This Dream Will End
by NEAL SILVESTER
There is something in the end of Christopher Nolan’s film Inception that is worth discussing. No, not the spinning top, not the endless questions of what is real and what is not — no, for the idea I have in mind we must take for granted that the scene at the end is real life, that his mind is in the world, not the world within his mind.
I am speaking of the scene in the airplane at the ending of the dream, when Cobb has found Saito, and all of the crew begin to wake up. If you can remember that scene, focus with me on Cobb as he opens his eyes after a lifetime lived in dreams below, as those disconcerted eyes flit madly back and forth, taking in everything he knew before, seeing things as they really are. Watch with me as he remembers all he once knew, a life he had completely forgotten about, a life that had led him into the dream world in the first place, a life he had originally left to improve, to change. I think we’ve all experienced something similar in waking from our own dreams.
Then watch as his gaze falls onto Saito, the man he made a special promise with, a kind of covenant. As their eyes lock onto each other’s, everything rushes back to them, more memories flood into their minds and we can see Saito’s near-instantaneous remembrance of the deal he made with Cobb that started this whole experience. The first thing he does as he wakes and remembers is make that precious phone call that would free Cobb from legal binds, to honor the arrangement that had been agreed to before the dream began.
Now here’s the parallel that a good friend pointed out to me: think of what it must be like to die, and to wake up in the afterlife, and have the veil pushed aside and passed through. I imagine this experience of waking up will be very much like what we see in the ending of Inception, as a preponderance of memory comes rushing back into our minds. Think of how we might look back on our mortal life in context of the pre-mortal life we descended from. Think of the people we knew before, and what we know of them now; think how many promises we kept, and how many we didn’t keep; think of the things we’ve done and the words we’ve said that we can never take back; and more importantly, think of the covenants we made, and the covenants we broke. And think of that deal we made with our Heavenly Father before we came to earth, the agreement He is bound to honor if we did our own part.
Will we look back in the context of that agreement in horror and shame, with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth? Will we be filled with regret? Or will we feel that perfect sense of relief and peace as we remember that we gave all we had to give, did all we had to do?
Suppose Cobb had failed in his test. When that plane landed he would be instantly arrested and thrown in jail for perhaps the rest of his life. As it stands, however, he did not fail; he did what he needed to do, and as a result he gained his freedom. Think about that. And the next time you watch that movie (which should be soon), keep it in mind.
But there’s another aspect to this little allegory, and this other one is what I want to focus on today. Still acting on that same parallel from before, in which waking from a dream is like waking from mortal life, remember the whole sequence of dream levels that comprises the better part of the movie, and recall how much violence there is. Think of the shoot-outs, the fistfights, the explosions, the car chases, the bloodshed. Characters get shot, stabbed, strangled. Think of Saito being shot in the chest, and the number of human-like projections killed and done violence to, and the huge amount of destruction the whole conflict causes on each of the dream worlds.
And then remember that they are in fact merely “dream worlds.” None of it is real, or lasting. The bloodshed and carnage end. They wake up in that plane in the end perfectly intact, physically speaking. All the suffering and strife are gone, erased, only imagined to begin with. The players in this story are once again whole. The only thing that has truly changed is their minds.
We undergo the same kind of violence in this life. Debilitating disorders, broken bones, strokes and starvation, cancers and comas, hunger and heart attacks. All leading inevitably to death, for each and every one of us.
It was the Fall that introduced Death into the world. Death, disorder, decay, destruction: all a result of Adam and Eve’s choice to accept opposition in order to progress. The fruits of the Fall condemn all that live --- humans, animals, plants --- to death, sooner or later. All living matter must eventually waste away and crumble back into nonliving dust. All order must turn to chaos; all incorruption to corruption. This is the application of what science calls entropy, the force of mortality and limitation, the law of disorder, the process of going from a more organized state to a less organized state.
It is not purely a physical process. It is also a state of our spiritual being — our own spiritual death, cut off from the presence of the Lord because of sin and imperfection. Entropy envelops our physical selves and our spiritual selves. It swallows us up into a state far distant from the glory of God, physically and spiritually speaking.
In his book The Infinite Atonement, Tad R. Callister notes Jacob’s words about the effects of this pressing force: “This flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth” (2 Nephi 9:7). Then Elder Callister quotes Hugh Nibley in Approaching Zion: “Without the resurrection, entropy — the good old Second Law of Thermodynamics — must take over.”
