{"id":103281,"date":"2023-12-31T15:28:32","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T22:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=103281"},"modified":"2023-12-31T18:57:35","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T01:57:35","slug":"toward-lives-well-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/12\/toward-lives-well-lived.html","title":{"rendered":"Toward Lives Well-Lived"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/a>
The soon-to-be dedicated Orem Utah Temple, in a Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph. The white tent on the left side of the photo is temporary, to accommodate visitors to the temple\u2019s pre-dedication public open house.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Our last church meetings of 2023 were, I thought, quite good. \u00a0Our first sacrament meeting speaker today was a young woman from our ward who has interrupted her studies at Brigham Young University to accept a call to the Chile Antofagasta Mission<\/a>. \u00a0 She spoke quite well and will, I think, be a wonderful missionary. \u00a0Our bishop then spoke for the remainder of the meeting, making quite a strong plea for older people to serve as senior missionaries. \u00a0(More on that in a moment.). He drew on his own family\u2019s history \u2014 parents, parents in law, an aunt and an uncle \u2014 of serving senior missions, but also on Elder Ronald A. Rasband\u2019s remarks on the subject<\/a> at the October 2023 General Conference of the Church, which are well worth reading and considering. \u00a0And he called our attention to the Church\u2019s website for potential senior missionaries<\/a>, which is very helpful. \u00a0(It\u2019s certainly not a \u201cone-size-fits-all\u201d kind of program; there are various ways of serving, domestically, abroad, part-time, full-time, from home, and so forth.)<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s priesthood meeting was divided into two distinct parts, with two different teachers. \u00a0I missed most of the first part, but I was there for the second, which was devoted to the topic of building a community of unity, without divisions. \u00a0The teacher showed a roughly seven-minute video of Elder Christophe Giraud-Carrier<\/a>, of the Seventy, speaking forthrightly about the unacceptability of racism within the Church of Jesus Christ. \u00a0I was very pleased at his message.<\/p>\n
<\/a>
Elder Edwin Q. Cannon baptizing converts from the Nigerian village of Ikot Eyo on 4 March 1979.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
But back to the question of senior missionary service: \u00a0This is a matter to which I\u2019ve given, and to which I continue to give, a fair amount of thought. \u00a0I hope that the response to my bishop\u2019s invitation, and to Elder Rasband\u2019s invitation, and to other such invitations, will be strong and positive. \u00a0I believe strongly that older people should, where they can, devote at least some of their retirement years to service to others and to the Kingdom.<\/p>\n
That said, though \u2014 and I know that some (certainly the small but obsessive coven of anonymous online critics who monitor my every word) will see this as self-glorifying, self-serving, arrogant, and hypocritical \u2014 I\u2019ve concluded that, for the foreseeable future, my wife and I are already serving<\/em> a kind of mission, one for which very few people would be willing or even quite able to take our exact place.<\/p>\n
The Interpreter Foundation requires a lot of time, as do our film efforts. \u00a0And I\u2019m working, when I can, on several enormous book projects, as well as a continual flow of articles, that I hope and believe might someday be of some benefit to at least a few Latter-day Saints. \u00a0Altogether, I spend easily forty hours a week on such things \u2014 from morning until, typically, late at night \u2014 and already I worry that, at my advanced stage of senectitude, I\u2019m not going to be able to finish them.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, we\u2019ve decided against submitting mission papers. \u00a0But I certainly hope that others will step forward to do so. \u00a0Perhaps things will change for us, but I really don\u2019t intend to give up apologetics, Interpreter, and writing until I\u2019m simply, flatly, unable to keep going \u2014 and, at that time, of course, I\u2019ll be in no shape to serve much of a mission.<\/p>\n
In the near term, I had actually hoped to volunteer to serve during the just-concluded Orem Temple open house, but we were already scheduled to accompany tours during that time to T\u00fcrkiye, Egypt, and (as we thought at the time) Israel, as well as to visit family in Virginia and in Mexico. \u00a0So we simply couldn\u2019t. \u00a0And I had hoped to be able to serve in the temple after its dedication \u2014 no more lengthy journeys to the two temples in far-off Provo! \u2014 but our calendar simply won\u2019t permit such a commitment for at least the next year. \u00a0Still, I admire and, in a sense, envy those who are able to serve in such a way. \u00a0I\u2019ll cite one example to illustrate what I mean:<\/p>\n
Edwin Q. Cannon<\/a> had served as a bishop before he was my president in the Switzerland Z\u00fcrich Mission \u2014 which, in those days, was responsible not only for German-speaking Switzerland but for Church units in North Africa, Greece, Israel, the Arab and Persian Middle East, and Afghanistan. \u00a0(He had to visit those branches each quarter.) \u00a0He told me, not terribly long before he was released, that he was looking forward to relaxing for a while on his ranch in Wyoming. \u00a0But then his brother was called as a mission president, and he was obliged to reenter the family business in the Salt Lake Valley. \u00a0And then his wife, Janath Russell Cannon, was called into the General Relief Society presidency and he was called to serve in the International Mission presidency. \u00a0And then they were called to open missionary work in Ghana and Nigeria. \u00a0And then they were called to direct the Nauvoo Visitors Center. \u00a0And then he was called as the interim president of the Germany Hamburg Mission while its president re-opened missionary work in East Germany. \u00a0And then they were called to preside over the Frankfurt Germany Temple. \u00a0And on and on. \u00a0(I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve forgotten some assignments.)<\/p>\n
They were bright \u2014 they had met while she was a student at Wellesley and he was earning an MBA at Harvard \u2014 but, more than that, they were faithful, devoted, and two of the kindest people I\u2019ve ever known. \u00a0In his final remarks in Z\u00fcrich before he returned to the United States, President Cannon said that, if nothing else, he wanted the Swiss\u00a0to remember that he had loved<\/em> them. \u00a0And, surely, that was one of the most obvious and noteworthy things about him. \u00a0About them<\/em>.<\/p>\n
I once stupidly recounted their story \u2014 to me, an impressive and exemplary story \u2014 in a setting where certain critics of the Church were vocal and active. \u00a0Those critics pounced. \u00a0The Church had shamefully exploited<\/em> the Cannons, they said.<\/p>\n
I saw it differently, and I know that the Cannons had seen it differently, as well. \u00a0And I thought how much better it would be to have been loved, to be missed, and to be mourned by hundreds if not thousands of people in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East than to die as a cynical, sneering nay-sayer.<\/p>\n
I wish you all a wonderful 2024, and a consequential life to which, at its end, you\u2019ll be able to look back with peaceful satisfaction.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Our last church meetings of 2023 were, I thought, quite good. \u00a0Our first sacrament meeting speaker today was a young woman from our ward who has interrupted her studies at Brigham Young University to accept a call to the Chile Antofagasta Mission. \u00a0 She spoke quite well and will, I think, be a wonderful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":103284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10562,10565,37062,37056,5222,37059],"class_list":["post-103281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cannon","tag-edwin","tag-ikot-eyo","tag-janath","tag-nigeria","tag-senior-mission"],"yoast_head":"\nToward Lives Well-Lived<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" Our last church meetings of 2023 were, I thought, quite good. \u00a0Our first sacrament meeting speaker today was 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