Category: 2014

Gathered In

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20141 Comment

Dear Will:

It was January 15. By my reckoning, the year was 1979, or maybe it was 1982 or 1983. I’m really not certain, but for sure it was January 15: Martin Luther King’s, Jr.’s birthday.

This was before Dr. King’s birthday was designated a national holiday. I was an undergraduate at UCLA, and the Black Student Alliance or some similar on-campus organization was commemorating the reverend’s birth by sponsoring a rally in his honor at Meyerhoff Park—a small patch of grass at the center of campus set aside for just such purposes. I didn’t know what to expect at such an event, but I felt sufficiently moved by Dr. King’s efforts to make our nation a better place that I decided to attend. It seemed like a good place to be and a good reason to be there.

Arriving early, I took a seat on the grass and waited for the rally to begin. As the smallish crowd gathered around me, I became increasingly aware that I was more than a little out-of-place. I was, in fact, just about the only Caucasian in the group—a middle-class white kid from a nearly-all-white high school in a nearly-all-white town. And as if my physical appearance weren’t enough to make me feel like I did not belong, I then listened to speakers whose references to “we” quite clearly did not include people like me.

Had I not arrived early, I could have hung near the edge of the crowd before making an inconspicuous getaway. And no doubt I would have—gladly. But there I was, smack in the middle of it all, the awkward, white undergraduate, in it for the duration.

My self-consciousness reached its peak when one of the speakers invited everyone to stand and join in the singing of the National Anthem. The Black National Anthem, that is. The Black National Anthem?, I thought. I didn’t know blacks had their own National Anthem! And you can bet I didn’t know the words. I wanted to crawl away.

Then, as the crowd joined hands and began swaying and singing, something remarkable happened. From behind someone grabbed my left hand, and then someone else grabbed my right. No doubt detecting my apprehension and embarrassment, they had found a simple way to gather me in and let me know that I was among friends. It has been over 30 years, and I still cannot share this memory without becoming emotional. How glad I am that I stuck around that day.

Does this story perhaps sound familiar to you? I fear that sometimes we Mormons can make those visiting our congregations feel a bit like they have stumbled into someone else’s rally at Meyerhoff Park. We do tend to talk alike, dress alike, act alike. We have our own vocabulary and rituals and unfamiliar songs. To newcomers and outsiders and folks making those tentative first steps back into church activity, we may inadvertently give signals that if you don’t look or act or talk a certain way then you really don’t belong.

Well, that is certainly not our intent. I can tell you that as Bishop my goal is to make the Santiago Creek Ward a sanctuary in the fullest sense of the word: both a safe place and a holy place. Come as you are, I say, with all of your warts and imperfections. If upon arrival you feel a little self-conscious, stick it out for a few minutes and you will discover that we have plenty of warts and imperfections as well. Come worship with us, and before long you will feel yourself welcomed, gathered in, as if a warm hand has slipped into yours to let you know that you are safely among friends.

PW

With Faith and Trepidation

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20144 Comments

Dear Will:

For the last seven years I have arisen before dawn every day of the school year to teach Seminary, the early morning religion class for somnambulant high school kids. It’s a curiously glorious assignment, one I have performed willingly and gladly since they first asked me to do it in 2007.

Since our church does not have a paid clergy, the whole, elaborate local operation is run by volunteers like me, most of whom do as they’re asked when they’re asked to do it. But we are not given the option of choosing our assignments—we are simply pulled aside and offered the chance to serve. And because we are committed, when we are invited to teach the five-year-olds or lead the choir or clean the chapel, our inclination is generally to say: Sure.

Of course, often we are asked to do things for which we have no true qualifications or training. We simply plunge in with a combination of faith and trepidation, learning as we go—sometimes at the expense of confused five-year-olds or thoroughly bamboozled altos and tenors. That alacrity to both serve and be served in spite of manifest ineptitude is consistent, I think, with the nature of Christ’s early church, which was run by a ragtag bunch of fishermen and tentmakers. They stumbled along, no doubt, but history shows that they were magnified in their task and the world is better for it.

It all brings to mind a favorite story. Peter and John, fairly new to this business of running a church on behalf of the Master, encountered a man who had been unable to walk since birth. Day after day his friends brought him to the temple gates to beg for coins to make his living. When the apostles stopped in front of him, the lame man expected that they would open their purses.

But he was mistaken. “Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God” (Acts 3:6-8).

Peter and John may not have had much. What they did have was a willingness to give—such as they had. To give what they could and let the Savior compensate for that which they lacked. To bless another life—change it even—in spite of the fact that they were mere fishermen.

I bring this up to you now because I have been given a new assignment for which the term inadequate is itself inadequate to express my lack of qualifications. After this week, I will no longer be teaching sleepy teenagers in the morning because I have been called to serve as your new bishop, head of the entire ward congregation.

It’s a terrifying privilege to receive this assignment. I have not been blessed with great executive skills and I have no relevant professional or academic credentials. What I do have is a love for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for the people in our ward. I don’t expect to be particularly good at this job, but I take comfort in Christ’s ability to help us overcome our weaknesses (see Ether 12:27). If not for that, I wouldn’t have a chance.

It comes to that and little more. I really don’t have much. But such as I have, I’ll gladly give.

PW

Moments Like This One

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20141 Comment

Dear Will:

This world is a big place. Billions and billions of us dot the planet. Where I live, it’s mostly an uninterrupted string of homes and buildings with millions of people inside, lining the hundreds of miles from LA to San Diego. If I lived in a more densely populated city, those buildings would be jammed wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor, with too many people crammed into too little space for miles and miles and miles.

As I stare blankly at the math of it all—7.23 billion people in the world, with roughly 189,000 added to the planet today alone—it’s pretty much incomprehensible. I have trouble just understanding the number of folks on the 405 freeway at rush hour. How can I begin to process the thought of 1,087 people per square kilometer in Bangladesh?

In the face of those numbers, it’s easy to convince myself that I’m pretty much nothing—that in the vast scheme of things I am not much more than a microscopic speck in the middle of the vast Sahara. The Psalmist inquired: “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4)—to which I feel to add: “Yeah. Exactly.”

One time, Moses saw all of this and more within a vision—“And it came to pass that Moses looked, and beheld the world upon which he was created; and Moses beheld the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created”—after which he (reasonably) exclaimed: “Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing” (Moses 1:8–10).

And yet there are moments when, almost unawares, I begin to feel like the entire universe is condensing down as if seen through a magnificent zoom lens. Moments when I feel as if the world is little more than the space within the reach of my outstretched arm. Moments like this one—sitting in this chair, at this desk, here in this empty room— when something I’ve just read triggers something I now feel, and I know all over again that God not only knows me but He is aware of my immediate, pressing needs. Moments when I know it as clearly as I know that the sun is hitting my face when I walk outside on a warm spring morning.

I cannot possibly do the math. And yet I know.

PW

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash