MMM Quotes: Happiness vs. Wholeness

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From Hugh MacKay, author of The Good Life

I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that—I don't mind people being happy—but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It's a really odd thing that we're now seeing people saying "write down three things that made you happy today before you go to sleep" and "cheer up" and "happiness is our birthright" and so on. We're kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position. It's rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don't teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, "Quick! Move on! Cheer up!" I'd like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word "happiness" and to replace it with the word "wholeness." Ask yourself, "Is this contributing to my wholeness?" and if you're having a bad day, it is.

originally seen on A Cup of Jo

Image credit: Ben K Adams (used with permission).

MMM Quotes 14: On Growing Older

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

Lord, Thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older, and will some day be old.

Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject on every occasion. Release me from trying to straighten out everybody's affairs. Make me thoughtful, but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom it seems a pity not to use it, but Thou knowest, Lord, that I want a few friends left at the end.

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details, and give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains - they are increasing and love of hearing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I do not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others of their pains, but help me to endure them with patience. I do not ask for improved memory, but for growing humility and a lessening cocksuredness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. And teach me, O Lord, the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

Keep me reasonably sweet. I do not want to be a saint, some of them are too hard to live with, but a sour old person is the crowning achievement of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people, and give me the grace to tell them so. - Hugh B. Brown

MMM Quotes 13: Reassembling a Testimony

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

The following quote comes from Boyd J. Petersen's article Arriving Where I Started: Disassembling and Reassembling A Testimony in the latest Sunstone (Issue 171).

Like the Church, my wife has changed over the years. She is not the same woman I married, and frankly, I would be bored and unfulfilled if she were. I certainly don't feel that she deceived me because I didn't now everything about her when I married her, and I have never felt betrayed when I discovered more about her. Some of the things I have discovered might have been apparent had I known to look, other things she may have purposefully kept from me, and still others she may not have even been aware of yet herself. Yet it has never bothered me that my understanding of her continues to evolve. So should I feel betrayed when I discover new things about the Church or start to understand how it has evolved? I have to admit that I love much of the nineteenth-century theology, but I would never be able to endure nineteenth-century Mormonism in a twenty-first century world.

MMM Quotes 12: Legacies of Jesus by L. Bennion

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

The following quotes come from Lowell Bennion's Legacies of Jesus, a great little book on the Savior I recently finished. If you have a chance to read or buy the book, you should.

"For me, four aspects of religion are significant: the Church, ordinances and rituals, religious and ethical principles, and a religious orientation toward other human beings. But the most important of the four is other people – what happens to individuals as the result of a religion. The Church is not an end in itself, but a means of making gospel principles like faith and humility functional in the lives of people. Yes, even gospel principles are not the things of ultimate worth. Their value lies in how they bless human lives."

"Many people are disturbed when they find doubts intruding into their faith, particularly young people who, as a natural stage in their maturation, are questioning the simple faith of their childhood. I try to point out to them two facts: Jesus did not rebuke the father for his unbelief, and the father confessed his unbelief to the Savior in the context of asking for help. I believe that our Heavenly Father is pleased with such confession. What could make for healthier growth than expressing doubts in a context of faith? Indifference, it seems to me, is far deadlier to faith than doubt."

MMM Quotes 11: The Rise of Modern Mormonism

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

I just finished Prince & Wright's David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. Everyone should read this book. In the meantime, here are a few passages that stirred something within me.

On knowledge bringing risk ...

[David O. McKay's] philosophy was that true education is liberal, painted by the broad brush strokes of all academic disciplines, unfettered by thin pencil lines of dogma. Speaking at the dedication of a church high school in New Zealand he said: "Members of the Church are admonished to acquire learning by study; also, by faith and prayer; and to seek after everything that is virtuous, lovely or of good report, or praiseworthy. In this seeking after truth, they are not confined to narrow limits of dogma, or creed, but are free to launch into the realm of the infinite for they know that 'truth is truth where'er it is found, whether on Christian or on heathan ground.'

Well aware that knowledge brought risk, McKay's response was to manage the risk, not proscribe the knowledge. Noting the "young man who, as his immature beliefs fall from him one by one, finds himself substituting science for religion, and the scientist for God," his response was to add religion as a refining influence on the young scientist, not caution him to retreat to safer ground.

