, he succeeded in teaching many youth, from New York to Chicago; that men could become gods. His message lives on today in underground Hip Hop music and culture. But, despite the noble efforts of Hip Hop’s poor righteous teachers who adhere to Clarence’s teachings, and in spite of government surveillance, this neglected reality of man’s involvement with the weather patterns on the planet stands in need of more attention and deeper comprehension.

Governments around the world have always been interested in managing what we think and how we feel. Oppressive regimes have always known that there are incredible amounts of power in the energy that comes through the hearts and minds of the people, and throughout history they have been careful to provide safety valves and complex canal systems for conducting this energy into programs which produce the outcomes they want. In recent years we have reached a place in the cycle of time where we have given over such complete control to Church and State that they have found ways to reliably rile up specific weather conditions. We say that God controls the weather but today we have been taught to forsake the God of Nature, and we have neglected to comprehend that God can only work “his mercies according to the conditions of the children of men” (D&C 46:15). So, if the preponderance of our thoughts, feelings and actions from hour to hour, day to day, are conditioned by circumstances set up for us by Church and State, then who is this god who we say controls weather conditions? It ought to be painfully obvious at this point in time exactly who is behind these unnatural disasters in diverse places.

The U.S. Government-run military arm known as SOUTHCOM was running a planned exercise based on the scenario of a catastrophic event in the capital of Haiti the day before the 7.0 earthquake struck Port Au Prince on Jan. 12, 2010. This is suspiciously reminiscent of the FEMA and NORAD drills so conveniently scheduled for Sep. 10, 2001, the day before 9/11. But ironically the group known as Scholars for 9/11 Truth proved themselves unable to handle or at least uninterested in the truth of what is really happening in the world today. The group, which had formerly championed BYU professor, Steven E. Jones in his valiant exposition of scientific truth, calling for a questioning of the causes behind the collapse of the Twin Towers, now joined the “Lord’s University” in distancing their selves from him and turning their back on him in disdain. Brother Jones had gone too far in pursuit and publishing of truth by illustrating how technology developed back in 1898 by inventor and futurist Nikola Tesla could be used to trigger earthquakes. Prof. Jones also brought forth evidence which indicated that the U.S. Government might be testing and perfecting this technology at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lost lives and destroyed homes.

simulacro

The Mexican Government was “kind” enough to put out a flyer beforehand notifying residents of the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas of their plans for an “Earthquake Simulation” to take place on March 20, 2012 at precisely 12 o’clock noon. The fact that they avoided loss of life to their human live-stock does not make the Mexican Government any less damnable. The evidence provided by their public announcement is very damning in that it reveals not only their intentions but the accuracy with which they are able to achieve tremors within .5 units of the projected magnitude. U.S. President Obama happened to be in Mexico at the time attending the G-20 summit along with other heads of state that are implicit in this murderous secret combination that reigns with terror across the globe. The Walmart Corporation showed itself to be in league with the pantheon of false gods looking down on humanity and laughing devilishly at our suffering. Within minutes of the violent quaking, Walmart.com.mx sent out a message on twitter that read: “Now we got the other stores shaking in fear of our prices.” Bob Marley’s paraphrasing of Proverbs 10:15 speaks powerfully to the evil feats of these gods of Babylon.

”Destruction of the poor is poverty. Destruction of the soul is vanity.” – Wisdom by Bob Marley

In the same song Marley says that those who have eyes to see will see. Tesla told us:

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena; it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

You can not study non-physical phenomena without possessing spiritually open eyes to see. But lamentably, it seems that the ones who serve spiritual wickedness in high places have taken Tesla’s advice more seriously than those who claim to be Christian Soldiers engaged in spiritual warfare against dark forces. Even without spiritual eyes or ears we now have information being proclaimed from the rooftops that is leaving everyone from evangelicals to agnostics without excuse. H.A.A.R.P. stands for High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, and has become the catch-all term for those technological advancements which are being blamed for inhuman deeds from earthquakes and hurricanes to mind-control. There is a certain type of angel that plays this H.A.A.R.P., and it is not the kind that works with Father to serve mankind. Although it is shrouded in speculation, what is clear is that it is a research project funded by both the U.S. Air force and Navy whose purpose is to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the physical processes that occur when a targeted region of the ionosphere has been excited.

LESS FEARS – MORE SPHERES

The ionosphere is a region of the upper atmosphere, from about 53 to 370 miles altitude, and includes the thermosphere (where UV radiation and auroras occur) as well as parts of the mesosphere (roughly 28 to 53 miles altitude) and exosphere (beginning somewhere around 310 miles above the earth’s surface and extending to interplanetary zones). It is distinguished because it is ionized specifically by solar radiation. It plays an important part in atmospheric electricity and forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere (outermost regions of Earth’s magnetic field). Underneath all of these, we find what is called the troposphere (the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere where the majority of day-to-day weather occurs).
layers-of-the-atmosphere

A secular, scientific view offers us a schema of concentric spheres encircling the planet. What could our spiritual eyes show us when looking at all of these spheres? The Doctrine & Covenants speak on the topic of spheres of influence and tell us:

