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©iStockphoto.com/creativeye99
“We’re scaring our children to
death,” says prominent Wall Street Journal editorial
writer Peggy Noonan (1). “Have you noticed this? And we’re
doing it more and more ... For fifty years in America, whenever
the subject has turned to what our culture presents, the bright
response has been, ‘You don’t like it? Change the channel.’
But there is no other channel to change to, no safe place to
click to. Our culture is national. The terrorizing of children
is all over ... This is what TV will be like in Purgatory ...
I would hate to be a child now.”
On the other hand, think of pearls.
Turn off the TV, shut Newsweek, close that thriller,
and visualize a perfect, luminescent, modest pearl. In Matthew,
such a pearl is compared to the Kingdom
of Heaven (2).
We, as Latter-day Saints, have
Priesthood power. This gives us power over Satan, over his
empire, over every hateful, evil thing that happens in this
world. Do we use it? As Elder David R. Stone of the Seventy
has said, “We have to create Zion in the
midst of Babylon.”
(3)
Have we become so overwhelmed and
drugged by the constant barrage from that Great and Spacious Building that we can no longer see the beauty of the pearl? Of the
Kingdom of God?
Pearl Power
We have the knowledge, not only
of the Restoration, but of the true power of the Atonement of
Jesus Christ. Getting that knowledge deep into the heart of
every man and every woman should be the mission of every possessor
of the truth. It is our only hope for happiness. It is our
only chance for eternal survival. All pearls have modest
beginnings. As they are created, layer by layer, from the inside
out, so is man changed from the natural man to the spiritual
man from the inside out — starting with a change of heart, as
King Benjamin tells us. (4) But the pearl’s beauty is quiet
and subtle. How can we hope to entice people to hear the still,
small voice amid the devil’s cacophony of noise?
One of the greatest tools for building
pearls is the creative arts. True beauty, majestic harmony,
and the perfect allegory are the tools that Christ would use.
He would not hit anyone over the head with the word of God and
get into a bashing contest with Satan.
In his mortal ministry, He used
what I choose to call “Pearl Power.” A masterful teacher, He
used everything around Him to testify — the elements, a coin,
a seed, a herd of swine. He healed everything He touched, not
with magic, but with love. He knew that, to the honest in heart,
nothing was more powerful than love.
Pearl Power. Using the arts as
Pearl Power is amazingly effective. People are drawn by the
power of love in a painting, poem, novel, or symphony as if
magnetized. It speaks to the Light of Christ within them.
I am not counseling sentimental
mediocrity. I am pleading for the dedication of the pure in
heart to refine their talents until they reflect the reality
of redemption. The greatest art is always born in pain unto
the redemption of the spirit. It conveys ultimate, triumphant
love.
Costume Jewelry
Satan has striven to counterfeit
the reality of human love by every horrid trick he has in his
devilish bag. Yet because of our pre-mortal existence, there
is a memory of true love in the heart of every man and woman.
Moral art appeals to that memory. As John Gardner, renowned
literary critic, puts it:
Art builds; it
never stands pat; it destroys only evil. If art destroys good,
mistaking it for evil, then that art is false, an error, it
requires denunciation ... Most art these days is either trivial
or false. There has always been bad art, but only when a culture’s
general world view and aesthetic theory have gone awry is bad
art what most artists strive for, mistaking bad for good.
For the most part
our artists do not struggle — as artists have traditionally
struggled — toward a vision of how things ought to be or what
has gone wrong; they do not provide us with the flicker of lightning
that shows us where we are. Either they pointlessly waste our
time, saying and doing nothing, or they celebrate ugliness and
futility, scoffing at good. (5)
I have had my own battle here,
as I struggle with agents who want “dark literature,” “erotica,”
and “chick lit.” Were I to give in to the standards of 99%
of the New York Times bestsellers, I could write a blockbuster,
for I always have been a bit of a drama queen. However, I try
to restrain myself, and struggle as John Gardner says, to bring
forth my own best art, born of triumph over pain.
The Pearl of Great Price
Are you willing to consecrate all
that you have, like the man in Matthew, to purchase the Pearl
of Great Price? Will you, in fact, give your talents to
the Lord to magnify and build the Kingdom? I suggest you
make a prayerful visit to the temple to contemplate this question.
Early in my married life, President
Boyd K. Packer gave an address entitled “The Arts and the Spirit
of the Lord.”(6) Though it is long, I have practically memorized
it. I have a tiny talent. A mustard seed of a talent, but
I have been moved tremendously in my artistic quest by the words
President Packer attributed to early apostle Orson F. Whitney:
We shall yet have
Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. God’s ammunition is not
exhausted. His highest spirits are held in reserve for the
latter times. In God’s name, and by His help we will build
up a literature whose tops will touch the heaven, though its
foundation may now be low on the earth.
