Mummy's the word

My fourth winter semester has come and gone. Now I have to decide whether I'm going to have a fifth or just leave it at four.

I had to take finals for Phonetics and Phonology and Geology of Planets on Monday and Tuesday. I think I did OK. Then on Wednesday I had the most interesting final I've ever had. Because the Bible is written in Early Modern English, and because at that time the hymn tradition was popular, we had to write hymns based on scriptures. Our final consisted of us getting together and singing everyone's hymns. I did mine from Psalm 119:97-104, to the tune of "Come O Thou King of Kings." I got some good accolades from my professor. She especially liked the line "Thy words are sweeter unto me/ than honey from the honeybee."

And then I was done! I went home to spend a few days in frivolity--playing Super Mario Brothers All-Stars, watching Bewitched and Frankenweenie, and otherwise wasting time.

The most unusual thing I did was yesterday when I went with my parents to the Leonardo museum to see their Mummies of the World exhibition. It was kind of creepily fascinating to look at the gaping holes and think "There once were eyes there, and they looked around and observed the world," or think "That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once" (thanks Hamlet!). The mummies ranged from more than 6,000 years old to only a few hundred (unless you count the animal mummies; some of those were pretty young). Apparently a few hundred years ago, some people figured that since the mummies were so well preserved, there must be something in them that preserved them, so they thought mummies must be healthy! So they used powdered mummies as medicine! Medicinal cannibalism. Creepy.

Then I had to come back to Provo for meetings. Lots of people will be moving in, and I have to get their records pulled in. Hopefully they will do what they're supposed to and create a profile on a helpful website someone in the stake created.

My roommates (or flatmates) in the other bedroom moved out. One of them hated us because he was too good for us. The other was a tarantula--a kind tarantula, but a tarantula that had an insatiable need to rearrange things, that took up 75% of the apartment space and 90% of the fridge space, that got rid of some of our dishes before even moving in yet used tons of dishes, that was particular about cleaning yet made the most messes, that put stuff in our bedroom without asking, that gave away things that didn't belong to him, that owned more stuff than anyone I have ever known.

Most of the stuff in these pictures belongs to him, except for the furniture--and even some of that belongs to him. And this isn't even all of it.

My new roommate Jordan seems to be a good guy. My room roommate Bryton is staying, but he went to Hawaii this week. He had invited me to go several months ago, but I didn't know when I'd be done with finals and I wanted to be back in time for spring. And then I find out he's not seeing any volcanoes, and that makes me feel better about not going. Why on earth would you go to Hawaii and not visit any volcanoes!?

Finalement

There was a lot that happened in the news this week. The Boston Marathon got bombed and the bombers were shot and arrested. A Provo girl went missing and was found. An Elvis impersonator sent poisonous letters and was arrested. Provo announced Google Fiber. A fertilizer plant exploded. All in one week!

But when it comes to me, it wasn't an extremely newsworthy week. Except that it's finals. I overheard someone this week saying, "It's like midterms but without classes!" I find that true. Everyone always stresses about finals, but I find finals week to be perhaps my favorite time of the semester. Sure, we have to study, but we're done with homework, and we have all day to study. It's actually pretty relaxing.

Speaking of marathons, I ran a marathon this week! Never mind that it took five days. I was able to go running on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It was great. I don't know the last time I was able to run four times in a week. And it was perfect running weather, about 50 degrees.

I've already taken my Historical Geology and Old Testament finals. I did OK, but not as well as I should have. I don't think I'm going to get a very good grade in Old Testament. Oh well. I guess that's why they make the disclaimer that religion grades aren't indicators of your spirituality.

I still have to take my finals for Phonetics and Phonology, Geology of Planets, and Early Modern English. I think the Phonetics test will be pretty easy; the hardest thing will be that it is at 7 a.m. tomorrow. The EME final (on Wednesday) just consists of us writing a hymn; that shouldn't be too bad. Geology of Planets is the only one left that I worry about studying enough for.

Next week spring term starts, and it's going to be crazy for me as ward clerk. I've heard that our stake has an 80 percent turnover! I have to get all those records moved in and out! I also have to figure out how to get a famous football star's records out of our ward, since he moved out a while ago.

I guess I will have to, as today's ward program said, "goo forth with faith!"

The weirdest of the weird

Those of you who know me well know one of the strangest quirks of my past.

When I was in high school, I claimed to be a werewolf.

You see, I was a depressed, internally emo teenager. I came to like depressing and scary things, including vampires. (And no, Twilight had nothing to do with this. This started before I had even heard of it. To this day I have never seen or read any Twilight.) At one point I determined that since vampires are fictional, their definition could shift. So I decided that the definition of a vampire could shift to include me. So for a time I claimed to be a vampire.

But then I discovered that according to some legends, when werewolves die they become vampires. So I decided that was me. I was a werewolf, and when I died I would become a vampire.

And I lived it. When there was a full moon, I would hunch over and growl when I was in the moonlight, as though I were turning into a wolf. I truly claimed to be a werewolf with aspirations of becoming a vampire.

My lycanthropy came to an end on my mission when one of my companions ratted me out to my mission president, who strongly discouraged me from being a werewolf. And my wolfish tendencies faded away.

I was just a weird teenager. An incredibly socially awkward teenager. Even more awkward than I am now. That was a long time ago. I don't do that anymore. (Although anyone who has seen my chest or back may still agree that I am a werewolf.)

But I was confronted with my own past this week in a rather creepy fashion. I was in the Wilk restroom when I heard someone awkwardly saying hi. There was a guy standing in the restroom with a creepy smile on his face who kept saying hi. As I was washing my hands, he started talking to me. He told me that he liked making scary faces. "I am a vampire," he said, and said he'd been around for 3,000 years (or something like that).