In Temple and Cosmos, Hugh Nibly further says about entropy: “In the course of nature, that law [entropy] takes its relentless course. Jacob says, "This corruption [could not] put on incorruption" (2 Nephi 9:7; cf. Mosiah 16:10). There is no chance of it. As he put it, corruption is a one‑way process that is irreversible: "This corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to endless duration" (2 Nephi 9:7). It could not be reversed. Incorruption can put on corruption—something can decay and break down, particles breaking down into smaller and lighter particles—but you can never reverse the process. "This corruption could not put on incorruption," wherefore this death and decay "which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration." And notice how he rubs it in: "If so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble"—that is, to disintegrate into mother earth—"to rise no more" (2 Nephi 9:7). That is the second law of nature, but according to Jacob, it is the first to which nature is subjected—the inexorable and irreversible trend toward corruption and disintegration; it can't be reversed. It rises no more, crumbles, rots, and remains that way endlessly, for an endless duration.”
This is the law of nature, the consequence of the Fall, the separation of God from man. It affects all of us; righteous and unrighteous alike must inevitably decay and suffer the stripes of mortality.
Allow me to share a few stories that exemplify that tragic side of life. And then let me share separately their effulgent, glorious conclusions.
I said before that suffering and death come to both the righteous and the wicked. Some are afflicted because of their unrighteousness. And sometimes they are afflicted because of their righteousness. This was, I believe, the case with my good friend Joseph Harris.
Joseph died some time ago. For the last few years before his death his health was in a constant flux, shifting in and out of various medical problems. He would often call me in the middle of the night, needing to go to the emergency room. There the nurses would take him and have him rate the level of pain he was feeling at the time on a number scale of 1 to 10. “Five,” he would say to the nurse, or “six,” “seven.” I know for me that it would be difficult to rate my pain the same way if I were being treated, because I wouldn’t know what to compare it to. But it was easy for him to discern between the different levels because he felt all of them so often. Sometimes he would be discharged later that same night because the doctors, who had continually given him a variety of tests and examinations, could never find exactly what was wrong with him. The most they could do was give him some pain medicine and send him on his way. His body weakened dramatically, to the point where he could no longer walk. He and his family were not financially well of; he always needed rides from friends or ward-members to go and do basic things like get groceries or go to the doctor or pick up medicine from the pharmacy. He also dealt with emotional disorders, and did not function well in social situations. He never had the chance to marry and was often lonely. He lived his life in both great physical and great emotional pain. This is the first story.
Sometimes the grief of this world is so strong it can shift the tectonic plates of the soul, as it did for Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the master poet. Crushed by the death of his best friend at the tender age of 22, Tennyson, began composing a series of lyric-like poems he eventually called In Memoriam. Two poems of these illustrate well the classic wrestle of the philosophical issues of the existence and nature of God and of trying to find truth and meaning in this world.
54
O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire,
Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last – far off – at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
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The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life,
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
We have all gone through times of darkness and struggle; no one is exempt from it. About a year ago I was informed that the mental health of a very close family member was gradually breaking down. She had been long diagnosed as having an emotional disorder and was going through an incredibly stressful and heart-wrenching time in her life. She was waking up in the middle of the night and acting odd, thinking she was still dreaming and being mentally stuck in that frame of mind, unable to really wake up. When I heard this I felt like I was in a nightmare of my own. I was working an overnight shift at the time, making this event even more surreal than it already was.
And it was then that I really had to grasp this hard doctrine of universal decay for the first time. It was then that it became personal, something real, and, tears in my eyes, I accepted it. I accepted that nightmare, knowing that what she was going through wasn’t permanent, that it was only in this life. That night I felt I was truly living the sacred hymn “Be Still, My Soul.”
Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.
Surely this hymn, as well as the very personal poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, can speak for many of the victims of the great tragedies of history, even just the history of this past century: the lives ripped apart unnecessarily by wars and tyrants; the needless horrors of World War I and the destructive influence on both the Pacific and European fronts in World War II; the storming of D-Day and the dropping of the atomic bomb; and the attempted extermination of an entire race in the Holocaust. So much sadness, suffering, and death.
And yet…
And yet. Neal A. Maxwell said in his talk Such As Is Common to Man: “We, of all people on this planet, have the best reasons to be of good cheer.”
And why is that?
Because, he says, “We know what the ultimate realities are in terms of the Gospel truths and all the reassurances that those will bring us.”
