The Trouble with Jack(ie):A Thought Experiment

Note: When dealing with transgender issues and the Church, pronouns are a tricky business. Does one allow the self identification of the person in question to carry more weight than the Church's insistence on the eternal nature of gender regardless of an individual's psychology? Luckily, the BYU Writing Center provides an alternative! "Werf," a genderless pronoun the BYUWC coined in order to avoid the awkward "he or she" construction and it's cousins, seems to be tailor-made for such a situation, and thus will be in use below.

Jackie was presented to werf's proud parents wrapped in a pink blanket. Werf had two X chromosomes, and the usual complement of reproductive organs. As werf grew though, things got more complicated. Werf felt like werf was in the wrong body. Finally, in college, werf bit the bullet and identified as a male, named Jack. Werf underwent breast reduction surgery and took hormone treatments, trading in a brassiere for a husky baritone voice and patchy facial hair.

But the complications were not over for Jack. Werf fell in love with a gay man, and since it was legal in their state, married him. (Note: Jack had no surgical interventions "south of the border," so to speak. Werf still had a uterus, etc.)

Then Jack and werf's husband met the missionaries. They were converted. They wanted to join the Church. As per the most recent iteration of the CHI:

Baptism and confirmation of a person who has already undergone an elective transsexual operation require the approval of the First Presidency. ... However, such persons may not receive the priesthood or a temple recommend.

So if the call were yours to make, what would you do regarding Jack, werf's husband, and their future involvement in the church?

Consider the following:

•According to LDS teachings, Jack is a woman, married to a man. This is not a gay marriage.

•Does breast reduction really count as an "elective transsexual operation"? After all, plenty of LDS women have plastic surgery. If it does count, what is the minimum cup size you can choose and still be considered an Relief Society member?

•What concessions do Jack and werf's husband have to make to enjoy the full benefits of Church participation (barring the issue of Jack's being ordained)? Does Jack need to get implants? Is it enough if Jack dresses in drag (ie: women's clothing) for Church activities? What if werf wears a kilt? Do the hormone treatments have to stop, or is it sufficient to shave regularly (after all, everyone knows at least one RS member that sports a mustache!)? Does Jack need to consider werf's-self female? Since that would be entirely a matter of personal identity, and therefore internal, how could Church officers police that––regardless of the clothing werf wears, how can you tell the difference between Jack(ie)'s regarding werf's-self as a gay man or a straight female?

•For that matter, what about Jack's husband? Does he have to stop considering himself a gay male?

Rules: You don't get to say, "Just follow the Spirit." That's cheating, and for our purposes, like, totally lame. Besides, even LDS teachings suggest that's a cop out (D&C 9:8).

Miscellany

A stupendously talented organist. His registrations are particularly amazing.



* * * * *

After returning from a trip to the homestead, my eldest sister related a story the other day that reminded me once again just how awesome my Dad is. I'm not going to be any more specific––for personal reasons––but I'm just very grateful he's in my life.

* * * * *

I was discussing proxy sealings with the same sister, when suddenly my four-year-old niece piped up with: "MARRYING DEAD PEOPLE IS FROM CORPSE BRIDE!"

Wow.

The more I learn about the universe/crazy physics stuff, the more I am reminded of these lines from the brilliant webcomic A Softer World (caveat lector – occasional strong language/secular humanism):

It freaks me out when I think about how big the universe is.

Just so big and growing bigger, exploding outward constantly in all directions,

so no, I don't care how fast I was going, officer.

A ticket? We're HURTLING THROUGH THE VOID!!

If the creator is anything like the creation, given the weirdness of reality, I suspect god may be less like the dignified, beardy, elderly gentleman of popular imagination, and something more like, say, Tim Burton.

Shouldn't...

Louis C.K. shouldn't be this funny... or this true to life. The reality/honesty of it ought not to be this significant/hilarious. Nevertheless, it is, (both funny and true) the case. Welcome to human existence.

Howl

Note: this post has nothing to do with Allen Ginsberg.
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Work sucked today. I took a suicide call.

The caller was a stranger who heard the commotion and went in to see if everything was alright. It wasn't. The man had been hanging for hours, probably all night, when they found him.

I've heard a lot of screaming and crying at work. It's just part of the everyday soundtrack now. There are different varieties: the snarling rage that attends customer and neighbor disputes, and on the most idiotic pretexts; hysterical cries of physical pain when a pregnant young woman gets beat up by her boyfriend––yet again; the quiet, hollow keening I heard as a woman described the sexual abuse of her little boy.

