Introducing the Show and Its Purpose

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories listeners, today I wanted to introduce you again to one of the brightest young minds and most vibrant spirits I've encountered within Mormonism, Ashley Sanders. Some of you will recognize Ashley from a previous Mormon Stories episode. Others might recognize her name as being one of the principal organizers for BYU's Alternative Commencement. Regardless, Ashley has an amazing gift of expression and an ardent passion for social commentary and cultural and political activism within Mormonism. Why am I telling you all of this? In cooperation with Mormon Stories and Sunstone, I am proud to announce that Ashley has decided to launch her own new podcast, patterned at least in part after the NPR program this American Life. This podcast is entitled Project Deseret. While you'll notice that Ashley is still working out a few of the kinks in her audio setup after listening to this episode, I am confident that many of you will agree that this podcast is an amazing piece of work and holds even greater promise. Please check it out and if you enjoy, consider supporting Ashley in one of a couple of ways, either making a small donation to help Ashley pay for her podcast setup costs, including equipment and other things. You can do this by clicking on the Donate button at the top right of the projectdeseret.com website, or you can just leave Ashley a note of encouragement by commenting on her blog projectdeseret.com or by sending her an email directly@projectdeseretmail.com finally, to subscribe to this new podcast, just click the subscribe via Itunes button, also at the top right of the projectdeseret.com website. This will obviously require you to install itunes before you click. Thanks again for your support of this rising young talent within Mormonism. And now, without any further ado, please enjoy this inaugural episode of Project Deseret Podcast with Ashley Sanders. The thank you very much.

What Is the Mormon Aesthetic?

Ashley Sanders [00:02:37] If you have ever Tull painted a Nativity or used a Mormon ad for room decor, you'll want to listen to this show. We're going to be talking about the Mormon aesthetic, what it is, if it exists, and what it should be. Welcome to the Project Deseret podcast, where you can get your daily dose of story, interview and manifesto. Today we hear from a Jesus model, a literature professor, and a Shaker devotee.

Guest [00:03:10] I don't care if the rains are freezer as long as I got that plastic Jesus sitting there on the dashboard of my car Cosmic colors pink and pleasant glows in the dark cause it's iridescent Take it with you when you're traveling far get yourself a sweet Madonna dressed in rhinestones sitting on a Pedestal thou glow Woah driving 90 I ain't scary Long as I got that Virgin Mary sure in me I won't go to hell Hell.

Ashley Sanders [00:04:02] Alexander Pope was a poet with an 18th century kind of problem. He wrote ancient poetry at a time when nobody wanted to read it. What people wanted to read was bad stuff. Romances, truisms, mediocre tales. There was a place for the people who liked these things. It was called Grub street, and it was filled with hacks, the worst of every kind of artist looking to make a quick buck. There were cheapy mags for the cheapy mag reader, dodgy publishers for crooked authors. Pope had an acid pen for these types, and probably a great fear too. After all, Grub street had the power to put Pope permanently out of business. If people wanted chintz, the hacks had it. And for the first time, they had the power to mass produce it. Pope responded to all this how you'd think he would. He devoted his poetry to mocking it, lambasting it, destroying it. He even wrote an essay. He called it the Art of Sinking in Poetry. It was poetry for dummies, a snarling, biting, satirical romp through how not to write. Or if you want a shorter version, it was about kitsch, one of Pope's unforgivable aesthetic sins. What is kitsch then? Among other things, our friend Wikipedia suggests is replicating sublime themes in a trivial context. Confused? Yeah. So it gives you examples. Tea towels with Titan's Last Supper on them, handguns that double as lighters. Makes you wonder what Pope would think of us now. For instance, the Grub street hacks have nothing on catholicshopper.com where a simple click on the right button sends you to the inspirational sports statues page. The statues are cheap, looking about 5 inches high. There are boys playing football, girls in karate chops dance, boys and girls on skis. The thing that makes them inspirational is that Jesus is doing all the sports with them. In the football scene, Jesus is taking a hand off from a ceramic teen quarterback. In the skiing piece, he is huddled together with a bunch of upper class white kids looking strained and awkward with his sandals lashed to some Rossignols. I told my friend about Catholic Chopper. She said that was nothing. She told me to go to Missouri and visit the Precious Moments Chapel. Then we'd talk, she said. So I did visit it online. If you don't remember Precious Moments cartoons, think harder. They're those drawings of doe eyed kids with robes and cherubic smiles and angel wings, imagining the rest will be easy. At least if you've heard of the Sistine Chapel, you know, Michelangelo and whatnot. Precious Moments cartoonist Samuel Butcher had certainly heard of it and thought it was too good an idea not to repeat. And so it is that we have the Precious Moments park in Carthage, Missouri, complete with its own version of the Sistine Chapel on its ceiling. The same rigmarole of creation and temptation goes on, but this time in Precious Moment style with pouting angelic atoms touching the proverbial finger of an over cute God. There is even a hallway dedicated to the Old Testament prophets where sweet lipped little urchins do their best formidable job impressions. Maybe you're laughing right now. Probably Pope is rolling in his shallow grave. But if you're a Mormon, you can't say you're surprised. After all, we have our own legacy of treacle sweet Jesuses, our own host of bad needlepoint. We too have told patent our history. We're what Pope feared. We're kitsch. And what's wrong with that? Is it escapism to paint a world that doesn't exist? Titch opponents would say yes. But looking at the face of someone like Samuel Butcher, it's hard to condemn. You want to say that he is maybe just remarkably sincere. That is until you see the prices in the Precious Moment Superstore

Guest [00:08:05] made a

Guest 2 [00:08:06] house of prostitution

Guest [00:08:09] supposed to be a house of God.

Matt Klein and the Art of Kitsch vs. Sincerity

Ashley Sanders [00:08:29] So this is the story of Matt Klein, a Jesus model caught between kitsch and his sincere place. It is a story of Pharisees outsiders, artistic sin and uncertain redempt. Matt's trip to the Utah State Fair two years ago seemed as unremarkable as Peter going out to fish or Matthew going a taxi. He went for the world's smallest horse or Utah's biggest ball of string. He didn't exactly expect to be called to the ministry.

Speaker E [00:09:11] We had two friends come up to us and say, you've got to check out these paintings that are. They're kind of tacky. And we went and looked at them and they were kind of funny. I mean, I could see why some people like them. I probably wouldn't hang one on my wall, but it was just pictures of Jesus with kids and adults and whoever, I don't know, just different pictures of him with, with kids on his lap or kneeled around him or whatever. And when we were, when we were done looking there, we were just walking off looking at other booths. And the guy that ran the booth, he ran up after me and said, I have to say I had long hair and a beard at the time. He said, hey, has anybody ever told you you look like our Savior? And lots of people had. But anyway, long and short of it is, he said next time I was up in Logan, he'd pay me to come in and he'd take pictures of me. Then, lo and behold, now I'm on people's walls.