The ultimate realities. Like the one found in 1 Corinthians 15:22 --- “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” And in Jacob’s words in 2 Nephi 9:12 --- “The bodies and the spirits of men will be restored one to the other, and it is by the power of the resurrection of the Holy One of Israel.” And in Elder Callister’s book The Infinite Atonement, “As powerful as is this sinister force that promotes death, chaos, and destruction upon all living things, there is a countervailing, counteracting power that emanates from the Atonement. It is the power of the resurrection.”
The ultimate reality of the power of the redemption and the resurrection, brought to pass by the Holy Messiah, even Jesus Christ.
For though death may surely claim us in this life, “The grave hath no victory, and the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ.
He is the light and the life of the world; yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened; yea, and also a life which is endless, that there can be no more death” (Mosiah 16:8-9).
We came to this earth to, among other things, receive a body. An imperfect, corrupt, and mortal body, to be sure, but a body nonetheless. Obtaining a body is not only important, but essential to God’s ultimate plan for us. Without a body, man cannot receive a fullness of joy; we cannot become like God, who has a body of flesh and bone. Obtaining a mortal body is the first step on that road to exaltation. And as with all mortal things, our bodies will die. But our life essence, our eternal spirit, lives on. We pass into the spirit world, into either paradise or prison.
Imagine the joy we might feel when we find ourselves in paradise. For if that’s where you wake up, you can be pretty sure that you’ve made it. After everything, after all, we can now rest, we can now cease from all worries, both spiritual and temporal.
But on the other hand, imagine finding yourself in the opposite place. For while waking up in spirit prison does not necessarily mean we are damned for all eternity, it does mean there is still a great amount of work to be done. That is, if we hadn’t already squandered our many opportunities in this life.
In either case we are once more only spirits, and are thus deprived of that fullness of joy promised to us in the scriptures. And we cannot achieve that until the glorious time of the Resurrection. All who have lived in this world will be given that blessing of immortality, righteous and wicked alike. First, to stand once again in God’s presence to be judged according to our works (fulfilling Jacob’s prophesy that “nevertheless, in our bodies we shall see God” [2 Nephi 9:4]); and then, for those who lived righteously, to dwell eternally in His presence and receive all that the Father hath, even the blessings of exaltation and eternal lives.
Joseph F. Smith saw in vision the dead awaiting this moment: “Their sleeping dust was to be restored unto its perfect frame, bone to his bone, and the sinews and the flesh upon them, the spirit and the body to be united never again to be divided, that they might receive a fulness of joy” (D&C 138:17). In a later verse he observes that, “the dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits form their bodies as bondage.”
Now, we aren’t sure precisely what we can do with bodies that we can’t do without them. We know that spirit is matter, but a certain kind of matter that does not have the full range of possibilities our body and spirit combined have. The range is unsure; can we, for instance, hug our loved ones as mere spirits? Whatever the case, we know that without the reunion of our spirit and physical body we could not achieve a “fulness of joy” (D&C 93:33-34).
And thus the necessity of the redemption and the resurrection. These things were and will be brought to pass by Christ’s Atonement. Hugh Nibley said, “Without an infinite atonement… We could not save ourselves from entropy. Someone else must be there to do it. Notice what atonement means: reversal of the degradative process, a returning to its former state, being integrated or united again—‘at-one.’ What results when particles break down? They separate. Decay is always from heavier to lighter particles. But ‘atonement’ brings particles back together again. Bringing anything back to its one original state is at-one-ment.”
Alma the Younger tells his son Corianton in Alma 41 that to return something to its former state, to “bring back again evil for evil, carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish --- good for that which is good; righteous for that which is righteous; just for that which is just; [and] merciful for that which is merciful” – this is “the meaning of the word ‘restoration.’”
This principle, the principle of restoration, has much to do with the law of the harvest. What we sow, we eventually reap. “What we send out shall return unto [us] again” (Alma 41:15). It is the reason that all of us here in mortality, both the righteous and the wicked, will be resurrected --- because all of us have, at the very least, earned this body by passing into the second estate, and “it is requisite and just… that the soul of man should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself” (Alma 41:2).
But it is not just what we’ve lost as it pertains to our body — we will not simply have our skin free of blemishes, or our hair grown back, or our spine uncurled. Restoration is about far more than that. It pertains to the Day of Judgment, when all our works and the desires of our hearts will be made known, for good or ill. “And if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, … they should also, at the last day, be restored unto that which is good” (Alma 41:3). Later Alma tells us that at the Judgment Day, we will be our own judges. In other words, our own choices will judge us in the end. And if our works were good, and if the desires of our heart were good, then the Atonement will wash away all else through the mercy of Christ.