But, before today, I'd never heard anything like this. You could hear the pattern repeat over and over as family members entered the room for the first time, only to find––in place of their loved one––the cold, rigid obscenity of death. One man could only repeat, again and again, "Oh god, oh god, he did it. Oh god." The sounds were hardly distinguishable as human.

And I don't think I'll ever be able to forget them.

So, just a reminder, if you're suffering, if you're contemplating doing something horrible and irrevocable, please reach out and get help. Because, I can promise you, you don't want to cause the kind of pain necessary to elicit what I heard today.

Stunned

So, I've never particularly liked Ernest L. Wilkinson. This stems from reading some quotes of his that I thought were pretty awful. (Also the BYU building they named after him is fugly.)

Then today, I read this [starts on page 164]. Wowza.

Organizing a student spy ring to keep tabs on professors you don't like? Well, it's not ethical, but... meh. Whatevs.

Lying about it over and over? Not good, but I get it. The flesh is weak.

Intentionally and repeatedly conspiring in order to ensure others––especially the student spies, who were only doing what he told them––took the fall? Throwing his subordinates under the bus? Yeah, that's what makes him a scumbag and a coward.

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HT: BCC Sideblog

Awesome.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

——Paul Krugman

A Thought and a Poem

Just a few ideas for a Sunday morning...

“Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term 'we' or 'us' and at the same time decreases those labeled 'you' or 'them' until that category has no one left in it.”

––Howard Winters, archeologist

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Pioneers
My people were Mormon pioneers.
Is the blood still good?
They stood in awe as truth
Flew by like a dove
And dropped a feather in the West.
Where truth flies you follow
If you are a pioneer.

I have searched the skies
And now and then
Another feather has fallen.
I have packed the handcart again
Packed it with the precious things
And thrown away the rest.

I will sing by the fires at night
Out there on uncharted ground
Where I am my own captain of tens
Where I blow the bugle
Bring myself to morning prayer
Map out the miles
And never know when or where
Or if at all I will finally say,
“This is the place,”

I face the plains
On a good day for walking.
The sun rises
And the mist clears.
I will be all right:
My people were Mormon Pioneers.

––Carol Lynn Pearson

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UPDATE: And here are a few more that I've just been reminded of:

The Mormon Stories Podcast series is über-cool. Check out the most recent offering from the marvelous Joanna Brooks (who also writes great stuff at Religion Dispatches). In her talk she makes reference to Daymon Smith, who has done some brilliant work unpacking and analyzing the history and meaning of "correlation" in the LDS Church. Some introductory blog posts are available from BCC (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9), and his whole dissertation is available here in PDF format. Download it. Read it. Enjoy. It's some of the most fascinating Mormon history stuff I've ever read. Ever. (In other words, if you want to make sense of the modern Church, this is ESSENTIAL reading! Tattoo it upon your soul in letters of fire!)

Variations on a Theme

They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt.

––Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

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Men never do evil as thoroughly or as joyfully as when they do it in the name of God.

––Blaise Pascal, quoted in The Monks of Tibhirine

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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.

––C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock

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RAHAB: Your war can’t be like any other war ever fought. It can’t be glorious, like all the other wars. It should be a war fought sadly, regretfully. You’re killing your brothers and sisters. If my people were attacking you, they wouldn’t see it that way, but you have to, you know better. Maybe this war is necessary; maybe God does require it. It’s still terrible.
JOSHUA: It’s easier, though, to glory in it. To trample every nagging doubt. Easier not to question.
RAHAB: It’s easier to kill me than to let me go.
JOSHUA: True. I thought I wanted it, war and death and violence. I thought I would find it glorious, though all to God’s glory.
RAHAB: But it’s not.
JOSHUA: No. He has a plan for us, and somehow that plan requires not just death and pain, but slaughter.
RAHAB: I don’t understand that either. And I’m frightened for you. People are going to hear of this. Your story is going to be told. Maybe even read about in books, generation after generation. Doesn’t that thought make you shudder? (JOSHUA turns away, disturbed.) It’s just so easy, people justifying to themselves, “Oh, God’s on our side. Oh, those horrible people are vile and vicious. Let’s wipe them all out.” I worry about it, evil done in your name.
JOSHUA: (A shocked pause, then an outburst.) Why do you do this to me? I never even considered that until now.
RAHAB: I knew men. What you’re doing tomorrow is the worst thing in the world. If God requires it, then maybe you have to obey, but it’s awful, and I think it’s going to be done again and again, and I think people are going to excuse themselves by saying God requires it, even when He doesn’t. I think you’re opening a door to horror and viciousness, and I know you have to open it, I’m even helping you open it, but please, while you do God’s will, find room in your heart for doubt.
[...]
JOSHUA: And now I’m filled with doubt, I’m nothing but doubt!
RAHAB: But is that so bad?
JOSHUA: I don’t know.
[...]
RAHAB: So spare me. Spare my ... family. And save yourself. From the worst excesses you think your God requires.