On the disappointment he felt with his first temple experience ...

"Do you remember when you first went through the House of the Lord? I do. And I went out disappointed. Just a young man, out of college, anticipating great things when I went to the Temple. I was disappointed and grieved, and I have met hundreds of young men and young women since who had that experience. I have now found out why. There are two things in every Temple: mechanics, to set forth certain ideals, and symbolism, what those mechanics symbolize. I saw only the mechanics when I first went through the Temple. I did not see the spiritual. I did not see the symbolism of spirituality. Speaking plainly, I saw men, physical state, which offended me. That is a mechanic of washing ... I was blind to the great lesson of purity behind the mechanics. I did not hear the message of the Lord, "Be ye clean who bear the vessels of the Lord." I did not hear that eternal truth, "Cleanliness is next to godliness." The symbolism was lost entirely ... And so with the anointing, following the washing. Do you see the symbolism? ... How many of us young men saw that? We thought we were big enough and with intelligence sufficient to criticize the mechanics of it and we were blind to the symbolism, the message of the spirit. And then that great ordinance, the endowment. The whole thing simple in the mechanical part of it, but sublime and eternal in its significance."

On politics ...

"While we respect and revere the offices held by the members of the First Presidency of the Church, we cannot yield to others our responsibilities to our constituency, nor can we delegate our own free agency to any but ourselves. We know that each of you will agree that in this instance we act in conformity with the highest principles of our church in declining to be swayed by the view expressed in the communication of June 22nd under the signatures of the First Presidency. We hasten to assure you that we stand ready at any time to receive your views, that they will be considered and evaluated as the good faith expression of men of high purpose, but we cannot accept them as binding on us." - Senator Frank Moss (D-Utah) expressing his displeasure in the Church getting involved in political matters

"It could be pointed out there's a moral obligation to permit men to see employment regardless of union membership. It also could be argued that there's a moral question involved and the church has every right to take an active interest in the well being of all its members. But basically the right-to-work issue involving the controversial section of the Taft-Hartley law, is a matter of politics. As such, it lies far outside the jurisdiction of any church leadership. It's just not a proper matter for expression of church views and certainly church pressure is improper, to say the least. Leaders of any church should speak up on clear-cut matters of theology or morals and all members of Congress should be happy to listen and try to profit from proper advice on such matters. But church influence should be limited to problems and issues that are clearly church problems and issues. Churches have no place in politics." - A pointed editorial in an Idaho newspaper

Two months after Kennedy's assassination McKay received a phone call, the transcript of which read:

Johnson: "Mr. President, this is Lyndon Johnson ... I am an old friend of yours. I don't know whether you remember me or not, but you've been receiving me every time I come out there."

McKay: "I remember you very well. I'm glad to hear your voice too."

Johnson: "I wonder if you feel like coming down to Washington and see me sometime in the next week or two? ... I don't have any emergency, but I just need a little strength, and I think that would come from visiting with you an hour or so."

MMM Quotes 10: How Love Rewires the Brain

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

photo via flickr (marie-II) 

"In a relationship, one mind revises the other; one heart changes its partner. This astounding legacy of our combined status as mammals and neural beings is limbic revision: the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love, as our Attractors [coteries of ingrained information patterns] activate certain limbic pathways, and the brain’s inexorable memory mechanism reinforces them.

Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love." - A General Theory of Love by Lewis, Amini and Lannon

Read more about A General Theory of Love, as well as four other books that tackle the psychology of love, at Brain Pickings.

MMM Quotes 9: Lowell Bennion

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

The Parable of the Prodigal Son, via Sacred Art Pilgrim

Does it matter if Jesus' parables actually occurred, or can they be true because they teach truth?