The iconic words of Amazing Grace reflect the nature of the redemption: “I once was lost, but now am found.” The Coldplay song “Fix You” tells a similar story ---
[When] the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you.
Now, I don’t know whether the singer Chris Martin is speaking from God’s point of view --- but I like to think he is. In the case of the Resurrection and the principle of restoration, however, the Savior won’t just try to fix you --- He will.
And note that the law of the harvest is so much more than a one-to-one ratio. You plant tiny seeds in the ground, but end up with so much more. Fields of grain, of bounteous blessings far exceeding the handful of tiny seeds we put into the ground. Likewise we will not only be given back our bodies, nor will our sins be merely neutralized, but our bodies will be glorified and our souls exalted. We will be rewarded far beyond being just “fixed” --- we shall become as God is.
We know some of the details of what an exalted body is and how it works. Alma describes the basics of the resurrection as follows: “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.” For further entailments of this principle I again quote Brother Callister in The Infinite Atonement — “A resurrected body is not subject to pain or disease or exhaustion. There is no bullet that can harm it, poison that can pollute it, or cancer that can invade it. There is no resurrected being who suffers loss of limb, speech impediment, or failing sight. A resurrected personage has a glorified, immortal body, free from the destructive elements of this temporal world.”
What excites me most about this description is that a resurrected body will never be exhausted. My friend Joseph, for so long bound by his weak and failing legs, will be able to run, and run forever without needing to take a single breath. C.S. Lewis said in his Narnia books, “If one could run without getting tired, I don’t think one would often want to do anything else.”
The question has been humorously raised of whether or not we can or need to eat food as resurrected beings. I know I personally would miss that wonderful experience. Whether we need to eat food or not I do not know (although I doubt a resurrected being would ever be dependent on any worldly or mortal sustenance for anything, including air or water). But whether we can was settled by the Savior himself: he ate broiled fish and honeycomb as a resurrected being in his disciples’ presence, and later in Acts we learn that certain witnesses “did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41).
One aspect of immortality that departs significantly from our current bodies is blood. The presence of blood in our veins is a key difference between mortal bodies and immortal bodies. In this life it is what keeps us alive and also what ultimately causes our demise. Elder Callister in The Infinite Atonement writes, “The prophets have testified that blood, the mortal element that eventually brings death, will one day be replaced by a spiritual substance in our veins. …So spoke the Prophet Joseph, ‘When our flesh is quickened by the Spirit, there will be no blood in our tabernacle.’”
At the time of resurrection and restoration, this and more will affect a total transformation of us. Continuing on further, Elder Callister writes, “In such a resurrected state one’s countenance, one’s outer glow and beauty will be but a manifestation of one’s inner spirituality --- thus, the inner and outer beings will be, in essence, mirrors of each other. Celestial bodies will radiate celestial glory; terrestrial bodies, terrestrial glory; and telestial bodies, telestial glory.”
Neal A. Maxwell said in the November 1996 Ensign, “What we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity.”
Essentially, we’ll become who we really are, and who we always wanted to be. All that is inside us and all that we’ve done. Our inner body will be reflected in our outer being; good will look like good and bad will look like bad; beauty like beauty, ugly like ugly.
And that will be who we truly are.
Another great religious leader, Jedi Master Yoda, said perceptively, “Luminous beings are we — not this crude matter.”
This is the kind of body Joseph Harris will have. Luminous. Perfect. Incorruptible. And now, all those fives, sixes, sevens, eights, nines, and even tens --- all of them are now and will be one eternal zero. Joe will never feel physical pain again.
And remember, not just death is reversed — all ailments, all injuries, all chemical imbalances, all disorders and disfigurements, all pain and hurt and loss — all the consequential corruption of mortality --- all of it is wiped clean, like waking from a dream.
When I think of this doctrine I think of a magna doodle, a toy very similar to an etch-a-sketch. It has a screen on which you can draw and scribble and make a big mess and then you just slide an erasure bar across and the mess is gone; everything is clear again, a brand new clean slate. This is what the Atonement and Resurrection do: cleanse us spiritually and physically.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks said, “What a comfort to know that all who have been disadvantaged in life from birth defects, from mortal injuries, from disease, or from the natural deterioration of old age will be resurrected in ‘proper and perfect frame.’”
Thus, that death is a natural part of life should not be mourned over, but rejoiced in! It is an emancipation of all our fatigues and woes, a freedom from the human trappings of stress and anxiety. A deadline cannot exist in a timeless world.
Neither can death in an eternal world. And what kind of pain can pierce the promise of “incomprehensible joy”? Of “never-ending happiness” and “eternal life”?