All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. (D&C 93:30)

Yes, we’re independent to act for ourselves, but notice that these selves of ours, though expressed in plurality, also form, in their independence, what we would call individual bodies. There are selves and there are cellves. The latter is alluded to in D&C 93:30 with the word “truth” and the former correspond to the word “intelligence” as used there. Truth would be analogous with the flesh and intelligence could be used interchangeably with the word light. Justin explains these two as, “Earth [my life here as a physical collection of atoms bumping into other collections of atoms according to the laws of physics] with Heaven [my innate desire for meaning, purpose, value, and order that emerges from and endures beyond what I’m doing here as a collection of particles moving around in space and time]”. That explanation renders the mystery of the self very self-evident. We all know that we are composed of elements that are subject to decomposition. But, we are also aware of something much more. According to scripture, these two parts of our life may be independent; however, nowhere is it implicit that they are completely separate or unaffected by each other.

Paul tells us that there are celestial bodies as well as bodies terrestrial (1 Cor.15:40). He says that the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. From there he proceeds to compare them to the Sun and stars respectively. It should be realized and remembered that the Sun is a star and the stars are the same as Suns, only appearing to vary so drastically from this, our limited vantage – or should we say disadvantage – point. But then, a third is suggested as an intermediary glory comparable to the Moon. Joseph Smith Jr. recognized the importance of this triune, and since a name for the intermediary glory was conspicuously missing from the New Testament, he shifted the title “terrestrial” over to that middle ground and invented the term “telestial” to designate that state which is most distant from the celestial. This additional commentary on the idea of degrees of glory on the part of Joseph, has been chided by a few and understood by even fewer, but it is at least consistent with the Old Testament in that it does not make the mistake of conflating this “lone and dreary world” with the true earth.

The true earth, wherein the Lord God is truly exalted is a physical place that is in harmony with true spiritual precepts. When these precise conditions occur there is a full fusion of truth with intelligence, flesh with spirit, the natural with the supernatural. In What, on Earth, are you doing, for Heaven’s sake? Justin starts off with another excellent break down by offering a non-traditional translation of Matt. 6:10. Here the Savior is teaching the people how to properly pray, and he says we should use the words:

may your will be done
in the earth
as it is in the sky

We are brought back again to a closer observation of earth and sky. And since we are commissioned with the combining of both earthly and heavenly regions, our focus must necessarily settle on that place where the two meet – the troposphere. The word troposphere derives from the Greek: tropos for “change”. It is a layer where friction with the Earth’s surface influences air flow. Atmospheric flow is good and a thing to be desired, cherished, and maintained. However, a fearful, fretful moving about, here and there, busily doing, is death. To be is to live and it is necessary from time to time to be still and “know that I am god” as per the instructions of the well known line in Psalms 46. But, in addition to that first half, there is a lot of meaning that is missed in that verse. Verse 10 continues and concludes the idea by proclaiming: “I will be exalted among the heathen; I will be exalted in the earth.” This is no conqueror’s song as some who feel so chosen based on worldly evidence might suppose. This is a mutual choosing between the God of all the Earth and the meek and lowly earthlings who have been judged as heathens but who know the God of Heaven much better than those who find a false sense of security in their riches and their religion

Now, Jesus’ main message to the weak things of this world was repeated over and over again: FEAR NOT! Meekness has the ability to transmute weakness into strength, but an abundance of inner-fears only inter-feres with this process. Dangers do not create fear. Fear creates dangers. The less fears one has, the greater access one has to more spheres. Jesus admonishes us to “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul” (Matt. 10:28). And Paul tells us in his letters to the Ephesians that “we struggle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Those high places which should be most guarded are our own heads atop our fortresses of flesh and blood. But where are the high places from whence emanate these attacks against which we should guard or even struggle? Certainly it is not a political power struggle or even a protest against world leaders, since such would fall under the category of struggling against flesh and blood. But what’s up with those high places, like the mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere?  Can someone please explain why it is that in nearly every other translation of the Bible verse in question, minus the King James Version, it is not translated as “high places” but as “heavenly places”, “heavenly realms”, or simply “heaven(s)”? That puts a slightly different spin on the atmospheric flow, doesn’t it? If we will look, we can easily see a stark difference between the Kingdom advocated by the Lord’s Prayer (Thy Kingdom Come), and the power behind the throne of a man like King James.

WHO’S RAISING WHO HERE?

In order to be effective against principalities, against the authorities, even general authorities, against the so-called “powers that be”, it is necessary to virtually ignore the meat puppets dangling before us and follow the spiritual strings upwards, so we may directly target the cosmic powers of darkness presently presiding over our world. This is a significant game-changer because we have been led to think of these “higher spheres” as completely and unquestionably benevolent, and the beings which inhabit them as perfect. Certainly the “goodie goodie” son who lingered above in his father’s celestial mansion way on high, believed himself superior in terms of worthiness to his prodigal brother who, having hit rock bottom, labored under no such illusions of grandeur. They may be “perfect” alright, but some beings in those royal realms are perfectly evil at this point. If it were otherwise, then there would be no evil down here in this sphere. The axiom, “as above, so below” is perfectly scalable to this imperfect power structure, right down to personal relationships between parents and children. Home can be a Heaven on Earth, but if there is a War in Heaven then what does this do for our home? Right here, at the sacred and sacral level of home, is where the real heart of the struggle is.