Ashley Sanders [00:10:10] Take pictures? But weren't we talking about paintings? Kind of. This is where snobs will want to plug their ears. The man who chased Matt down at the fair is a very different kind of artist. He doesn't paint and he doesn't draw either. He takes photos and makes them into paintings.

Speaker E [00:10:29] He'll take your kids into the studio and pose them how he wants them, posed, you know, kneeling down or sitting on Jesus lap or whatever. And then he'll take pictures of your kids by themselves. And on his computer, he'll superimpose the kids onto this Jesus body that he has saved. And then on top of the Jesus body is my head and my hands. And then he airbrushes them and makes them look like a painting.

Ashley Sanders [00:10:54] Matt's day job was wilderness counseling, which was appropriate. After all, the Bible's best got started on honeycomb and loincloths. Then they'd enter civilization for the reckoning. For Matt, civilization was a park in Logan, Utah. That was where he met the Kaye family for his first Jesus shoot. If he hadn't learned it already. He learned it then. Being Jesus ain't easy.

Speaker E [00:11:19] I'd take an expression and he'd just tell me to change my expressions until he found one he liked. And he said, okay, that's the expression I want. And then he'd tilt my head, you know, first I'd be looking down at like a 45 degree angle to the left. And then I'd slowly turn my head, frame by frame. And so I'd have all these pictures looking, you know, maybe sorrowful or. I don't know, what's a good Christ expression? Just kind of poignant or mournful for. For the souls of people. I don't know. And so I'd have all these pictures looking at a certain angle, and then he tilt my head up and do it again, and then again and then looking up and then he changed, you know, kind of a happier, joyous expression, and go through all these things so that eventually he'd put me in his computer.

Ashley Sanders [00:12:06] You can find the finished products@kpaintings.com where you will find a gallery of the K's best work. Alongside their artistic philosophy, the paintings look ethereal, infused with light in One, a child sits in a brilliant white dress looking up into Jesus face. The landscape looks like watercolor and wisps into the background. You can read the K's philosophy on their About Us page. Says wife Amanda, I love to see the faces of children when they first see themselves with Christ. She claims that the paintings are a way for virtually everyone to see themselves with Christ. Everyone, of course, includes the K family, who has their own picture on the site. They are standing at the end of a rod of iron, looking up into a tree glowing bright with celestial pears while one of their children reaches for the branches. Matt says this is the softer side of K paintings. He says he started with the hard

Speaker E [00:12:59] stuff a while back. When I first did this. A couple months later I decided to look it up and see if I could find myself. And I did find some. But they're different than these pictures that I've seen today. They were more of Book of Mormon. The cities get destroyed. So here is Christ sitting in this rubble with people around him. They were more that type picture. But these ones I'm looking at now are a little kid waiting to get baptized.

Ashley Sanders [00:13:39] Matt is a little disappointed. He thought his look was a little more O Jerusalem.

Speaker E [00:13:45] I just feel like the way I look is a little, kind of disheveled, a little scraggly. So I thought I'd be more of like a realistic, I don't know, dusty, dirty Jesus. Like the real. The real steel deal, after all.

Ashley Sanders [00:14:01] Matt's gritty look even helped him to beat out the K's last Jesus model. Well, at least for the hands and the face. Turns out not everyone can have a Jesus torso.

Speaker E [00:14:12] He had a model that he was using before, but I think he liked me better. The model he used before had a fake beard and it looked fake.

Ashley Sanders [00:14:20] So he kept the torso of the

Speaker F [00:14:22] one guy, but he used you for the hands and the face and the feet.

Speaker E [00:14:26] Yeah. And it's funny because as of this interview, like five minutes before this interview, I actually saw for the first time these pictures on the Internet. And I have a very small body.

Ashley Sanders [00:14:38] But a small body is the least of Matt's problems, at least in terms of kitsch. Let's put it this if you could keep 1k painting a secret from Alexander Pope, it should probably be the prom one.

Speaker E [00:14:50] She's holding my hands and I'm gazing at her and she's looking at the camera. So I'm gazing at the side of her face and she's looking at the camera, smiling. And I'm not quite sure what that picture is. Maybe it's a forgiveness picture.

Ashley Sanders [00:15:08] I asked Matt what Jesus would think of all this, and even though he's posed as him, he doesn't feel comfortable speaking for him. He agrees they are cheesy, but are they harmful? Matt's not so sure.

Speaker E [00:15:21] They're cheesy for sure. But at the same time, I mean, there's so many other things that could replace that. And some of them definitely, I don't know, I don't see it as being any better or worse than like a poster of a pop star or sports figure. At least it's giving you somebody to look up to.

Ashley Sanders [00:15:43] And Matt is the first to admit that no one is perfect. If that were the requirement, he'd be out of a modeling job.

Speaker E [00:15:49] I guess I'm definitely not the most Christ like person. So in a way it's kind of funny knowing that. I don't know. It's like the stories of painters that will seek out the vagabonds or whoever to play the apostles or Jesus, you know, the dregs of society because they look more real. Maybe that's more like me. I'm definitely not a Christlike example. I think if the kids in the paintings knew they were really sitting on the lap of or holding hands with, I don't know, they might not be beaming so much. I don't know.

Ashley Sanders [00:16:26] We're all sinners then against the moral or artistic gods that be. And so what does it all boil down to? Sincerity? Can we all be forgiven if we can smile like Samuel Butcher or reach clumsily for a glowing pear? Or is Pope right? Is this just another selling table in the temple? If Jesus were here, would he fume or would he sit and sup with these, our aesthetic publicans? Maybe there is a real price to kitsch. Maybe it distorts our view of reality, makes life too easy on us. But then again, maybe there is a price to irony and ambiguity as well. Kitsch might be naive, opportunistic, sentimental. But high art can be smug, self indulgent and overwrought. Maybe Alexander Pope is right, maybe he's not. But whatever you think, the Jesus market is paying off in loaves and fishes. Mac got 50 an hour and the paintings cost 400. Mormons might be reminded of a phrase. He never said it would be cheap. He only said it would be worth it. George Handley is a professor of humanities at Brigham Young University. George organized last year's Mormon Scholars in the Humanities conference. I talk with George about revelation, aesthetics and restoration.

Speaker F [00:18:24] This is the famous quote by Spencer W. Kimball from his talk called the Gospel Vision of the Arts. And he says, amongst other things, it has been said that many of the great artists were perverts or moral degenerates. In spite of their immorality, they became

Ashley Sanders [00:18:44] great and celebrated artists.