However, there certainly exists in this life tragedies that seem to be irreversible. I speak especially of those faithful members who have loved ones turn away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A mother whose beloved daughter wanders so far off the Gospel path that it seems impossible she will ever find her way back. The wayward, willfully rebellious child who seems destined for a lower kingdom because that is where she chooses to be, forever separated from God and the rest of her family. A situation in which the heartbroken parent can do nothing but pray and hope and have faith that it will all work out in the end, somehow. To this parent, to this mother, I offer these words from Orson F. Whitney:
“The Prophet Joseph Smith declared – and he never taught a more comforting doctrine – that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God” (Orson F. Whitney, in Conference Report, April 1929, 110).
Brigham Young said, “Let the father and mother, who are members of this Church and Kingdom, take a righteous course, and strive with all their might never to do a wrong, but to do good all their lives; if they have one child or one hundred children, if they should conduct themselves towards them as they should, binding them to the Lord by their faith and prayers, I care not where those children go, they are bound up to their parents by an everlasting tie, and no power of earth or hell can separate them from their parents in eternity; they will return again to the fountain from whence they sprang” (quoted in Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. [1954-56], 2:90-91).
Thus is the power of temples and the sealing power of the Priesthood, the only power that stretches out after this life into forever. Another gift from God that no sense of earthly gratitude could ever properly address.
And with the sealing powers we can further see the principle of restoration at work. Not only will our bodies be restored and glorified, not only will our righteous desires and works be restored to us again, but we will be restored to the presence of those precious souls with whom we made our strongest earthly connection. Our families and our truest friends.
This brings so much comfort to my own soul because it is certainly not limited to human family members. I believe strongly that Heavenly Father has provided us as human society with pets for a reason. They can be extraordinary examples of the tender mercies of the Lord.
Throughout my youth I suffered from a deep, largely un-medicated, clinical depression. Very near the beginning of this, our family pet, a Yorkshire Terrier, the last of what was once five dogs in the home, passed away, and the house became very empty. Then one night after some family discussions my parents came home with an autumn-colored calico kitten. This cat, who I would eventually call my Keyta, became my ever-present companion. She was like a guardian angel, a messenger bearing Heavenly Father’s love to remain with me as long as I needed her. She was one of my only constants in my love through those terrible years. She would come galloping up to meet me alongside my car as I got home from work late at night and we’d go inside together. Ours was an incredible bond.
But one night back in 2010, a few weeks before I moved to Utah, she wasn’t waiting outside to greet me when I got home. The next morning I went to open the door for her, sure she’d be lounging on the porch, but she wasn’t. I checked the porch almost constantly, but she didn’t come home that whole day, nor that night, nor the morning after that. A horrible fear began to seep through me. My life became a living nightmare as she continued to not come home, as I finally realized what all this meant. I had her for eight years, my comfort and angel through depression and other dark episodes, and just like that, that light inside my soul was blown out. She was just…gone. I never figured out what happened to her.
But by that point in my life I knew there was a purpose to everything that happened. And soon it was made manifest to me exactly what that purpose, in this case, was. It turned out to be another of Heavenly Father’s tender mercies. Shortly before this happened, I expressed to a friend how my only real remaining concern about moving to Utah was that my Keyta would be lonely; her only friend and ally was moving away and couldn’t explain to her why, or where he was going, or when he’d come back, if ever. Later, when I told my friend the story of her disappearance, he reminded me what I had told him before. And in my darkness I saw that light. I saw Heavenly Father take a burden from me and also from her in bringing her home—to a place where she wouldn’t ever have to be lonely or distressed.
To use Alma’s words, she was “sent out” of my life. Does this principle of restoration mean, then, that she will return to me again? I think it does. I think she will be among those who greet me as I leave this life. I think she will be running, galloping toward me. I think she will jump up onto my shoulder, and I will pet her again and I will cry the same kind of tears as when I see everybody else, when I will see my Savior and Heavenly Father again.
She was taken from me by Heavenly Father, as many things are throughout our life. But we must remember, this is only temporary. All that God takes from us in this life can be returned in the next, and for all time, as it says in Helaman 3:30, “to go no more out.”
So do I think it will apply to things outside of our own body, then? Yes, I think so. I think it will apply to every good and righteous thing we’ve ever had in this life. However, I am not sure where the limit lies. So here’s a situation for you all to ponder. I think I may have found an answer, but it’s not a simple one.
