Circling The Wagons

Previously: My Testimony of the Church

Regular readers of this blog will be thrilled to learn that this post will be mercifully short, because I'm going to spend it mostly explaining why there will be no post this month. The reason is that frankly, at the moment I can't see well enough to write anything. In fact, you wanna hear something really tragic? I haven't even been able to watch TV for the past three days, my eyes are so bad. My daughter Amy, who is now grown with a family of her own, fondly remembers a lesson I often taught the children when they were young and clamoring for my attention: "Television is more important than family. Leave me alone."

So you can imagine how much I miss TV.  I can't read, and I can't watch TV. My eyes can't focus on anything.  Everything I try to look at swims before my eyes, which is why even now I am not writing this myself.  I am dictating these words to Amy, who has kindly consented to type them out for me in spite of her own tragic upbringing.

So here is what happened: For some weeks I have not felt very well at all, and then a few days ago I got really sick. I mean incredibly sick. Sicker than I think I have ever been if you don't count those many miserable bouts of pneumonia related to my chronic asthma. This was different, and left me with some weird severe equilibrium imbalance that has me knocking sideways into walls and opening the bathroom door into my own face. It would be quite comical had I seen this happening to somebody else. My stumbling about has managed to provide Amy with a laugh or two, though she quickly changes her expression to a worried look of concern when she sees her mother watching. (Note from Amy: not true. I was very worried and did not see anything funny about it at all.)

Anyway, I was so helpless that I was unable to keep balanced enough in the kitchen to fix Connie's meals, so I called Amy and asked her to come over for a couple of days and look after us.  You know how in the movies there's that effect where we see the room swimming from another person's point of view? I thought that was just in the movies, since I had never gone through anything like that myself. It turned out in this case to be exactly like that, and when I tried to walk from my bed to the bathroom it was like trying to make my way through that flying saucer shaped centrifugal force carnival ride while it's going full tilt.

Yesterday there was a small window of time in which I felt somewhat better so I sat at my desk intending to catch up with email. I read and responded to one email, then it all started swimming again and my eyes went out of focus. That is why I have Amy as my hands and eyes at the computer screen right now.  I have been all but helpless for three days now, and both womenfolk have ganged up and persuaded me to go into the doctor and find out why I seem to be turning into Annette Funicello. So I will do that tomorrow.

In the meantime, August is rapidly dwindling and I have not yet posted the piece I intended to this month, and I wanted to write about it while the topic is still timely. With this imbalance thing, I don't know how soon I will get to it, and I don't know how much longer Amy will be in the mood to kowtow to my incessant demands, so we are taking this opportunity to refer you to some blogger friends who, it so happens, have already covered what I had intended to, so the best writing on the topic has already been done. I am not needed now, except to help spread the word.  Many of my readers have written wondering what can be done to help move us to a more Zion society, and I think this is a worthy start, particularly for those of you currently residing on the Wasatch Front who might have some unneeded material goods to assist with. Here are those links:

Bare Record of Truth: Circle the Wagons

LDS Perfect Day: Participate in a Modern Day Circling of the Wagons

The Voice of One Passing Through

In the event anyone is interested in my dizzy little adventure, when my eyes are able to focus again, if I get any answers from my doctor I will mention the outcome in the comment section below, or have Amy write something there.

Anyway, weird, huh? Apparently the room does swirl around and around just like in the movies, and even when I'm lying on the bed with my eyes closed it often feels like I am spinning around on the edge of a whirlpool. I'll bet later I will wish I enjoyed that sensation more instead of letting it scare the hell out of me.

Oh, by the way, I usually keep up with comments daily, but have not been able to get to any of the comments on my other posts here for about a week. So if someone has asked me a question directly and not received a response, this is why. Ditto if you have sent me an email and not heard back.

Well, we're going to wrap this up. Amy is already starting to complain about how she would rather be watching TV than spending time with her father. Kids today. I don't know where she gets it.

Update Friday August 23, 2013:
Okay, I'm Back 
I just re-read the above and my goodness, I ramble on as much when I'm dictating as when I'm writing it myself.  Poor Amy. Poor readers.