––Eric Samuelsen, The Plan

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Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

––Bertrand Russell

Fugue in the Key of Gaga

Okay, so I have a confession. I know I'm supposed to be a music snob –– and believe me, when it gets right down to it, when it really counts, I am; I can snob it up with the best; I'm snobbish enough to know that the most enjoyable musical performance to watch is the one that's flawless but for a single glaring error... that you can harp on all night! –– but I also happen to be [shaky breath, eyes lowered in shame] a pretty serious Lady Gaga fan. Now that I got that off my chest, I want to share something with you. That something is TEH AWESOME.

But first some preliminaries for the uninitiated. One of Lady Gaga's most famous songs is called Bad Romance, (this is the Glee version, which I've used in lieu of the original because this version doesn't use the word "b*tch"):



Now to the point. If J.S. Bach and Lady Gaga had a love-child, he/she would write this amazingness:



You're welcome.

From The Monks of Tibhirine

Brilliant quote from a great book*:

If you think God is what the different communities believe –– the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Mazdeens, polytheists, and others –– He is that, but also more. If you think and believe what the prophets, saints, and angels profess –– He is that, but He is still more. None of His creatures worship Him in His entirety. No one is an infidel in all the ways relating to God. No one knows all God’s facets. Each of His creatures worships and knows Him in a certain way and is ignorant of Him in others. Error does not exist in this World except in a relative manner. [From the Spiritual Writings of Emir Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri.]

The subject of this book is also given a beautiful, profound film treatment in Of Gods and Men, which is required viewing for anybody who claims to have a soul.

*Very special thanks to Father Peter for sending a copy my way!

A Four-Year-Old's Scriptural Insights

Niece: She's in the water! Get in the boat! [she = little sister, water = rug, boat = couch].

Me: Maybe she's walking on the water like Saint Peter.

Niece: No! She can't do that!

Me: Why not? Saint Peter could.

Niece: That's because Jesus taught him with his miracles.

Me: Why did Jesus teach him how to walk on the water?

Niece: So he wouldn't drown.

Me: Why didn't Jesus just teach him how to swim?

Niece: Jesus didn't know how to swim. His mommy never taught him.

Me: Oh.

Rapture

If you didn't make the cut today (i.e.: you're still on the planet), you might take a moment to read something sublime and astonishing and very, very humbling. Quite a reminder of how difficult it is to forgive, and how reluctant we are to do so––both personally and institutionally.

Personal Revelation II

Well, after yesterday's rather sardonic post (which, no doubt, made me look like a curmudgeonly, hateful S.O.B., and therefore wasn't too far from the truth) I thought something with a rather different tone might be appropriate. In addition, I had a good day at work, helping to resolve some high-stress calls with happy endings, so my mood is brighter.

I'll be brief and unspecific, but this is nevertheless heartfelt, and the result of some serious thought over the past several months.

If you have ever faced an insoluble dilemma, you'll know what a strange, numbing experience it is. Hard thoughts are never far away: This isn't right. Life shouldn't be like this. This doesn't make sense. Nevertheless, this is the dish presented to you. Right, wrong, nonsensical it may be––but it's all yours, so grab a fork.

There are options, of course. There are always options. But in such situations, each choice, any path, is intolerable. Painful. A tragedy. And so, you hope and pray for a miracle. You wait and work and almost hold your breath. Maybe today is the day. Maybe this is the prayer that'll get through the ceiling; you will finally convince the angels of their mistake, and six-winged seraphim will come swooping down to rectify their errors and omissions, bearing coals to burn away what is wrong.

But this isn't the day, and that wasn't the prayer. And you find, ever so slowly, that you have been waiting on the wrong miracle. Priest and Levite have passed you by, but the Samaritan reaches out with his unexpected grace. God has been biding His time, perhaps just waiting for you to finally see the miracle long-prepared: He helps you to select the tragedy you can bear, the suffering you can accept.

It is a strange sort of mercy, but what else are we to expect from "God the surprise."