To struggle with someone or something is to provide the other party with energy. In truth it is a loving act. Just like when Jacob struggled with God and prevailed, the purpose of struggle is always to see ourselves more clearly in the light of love. To resist not evil means to not provide energy to it, but rather to focus on the good and nurture it with love. We do this until the evil outgrows that stage and, turning towards our love, eventually turns into love itself, like a child learning to do better. Evil is simply love that does not know itself. So we let our lights so shine before men, that they may see our good works and glorify our Father in Heaven (Matt. 5:16).

Do we think it was sheer coincidence that Jesus went directly to those souls that were in the darkness of spirit prison, plus made a detour to see Mary, all before going to His Father? Do we think that His resurrection was a gift from the Father (to whom He had not yet ascended) in order for the Son to bring light to those who were trapped in the dark abyss? Isn’t it obvious that His work there in the abyss was what resulted in His resurrection, which was a two-way gift exchange originating from the Son Himself, extending to the lost substance of fragmented souls sequestered in prison, and returning the favor from grateful captives, swirling out of the control of dark energies, now liberated into light? We hear the Son say, “Glory be to the Father,” only because, until He had been to the Father, His body could not complete that glory. But Jesus obviously knew where it was at – the troposphere – where the precipitation of mourning Mary made climate change possible. God in Heaven gets the glory, but as we strive to climb through the climes do we stop and consider where He gets it from?

Any well-meaning and wise man or woman will look to the younger generation which is in their care, and wonder, “Who is raising who here?” – even and especially in those poignant moments when the little ones are behaving, as grandma might say, like “little devils,” rebellious and spirited. Only fallen angels really get the gospel. Fallen angels are earth angels. In the 1950’s classic, Earth Angel, the lyrics tell a touching tale of love:

I fell for you, and I knew the vision of your love, loveliness. I hope and I pray that someday I’ll be the vision of your hap, happiness.”

“Happy” and “Happen” have the same root. Happiness comes from knowing how we can make good things happen. Down here on the ground is the most happening place there is.

As fallen angels, we are given the all-important task of waking up the gods and keeping them awake to reality. In D&C 132, verses 16 and 17, it speaks of the marriage of heaven and earth and describes this glory in terms of a “far more…eternal weight” Through us they are enlarged and exalted. In a detached state, floating singly around in the heavens as a mere idea, they can become just as lonely as one here in the lone and dreary world. The gods have two choices before them. They can tell Luciferian lies to their selves and remain there afraid of falling from great heights. Or they can take the leap of faith and allow themselves to dive deep into a much fuller love and joy. The first option is motivated by fear. It is a lie and they know it.

Anything that remains stubbornly in the mind of god without coming into action down here will eventually be cast down for its own good. But as the saying goes, the harder they come the harder they fall. The more difficulty one has in taking the fall of faith, the more difficulty one has in waking up from the concussion incurred from such a hard-headed and hard-hearted impact. Learning how to ascend and descend consciously as angels in the body of Christ is best accomplished with humility, and it is best not to be compelled to be humble. Alma the Younger is clear on this point when speaking to the poor and despised among the Zoramite people in Alma, chapter 32. But he is also quick to recognize that the down-to-earth people he is addressing were likely not all of them compelled to be humble but rather would choose humility regardless of their circumstances. As the gap between the rich and the poor grows wider in this modern-day Zoramite culture, the Great American Hero hiding timidly within each of us will have to learn the ironic life lesson that; flying is always easier than landing. The earth is spoken of in scripture as the Lord’s footstool, something that one must set foot upon if they desire to elevate themselves. This makes the earth the launching pad from which gods can be made real, but they have to get over their inverted vertigo if they are ever to master the art of a smooth landing.

and behold
the angels of god ascend and descend upon it

Genesis 28:12

 

you will see the sky open
and the angels of god ascending and descending

John 1:51

 

Notice the order always starts off with ascending, then descending. Jacob’s ladder is set upon the earth, and from here is how we get to heaven, not so much by jumping or reaching but by simply starting at the bottom. Kids “know” less and therefore have more faith than their adult counterparts. Lofty branches, with their high ideals, get cut off. They cut themselves off by separating themselves into caste systems with “gods” up top and workers down below. Celestial beings that remain in this state never learn. The ancient Aryan race set things up in this way on the Indian subcontinent during the Vedic Age (roughly between 1700 and 500 BC). And then, thousands of years later, the haughty “gods” of the Aryan people proved they had not learned humility at all, and were in fact irrationally inflated by the time the Nazis of WWII Era Germany sought to awaken those warring gods for purposes of world conquest via a supposed “master race”. All the while, the purer, truer aspects of the original Aryan race lived on in the down-trodden Hindus and Roma Gypsies of brown and olive complexion as they patiently worked towards the completion of a great work and a glory.