"Jesus' parables are creative works of art, the product of a vivid imagination and profound insight combined with a remarkable ability to articulate. Jesus observed the human scene and the ways of nature. His stories are drawn from the experiences of his listeners. His parables are true to life. Whether or not they actually happened, they could have happened just as he told them. (A sower does cast his seeds on all types of soil.) Many contain the phrase "like unto." His parables are analogous to life situations. They are true not because they actually occurred as reported, but because they teach truth." - Lowell Bennion, Jesus the Master Teacher

MMM Quotes 8: Mark Twain

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

via Mark Twain's Interactive Scrapbook on PBS

In this excerpt from Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 2, Twain addresses plagiarism charges that had been made against his friend, Helen Keller, some 11 years prior, when her short story "The Frost King" was found to be strikingly similar to Margaret Canby's "Frost Fairies." Heller was acquitted after an investigation, but the incident stuck with Twain and prompted him to pen the following words about creativity and originality more than a decade later. What are your (unoriginal) thoughts about his words?

"Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that 'plagiarism' farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul – let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances – is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men – but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing – and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite – that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that."

MMM Quotes 7: The Big Rock Candy Mountain

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

Wallace Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist, often called "The Dean of Western Writers." He was also a fervent Mormon booster, writing two affectionate books (Mormon Country and The Gathering of Zion) about the Mormons, primarily inspired by the friendship he experienced as a non-Mormon growing up in Salt Lake City. The quotes below are from The Big Rock Candy Mountain, a book I recently started and finished on the beaches of Mexico.

"People, he had said, were always being looked at as points, and they ought to be looked at as lines. There weren't any points, it was false to assume that a person ever was anything. He was always becoming something, always changing, always continuous and moving, like the wiggly line on a machine used to measure earthquake shocks. He was always what he was in the beginning, but never quite exactly what he was; he moved along a line dictated by his heritage and his environment, but he was subject to every sort of variation within the narrow limits of his capabilities."

"I suppose that the understanding of any person is an exercise in genealogy. A man is not a static organism to be taken apart and analyzed and classified. A man is movement, motion, a continuum. There is no beginning to him. He runs through his ancestors, and the only beginning is the primal beginning of the single cell in the slime. The proper study of mankind is man, but man is an endless curve on the eternal graph paper, and who can see the whole curve?"

MMM Quotes 6: On Grooming

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

Per Wikipedia, Hugh Nibley was bothered by what he saw as the unthinking, sometimes almost dogmatic application of some portions of Brigham Young University's honor code. Nibley had no objection to requirements of chastity or obeying the Word of Wisdom, but he thought the often intense scrutiny directed at grooming (hairstyles and clothing) was misguided. In 1973, he said the following. Thoughts?

"The worst sinners, according to Jesus, are not the harlots and publicans, but the religious leaders with their insistence on proper dress and grooming, their careful observance of all the rules, their precious concern for status symbols, their strict legality, their pious patriotism ... the haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances."

MMM Quotes 5: Shawn Carter

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

Jay-Z has some words of wisdom for the 1%'ers and the rich man who is having trouble entering the kingdom of God:

I can't help the poor if I'm one of them
So I got rich and gave back
To me that's the win, win

- Moment of Clarity, The Black Album

Other stuff to read:
Gwyneth Paltrow on Jay-Z (Goop)
Jay-Z's Interests (Life + Times)
Man of Year 2011 (GQ) *language*
Profile (Wikipedia)

MMM Quotes 4: Truth

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." - Sir Winston Churchill

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." - Andre Gide

"The truth is more important than the facts." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'" - Kahlil Gibran

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." - Niels Bohr

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." - Oscar Wilde

MMM Quotes 3: The Jobs Report

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

As Aimee wrote on Instagram the day he died, we hope Steve Jobs is in iHeaven. Here is a collection of his quotes from his Stanford University commencement address in June 2005.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

MMM Quotes 2: Gospel As Resource

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

“Sad things - children who are sick or developmentally handicapped, husbands who are not faithful, illnesses that can cripple, or violence, betrayals, hurts, deaths, losses - when those things happen, do not say God is not keeping his promises to me. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain. It is resource in event of pain, and when that pain comes (and it will come because we came here on earth to have pain among other things), when it comes, rejoice that you have resource to deal with your pain." - Carlfred Broderick

Discuss.

MMM Quotes 1: Freedom to Think

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

"We must preserve freedom of the mind in the church and resist all efforts to suppress it. The church is not so much concerned with whether the thoughts of its members are orthodox or heterodox as it is that they shall have thoughts." - Hugh B. Brown

Discuss.