Personal Revelation

At work today I realized something important about myself. Heretofore only a slowly swelling knot of impressions and glimpses, it finally crystallized. I used to think I was a pretty nice guy. I was wrong.

There is nothing more perfectly suited to make one doubt the value of humanity in general than interacting with them at their most animal level. Being a 911 operator basically means nobody you talk to is having a good day, and everyone you talk to thinks their crisis demands immediate intervention via tax-funded resources (no matter how petty those "crises" might be).

Also, you face the increasingly insistent and obvious fact that your job is working against the general trend of evolution. I am paid to do the species a disservice––I keep people in the gene-pool who, a few generations ago, would likely never have survived long enough to spawn! It's as though I'm shepherding idiot salmon upriver to safety, when by all rights they ought to get eaten by bears! I can almost see Darwin hanging his head in sorrow, like the lachrymose bench-warmer surrounded by zombie politicians in this McNaughton confection. (Empty your stomach before you click the link, Gentle Reader; he's a veritable Michelangelo of nausea-inducing pseudo-religious political kitsch.)

I seem to be channeling Malthus, so I'd better quit. (He is among the least pleasant Georgian Era economists to have as a spirit-guide, but this is what happens when you combine Ouija and The Wealth of Nations.) I'll just sum up with what a co-worker declared today after several long minutes spent trying to tease the most basic information out of an irate and hysterical caller: "Dumb b*tch probably deserved to get punched in the face!"

And I couldn't agree more.

My Testimony of Cheeses

Forgive the blasphemous title, Gentle Reader, but I couldn't resist. While working my way through a sliver of Roquefort this evening, I was reminded just how beautiful gastronomy can be sometimes. Among blue cheeses (and I mean this in a good way) Roquefort is like eating a razor blade. A delicious, life-giving razor blade. However, as gorgeous as it is, one cannot eat it without thinking of that noblest of milk-based marvels: Stilton. Oh, Stilton! What I feel for thee is nearly lust. Where Roquefort is a razor blade, Stilton is a sledgehammer to the face. A sledgehammer of ecstasy. As a British sitcom chef once declared: "Halle-bloody-lujah! Cow and bug in perfect harmony!"

Well, any paean of praise I might compose would fall short of the mark, so I'll leave that task to my betters. Enjoy, then, G.K. Chesterton's own Ode to Stilton:

Stilton, thou shouldst be living at this hour
And so thou art. Nor losest grace thereby;
England has need of thee, and so have I--
She is a Fen. Far as the eye can scour,
League after grassy league from Lincoln tower
To Stilton in the fields, she is a Fen.
Yet this high cheese, by choice of fenland men,
Like a tall green volcano rose in power.
Plain living and long drinking are no more,
And pure religion reading "Household Words",
And sturdy manhood sitting still all day
Shrink, like this cheese that crumbles to its core;
While my digestion, like the House of Lords,
The heaviest burdens on herself doth lay.

Borderlands

Borderlands marks a place of intersection, a liminal space where roads end but new paths begin, where [new] horizons reveal themselves but also where collisions do us harm. I'm a believing, practicing Mormon, and Mormonism is at its most essential a religion that preaches literally endless human possibilities, eternal progression, and growth. But we Mormons face tremendous pressure to conform, to fit in, to obey, to define ourselves in certain quite limited ways. It is, for many, a religious culture of public orthodoxy and quietly whispered rebellion. And so we carve out spaces for ourselves, and we meet in those spaces, and we come out to each other. We come out. Sunstone Magazine is one such space, where we brave the borderlands––this play came in part from reading back issues of Sunstone.

But where to set it? And then I thought of a used car lot, the one commercial space in American culture where prices are contingent; the one place we still bargain. The very act of car buying is also liminal, but also sort of sleazy: the game of salesmanship, the give and take, the creating of quickly disposable narratives strikes me as quintessentially and disreputably American. Cars represent the transcendent open road of Kerouac and Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe. And Dale Earnhardt: go to any Christian bookstore in the South or Midwest, and see the two big displays on competing tables: the vulgar eschatology of Left Behind, and Dale Earnhardt––prints of him being raptured out of this wrecked #3 car. Cars represent mobility and portability and of course the possibility of instant death. And freedom, and life.

So I wrote a play about coming out, about cars and salesmanship, about death and God and sexual desire. And a space, perhaps a mini-van, where we dare to tell ourselves the truth, and where we are appalled to find how little it sets us free.