I feel to echo the sentiments of Austin Osman Spare, who said: “Myself, I have not yet seen a man who is not God already.” And I would add to them Justin’s words which provide some helpful specifics. In the aforementioned What, on Earth, are you doing, for Heaven’s sake?, Justin said: “God” is to be found in being under the most, serving the most, and being connected to the most [instead of the other way around].” By this standard the indigenous Zapatista freedom fighters who populate the very area targeted by the Mexican federal government’s 7.4 “Earthquake Simulation” are more godly than any blue-blood or contented Christ-Shun church-goer. The man whose name they are known by, Emiliano Zapata, was just as much of a Christ as Jesus. The two men are on the same team, and as team captain, Jesus has never been a ball-hogging, show-off player. Zapata Christ said that until every last person in Mexico was free, then there was no freedom in Mexico. By recognizing that this is a universal struggle, the way that true Christians like the Zapatistas do, one connects to all humanity. If these indigenous peoples along with their adoptive gentile brothers and sisters can carry that awareness of connections between beings over to the flora and fauna sectors of God’s Kingdom, they will find some major allies in the universal service they perform. And if this sense of alliance and selfless service can cross into the plant and animal Kingdoms, then why not into the elemental realm of mountain moving and the so-called non-contact forces of nature? One good thing to come from the Aryan race is a Vedic scripture that says: God sleeps in stone, breathes in plants, dreams in animals, and awakes in man.

The great gods of Babylon may seem “high and mighty” but they are only high-maintenance. Those destructive deities remained in constant contact with their earthly servant, Adolph Hitler and the highest ranking Nazi leadership. The so-called Illuminati have always served these lofty beings, so they become lofty branches themselves. They are infamous for rejecting the root in favor of worshipping impressive beings of light – beings of light that are imp-pressive only in that they are imps that press. But when you know what’s real, you aint so easily fooled. In the immortal words of Bob Marley on his smash hit, Get Up, Stand Up: ”Most people think great god will come from the sky…But if you know what life is worth you will look for yours on earth…So, now you see the light, you better stand up for your right!”

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW – BETWEEN JOY&PAIN, SUNSHINE&RAIN

Speaking of seeing the light, Carl Gustav Jung is quoted as saying:

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

In the above quote Jung was using the word “imagining” in the way it has come to be used typically in the modern westernized world; to mean believing in something untrue or unreal. At best, this verb is usually used to describe the forming of a mere mental image for pleasurable or practical purposes which limit themselves to either the realm of fancy or figuring. But Jung, like Lennon, knew that true imagination is actually an underdeveloped and atrophied organ in the spirit-body of man. The imagination is a powerful faculty which the Nazis of Jung’s time and place and the Capitalists of Lennon’s lifetime were determined to control, monopolize, and maim in others. Men and women, free-thinkers of these modern times would find themselves more in line with the beliefs of the prophetic and persecuted Sufis before and during the dark times of the Middle Ages. Avicena, Suhrawardi and other men inspired of heaven wrote about the imagination as the culmination of all spiritual senses which pre-seed and are above the 5 senses of the natural man, and are therefore supernatural and able to perceive/conceive supernatural things.

Henri Corbin coined the phrase imaginal, as opposed to imaginary, to denote the original imaginative faculty of the Spirit. Corbin hypothesized that the proper and true meaning of the term imagination would, “of necessity be lost and leave room only for the imaginary if something like a secularization of the imaginal into the imaginary were not required for the fantastic, the horrible, the monstrous, the macabre, the miserable, and the absurd to triumph.” Well that would certainly explain a lot of what is happening in today’s world, wouldn’t it? Psychology generally fails to acknowledge the value of communication with Spirit and considers the manifestation of this phenomenon to be a projection of the “imagination”. In my experience pure imagination can be used as a bridge between selfishly generated images and real messages from Spirit. And it appears that this bridge is a rainbow bridge, which shouldn’t be surprising since the imagination as we typically speak of it, deals primarily with visual images and colors.

Rainbows show up frequently in folk traditions from Yoruban to Celtic, from Taiwanese to Nordic, as the bridge we must pass to reach the perfect world of the ancestors, the pure land of Buddhism, or the earth in its paradisiacal glory imagined in Mormonism. Rainbows serve as a heavenly path leading to the greatest treasure of all. Two things are needed to make rainbows – sunlight and water. The troposphere is the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere. As a far more “exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (D&C 63:66, 132:16), the troposphere contains approximately 80% of the atmosphere’s mass and 99% of its water vapour. It is deeper in the tropics, up to 20 km (12 mi), and shallower near the polar regions at 7 km (4.3 mi). In the tropical areas of the Earth we find high concentrations of “poor” people with generally “warm” hearts. What would happen if the good people along Earth’s equator were to cast off the yoke of the non-egalitarian regimes which currently weigh them down, suddenly and unexpectedly switching places with their frigid but nonetheless feisty and freedom-loving brothers in the north countries? What type of weather patterns is that type of total inversion likely to whip up? What magnificent rainbows of promise would we see shining down on Inuit and Icelander? And what splendid aurora borealis would we behold breaking forth from the newly relocated continent of Afrika? Can you imagine it?!