I have read your kind comments below and I'm grateful for your many prayers and good wishes, which surely are the reason that by the time Amy had gotten me to my doctor Wednesday afternoon, I was much improved. I'm still a bit unsteady on my feet, but my vision is fine now and I'm on the mend. Thank you all sincerely. Frankly, I wouldn't belabor the topic further, because I believe talking about illness tends to call forth more illness, but my email box is full of concerned queries from many of you, so the best way to put everyone at ease is a brief explanation of what all that was about.

It was food poisoning! Probably. At least that was the doctor's best guess, based on the description of symptoms I gave. I told him I had eaten a jumbo hotdog 24 hours previous, and he supposed that was the culprit. He gave me some anti-dizzy pills and some antibiotics ("Warning: May cause dizziness") and told me I should be completely normal by today.

So in the car on the drive home, I told Amy his diagnosis, and she admitted to having eaten two of those same hotdogs out of my fridge the night before, and she still has shown no ill effects. So go figure. There should have been no problem with those hotdogs anyway, as they are new and tightly packaged. Amy has a theory of her own: the Mormon Mafia poisoned me. Yeah, that's the ticket. The story I'm going with is that the Mormon Mafia is trying to shut me up.

Actually, I suspect the real reason for that weird bout of unsteadiness is connected to a bit of difficulty I've been both fighting and trying to ignore for several years. Some time ago it was discovered that there has been some wearing of the myelin sheath inside my spinal column. The way I've had it explained to me, the myelin sheath is like a coating of insulation around the nerves that send signals to and from the brain. When that insulation gets worn or damaged, it can cause mischief. In my case this bit of unpleasantness manifests as severe fatigue and frequent stupors, which I have been putting up with for years, but I'm guessing this present difficulty in keeping a steady gait may be related. So I'll be keeping an eye on things and checking in next week with the specialist I used to see about this thing. Again, I attribute my rapid recovery to your prayers, and thank you all sincerely for your kind words.

So. Enough about this crazy shell I'm currently inhabiting while on this planet. Let's get back to the topic I meant to address here. Warning: Any promise about the brevity of this post is hereby revoked.

Circling The Wagons, Take Two
One of the unexpected perks of maintaining this blog is that I have had the privilege of becoming acquainted with some extraordinary people. For the past year or so I have been conversing with a lovely young mother from Australia named Eva, whose exceptional spirit has impressed both Connie and myself as we have written, spoken by phone, and Skyped with her. (Is there anything more delightful to the ear than the Australian female voice?) It seems Eva had a run-in with her bishop awhile back, who had strong objections when he heard her testimony of having given her sick child a blessing of healing.

It used to be quite ordinary for women in this church to bestow blessings not only upon their own children, but upon each other if they so desired. Some years back, Linda King Newell documented this once common practice in Sunstone Magazine:

“Someone apparently reported to Joseph that the women were laying their hands on the sick and blessing them. His reply to the question of the propriety of such acts was simple. He told the women in the next meeting “there could be no evil in it, if God gave his sanction by healing...there could be no more sin in any female laying hands on the sick than in wetting the face with water.” He also indicated that there were sisters who were ordained to heal the sick and it was their privilege to do so. “If the sisters should have faith to heal,” he said, “let all hold their tongues.” (Relief Society Minutes of Nauvoo, 28 April, 1842)

That article cites many other statements from subsequent prophets confirming the absolute right of women to be vessels through which the Lord can provide healing miracles. But Somehow in modern times we came to confuse gifts of the spirit with priesthood authority, and so it was that my own mother, whose husband was off fighting in North Korea, often sat helplessly at home wringing her hands when her children were ill until a couple of men in the ward got around to putting on their shirts and ties and making it over to our house to perform a simple ordinance that she was perfectly capable of doing herself.

When my friend Eva was heard to have performed such a vile act on her own child, she was called in for a meeting with her bishop to answer for this blasphemy. Somehow during the interview, Eva also let slip that she questioned the propriety of the Brethren in Salt Lake City investing Church funds in a lavish shopping center, and this proved too much for her bishop. He convened a bishop's court and disfellowshiped Eva for the crime of "being out of harmony with the Church."