Speaker F [00:18:45] What could be the result if discovery were made of equal talent in men who were clean and free from the vices and thus entitled to the revelations? And he also says, take a da Vinci or a Michelangelo or a Shakespeare and give him a total knowledge of the plan of the salvation of God and personal revelation and cleanse him, and then take a look at the statues he will carve and the murals and the masterpieces he will produce. And he goes on, and then he talks later about how we need more Mormon Michelangelos, etc.

Ashley Sanders [00:19:13] I first want to know if you

Speaker F [00:19:15] think that with the particularities of the Mormon religion, if this is possible, is it possible to have a Mormon Michelangelo or is that not something that you think is available in our tradition?

Guest 2 [00:19:26] Well, I don't. I don't know anybody who doesn't hope that that's a possibility. I think it's a very appealing call. And I think a lot of people in the church, artists and scholars alike, look at that speech as a great, first of all, a statement of the fact that the arts matter in the gospel and that we need artists to build the kingdom of God. That in itself, I think, is fundamentally important, or one of the reasons why that talk is fundamentally important, and that we shouldn't lose sight of that. I think it has been said that. I think actually it was Hugh Nibley who sort of offered his own. His own corrective, gentle corrective to the vision in saying, well, we shouldn't assume that what President Kimball is calling for is something that can happen overnight. I mean, it took generations and centuries to produce people like Michelangelo or Bach or Shakespeare. So to think that in the short period of time that we've been a church, we could produce something like that, I think is premature. We ought to think of that as something that we're building toward. But I also think that. I mean, I sometimes think now, with the hindsight of 30 years, I think roughly since that talk, the church is much more international. And in another 30 years, another hundred years, the church is going to be much more international than it is now. And if that's the case, then I think the examples that we might even think to emulate would not be only Western European canonical figures. They would be great artists and thinkers from all cultures. And that's sort of the overall trajectory I think Mormon culture is headed toward, and that therefore, we ought to think about what we're building when we're building something that we call Mormon art. But having said that, I do think the tendency to think in terms of uniqueness and in terms of particularity, as Mormon experience and Mormon belief, might dictate. I mean, I'm, for one, committed to writing in creative nonfiction that I've been trying to write as a Mormon. And so I don't want to ever feel that I have to sacrifice the particularity of my experience as a person, as a writer, as any kind of artist. I don't think should have to be expected to do that. But there is this great leap or this great gap between the particularities of Mormon experience and the rest of the world and what the rest of the world understands. In terms of art and in terms of universals of human experience. So we've got to figure out a way to translate those particulars and to speak in a way that makes sense to the broader world around us. And I don't think of that as just merely a kind of translation exercise. And I think a lot of early Mormon writers and Mormon artists have struggled with that in terms of

Mormon Art Between Uniqueness and Universality

Guest [00:22:40] trying to

Guest 2 [00:22:40] explain Mormonism almost anthropologically so that an outsider can get inside. But I actually think one of the things that will aid us in that ultimate goal of achieving great Mormon art will be a transformation of what we think it means to be Mormon. I think the transformation has to be something where we recognize our Mormon ness as part of the broader world culture without sacrificing the particularities of who we are. But we recognize the achievements of other cultures as maybe part of our own. I mean, when I hear. I mean, the other famous quote from a Mormon prophet on this subject, one of them, anyway, is from Brigham Young, where he talks about, all the achievements of the arts belong to Mormonism or all the achievements of the sciences. So all truth belongs to Mormonism. So if that's the case, I don't think that means presumptuously that we come in and say, bach, you were really great, but we're Claiming you now for our own. But it does mean, I think, a recognition that the achievements of Bach belong to the degree that they're truthful, to the degree that they're meaningful, to the degree that they're beautiful. They belong to the kingdom of God. And since I'm interested in building the kingdom of God, I want Bach as part of my culture. And if I in the process, I mean, I'm not a composer, but if I'm an admirer of Bach, and I'm also trying to compose, maybe through my sincere devotion to who Bach was and to all the other great composers who've come before me, I'm also going to sort of discover something new that I can express through my art. I mean, that's what I think TS Eliot is articulating in his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent is that when you get too obsessed with trying to speak uniquely on your own terms, you run the risk of sort of alienating yourself from the very culture that you want to be a part of and be speaking to and from. So you actually have to sort of do it in a paradoxical way, in his mind. And other writers have actually taken this up and in a much more aggressive fashion. Writers from the Caribbean and from Latin America and say, you know, think of tradition as something to cannibalize. Go ahead and devour it, eat it up, you know, really, really absorb it. And you won't run any risk of being an imitator, because when you do that aggressively, you're actually going to find who you really are, instead of being defensive and paranoid about outer influences. And I'm thinking from the point of view of somebody who's studied a lot of post colonial cultural situations, that the most effective response to wanting to express yourself uniquely, I think, is through being totally unafraid of influence and learning from every great master that there might be.

Speaker F [00:25:45] I want to talk more about the second part of Spencer. Wow. But first, since we're on the topic, I want to talk about what you mean when you say a poetics of the Restoration. Specifically. I have a lot of friends who went to BYU and studied to be a Mormon, something a Mormon anthropologist, a Mormon artist. And most of them had crises, at least by their junior year and definitely by their senior year, about whether or not that was even possible and how they would do that. And so I already asked you about whether you thought it was possible. But first, what would it mean to be a Mormon? Fill in the blank. A Mormon anthropologist, a Mormon artist, a Mormon writer, what would the process be?