When Paul was at Thessalonica, he and his comrades were joined by many god-fearing pagan Greeks and others who Latter-Day Stains would classify as non-members. They were however accused by the local True Blue Jew church membership of being instigators of treason against the state, and decried as “these that have turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). Indeed, if it were true that the one holy God entered humbly into the world in the person of Jesus, then Paul was boldly broadcasting the utter upending of the commonly held worldview and the whole hierarchical world order. If God became human so that he might confer divinity upon the creature, then it follows that the last must be first, that the poor are blessed. Now imagine, once the full import of these glad tidings sink into the hearts and minds of the oppressed masses, what is to stop the spiritual pole shift from transitioning into physical reality?

Drawing from the oldest spiritual traditions known to man born out of central Afrika, we can know that pure imagination is truly a “rainbow connection” capable of uniting man’s physical self with his spiritual self. The medium by which the gap is bridged between dense dark bodies of dirt (ara) and dazzling bodies of light (iponri) is water from the emotional body (egbe). Through mystical mists a person’s aura can be seen like a “coat of many colors” adorning them. This most plain and precious wisdom from sub-Saharan Afrika migrated to Egypt then met with further complication from the stubborn Hebrews; who were, for the most part, unable to penetrate the Kabod of the very God that led them  because they were unwilling to penetrate their own KaBodies or Spirit Bodies, as Latter-Day Saint Sunday School classes would call them. The Semitic triliteral root of KBD can be translated as glory, importance, honor, or even as interior, entrails, liver, but its most literal meaning is to “be heavy“. So when we see the word Kabod used, we should not relegate our thoughts to ethereal images of light, but also remember the “far more…eternal weight” mentioned in D&C 132, verses 16 and 17, where it speaks of the marriage of heaven and earth, spirit-body and flesh-body.  Justin points out that there is a “disconnect between the rule and order of our Heavenly Parents’ kingdom in the sky — and the rule and order of humankind on this planet.” Ancient Afrikan wisdom teaches that alignment with our Heavenly Parents is only possible if there is alignment between the physical, emotional, and spiritual self.

Just as water and sunlight come together to reveal rainbows, so the baptism of water and of fire reveal the way for us to realign Heaven and Earth. Emotions, like tidal waters, run high on both sides.

and the gods also said

let there be an expanse
in the midst of the waters
and it shall divide the waters
from the waters

and the gods ordered the expanse
so that it divided the waters which were under the expanse
from the waters which were above the expanse
and it was so
even as they ordered

Abraham 4:6-7

So we have waters below and waters above. If the troposphere contains 99% of the water in the air, then this means that the expanse spoken into existence by the gods must be very close at hand – nestled somewhere between the earth’s solid surface awash in seas, lakes and rivers, and the low lying layer of the troposphere. That mystery sphere is here. It’s us! Think about it. If all truth is independent as all intelligence also in that sphere in which God has placed it – If the celestial heaven is one sphere and the earth or telestial kingdom with all of its inequality and inconsistencies is another – then from where is God doing the placing? This can not be classified as merely a top-down operation. That type of explanation will only get us so far, and tends to let humanity and their gods off the hook for so much wickedness. Where is this place of balance and perfection if it is neither to be found in the highest nor the lowest of these two war-torn spheres. The answer is that it is NO-Where. It is not technically a place, but is a placing. It can not be situated on our maps but is situational.

Long before Joseph Smith ever spoke of infinite intelligence, spirit bodies, angelic visitations, or distinct degrees of glory, Persian visionaries were in the midst of restoring and revealing many great and wondrous things, like jism mithali – the “resurrection body,” and the “eighth climate,” also known as na-koja-abad – the “land of nowhere.” They spoke of things corroborated by the experiences of Isaiah, Paul and Mohammed before them. The ramp-up to the latter-day restoration of some of these truths had practically nothing to do with characters like Martin Luther or Wycliffe, and more to do with occultists like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, and scientist/mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who never started religious movements but definitely paved the way for that of the LDS. And it was no thanks to the stiff-necked British and Scandinavian Victorian era converts that rushed into Sydney’s (Oops! I mean Joseph’s) new church; only to cut the short-lived restoration movement off at its base and be led by Brigham into a spiritual and topographical wasteland some 166 years ago (Happy late July 24th, Pioneer Day to all you Utahns). The point is, we ought to do as Joseph and study out of the best of books. But we would do well to remember that no amount of book-smarts and theology can ever substitute for direct and personal experience with the spiritual phenomena discussed in those books.