The foregoing is from the introduction to BYU professor Eric Samuelsen's new play, Borderlands, published in the March 2011 edition of Sunstone Magazine. Get yourself a copy of this play, Gentle Reader. You won't regret it. It's one of the best pieces of Mormon-themed art I've read in a long while.

The premier production of the play, by Salt Lake City's Plan-B Theatre Company, just closed this month, after being forced to extend the run another week to meet the demand created by rave reviews.

Samuelsen continues to be humane, insightful, and a force to be reckoned with.

Christus Resurrexit!

Holy Saturday

The following is from an early Christian sermon, the text actually pre-dates much of the New Testament:

Something strange is happening––there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the Cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: 'My Lord be with you all.' Christ answered him: 'And with your spirit.' He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: 'Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.'

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in Hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in Me and I in you; together we form one person and cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, Whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on My Face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On My back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See My hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once ... stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced My side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. ... My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in Hell. The sword that pierced Me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise. Let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

The Sacrament of Grief: VI

This is Part VI. Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

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Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua... [9]

Vespers begins to wind down, though you might just as well say it approaches the climax, as the brothers sing the doxology and antiphon to the final psalm. The Psalms are generally less familiar to Latter-day Saints. We don’t do much with them. In our Sunday School classes they get a grand total of an hour every four years, and it’s a shame. They are a bit wilder than our usual devotional fare, calling on God to pour out judgment on enemies, sometimes even railing at the Lord. Threaded through the lodes of hope and faith there are fine veins of anger and despair. The Psalms, in short, are emphatically not “correlated.” They have a certain emotional heft and gravitas, they bluntly admit to a messy spiritual reality I feel I could never share over a pulpit. That kind of thing just isn’t done; doubts are to be kept on their shelves in the back until they’ve been resolved, at which point we can bring them out, floating in their sealed and labeled jars, showing them briefly to illustrate a point in a talk or lesson. (It’s the confessional grille again though, isn’t it? It is alienating to see these displays, and know that back at your house the little bastards are still armed with teeth and spines and slow venom.) Perhaps this is why we do not engage the Psalms more fully, resistant as they are to the tidy endings and reliable deus ex machina resolutions we like.

When I began learning psalm chant, I was surprised by the sensation of joining in something larger than myself, even if I was singing alone. I think it was (at least partly) the effect of the unflinching honesty, like the rough hands and lined faces that tell the story of those who daily turned their backs on the rising sun and scorched a trail across a continent. You almost feel like you’ve jumped into a river of prayer that has cascaded down the craggy rockface of centuries. Never is that feeling keener than during the Lord’s Prayer.

While always familiar, I actually only memorized the words of the prayer as a fourteen-year-old. Every summer, my grandparents would hold what they termed a “Mini MTC.” All the grandsons between the ages of 14 and 18 were invited for two weeks of scripture study, farm labor, basic music lessons, talk preparation, Grandma’s home cooking, a little fishing, and the attendant insanity of a herd of teen boys under one roof. I will never understand what possessed two otherwise sane individuals, who had already raised and married-off ten children, who had each served missions in their youth and then two more as a couple, to decide that this was just what they needed to spice their golden years. It must have been a logistical nightmare, and an utterly exhausting ordeal for both of them. And that’s only considering the official schedule; rest assured, there was a whole other list of unsanctioned activities that we engaged in with equal enthusiasm. (One year, eight of us nearly drowned––long story––to say nothing of the eyes and digits we ought to have lost pursuing our aggressive, and fairly successful, firework-cannibalizing/bomb-crafting program.) When we weren’t busy making ourselves generally uninsurable, we also memorized a number of scriptures, among them, the Lord’s Prayer. After those summer sessions, I never really thought much about it much. I certainly did not use it in my personal prayer life.

Now, though, there is something moving about saying the same words that have been formed by so many lips, words passed from parent to child, words whispered at deathbeds, at burials, at weddings, at births. The same words in a thousand different languages, repeated in time of joy or sorrow, in the face of fear or with gratitude for averted disaster, or just to count away the minutes. Words of a long-gone Jewish mystic, or of God Himself, history buzzes with them. When wondering at the Restoration, puzzled by why, of all the searching souls in the world, this uneducated fourteen-year-old should have his (not uncommon) question answered with light and fire, I think perhaps it was also an answer to the billion pleas: “...thy kingdom come...” Even more encouraging, at the beginning of the prayer we find that in spite of all our weakness, in spite of the evil we commit and the evil we allow, Christ is still willing to say with us “Our Father...”

The whole atonement in two words.

___________________

[9] “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done...”