Guest 2 [00:26:25] Well, Again, I don't want to presume to speak for other people's experiences. So when you mention those terms, Mormon anthropologists, I was just thinking to myself, I have no idea what that means either. Well, I think it's. Well, even that. I think it's safe to say I just never. I mean, my experience is colored by my education, which was not at byu. It was in California, at Stanford and at Berkeley. And I never told myself I want to be a Mormon scholar in the humanities. I mean, I always told myself I want to be a Mormon. And I also always told myself, or at least at a certain point in my life, I want to be a scholar in the human humanities. And I just kept those two things on the stove, cooking. I mean, I just devoted myself to active service in the church. I devoted myself to living the gospel as well as I could. And then I also devoted myself to learning the standards of scholarship that were expected of me in my classes and didn't worry myself about whether or not, as a Mormon, I could accept everything that Michel Foucault or Wittgenstein or some other philosopher was saying, or whether I agreed with everything that T.S. eliot expressed in his poetry. I mean, I certainly was always asking those questions, but in terms of writing a paper, forcing the issue, I just never felt. Felt like I could. I mean, for one, I didn't feel up to the task. I didn't always have answers to a lot of the questions that were running around in my mind. And so there was a kind of suspension of disbelief going on in my secular studies to sort of listen. And I think of it now as. I mean, I don't think at the time I was consciously deciding to do this out of spiritual reasons. But I think of it now as actually sort of what it means to bear all things. When the description of charity is given by Paul or given by Mormon in the Book of Mormon, it's describing a kind of patience with contradiction, an openness to experimenting with ideas, and a recognition that you're sort of playing at ideas. A lot of the times when you're engaged in intellectual or creative activities and that you shouldn't expect that you're sort of going to solve it all. But in the process, over time, I think what starts to happen is you do start to make connections. You do start to gain confidence about what it means to be a Mormon and an artist or and an anthropologist or. And whatever it is that you are. I think it actually should be an honest recognition that as a Mormon who wants to become a writer, or wants to become an anthropologist or wants to become a scholar in the humanities. You have a lot to learn and it's exciting. You have something to contribute as a Mormon, and those contributions will come, those opportunities will come. I just don't think you should rush them. I don't think you should force them prematurely. And to the degree that things don't fit and you're still working them out, let those contradictions be fruitful for you. I think they're actually quite productive tensions. I don't think there's any easy answer to that question. I mean, nobody really knows what it means to be Mormon and to be doing the other things that we're doing. And do they have to be separate things? I suppose there's always going to be a tension and you're always going to feel like you're wearing slightly different hats depending on where you are and who you're talking to. But as long as that doesn't become a kind of schizophrenia or fragmentation of your personality, which I think is possible. And sometimes people get to the point where they can't live with those tensions and so they choose one or the other. And I think that's unfortunate. I think it's most exciting when you can live with those contradictions. I mean, for me, it's. It's really, really been crucial in my life to just stay as close to living the gospel as I can. That just always feels like the most simple, straightforward rule of thumb to follow. I don't pretend to believe that that therefore means, because I'm living the gospel, that everything that goes through my head intellectually must be the gospel truth. Or every insight I have about a novel or every creative impulse I have must be direct revelation. But I think as I patiently wait through the process, I think it was Elder Maxwell who said, don't over sponsor your revelations. Let the Spirit impel your worthy ideas. And I like that as sort of a guiding philosophy to let the really valuable ideas percolate. And they'll eventually be so irresistible you won't be able to shut them up.

Tradition, Revelation, and Cultural Identity

Speaker F [00:31:41] So in terms of the T.S. eliot essay, are you saying that it is everybody's task as a person who eventually will contribute what he or she wishes to contribute to first let this percolation process happen and to steep themselves in literature so they understand what they are continuing? And is that a process that everybody has to go through? Is it a specifically Mormon process?

Guest 2 [00:32:05] I think it applies to everybody. I mean, what he's saying in the end is what makes great art great art is precisely the way in which it participates in a conversation with tradition. Now, some people have looked at that as a rather conservative essay. But what interests me is that some authors, Derek Walcott from the Caribbean in particular, with whom I'm most familiar in this regard, has looked at that essay as sort of a liberation for a writer of African, Dutch and English descent, writing from a small island in the Caribbean that no one considers to be a center of culture by any stretch of the imagination. And he's achieved greatness in literature. And I think he thinks of that achievement as the result of a willingness to participate in a conversation with traditional. Some writers might think of him as having sold out. Other black writers from the Caribbean have criticized him for being too pro European. But I think that's a misunderstanding of what he's accomplished, because what happens is that great art is a dialogue. I think fundamentally what Eliot is underscoring is that being an artist is not being a voice that is uniquely your own. It is participating in a conversation that you have uniquely organized or orchestrated. So you are. Your fingerprints are there. There's no question that you can identify the greatness of T.S. eliot or the greatness of Derek Walcott or of any visual artist in terms of their particular style, but you can't. It would be a mistake to assume that what any one of those artists achieved just happened uniquely in that one time and place, and doesn't owe in a tremendous. Doesn't owe a tremendous debt to what's come before. I mean, Bach came from a long line of composers and a lot of tradition. So it's not as if his unique accomplishments can be separated from that tradition or even the other great Baroque composers of his period. I mean, we have to remember that great art, in other words, is not as uniquely individualistic as both modernism has led us to believe in the 20th century and American culture. We have an obsession with sort of the individual stamp on things. And I think great art really is not so much an expression of the individual as an individual participation in a larger conversation.

Speaker F [00:34:38] My first question, and I'll give them to you a scattershot, and you can answer them how you want. My first question is, how do you then combine your tradition of Mormonism with your tradition as an artist in the artistic community? And then secondly, Mormonism emphasizes revelation, at least as a spiritual way of knowing. How does revelation combine with this painstaking process of finding out what conversation you're participating in? Because of the way that we've been trained rhetorically in the church, because of the way that we Learn to speak and learn to read. We place a lot of emphasis on very sincere, persuasive speaking designed to change the world for the better. And we also place a lot of emphasis on revelation, which some people might interpret as somebody saying, this is the truth. You don't need to know the conversation that went before or is coming. This is what you know. Now, how do you negotiate the Mormon tradition with the larger artistic tradition? And how do you negotiate the celebrated Mormon ways of knowing, such as revelation, with this painstaking process you're describing?

