Dialogue, Volume 25, Number 2 - Dialogue – A Journal of Mormon ...

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156 DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT A few minutes later, we knocked at the new family's door. No answer. We knocked again. Nothing. My companion wanted to wait awhile; this family was golden, he said. While he read scriptures, I stared across the street at people going in and out of the post office, wishing I could trade places with any one of them, even wishing I could be one of the shoeshine boys who slept there in the park. After fifteen minutes, we gave up and left. For the first time, I was pleased no one had opened the door. I knew I had nothing to teach, nothing to share. I wondered if I ever could call myself a representative of Jesus Christ again. If I wasn't willing to minister to those who suffered most, what in the hell was I doing on a mission? As we walked away from the unanswered door, I told my disappointed companion that I needed to buy some envelopes —my ploy to lead us back up the street where the old beggar sat. This time I would stop. I would squat down beside him. I would ask his name and shake his dusty hand. My fingers would feel the hardened knuckles that propelled him through the streets. I would ask God to help me do the right thing. But the doorway was empty; the man was gone. My mission seems long past, almost as long ago as the Targeteer class where I first announced my understanding of Zion. Since then my experiences with attempted Utopias continue to be disheartening. I've worked on a Kibbutz in Israel, clearing drip-irrigation lines in the banana fields. The work was strenuous and —worst of all —boring. We started before sunrise and finished before noon. Then we were free. We could eat our fill without price, swing from a rope into the Jordan River, or skinny-dip in the Sea of Galilee. But we never were a real part of their community. The kibbutzniks paid us a dollar a day, and we wore our own shoes, not the leather sandals issued by the kibbutz. In the People's Republic of China, I visited a carpet factory. I saw the worn wooden bench where Chinese citizens would —in theory —sit for their entire working lives, tying the same knot, over and over and over. One carpet might require an entire year's work. Western tourists would then buy the carpets for a few hundred dollars, and the citizens would start on a new loom. To enjoy their own carpet in their own home: impossible. Everything belonged to the state: the factory, the bench, the loom, the yarn, their tired fingers, their children, and even their dreams —all for the benefit of the state. In India I sat a full day by the River Ganges and watched the pilgrims bathe, drinking in the holiness. They all seemed to have their own rituals —chants, washings, prayers —yet all were entranced. In the late afternoon, a young Indian explained to me the meaning of the burning pyre nearby and reminded me not to take photographs.
Fogg: Glimmers and Glitches in Zion 157 He was of the Brahmin caste and would soon inherit a silk factory on the other side of the river. It was his lot, he said; the untouchables had theirs. I now bring these glimmers and glitches in building an ideal society to the other side of the Sunday School lesson manual. Tomorrow I'm scheduled to teach lesson #22, "Zion Will Yet Arise," and I'm afraid. Afraid that the manual as written will evoke only simplistic rote responses, like my Targeteer mantra: "Zion is a people of one heart and one mind. They dwell in righteousness and have no poor among them." I now know what these words mean —well, at least what the dictionary says they mean. Perhaps that's why I've restructured the lesson into an open discussion, where my class can teach me what they know about Zion. I'll ask them to help me learn to perform those songs of Zion that are in my blood, to help me amplify those joyful notes that beat in my heart but so often fail to echo off my fingertips. I don't expect that we'll discover all the answers tomorrow, but I won't be surprised if an honest discussion confirms what I've found: That Zion is as enticing as a strummed guitar but as arduous as lifting boulders from a riverbed; that Zion is as sweet as plump grapes on the vine but as fleeting as a weathered hand that begs.
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Page 141 and 142: Lamb-Kwon: Because I Was a Sister M
Page 153 and 154: Glimmers and Glitches in Zion Brian
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Page 161 and 162: FICTION Ziontales: An Excerpt Kevin
Page 163 and 164: The Lone and Only Tree Barnhurst: T
Page 165 and 166: Barnhurst: The Lone and Only Tree 1
Page 167 and 168: REVIEWS Reappraisal of a Classic Gr
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Page 179 and 180: INDEX Index to Volume 24, 1991 Auth
Page 181 and 182: E "East Meets West," Wilma Odell, 1
Page 183 and 184: INDEX 181 "The Moral Failures of Op
Page 185 and 186: INDEX 183 Rosenbaum, Karen, "For Me
Page 187: ABOUT THE ARTIST Brian T. Kershisni
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