Where, you ask, are our Miltons
and Shakespeares? That statement was made in 1888. President
Packer has some pretty stern words to say about that:
The greatest poems
are not yet written, nor the paintings finished. The greatest
hymns and anthems of the Restoration are yet to be composed
... We move forward much slower than need be, and I would like
to underline the things that stand in our way ... It is a mistake
to assume one can follow the ways of the world and then somehow,
in a moment of intruded inspiration, compose a great anthem
of the Restoration, or in a moment of singular inspiration,
paint the great painting.
When it is done,
it will be done by one who has yearned and tried and longed
fervently to do it, not by one who has condescended to do it.
It will take quite as much preparation and work as any masterpiece,
and a different kind of inspiration …
The reason we
have not yet produced a greater heritage in art and literature
and music and drama is not, I am very certain, because we have
not had talented people. For over the years we have had not
only good ones but great ones. Some have reached great heights
in their chosen fields. But few have captured the spirit of
the gospel of Jesus Christ and the restoration of it in music,
in art, in literature. They have not, therefore, even though
they were gifted, made a lasting contribution to the onrolling
of the Church and kingdom of God in the dispensation of the
fullness of times ... I am reminded of the statement: “There
are many who struggled and climb and finally reach the top of
the ladder, only to find that it is leaning against the wrong
wall.”
I am certainly
not going to be the next Milton or Shakespeare, but I may make
the way easier for him or her by staying true to the light. My
life may touch someone of genius, inspiring him or her with the
love of God and a desire to become a pearl rather than another
voice shouting from the Great and Spacious Building. Even in my own limited
way, I have Pearl Power.
Out of Small Things
A pearl is a small thing. A hymn
is a small thing. Even most novels are small things. But the
Lord tells us, “Wherefore, be ye not weary in well-doing, for
ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small
things proceedeth that which is great. Behold, the Lord requireth
the heart and a willing mind.” (7)
Do you feel weak when you are assaulted
by the blatant strength of today’s media? I know I do. But
the Lord, again, has said, “God has chosen the weak things of
the world to confound the things which are mighty.” (8) And
to Joseph Smith, an unlearned farm laborer, “I am well-pleased
with your offering and acknowledgments, which you have made;
for unto this end have I raised you up, that I might show
forth my wisdom through the weak things of the earth.”(9)
A String of Pearls
In the end, there will be two societies,
a Zion Society and Babylon. But for now, we must do as Ammon was counseled before he
began his mission among the Lamanites, his deadly enemies:
Go forth among
the Lamanites, thy brethren, and establish my word; yet ye shall
be patient in long-suffering and afflictions, that ye may show
forth good example unto them in me, and I will make an instrument
of thee in my hands unto the salvation of many souls. (10)
There are many who are just as
horrified as Latter-day Saints at what is going on in our cultural
universe. They can be gathered together with us if they recognize
our fruits. There is strength in togetherness; a string of
pearls is more heavenly than a single pearl. A Zion society will be such a string — a collection of the pure in heart,
with all that is most divine in music, literature, and art.
We can draw people to us in this dark world through our light,
if we choose to let it shine.
Let us not submit to ugliness.
Let us aspire to true beauty, even if it is in our own small
way. Remember the pearl. Remember Pearl Power — Christ’s love.
The greatest act in the history
of the universe, forward and backward in time, was the atonement
of Jesus Christ. It is that atonement that makes it possible
for us, like pearls, to grow in beauty from the inside out.
To shine in quiet, modest luminescence. That true beauty creates
beauty. It is the only thing it can create.
Let us celebrate triumph over pain,
light chasing away the dark, valor in a world of false values.
We can do it. We have been endowed, each in our own way, with
talents and abilities to polish and shine until we can take
our place on that string of pearls that is the Kingdom
of God.
Notes
(1) “We’re Scaring Our Children
to Death,” Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, April 27,
2007.
(2) Matthew 13:35-36
(3) “Zion In the Midst of Babylon,”
Elder David R. Stone, Ensign, May 2006.
(4) Mosiah 3:19
(5) Gardner, John, On Moral
Fiction, Harper Torchbooks: 1977, pp. 15-16.
(6) “The Arts and the Spirit of
the Lord,” Elder Boyd K. Packer, Ensign, August, 1976.
(7) Doctrine and Covenants 64:33
(8) 1 Corinthians 1:27
(9) “The Expanding Inheritance
from Joseph Smith,” James E. Faust, Ensign, November,
1981
(10) Alma 17:11
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