Guest 2 [00:35:42] In terms of the first part, I would say Mormon tradition can mean a lot of different things. I mean, if you're talking about Mormon cultural tradition, it's a pretty short term tradition. I mean, it's 150, 50 plus years old. So it's not like it's this massive body of work like we all know the 20 great Mormon novelists. I mean, I know there are at least 20 great Mormon novelists out there, but it's not as if we've got the kind of tradition to look back on like we do in American literature or in Western literature generally. So there's that problem. I mean, there's sort of the shallowness of the tradition. And I don't mean shallow in the terms of the particular questions that artists are already dealing with. Some of them are extraordinarily profound. But I just mean in terms of the. It's not like we have thousands of years of tradition to draw upon. On the other hand, we are a religion. Even doctrinally speaking, we are a religion that's unique and new, but we're also a religion that believes that we are a restoration. So we're actually sort of laying the claim to being the oldest tradition around. And I think that's really provocative. I think that means we've got tons of access to all kinds of voices that we can consider part of our tradition. I think a lot of what used to be called farms, the Neal Maxwell Institute, a lot of that work going into ancient cultures is a kind of listening to tradition and a recovery of understanding of the past. And I think artists and intellectuals generally can think of all cultures as part of what we might consider Mormon tradition as material to work with and to listen to and to be in dialogue with. So maybe I'm just sort of saying what I said before, but I would just say I think we sometimes forget that Mormon tradition really is an open field because of our doctrinal positions. If we believe we're a restoration of what was lost, then everything along the Way from what we believe to be what was lost or the causes of the loss. All of that is a tradition that we're supposed to be attentive to and knowledgeable of and interested in as far as revelation is concerned. I think there's a lot to be said about that and a lot that I still just don't understand about that process. But I often think of the section 9 in doctrine and Covenants where Oliver Cowdery is. Is chastised for assuming that all he needed to do was ask and the Lord would give it to him. We all know that scripture well, but I don't know that we understand the implications of that in terms of what that implies revelation involves. I think it involves a very active imagination, a very active set of questions that we are interested in and that we are thinking about in terms of. Again, if we're thinking. I mean, we use that scripture in terms of making a decision about where to go to college or something along those lines. But I think it's just as relevant to an artist who wants to know what should I be producing, what kind of art should I produce? And I think that involves a very active set of questions and issues that drive your own imagination. And. And then you present something like that to the Lord in the hope that he will bless what you've done. And I think it's a little bit of a. I guess what I would want to say is that it's a little bit. I get a little uncomfortable. And there have been cases of this, not very many, but cases where Mormon artists will sort of want to claim revelation with regard to their art. And I think that's a little dangerous in part because I think it just sounds like a really good sell to Mormon audiences. You know, people want to. Want to believe that they're buying something that the Lord has approved of and not something that's questionable. But I think most artists feel that they have participated in a co creation of some kind. And so again, I would say maybe it's a process by which we sort out the good for from the bad over time. And we'll become more confident in our ability to identify art that is inspired and art that is less inspired because we've listened patiently to what people are creating. We're a culture that's willing to bear with all things and sort of look at an artist and say, well, I mean, I have lots of friends who are artists and I don't like everything they've produced, but because I know them and respect them and know that they're people of integrity and honest ambition, I listen and patiently observe and try to see if that work changes my idea of what makes something beautiful. And over time, I've become convinced that some of the works that they've produced are truly worthy to continue to be admired over a long time. But we just shouldn't be knee jerking our reaction, I guess, to something that we don't like. I mean, that's maybe a different discussion, but Mikhail Bakhtin says that there's sort of a dual responsibility for the failure of art. And it's both the artist and the community. And the community has to recognize that if you've sort of. If you've ostracized art and you've. And art has become ugly or uninspiring to you, that's partly your fault as a community because you have not been willing to try to listen and try to engage in conversation with art. So art may tend to get more and more alienated from community to the degree that the community is uninterested in listening and bearing other people's stories, bearing other people's burdens.

Speaker F [00:42:07] How do you feel then that Mormons. How good are Mormons at bearing other people's stories? Another way to ask that is what do you believe is the dominant Mormon aesthetic, the mainstream Mormon aesthetic? And what does it say about us as readers, as religious people, as artists,

Guest 2 [00:42:24] or as appreciators of art in 5 seconds or less? That's a huge question. I really think a lot of study has to be done on that very question. I know that we have a lot of attitudes about what the Mormon predominant Mormon aesthetic is, but I'm not always convinced that we're talking about a phenomenon that we really understand or I just don't know how to measure that exactly. I'm not trying to dodge the question, but I would say that it's easy for this kind of conversation to become a conversation about rumor or a self perpetuating woe is me kind of attitude among artists in the church. Having said that, I think most of us recognize that Mormons tend to be very instrumental in their view of the arts. The arts are supposed to be didactic or pedagogical in some way. They're not supposed to be controversial. And to the degree that they're not really overtly religious in content, there's also sort of this. Well, I don't know if that's really all that necessary. And there's also a lot of sentimentality and a lot of Mormon aesthetics. And that I think just has to do with a certain maybe impatience with getting to a confirmation of what we already believe and know or feel. To be true and certain about life and art is really always an investigation and a self questioning about do you know what you thought you knew? And shouldn't you try to think about things in a new way or see things from a new perspective? And that's, you know, that's a prodding that always for every culture, I think is uncomfortable. A lot of culture, I mean, American culture, is certainly guilty of this. We tend to resist the prodding of great artists who are seeing problems or wanting to envision new realities, and we're much more content with the status quo. So I think there's that tendency to want to fall back on what is more comfortable in terms of thinking about it as bearing other people's blood burdens. I really want to believe that Mormons can be, and often are, but can be known as some of the most compassionate people on earth. And compassion, I think, is expressed through a willingness to feel other people's pain. I mean, that is the central meaning of the baptismal covenant. So in that regard, it seems to me, and I try to tell this to students every time they're comparing, confronted with a novel or a painting or a work of art of any kind that doesn't reflect their lived reality, that this is an opportunity to exercise charity. You are to learn how to listen and to feel and to imagine yourself in the position of another person. The artwork is not asking you to become somebody else. Sometimes people think that, and some people do that, and I think that's wrong. That's not aesthetics. I mean, borrowing again from Bakhtin, his understanding is the aesthetic moment. Really, aesthetic activity doesn't begin until after you have fully identified with the subject and then return to yourself. So you have every right to go back to your Mormon ness, to go back to your. Whatever your background is, whatever your culture is, whatever your particularities are, and judge and assess what you've experienced. But if you haven't experienced a profound identification or compassion for the subject at hand, then you haven't done your job. And so to the degree that you then dismiss art as not being very meaningful, if you haven't participated in that kind of thoughtful response, then maybe your judgments are just really flippant. They're not responsible. Or as Bakhtin puts it, they're not answerable. You're not being answerable to art in any sense. And I think we have to learn how to do that. That is an exercise in compassion. Even if it's vicarious or virtual. It's not a real person, but it is learning how to respond to real human experience and human situations. And to the degree that we become good at that, I think we're going to be very good Christians because we know how to feel other people's experiences.

What Mormonism Offers the World Through Art

Speaker F [00:47:08] So what is it that you think Mormonism, once you've gone through this process, has to offer other people?