If the scriptures do not inspire and activate your imaginative faculty, arousing it to experiment upon the word, then the words on the pages spell death to your soul. All “people of the book” before us have condemned themselves in large numbers, because, as our Book of Mormon warns, “the law hath become dead unto us” (2 Nephi 25:25) Pure imagination is crucial because, in the “eighth climate” – from whence the light of the law shines in powerful beams – in that realm consciousness and its object are ontologically inseparable. So if we are following the light beams of law out to their dead ends we are headed, deeper and deeper, straight for outer darkness. Instead of following the laws, we ought to look to their source. For, for this end was the law given (2 Nephi 25:25), to guide us to our heavenly home where they always leave the light on for us.

The active imagination is the organ by means of which that migration occurs – the return with honor from the exterior to the interior. It is not by the senses of the natural man nor is it by means of the pure intellect but it is that intermediate power which functions as the preeminent mediator. The spiritual imagination is the organ that permits the transmutation of internal spiritual states into external states, into vision-events symbolizing with those internal states. Henri Corbin poses the following question:

“If we are no longer capable of speaking about the imagination except as “fantasy,” if we cannot utilize it or tolerate it except as such, it is perhaps because we have forgotten the norms and the rules and the “axial ordination” that are responsible for the cognitive function of the imaginative power.” – Mundus Imaginalis

Moroni puts it to us in a similar but more sobering tone:

“Has the day of miracles ceased? Or have angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? Or has he withheld the power of the Holy Ghost from them? Or will he, so long as time [weather] shall last, or the earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof [troposphere] to be saved? Behold I say unto you, Nay; for it is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men; wherefore, if these things have ceased wo be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief, and all is vain.”  – Moroni 7:35-37

THE MIRACLE OF FORGIVENESS & KIMBALL’S CADILLAC – Pt. 1


The crisp coldness of the Utah Valley winter air dominated my senses but clashed in competition with the rumbling warmth of an idling Cadillac engine. Soon I found myself side by side with my best friend, rolling, in silence, through a meandering suburban maze. By the time the humming motor took over the soundscape, my mind began to ruminate on the events that had led up to this unassuming moment. If I had allowed my mind to wander further back in time, I would have marveled at the stranger than fiction story-line that had brought two New Yorkers – one black, one white– to cross paths in Orem, Utah of all places. But, as it was, my subconscious and my conscious, seated side by side in my right and left brain hemispheres respectively, enjoyed a quiet, mutual appreciation, perfectly paralleled by the way Mike and I respectfully remained in our own private thoughts during these demure moments of reverie.

I thought back to only hours earlier, when we had made a midnight run for burritos at a popular 24 hours spot located in that no man’s land in between Orem and Provo. During my not so distant college days I had jokingly dubbed that area, “Orvo”. Although we were unaware, time and space had here converged in an “Ovum” pregnant with possibilities. Another brother from yet another mother, Brio Springford, would later explain to me the mystical significance of such intermediate states as midnight, dusk and dawn. Neither here nor there, this nor that, halfway between solid and gas, they act as a mystical mist or lubricant opening portals between the physical world and the realm of spirit. But, like I said, my conscious mind was not even traveling back that far into the strange and slow spiritual sojourn that had taken my brother and I along the paths of Muslim and Mormon to this current crossroads in Christ. Brio was, at this point, still just a Facebook acquaintance going by his first given name, Joseph. And all I remembered was the good grub and good conversation.

We had talked of many things; Mexican food and culture, U.S. culture, Mexican women, U.S. women. But mostly, Mike shared his enthusiasm for Cadillacs. This was my first time riding in one and I could see why he liked them so much. Comfortable and kingly, the ride evoked a classic coolness to transcend all trends. As he described the character of the car I could see, hear and feel the truthfulness of his report. This was an honorable vehicle. Even its functional flaws figured nobly into its proud performance –Honor on wheels.

This magnificent maroon colored machine now made its way to the freeway on-ramp and my thoughts moved forward to only minutes before we left the house. I had checked online and saw that the Facebook friend I mentioned earlier had invited me to join a group that called itself the Mormon Reconciliation Movement. Joseph explained in a message that the group’s goals were somewhat loosely defined but that they wanted to at least start a dialogue among people who desired a peaceful and happy society. Open to and in fact reaching out to those of all faiths and cultures, the group would however maintain as one of its focal points, a reconciliation, specifically between Mormons and Native Americans.

I was well versed in the lamentable history between LDS and ‘Lamanites’. Now as the little man in my mind accessed the file on dealings between Mormon settlers and Native tribes, I saw a vast library of information appear on my mental screen. There was Joseph’s referencing of the native population as modern descendents of the Lamanite civilization described in the Book of Mormon narrative. The commission to the overwhelmingly white converts of an early Mormon Church to join with the natives, rejected, and a precarious distance respected in Brigham’s Utah. My great-great-great-great grandfather and one of my guardian angels, Daniel Webster Jones’ statement that he had found, “more nobility of character among the Indians than what is common among many whites, even Mormons included,” echoed through my thoughts. Appalling accounts of treachery towards the Hopi that built the corrupt careers of Ernest L. Wilkinson and others were harrowed up from this dark data base. But perhaps most disturbing to me were the misguided notions of LDS Church President, Spencer W. Kimball. Most disturbing, because, this sweet old man with smiling eyes, had a love for the Navajo people, which seemed to be sincere, real. I guess Pres. Kimball was a product of the thinking of his time. But I found no comfort in this conclusion. That an old man with a good heart would allow the racism of his era to mislead his heart was extremely saddening to my own heart. The contrast between true love and false principles made me feel like puking. And speaking about “striking contrast,” as a product of ‘his era’, he pushed the painful irony deeper when, in a 1960 issue of a magazine called The Improvement Era, he said:

“I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today …. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation. At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter we represent, the little member girl—sixteen—sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents—on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather…. These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.”

