More Old Stuff

Catching the Vision

Years ago before I began to pretend such juvenile satire was beneath me, I read a section in Mad Magazine what featured cartoons renderings of colloquilaisms. I remember one drawing of a man struggling with a rid and reel as he pulled a very ugly lifeform from a pond. the caption read "Fishing for a Compliment." There were others, of course, and I thought they were all raucously funny.

In my morning prayers today, I asked God to help me help a select group of elders and high priests assigned to another select group of prospective elders to catch the vision of their new assignment. Right there in the middle of a sacred minute, I saw in my mind's eye, the cartoon that would accompany the "Catching the Vision" caption. Reverence, for me, almost always loses the battle when something funny pops into my mind. And it happens far too much.

Rarely do I enjoy a Fast and Testimony meeting without playing a round or two of Testimony Bingo in my head and at least twice a month I mentally add the words "in the bathtub" to the hymn titles while I pretend to listen to a talk that, no doubt, it's bearer invested time, sweat and tears in preparation. Last evening our Home Teachers stopped by for a visit. Brother and Sister Riggs both live and home teach as companions. They are our next-door neighbors and have lived a long, lone time. Both are approaching 90 and he has a difficult time walking. I should not find his wobbling funny. I just shouldn't.

Some people who don't know me well would be surprised at how little I take seriously. At work I have a reputation that is slightly better than that of Attilla the Hun even though during the past 9 months I have not terminated a single soul. (Although I came very close yesterday and based on information I received this morning, I will next Monday)

My wife thinks I get more serious on the Sabbath and it kind of bothers her that I am trying to be someone or something I am not. I tell her that she shouldn't be bothered because I am trying to become something I assuredly am not... a righteous man. Before anyone supposes I equate seriousness with righteousness, let me say that I do not. I do equate approriate seriousness and appropriate humor with righteousness, however, and I flat don't think Jesus would think Brother Riggs teetering is very funny and I certainly don't see him smiling at "I Stand All Amazed in the Bathtub"!

But back to the cartoon in my head that made worthless a perfectly good prayer...

The vision I was trying to catch was like a cloud. I could see it but I couldn't really see what it was. In my mind's eye I had captured the cloud-like thing and was holding it in a bear-hug as it struggled furiously to get away.

I thought of this cartoon several times on my way to work this morning and just before I decided open my blog. It occurred to me that visions are not really different from the cartoon thing that popped into my head. They are always there but generally just outside our grasp and when we do manage to catch one, it wiggles and fights until it gets away. Perhaps that is why Oliver Cowdery could have knelt under the hands of Peter, James and John and then, just a few years later, abandoned the prophet and the Church for a time. Perhaps that is why Sidney Rigdon could participate in the "revelation" and then walk away from the truth only a few years later. Maybe... just maybe that is why I can feel intensly, the love of my Savior while I take the sacrament and, just a few minutes later, scream BINGO! in the recesses of my irreverent brain.

Perhaps someday, I might catch the vision and keep it but part of me hopes that the Spirit of God, like a fire is burning somewhere... in someone's bathtub.