Guest 2 [00:47:15] That's a great question. We have a rich heritage of doctrinal understandings that I think. I mean, the reason I would say this in cultural terms, I mean, I'm not talking in terms of individual salvation and proper understandings of relationships to God and so on, but in terms of the cultural. Because I think that's what your question is getting at, right? What is the cultural outcome or what's the cultural benefit? I think it's actually what other people will tell us about what we believe that will be the ultimate contribution. Because I think it's so exciting to me. I mean, I never dreamed of the day, and I feel like I've already. I'm already living it, but I never dreamed of the day when I would be teaching Mormon students at byu and I would have in a Latin American humanities class, you know, a good number of students in that class who are from Latin America, who've been members all their lives, who are totally bilingual, and they are pioneers in their own right, in their own cultures, and they have a perspective on what it means to be Mormon that is radically new. Even if it's a continuity of the tradition, it's a revamping, a realigning of perspectives. Well, I think that's how I think of what art does, is it sort of realigns things or grants new perspectives. And so to the degree that these. To the degree that Mormonism shares its culture with the rest of the world, I think they will. To the degree that they are willing to bear our burdens. Right. Or to listen to our stories, I think great things will come of that. In terms of the conversation that ensues, even if independent of whether they become Mormons. You know, I mean, I'm not saying this is necessarily a process of proselyte lighting, but just other thinkers who are aware of the significance of Mormonism and the significance of the profound contributions of someone like Joseph Smith and that they borrow from those contributions in some interesting ways in their thinking and in their art and in their culture. Then you're talking about Mormonism really finally having a conversation with the world that's not merely about doctrine. And again, I don't mean that conversation is insignificant, but it's also about mutual understanding about our places in different places in the world and different cultures in the world.

Speaker F [00:49:48] Can you give me an example of one thing you think that the world is teaching us about what we believe?

Guest 2 [00:49:54] Well, anecdotally, I could say this. I've been involved with discussions about the environment and religion. And that conversation, that professional involvement, started for me when I was teaching at Northern Arizona University, and I had a colleague who was Jewish and was also a scholar of Judaism, but she was intensely interested in Judaism and the environment. And I remember just one day talking to her about. She had actually studied with John Cobb, who was a leading process theologian in California. And so she was very familiar with his views of Christianity and the environment. And as we were talking, everything she kept describing about what John Cobb had done made me realize I needed to read him because he sounded like he was saying things that echoed Mormonism. But when I told her what Mormons believed about the spiritual creation of the earth before the physical creation, that the celestial kingdom was going to be the earth, and the account in the Pearl of Great Price, she was absolutely stunned. And she said, do you know what you have? Are you aware of what you have? Are Mormons aware of what they have? And I said, well, I guess in a. In a certain sense, of course we do, but in terms of maybe the environmental implications, we don't. So it was actually her perspective, hearing my description of our doctrines, that, for me, ignited an enthusiasm for the environmental implications of our doctrines. And I think that. I mean, I've since been involved in several other conversations, some interfaith conversations about religion and the environment. And I feel that that process continues, that I keep learning new things about what I believe just as a result of having a conversation with other cultures in the context of a communal effort to build some new culture together. And I think that's been very valuable.

Mormon Attitudes Toward Art and Religion

Speaker F [00:52:13] I want to end by asking you a few questions that I think reflect some dominant or predominant Mormon attitudes about art and religion. Not in a scoffing way, but I feel like many people I've talked to have sincerely struggled with these questions, and I want to get your perspective on this before we finish. A lot of people I have talked to have said, well, the religious project is very different than the artistic project. The artistic project is about exploration and ambiguity and filling in the holes that aren't taking care of by religion. Religion is about immediate action, about caring for others, and about improving morally. And so a lot of people I've talked to, and I've struggled myself with this question, wonder does religious art have to be pragmatic or didactic? Does it have to make you moral in that immediate action type of sense? Does it have to build Zion in a very literal, direct way, or is there space for ambiguity? Another way to ask that is, in heaven, will there be art?

Guest 2 [00:53:20] Yeah. Boy, I hope so. That's a great question, and I don't know that I'll be able to give a satisfactory answer, but I heard Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Westminster Abbey in London this last year when I was doing study abroad there for byu. And I was so profoundly moved by that piece of music in particular, that he combined, and. I don't know the history of the text, but he combined the use of Scripture with poetic expressions of praise and appreciation for the Scripture. And I thought that was a really profound realization for me that there was a devotion to the Scripture, but there was a willingness to engage in a. I don't know if you could say this was a personal interpretation of the Scripture, but it was a magnification of what the Scriptures meant through this art. The art was faithful to the Scripture, but also idiosyncratic and personal and richly embedded in the personal psychology of Bach himself. For me, what it did was. It was the same doctrine I'd always heard. It wasn't like I heard new doctrine that night that I'd never heard before, but it. It caused me to think again about what I thought I knew and to feel it as if it were new. And I think that is really a great example of the fact that great art. Can cross a lot of these tensions that you're describing. I don't think it always succeeds. And the fact that it doesn't always succeed is. There are a lot of reasons for that. And some of that is maybe you could say a failure of a particular artist, the failure of the community, a misunderstanding about what the intentions of the artist might have been. Those tensions happen all the time. But I just want to say that from the outset, I do believe that it is possible for great art to. To override some of those tensions or to use them productively. I do think maybe it's easier in music for some reason. I think it maybe depends upon what your conception of the pursuit of religious expression might be. Going again, back to the Bach thing, I think that what that implies to me. Why would Bach want to add to the Scripture in that way? I mean, if that's what he was doing or why would he feel the need to say again or to say more than what the Scriptures already say. So from a certain point of view, you could say, well, that's kind of blasphemous that he would have done that. But to me, in my mind, it's a profound tribute to the first experience with the Scripture. So to make it into something even more profound, to preserve and to perpetuate that wonder that he must have felt, contemplating those doctrines of Christ's birth, that, to me suggests that religious experience and religious doctrine do not happen without an experience of tremendous wonder. And you could say, I mean, you used the word ambiguity. And I would suggest that the experience of wonder is an experience of ambiguity. Or at least it may be an experience with a very clearly revealed truth, or it may actually be an experience of revelation where you suddenly feel the truthfulness of something. But for me, every time that's happened in my life, all that does is create more desire in me to want to explore it further. It seems like a new mystery that now I want to plumb the depths of it even more profoundly. So I guess what I'm trying to describe is that religious experience itself, for me, feels very much like aesthetic experience. It's not something I think of as I feel lucky and blessed to be. I don't know if it's temperament or life experiences or what, but I feel that doctrinal things make sense to me in the church. So I don't wrestle, as some people do. I know, over the intellectual questions that might drive some people's quest and experience in the church. That's not to say that I live my life without doubts or without questions or without tensions. I certainly do as a Mormon. But for some reason, I feel a certain amount of peace about following the gospel as it's laid out in the restored gospel. And by doing that, my religious experience doesn't feel as much in tension with my aesthetic experience. That also means, by the way, that I don't feel tension listening to the stories of people inside the church or outside of the church who believe otherwise. Again, I would connect that back to the baptismal covenant. I feel that's part of my responsibility as a Mormon, as a Christian, to hear stories, to bear burdens, to listen patiently, to not jump to quick conclusions. There's so much more I'm going to wish I said about that, but I think that's. I think that's a difficult tension, but I think it's a little bit of. I guess all I want to suggest is that it's a little bit of an overstatement to suggest that religious experience has no ambiguity and art has it all. I mean, there's plenty of art that doesn't have very much ambiguity and there's so much religious tradition. I mean, look, the Western tradition that we've alluded to in this conversation, you know, up until 150 years ago, was primarily sacred. So it was primarily invested in being Christian, overtly. And so it's only a relatively recent development, at least in Western culture, where literature, visual art, music, is now sort of perceived to be entirely in the secular domain and at odds with the sacred. And I think if we go back and borrow from earlier traditions, we ought to recognize that that doesn't even have to be the case. Even Eliot, who was a modernist and went through his intellectual doubts and so on, his art, he finally found a way to build the kingdom with his poetry. His later poetry, I think, is actually a great model for us to think about in terms of how to use art and how to think about ambiguity or to think about tensions in life or gaps or misunderstandings that provoke the desire to want to produce art and how that's part of building the kingdom. I mean, for me, as a committed Latter Day Saint, because I believe in some sort of ultimate restoration of all understanding, every time I feel tension, it makes me want to write a poem. Looking at poetry and learning from art and learning from the humanities is a way for me to wrestle with and reconcile or at least balance some of these tensions that I experience.