During this very visit to friends in Utah, my wife, Quiana and I, had witnessed firsthand, the soul-corroding effects of Kimball’s zeal for the Indian Placement Program. Long-time friends of Navajo descent, the Seschille Sisters, welcomed us to their home until they discovered that Quiana, by choice, no longer wore the LDS Temple undergarments. They seemed unable to feel the spirit of the ancestors sweeping the land, unaware of the blocks that had been placed between them and their kindred dead; while Quiana and I were unable to deny that same powerful spirit of Elijah. Just over a month prior, during the harvest time of year once celebrated by my Keltic ancestors as Samhain, now commercialized as Halloween and observed in Mexican tradition as Day of the Dead, we had been made keenly aware of the presence of those long passed. It wasn’t so much the resurrection of repressed ancestral memories, but a relaxed and naturally remembered ritual. There was a very ‘tuberous’ theme reminding us of our ‘roots’ that day. Modern-day Americans, of course, use pumpkins. But the Keltic Clans had used turnips, and they felt right at home with the anciently rooted Nahuatl custom, which made use of a closely related species –the refreshing jicama. Revived spiritual sensitivity along with an already sanctioned mix of Catholic and Mesoamerican holy days being observed locally by the general public, coincided to usher in an early thanksgiving, which had always been Quiana’s and my favorite holiday. It was really nice, because, whereas living so far from ‘living’ relatives made get-togethers extremely difficult, this simple openness that had snuggled up to our hearts gradually till this period of permeability in the veil between worlds, reminded us that distance itself was relative. And hence, distant relatives and even the spirits of relations of close friends and curious neighbors, graced our home with their visitation during this season.

But, I digress. This was not the warm climate of central Mexico. It was early December in Utah, and my train of thought was stopped cold in its tracks. I was contemplating the cruel confusion of this world that made a genuinely respectable man capable of hosting such degrading attitudes and perpetrating truly deplorable actions toward such a noble albeit abused race. As soon as the sick and twisted picture started to sink in, a feeling suddenly came over my heart and a thought rushed into my mind. I felt and thought that Spencer was truly sorry and repentant for his past transgressions. But who could know but the man himself and God, right?

Then, just as suddenly, my train of thought was completely derailed when Mike’s gruff voice broke the silence. “There’s this Caddy I peeped on KSL classifieds. I was thinkin’ of goin’ to check it out after we run these errands.” Oh, so not derailed but looped back to the original line of thought, “Cadillacs”. I listened while the enthusiast described the details of the vehicle for sale. It was located in American Fork –we were headed there anyway. It was a ’79 DeVille D’Elegance –we were riding in a 1980 DeVille. It was originally owned by Spencer Kimball. “Whoah, hold up. Did you say Spencer Kimball?” I asked. I had to consciously swallow the ‘W’ that my Babylonian upbringing was wont to automatically insert; as if the presentation of, first name–middle initial–surname, would grant the man some heir of worldly importance.  Mike confirmed that I had indeed heard him correctly. He said, “Yeah, I guess you know who he was. I wasn’t really familiar with that name but I gathered that he was a leader in the LDS Church.” As I marveled over the route of thought that had just completed a perfect closed circuit through my mind and Mike’s mouth, I told my friend that Spencer Kimball was the President who had finally changed the policy preventing black men from being ordained to the Priesthood in the Church. Mike’s eyebrows were slightly raised and his tone was somber as he said, “Wow. See, that makes me even more interested in this car.”

I too was seized with the desire to see this car and took it as a very material validation of the sweet spiritual assurance I had just received. Why should Spencer Kimball confess and speak to my heart regarding his personal conversion? Why should he want to offer this token and sign of his repentance? Why not? Our hearts were one on this issue. We all help one another as brothers and sisters through mutually uplifting heart to heart dialogue. One who is looked up to as a leader in any capacity knows that they can only retain respect in the eyes of their younger supporters through humility. Public confession was a very emotionally freeing way to keep families working well together in the early days of any Christian movement. The bold swallowing of pride by one of my elders, so long removed from the sphere of the ‘living’, but nonetheless indelibly impressed upon my mind from the earliest days of my childhood, caused my mind also, to be humbled. I understood that God’s forgiveness is infinite and that by continuing to judge someone based on the actions of their past, I could lose the opportunity of reaping beautiful blessings from the reconciliation that comes about through repentance. My mind could hardly believe what was happening but secretly I was excited by the prospect of participating in what appeared to be an inter-dimensional gift exchange transacted across time and space.