Here it is: you can tell I am a sentimental person. I form attachments to things that in the end probably don’t matter much. Probably. But there are some things in my life that, to me, very much do matter. I grew up and lived in the same house all my life. All of my childhood memories take place there. That’s where I went through pretty much everything. It is the second-most special place to me in this world (the first being my current home with my wife and new cat). It is as much a part of me as anything can be.
Recently my parents, for financial reasons, had to sell the house and move to a small apartment. The last thing I ever did there was have my wedding reception, the quintessential graduation from childhood to adulthood. Heavenly Father blessed me with that beautiful tender mercy. But I wonder, does it have to be gone forever? Can that house be raised with us in the resurrection and restoration?
This in turn raises all sorts of related questions. For instance, after we die, will it ever be possible to go back and relive old memories as if re-reading a favorite scene in a book? Or are they permanently mere memories? Will we even want to, anyway? Will our minds and spirits have progressed past that stage? Is there any room for nostalgia or sentiment for the past in God’s kingdom?
I don’t know, not for sure. I don’t think anybody does quite yet. But I think I’ve found a possibility that soothes my aching sentimentality. I’ll share that with you in a few minutes. Now I’d like to tell you the rest of those stories I shared earlier.
Remember Joseph. There was one thing about his story that I didn’t tell you: through all of his experiences, his sicknesses and his pains, he rarely, if ever, complained. And if he did he would immediately repent and apologize out loud, saying he knew he shouldn’t. His sicknesses and disabilities gave him a permanent sense of humility, and never did he feel he was entitled to anything. He wished out loud to me on many occasions that he could be normal, but knew that the Lord did not see it that way. The faith Joe showed throughout the years I knew him was and is monumental; his example has affected me to this day and will eternally. Perceptive Priesthood leaders had expressed their feelings to him on multiple occasions that they felt he must surely have been among the upper echelon of even the noble and great ones before the world was. Anyone who knew him and the pain-filled circumstances of his life could not possibly disagree. The kind of faith he had proved to me that his whole life had been a test, one of the most searing and frustrating and heart-wrenching Heavenly Father could give anyone. Only a general in the Lord’s army could have reacted to life the way Joe did. And so I am convinced that the Lord gave him so many struggles because he was so righteous, in this life and the one before. And I believe the more pain a person righteously endures, the greater the blessings the Lord gets to bestow upon that person in the life to come.
Tennyson, his soul once shattered, did not end with doubts. He emerged from his grief victorious, with faith and belief all the stronger because it had been tested so viciously. And he expressed this victory in one of the last poems of In Memoriam.
124
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
He, They, One, All; within, without;
The Power in darkness whom we guess ---
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye,
Nor through the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun.
If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice, “believe no more,”
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep,
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up an answered, “I have felt.”
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But, that blind clamor made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach through nature, molding men.
He knew his father was near, aware of his child’s pains. And he came to understand God’s reasoning, the solution to all the grief and doubt: the hands that reach through nature, molding men.
The last story has a twist, an unanticipated reward for my faith and submission. My loved one was taken to the hospital where they diagnosed her not with a mental disorder, but with pneumonia. Apparently delirium is sometimes a side-effect of that virus. After a few nights in the hospital she came home, perfectly healthy. You cannot imagine my relief when I heard this news.
However, I believe my acceptance of that potential life thread was necessary, either as a test from God or as a requisite to having a fuller understanding and testimony of the Gospel, or both. In the end, it is the reason this talk was written, the reason this message is being shared.
But…the victory claimed in this story is not the ultimate one. It is temporary, impermanent. Ultimately death and decay and the symptoms of this mortal world will overcome her, and they will overcome all of us as well. But remember—our Savior has “overcome the world” (John 16:33).
There is no need to be sad, brothers and sisters, there is no need to mourn! For He is risen, “with healing in his wings” (2 Nephi 25:13). And because He rose from the grave on that third day, because he ultimately triumphed over death, so can we. So can we.
It cannot be done by any other way but through Him, our Savior. An old institute teacher of mine was particularly fond of the metaphor the prophet Jacob uses in 2 Nephi chapter 9 verse 10 — “O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster,” meaning, essentially, death and hell. To teach it he would show us one of the climactic scenes in Steven Spielberg’s film Jaws. When the shark is attacking the boat towards the end, Brother Hansen would pause it right on the frame where the shark clamps down its jaws on Quint’s body. It’s the most gruesome scene in an already-gruesome movie, but it taught a great lesson. Quint couldn’t escape from that shark on his own power. Likewise, we cannot escape the grasp of that awful monster of death and hell on our own power. We need the redemptive and resurrecting power of Jesus Christ.