We do indeed live in strange times when a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who makes a serious attempt to live the precepts of her religion, finds herself accused by those holding administrative office of being out of harmony with it.

Eva's reaction was not quite what her bishop had expected. This bishop, a militant former SAS officer (the Australian equivalent to U.S. Special Forces) expected her to grovel her way back into the good graces of her local Priesthood Authority.  Instead, Eva reacted with a shrug and walked away.

When Eva's husband, Andrew, was instructed to "correct" his wife, Andrew refused to do so and was also disfellowshipped for his insubordination.

Guess what? Andrew and Eva learned it was quite possible to remain in the faith even if the local authorities did not think them worthy company. They believe, as the apostle Peter said, "we ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29) and with Nephi who tells us it is the Holy Ghost who will show us what we must do (2 Nephi 32:5).  If the local LDS congregation had no further need of them, fine. They still had their scriptures and the Holy Ghost as their guide. What further authority is necessary?

But if rejection by the church they loved was not trial enough, their lives were further upended when Andrew lost his job.

I wish you knew these two the way I do. They really do live in the spirit, and know no fear. Instead of reacting in panic as many of us would, they saw their new circumstances as a wonderful opportunity provided to them by the Lord. Andrew and Eva received a strong witness that they were to sell all their belongings and make their way to the Rocky Mountains.  They have already experienced many miracles. After listing their possessions on the Australian version of Craigslist, early one morning they found a man standing at their front gate. He had seen their listing, and told them God had impressed him to make the five hour drive to their home. He handed them $1,000.00 to use toward their journey.

I could write many more things about this remarkable couple, but instead I'll direct you to their blog, "The Voice of One Passing Through" where they are logging their progress.  What I wanted to mention here was the project they have inspired in others, Circling the Wagons.

A few months back, before Andrew lost his job, he had reason to come to Salt Lake City where he happened to attend a presentation by Denver Snuffer. At that presentation were several people who I had also become acquainted with, both online and in person, and they were singularly impressed with Andrew. These people separately described to me how they had felt an instant and intense spiritual power in him. After Andrew's job loss, one of these friends actually traveled to Australia and spent a month living with them, and she returned and reported some amazing things to me.

Long story short, this group of friends had been talking for awhile about founding some kind of shared charity that believing Latter-day Saints could draw from when in need, a charity that would include material goods as well as money. Yes, the corporate Church already has such a program, and this particular charity is not intended to supplant, replace, or compete with it. The founders encourage members to continue to support their brothers and sisters in their various wards.  But one difference between the Church welfare program and Circling the Wagons is that with the latter, the giver is provided accountability as to where their contribution goes, and can decide specifically what their contribution is used for, who gets it, and for what purpose.  After my separate posts here on tithes and offerings, I received numerous queries from readers asking me if I knew of any suitable charity where the giver could control where his contribution went.  This project sounds to me like it would fit that bill, and that's why I'm taking the time to write about it.

Those involved with founding Circling the Wagons have set this thing up as a legitimate charity. They do not take a cut of administrative costs, but administer it voluntarily. When they learned about Andrew and Eva's circumstances, they decided this young family would be a good place to start practicing a type of Zion society. The idea, as I understand it, is that those who contribute now may find themselves in need of future assistance, and could then draw on the resources themselves, similar to how Joseph Smith envisioned the ideal.

There is a member who is already fixing up a temporary cottage for this family to live in when they arrive, so, if you live on the Wasatch Front and have some spare household necessities, you might consider dropping them off.  You can also contribute pocket money through Paypal or directly to the account at Zion's Bank.

I am not directly involved in Circling The Wagons, so please address all inquiries to the email address found at the websites listed above.  My only part in this is that some of you readers have asked me for ideas on how they can become more faithful givers, and I think this is a worthy endeavor.  In my opinion, Andrew and Eva are certainly the right people to start this experiment with. Here are those links again:

Circle The Wagons

Participate In A Modern Day Circling of the Wagons

Here is Andrew and Eva's account, beginning at the outset:

The Voice of One Passing Through

Eva's testimony to "My Brothers in Leadership"

It wouldn't hurt if those of you reading about this project were to share one or all of the above links. Let's see if we can give this thing some traction.