turning

What if our salvation is an all or nothing deal?  Not in a you-have-to-be-perfect-in-order-to-be-saved kind of way.  More like either we're all saved together or none of us is saved.  And not because we're all perfect, but because we learn how to love and accept everyone in all our necessary differences.  What if we can't be saved without those with whom we vehemently disagree?  What if the tension that exists between two opposing points of view is completely necessary and the solution is to simply listen to each other and seek to understand what it means to be in another's shoes.  Who are we to decide that what we perceive as another person's sins are any worse or better than our own?  Maybe it's more about loving unconditionally instead of categorizing and ranking sins.  These excerpts from an essay entitled "Turning" by Dian Saderup that appeared in Dialogue help explain how this might be.

All of us have a story. All of us have a voice. All of us have a vision —and all are limited by our own mortality and the possibility of error. I like to picture the Church as a wheel with Christ as the hub. Each individual life path is a spoke feeding into that hub. We all start our mortal journeys in our own particular places on the rim of the wheel — each with his or her unique strengths and weaknesses. Because of this, though we may be baptized into the strait and narrow way, we each journey through different territory. Different experiences give us various prides, prejudices, perceptions, and testimonies as we progress toward Christ, the central hub. Some spokes lie close to one another; others may be on opposing sides of the central focus. I believe that Joseph Smith actually saw God and that the Church established through him is literally the kingdom laid to prepare the world for the millennial reign of the Savior. Because of this I feel a duty — if not always the disposition — to bear with those of my fellows whom I see, at times, opposite me — to respect the real rigors, perplexities, and triumphs of their unique paths. And I feel to watch for the divine fire that will, in tangible reality, flare now here, now there among us.

The kingdom will go forward, despite our collective differences and failings, and we will all play our several parts: some of us shepherds, some of us followers, some conformists, some dissenters, some critics, some apologists. The wheel will continue to turn, and we may one day find that those spokes which are now on opposing sides of the hub have together created an essential tension — a dynamic balance — between mutually necessary opposites.

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I watched the deacons as they passed the sacrament: young, awkward boys bearing bread and water of whose significance they probably had little understanding.  But did any of us? The trays passed down the pews hand to hand as, one after another, the ward members partook. Each ate and drank with the familiar ritual motion. And it struck me, like a sudden gust of wind on a still night: We all partake of the same loaf, we all drink of the same cup. What right have I to boast? Who am I to judge? Or any of us? It is, after all, by grace we are saved, after we have done all in our halting mortal ways that we are able. That grace seemed to me then the greatest mystery of all. And then I seemed to be looking through clear glass; things were no longer complex, confusing, tangled, and dark but simple and spiritually liberating. Faith — in God and in each other; humility — for our own imperfections and those of our brothers and sisters; endurance -— despite conflict; love — sustained throughout disappointment with our fellows; and gratitude — for God's grace and the human grace we may share with one another: these seemed to be the best gifts we could give or receive.

It was a singular moment of simple clarity of vision. We will live our countless lives, and I believe the wheel that is Christ and his Church will continue to turn until one morning that vision is fully realized. The words of an old Shaker hymn with its lovely melody played over and over in my mind that afternoon:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we are to be;

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed;

To turn, turn will be our delight

Till by turning, turning we come round right.