It is a two-tiered rescue — escape from death, escape from hell; escape from physical death, escape from spiritual death; and thus we see in parallel the two-tiered mission of God: “For behold, this is my work and my glory; to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). Immortality is solved by the Resurrection; eternal life is granted by the infinite Atonement.
We need our Savior. It is because of His Atonement that all of this is possible, all these supreme and everlasting gifts. Resurrection, redemption, restoration…All are given to us free of any price except a broken heart and contrite spirit. And if we give Him this, He will heal that broken heart, He will cleanse our earth-stained hands. And in the end, He will give us eternal life and incomprehensible joy.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks said, “The assurance of resurrection gives us the strength and perspective to endure the mortal challenges faced by each of us and by those we love, such things as the physical, mental, or emotional deficiencies we bring with us at birth or acquire during mortal life. Because of the resurrection, we know that these mortal deficiencies are only temporary!”
Now this statement from Elder Oaks raises a very pertinent question: What is permanent and what is not? What lasts and what drops away? We take nothing into the spirit world but… but what? No material things. Nothing physical that we claimed was ours in mortality. No wealth, no riches, no gold or silver. This fact is evident in many stories in our culture, including Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and the 1938 film You Can’t Take It With You.
Rather, we take with us everything that we are, everything that we have become. Ourselves. Our spirits. Our minds and memories. Neal A. Maxwell said, “If we ponder just what it is that will rise with us in the resurrection, it seems clear that our intelligence will rise with us, meaning not simply our IQ, but also our capacity to receive and apply truth. Our talents, attributes, and skills will rise with us; certainly also our capacity to learn, our degree of self-discipline, and our capacity to work.” This we also know from D&C 130:18-19.
But that is not it. We take more with us than that. To clarify what that is, consider the two great commandments. The first, as our Savior tells us, is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind; and second, to love our neighbor as ourselves. Can you see why these are the most important, most essential commandments? They correlate to all that we carry with us into the next life: first, our relationship with God; and second, our relationships with other people.
Now I ask you, what is our relationship to God if not who we’ve become in His piercing eye, what our minds and very souls consist of? This, I believe, can be measured by what we’ve done with the responsibilities and gifts and stewardships He has given us. This is one of the two great purposes of this life.
The second great purpose is like unto the first: who we’ve been to other people. Have we done as the Savior has done, and helped bear others’ loads and ease others’ burdens? Have we taken care of our families how Heavenly Father takes care of us? Have we been a friend and brother to all who have crossed our path? Or have we been a negative influence on the world? Have we made others’ lives harder, more painful and laden with sin? What has been our effect upon our spiritual brothers and sisters? What has been our effect upon the world?
When we see it this way, there are many permanent aspects to this life. For it is how we react to the impermanent challenges that etch the permanent changes in our soul. And thus we can see the beauty of the Lord’s plan: these changes in our soul, in our intelligence, last forever, but the trials that produce them do not. Pain is temporary, but, as the hymn says, there is no end to wisdom, nor to glory, nor to light. And as the scripture says, “The glory of God is intelligence, or in other words, light and truth” (D&C 93:36).
But it is good and comforting to note some of the impermanence of this world. I would like to call attention to one in particular: the spiritual pressures of the wicked yet alluring lifestyle will also cease at death. The lawless look like they’re having fun, like they’re even happy, getting to do things that we as disciples of Christ deny ourselves daily. But remember that the pleasures of the world will end, and the fruitless inanities of lust-driven lives will fade away, but Love will continue on, eternally so. Keep that in mind, brothers and sisters, the next time the grass looks greener on the other side. I think it does to everybody once in a while.
For all of us, it is easy to compare our lives to the surface images of others’. And in comparison, this dream may at times seem more like a nightmare. Friends may abandon us; our love for someone is not returned; or worse, one who once loved us now feels indifferent. Situations in which you cannot believe that it is actually happening, events or crumbling relationships that make this life seem more dreamlike and surreal than any other part of our mortal life.
Most of the emotional wounds acquired in this less-than-holy sphere will heal with time, but it is true that some leave seemingly permanent scars. When all the comforting doctrine just discussed has failed to adequately reassure, we must remember the simple foundation of this Gospel: faith. And we must always be aware of the simple but glorious truth found in Preach My Gospel: “Everything that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”
It is in these times that we must trust our Lord and Savior with a blind and absolute faith, and cleave unto Him above all else. It is in these times that faith and faith alone can save us, can pull us through, can heal those scars we thought would never leave us. It may take years, it may take until after we leave this mortal by, but by our faith, and through the Savior’s sacred power, all that is good can and will be restored unto us, and all that is bad will be cast away.