Speaker F [01:01:05] So do you believe that a restoration would be a perpetuation of a compassionate tension? Because many people believe in a heaven that is very unambiguous and where things have been resolved, and that is why it's in a desirable place. But. But it sounds like you're saying that this restoration will never be complete in a good way and that it will be a tension always and that heaven will be that kind of tension that good art and good religion are. Is that what you're saying? Partly.

Guest 2 [01:01:39] Well, yeah. I mean, that's a paradox I've never been able to figure out. It's similar to the paradox of eternal progression and just the ideas of. Actually, Wallace Stevens expressed it really profoundly in his poem Sunday Morning, where he says death, he articulates the idea that death is the mother of all beauty. And therefore, presumably as he's sort of wrestling with in that poem, heaven, if there's no death, there's no beauty. Because if there's no sense that something's passing and something's leaving and something's Changing, then there isn't that pain and that yearning to want to preserve it. Or to. To see it in its momentary instantiation. With a certain kind of profound appreciation. I mean, art really is generated by that kind of an experience of transience. So that's a really difficult question. I don't know how that works doctrinally or in terms of celestial culture or anything. But I do think what you're pointing to is the tendency to assume that we do know what all that reconciliation means. And therefore, we want to sort of make that reconciliation happen here. Because ultimately none of us knows what culture is going to be like in heaven. What we do know is what it can be here. And I think the tendency to want to create a culture that is statically celestial. And where everything is reconciled. Is a misunderstanding of what art is. I don't think that's. You know, art is a way of helping us think through the tensions and ambiguities of our lived experience. Without having to choose between two options. That, at the particular moment we're in, in life, don't seem like options we can choose from. Like, we have to find a way to live with certain tensions. I mean, that's. Arguably. That's the very heart of what a metaphor is, right? A metaphor is establishing a relationship between two unlike things. Without collapsing their differences. And it's a meaningful relationship. It's a beautiful relationship. And so, I mean, the other part of that paradox is that you could say, and this is why I think people in the church are a little impatient with art. Is that when you artistically represent attention. And it's so beautifully done. It almost seems to be a suggestion that this is the way things always should be. When that seems to be the argument. That's when people say, wait a minute. If you're representing a situation of challenge in a family life dealing with suicide or something of that nature. It's almost as if you're suggesting that these things should happen. Or these things are part of the way things have to be. And we would want to believe that whatever the situation, whatever tragedy is occurring in art shouldn't have to be. But I think, again, that's a misunderstanding of what art does. I mean, Aristotle pointed out that that can be cathartic, right? If you see something that shouldn't be, but you see it done, represented in a way that preserves those tensions. Your experience will sort of reinforce a desire to want to live in such a way, perhaps, that those things won't happen.

Speaker F [01:04:58] One last question. And it's going to be slightly Redundant. But I'll give you the chance to think of whatever it was you couldn't say before. In the quote at the beginning, Spencer W. Kimball, when he says that most artists were perverts or moral degenerates. And he said, what could be the result if discovery were made of equal talent in men who were clean and free from the vices and thus entitled to revelation? Men who knew the plan of salvation. My question, he says, what kind of sculptures would they carve? And I'm asking it in a different way, maybe slightly skeptical way. Would they have any sculptures to carve if somebody were relatively free from vice, they knew the plan of salvation and they had experienced the joy of the gospel? Could they make any art but devotional art? And what would they say if they did have something to say? Is it valuable?

Guest 2 [01:05:54] Well, I don't know if this is part of what you're asking, but I sense that you're implying, too, that great art comes out of the experience of suffering, maybe suffering over individual sins, but sort of out of the particular experiences. I mean, to give a good example, Caravaggio's one of the greatest painters to have ever lived, and he murdered somebody and apparently just had an unbelievable temper. By the way, President Kimball says it is said that they are perverts. I'm not sure that he's necessarily pointing fingers at all of them, but clearly what he is pointing at is the fact that we should recognize that given the fact that other artists from other cultures, or from our own for that matter, are human beings with flaws, and we should not mistake the achievement with the person. And part of this has to do with our belief that how we live will sort of bear good fruit in our lives. And I don't have any argument with that. I think that's true, but we just don't always understand what that means. Exactly. Nor do we recognize the complexity of what it means to live righteously, for example. I mean, we can follow the commandments and still make lots of mistakes and have lots of blind spots. Spots. And have lots of pride or whatever else is getting in the way of really living as we should. No one is doing that. Exactly. So there's always some distance between what we believe and how we live. And one could argue, and I don't know if I fully buy this argument because I think it has some problems, but one could argue that great art comes out of an experience, of an awareness of that distance between how one is really living and how one wishes one did live, or how society is living and how One wishes that society did live. And that's a great angst and pain that I think does generate a lot of great art. So, again, I think it's fair to ask, but I don't think it's an accurate description to say that because somebody has the restored gospel, they're no longer living with those tensions. They're no longer having to worry about the distance between what they believe and how they live. They're no longer having to live with angst about their sins. You know, I haven't committed the sins that Caravaggio committed, but I certainly am aware of my sins, and they do cause me intense angst and pain, and that is fruitful for me. Artistically, it's not, but I don't think it's a relationship of codependency. It's not like art needs sin in order to be great, and sin needs art in order to compensate for itself. I mean, that's a strange. That's why I say I sort of feel uncomfortable with that kind of an equation, because it seems like a really odd formula for why we need art or why we need culture, because it's as if we're saying we need degeneracy. We just need more of that, and then we'll be doing fine.