We went to see Kimball’s caddy. There she was, shinning in a partially iced-over driveway just off of 100 East; an impressive, Book of Mormon Blue, Mafioso looking ’79 Cadillac DeVille D’Elegance. The current owner came outside and shook our hands. We admired his scrap-metal artwork as he rummaged through drawers in his garage and finally produced the keys to the vehicle. We examined its spacious trunk, its plush, light blue interior. Between the seats, Mike found a clear plastic clip with worn adhesive material on the back, encasing a little slip of paper. “Yo, check this out.” He passed it to me. At the top of the paper it read: LDS Vehicle Service Center. Below it listed the details of a service check done in May of ’87. This being a ’79 model would have been issued to Spencer in September of the previous year, making it the same car which transported him the day of the historic announcement in general conference on Sep. 30th of 1978. The man told us that he had hoped to sell it to someone who appreciated the car’s history. He said that shortly after placing the Cadillac on the market he was contacted by an old woman who wanted to purchase it as a collection piece for the very fact that it had belonged to President Kimball, who the lady described as her “favorite prophet”. But for some reason he felt impressed to not sell it to her and wait instead. I felt a warm sensation come over my heart. The feeling was fire and ice as Mike and the seller carried out the details of the transaction. I just stood there with sunbeams, like little golden children of God signing in my face and chills running up and down my spine, like the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” from the song.

As we pulled out of that amiable young man’s driveway, Mike in Kimball’s Cadillac and I tailing him in the other Caddy, a quote popped up in my mind. From a crease in the grey matter right next to the memory accessed earlier that day, came a file containing a vaguely remembered, preferably forgotten piece of Church history which had no doubt been preserved for some wise purpose in the Lord. My happy heart was overwhelming my meticulous mind at this time and so I would have to look it up later to retrieve the corrupted file in all of its vainglorious corruption. Something about “Negroes and Cadillacs”, but this was no Snoop Dogg track. It turned out to be from a shameful speech given by apostle Mark E. Peterson, at BYU, August 27, 1954.

“Now we are generous with the Negro. We are willing that the Negro have the highest education. I would be willing to let every Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. I would be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world. But let them enjoy these things among themselves.”

Later Peterson explains how he expects to find Negroes as his servants in the next life. I wonder what he did find there and if his hateful speech has since turned to a sad soliloquy delivered from some dark catacomb like Hamlet. To be so miserably mean is to be lonely and anguish to a human being’s soul. But, unlike the fictional character of Hamlet, “Not to Be” is not an option. As soul’s discover their own immortality they are ever faced with the same question “To be loving or to be damned?” Poor guy, I’m sure he’d love company. And perhaps Spencer in some other dimension was visiting his contemporary in his spirit prison cell. But in this space and time, Spencer W. Kimball was arranging the symbolic signing over of this prized possession through the veil.

I took it as a sure sign that I was to ordain Mike to the Melchizedek Priesthood. Oddly enough, the thought had occurred to me the last time I had visited and seen Mike in person, exactly one year earlier. But that December was full of other adventures and due to last minute family plans, we had been unable to spend more than a few hours with Mike. At that time Mike had seemed a little depressed and sort of distant. Apart from that, I did not really know how to bring it up. What was I supposed to say? “Hey bro. Why don’t you let me put my hands on ya head and pass you some priesthood?” No, like many other ideas and premonitions that came to me that year, it would have to wait. Wait for what? –For me to get over my fear to act on the promptings of the Holy Spirit for one thing. It would have to wait for me to stop drinking the Kool-Aid of LDS Cult-sure once and for all by desisting from my church attendance. It would have to wait for me to get out, by means of fear and trembling, from under the veil of unbelief I was born into. It would have to wait for me to “Gird up my loins,” which is biblical language for “Grow some balls”. It would have to wait for many things. And to be fair to myself, Mike had to do some personal soul searching in that time too. It would have to wait for everything to be just right. And as a matter of fact we would end up waiting about a month, till it felt like the perfect time to perform the ordination; although I told him later that same day and we were both agreeable to the idea. But, as I explained to my friend, this would not be a conferring of power so much as a symbolic act to unlock a power already inside each of us. It would not have to wait much longer as God hastened his strange work in these latter days.

The stars were literally aligning. Michael’s militant muse of Mars and my guiding star, Jupiter were prepping each other for resiliency in an upcoming adventure where we would need to be very daring. The adventure would take us over land and sea and be challenging but exhilarating. Exhilaration and sheer electricity was felt as I finally placed my hands upon the crown of his head and unlocked the priesthood power. In many ways, Spencer’s spirit helped set us up for what we needed to do in life. The ensuing experiences since December of 2011 have changed Mike’s and my lives forever. We are new people –Stronger, happier. We are grateful to God for the miracle of forgiveness which enables us to stop trying to outrun our pasts and be made free in Christ. And we are grateful to Kimball for the Cadillac.