We can learn from the people of Ammon, for “they never did look upon death with any degree of terror, for their hope and views of Christ and the resurrection; therefore, death was swallowed up to them by the victory of Christ over it” (Alma 27:28).
In the words of John Donne --- “Death, thou shalt die!”
As I near the conclusion of these remarks I would like to share with you a parable. In The Last Battle, the final book in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis tells the story of the end of the world, the end of the old Narnia, and the beginning of a new one, the real Narnia, as it essentially gains its paradisiacal glory and celestial state. In one of the final chapters, the children at the center of the tale observe the awakening of a massive giant known as Father Time. Aslan, the Great Lion, tells them, “While he lay dreaming his name was Time. Now that he is awake he will have a new one” (emphasis added).
Alma teaches that “time only is measured unto men,” and Elder Maxwell said, “If, on occasion, you notice the strange encapsulation we call time, you’ll understand it’s not our natural dimension. The birds are at home in the air. They don’t think about how to fly. Fish are at home in the water. They don’t think about how to swim. It’s natural. But you and I are cocooned, as it were, in this dimension we call time. And it’s not our natural dimension. So it is, we’re always wishing we could hasten the passage of time or to hold back the dawn. And we can’t do either. We’re uncomfortable with time because we belong to eternity. If we were comfortable with time, we wouldn’t have clocks on the wall and calendars and wristwatches. It is not our natural dimension, so time will whisper to you, in the words of another hymn, that you’re a stranger here.”
In describing the new Narnia as compared to the old, an adult tells little Lucy, “When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream” (emphasis added).
Perhaps this is the answer to the question of my old home, or at least suggests an answer. As one character says a bit later on, in that heaven “no good thing is destroyed.” I believe that in some form, that house, that home, will be raised in the restoration of all good things. And perhaps that celestialized, glorified home is the real thing, not the dream version that I hold so much attachment to in this world.
The children, in the New Narnia, come upon a set of great golden gates. There they hesitate, wondering if those gates could possibly be meant for them to enter. Then they hear a great horn, and the gates swing open wide. And out of the gates burst forth all the friends and family they ever had to say goodbye to, the kings and queens of old and the great heroes of Narnia’s past, creatures with whom they once shared adventures but had long since passed away, all safe and at peace at last, never to be lost or bid goodbye to again.
“Everyone you had ever heard of (if you knew the history of those countries) seemed to be there. There was Glimfeather the Owl and Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle, and King Rilian the Disenchanted, and his mother the Star’s daughter and his great father Caspian himself. And close beside him were the Lord Drinian and the Lord Berne and Trumpkin the Dwarf and Trufflehunter the good Badger with Glenstorm the Centaur and a hundred other heroes of the great War of Deliverance. And then from another side came Cor the King of Archenland with King Lune his father his wife Queen Aravis and the brave Prince Corin Thunder-Fist, his brother, and Bree the Horse and Hwin the Mare. And then — which was a wonder beyond all wonders to Tirian — there came further away in the past, the two good Beavers and Tumnus the Faun. And there was greeting and kissing and hand-shaking and old jokes revived....”
Might it be like that for us? Might we meet again all those we had known who went before us? Might we reunite with them as tears stream down our faces, as we shout and exclaim for joy that we never have to part again, that we never have to suffer again, that we can be together in the same sociality we enjoy on this earth without ever having to bid farewell again?
In the final spoken line of the story, Aslan declares, “The dream is ended: this is the morning.
“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Brothers and sisters, this dream, too, will end. This vale of tears, this mortal sphere, all that make us cry and weep and wail — all of it will end. And all that was torn asunder shall be reunited. All that has been lost shall be restored. Everything that we went through, all the weights and anchors and crushing gravity of mortality — all gone. The slate of physical corruption is wiped clean, like waking from a dream. And so, like the players in Inception, the only thing that truly changes... is us.
I testify that this will happen. And I testify that it can only happen because of the atonement, the redemption and the resurrection brought to pass by Jesus Christ, our Master, our Savior, and our Brother. Let us live our lives so that when we see Him again it can be with a tearful embrace, not downcast eyes.
Know that this dream will end. Know that it is nothing compared to what comes next. Know that there is never a true goodbye; only a see-you-later. And remember these words from an Indian saying, "Everything always works out in the end. If it's not happy, it's not the end."
I say these things in the name of my Savior and of yours, even Jesus Christ, amen.