Speaker F [01:09:08] I'm just going to give you a chance if you want to say anything that you haven't already said. This is your Mormon manifesto moment. Whatever you want to say about art that you feel like you haven't said, that you want people to consider.

Guest 2 [01:09:20] Well, I guess I think art matters a great deal. I think it is one of the most wonderful ways for me to refine and enhance my spiritual life and my understanding of the gospel, my understanding of what it means to be on this planet at this particular time. And so I can't imagine a gospel culture without the arts, and I can't imagine a gospel culture without non Mormon art. I mean, I think I've said that in a variety of different ways. But as much as I hope for great achievements for Mormon artists, I just hope we don't lose sight of the fact that there's a great number of great thinkers out there that are available to us to help us think better about what we think we're doing as Mormons. And those are people who are overt, you know, Christians or people who don't really have any identifiable religion, or people who actually, in some cases, are atheists. I mean, I've been immensely inspired by the poetry of Pablo Neruda, and I don't think he ever believed in God any day of his life. But I don't see an inconsistency entirely between his vision of the good and mine. And I would even go so far as to say I've learned more about what it means to live meaningfully from him precisely because I encountered somebody in such a different circumstance and with a different set of beliefs as my own. So I think that, simply put, I think to be Mormon means to be intensely invested in both our own unique culture, our tradition, as we were talking about our doctrines, our beliefs and practices, but also intensely interested in the world and intensely engaged in a conversation with the world. And I would wish that I could see evidence of, of that more than I do. But I wouldn't say I'm without hope in terms of where Mormonism is headed. I think there's a lot of reasons to believe that we're headed in the right direction, but there are obviously areas of deep concern. And some of that has to do with our tendency to equate a Mormon religion with American culture, to allow American commercialism to dictate how we live and what we value. And that is reflected in the kinds of things that we put on our walls and how we, how we decorate our homes and how we dress and, you know, how we build buildings and so on. I mean, I just, I just, I think we're overrun too much by the state, the contemporary cultural environment that we're in, to the degree that our understanding of our own cultural tradition or our own religion is more and more narrow and less and less connected to,

John Dehlin [01:12:29] or

Guest 2 [01:12:30] less and less on a trajectory towards building another culture. I mean, I think that's what's fascinating to think about in terms of Building the Kingdom of God is that that involves. And again, I alluded to T.S. eliot earlier and I'm not remembering the title of one of my favorite poems by him, but he talks about Building the Kingdom of God is just as much the work of a poet as it is a stonemason. And that we should remember that we have that responsibility and that opportunity and that kind of art that maybe is less identified as immediately useful to the building of the kingdom in terms of crafts, of building buildings and so on. But writing poems, painting paintings that aren't necessarily going on, murals in temples or whatever, but painting an individual portrait, or painting a landscape, or writing a poem, a. About an experience in the mountains, or writing a novel about day to day living in Utah Valley, whatever it might be. That too, I think, is building a sensibility and building a world orientation that is extremely important. So I guess it's just to underscore the fundamental importance that President Kimball gave to the arts that I don't think has been revoked by anybody since. And so I think we still have that responsibility to value the arts as much as we can. And that can be in a variety of ways that I think if we let our conscience speak to us, we'll know what that means. It may mean reaching out to individuals that we know of who are artists who are struggling to feel like they belong in the community and not in a patronizing way, but actually to sort of let them become a part of your life and let them teach you something. Or, you know, being a patron of museums and complaining to the movie theaters that they bring in the lousiest movies and that we want something that's more beneficial to our souls and to our minds and to our spirits than pablum. Just bad entertainment, cheap entertainment. I think that's the real battle we need to fight is against the crass commercialism of our entertainment driven culture.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [01:14:58] Dog heaven, well that's where I'm gonna go it's where the wild winds blow down you can take it slow. Dog heaven don't you worry about your sin, you're gonna fit right in.

Mormon Manifesto: A Listener Perspective

Video Clip 1 [01:15:28] Welcome to Mormon Manifesto, your regular kid chance to shout your opinion on whatever topic. Today we hear from Elizabeth Pinborough. Elizabeth Elizabeth is obsessed with Shakers. I do not say this mildly. I say this in the she made all her co workers do a traditional Shaker dance to celebrate Mother Ann Lee's

Video Clip 1 [01:15:48] birthday kind of way.

Video Clip 1 [01:15:50] Today, Elizabeth will manifest about simplicity, Shakers and the good life.

Video Clip 1 [01:16:03] My angels sing the clues and the devils too. Don't worry, you'll know what to end.

Video Clip 1 [01:16:46] One of the most memorable pictures of my Grandma Pinborough was taken in the last week of her life. A few days after the picture was taken, Grandma suffered a stroke on Labor Day. She passed away four days later. In the picture, Grandma is standing in front of her house next to a card table. The card table is neatly covered with a red and white checked tablecloth. On the table she has placed luscious homegrown zucchini and tomatoes. Next to the vegetables, she has placed a hand lettered cardboard sign that says free vegetables. Help yourself. She smiles as though to say, I knew you would be hungry. Come and have something from my garden and my heart. This picture impressed me as a child and continues to influence me today. It is a visual illustration of true giving Grandma gave of herself and her substance without expecting any payment or acknowledgment in return, she merely offered what few vegetables she had to whoever would take them. And she was there to personally offer her produce to passers by. As I have grown older, I have begun to realize how profound this gesture was. Her gesture was a gesture of peace, of dedication to living in harmony with others and with nature. I believe that such peaceful gestures constitute beautiful living. I've come to admire people like my grandma, people who make peaceful gestures daily and who, as a result, live very beautiful lives. This peaceful and beautiful living is exemplified by a dwindling American religious sect called the Shakers. Shakers believe in simple communal living. They share their substance with each other and give freely to others in need. During the Civil War, Kentucky Shakers fed and sheltered soldiers from both the Confederate and Union armies. The Shakers peaceful gestures match their beautiful lives. Shakers have created some of the most beautiful architecture and furniture in American history. I think the true giving, honestly understood and faithfully practiced, can transform the world. Violence toward others and selfishness fade as we see those around us as our brothers and sisters, as humans in need of what we have to offer. My grandma taught me the power of gifts through her example, and I don't think there is any greater gift we can give to the world.

Video Clip 1 [01:19:07] Sam,

Video Clip 1 [01:19:35] You have just listened to the Project Deseret podcast. This conversation was made possible by Sunstone magazine. And now for the dot coms. Read and subscribe to the magazine at sunstoneonline.com listen to the podcast at projectdeseret.com or email me at sanders.ashleymail.com with story, ideas, manifestos and the like. Happydeseret.

Video Clip 1 [01:20:00] Com.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.