Considering my own history, I thought about telling him I was a werewolf, since I was reminded of my former claims. But I thought that he wouldn't think I was serious.

I was really creeped out by this guy. I was glad to get out of there. Some people pull pranks and such, but this guy didn't seem like one of those people. He didn't seem quite like a BYU student; he seemed a little out of place, but I can't place what exactly seemed so atypical (besides claiming to be a vampire). My own claims to werewolfism and vampirism were strange, but they were different from this guy in a few key ways. For one thing, I did not volunteer the information to strangers. If I was having a conversation with them, it might come up, but I would not just randomly throw it out to people as one of the first things I told them. Furthermore, I didn't hang out in restrooms and watch people at urinals while revealing my identity. And I was a teenager, and this guy looked a little older. He sure was a weirdo.

I heard of some other weird people this week. At BYU Studies they do poetry contests, and someone submitted a poem for the contest. It was signed "Sister [So and So]" and ended with "In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." The office secretary, two of the main editors, and I collectively took turns reading the poem out loud. The poem started out something like this. I can't remember it exactly, but I know that these are the rhymes she used:
"I was feeling tired and weary-head,
So I decided to go to bed.
I was soon in the land of Nod,
And I found myself before my God." 
The poem was called "The Body Suit." It was about being in the premortal life and having Christ tell us about the suits we would be getting as we came to earth (our office secretary said that the poem should be called "The Birthday Suit"), our bodies. The poem continued quite the same way, with silly rhymes and words being used in nonsensical ways that changed their part of speech (I think she used "worth" as a verb). We had quite the laugh.


Then I mentioned that I knew someone who wrote poetry like that and sent it through email. I pulled up one of her poems, entitled "Bling! of Spring!", and read the beginning of the poem to the others. It kept saying "Bling!" and talked about different things that happen during the spring. They really liked the lines "aeromatic fragrance of familiar" and "tulips of tiny." The secretary said that "Aromatic fragrance of familiar" would be a good name for a rock band. One of the editors proposed another good rock band name, "Bad Poetry." Then they really liked the closing line, "Bling! Bling! Bling! Bling!!!!/ Is God really dead?" Before stepping out of the office, one of the editors said, "Well, you know what they say in poetry, 'Bling bling!'" Since that day, we keep talking about being "weary-head" and "bling bling."

Now, when I write poetry, it inevitably ends up ridiculous. But I decide to run with it and make it ridiculous, like when I rhymed "Chopping the heads off of snakes that are writhing" with "tithing" (see this video). The above poetesses were quite serious about their poems. And in my ridiculousness, I don't change adjectives to nouns or verbs.

I think about how weird Mr. Vampire and the wannabe poetesses and Jan Terri and others are, but then I think, "So what? At least they're more normal than I am." Even though I don't claim to be a vampire (anymore) or submit laughably bad poems or say my r's as w's or many other things, I think that I am the weirdest person on the earth. I even think that somehow I'm not quite human (but not a vampire).

So it surprises me that I, the weirdest person(?) on earth, got the new calling I did today. I have been serving as assistant ward clerk since August, and today I was called, sustained, and set apart as THE ward clerk. Which means that my Sundays in the future will be full of bishopric and ward council meetings, and audits, and tithing settlements, and all sorts of things. I've gotten familiar with membership work, but I know little about finances. I've known that I would get this calling for some time now, but now it's official. I think about other people who have held this position, and I think of them as normal people. So why does a weirdo like me get it? In the body of the church (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-28), I'm content to be a toenail or a chest hair. But ward clerk is a bigger calling. I only hope I can live up to the demands required of the call.

It Passes All My Understanding

I had a series of small coincidences this week. I don't think they were really significant, but they were some coincidences nonetheless.

One of these coincidences came as I was doing my homework about Saturn and its largest moon, Titan. I was looking at a lovely picture of Saturn and its rings, and I thought about a song lyric about Saturn's rings.

And then I realized that the song that was currently playing on my shuffle playlist was that very song. It was almost over, and the Saturn lyric had already passed, but I did find it interesting that the lyric became relevant while the song was playing, even though I wasn't really paying attention to the song.

You may recall that I really like the singer Cherie Call, and this song, “It Passes All My Understanding,” is what introduced me to her.

“He talked about the universe,

He talked about Saturn's rings,

And he said, 'I might be an atheist,

Except for just one thing.

“'It passes all my understanding how it all worked out just right:

The distance that we live from the sun, the stars that shine at night.

We may prove that it was just an accident, but how did it begin?

It passes all my understanding.'”

My testimony has been strengthened this semester, but paradoxically it hasn't been because of my religion class but because of my science classes. As I ponder the mysteries of deep time and space, I am filled with a sense of awe. I remember standing outside one day, looking at the mountains towering in the east, and looking at all the buildings we humans have built, and watching someone drive their van down the road. We as a species have built all these buildings and we have the ability to create vehicles and airplanes and come up with scientific theories for our existence.

Yet 65 million years ago (that's (999,999+1)*65), our ancestors were small mammals that probably burrowed in the ground to survive the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. In the late Triassic, we mammals evolved from reptiles. In the late Mississippian, reptiles evolved from amphibians. In the Devonian, amphibians evolved from fish. Fish date all the way back to the Cambrian. And around three and a half billion years ago (that's (999,999,999+1)*3.5), the only living cells were simple prokaryotes.

As I think about how amazing our world is, and how amazing our bodies are (with the ability to reproduce and heal so easily), and how amazing our minds and species are, I can't fathom it all being by chance. It seems incredible to me that our planet just happened to accrete with the proper materials and the right distance from the sun for water to exist as solid, liquid, and gas. It's incredible that the amino acids just happened to form living cells that were able to reproduce themselves, and then eventually become the complex organisms we are today. It's incredible that we can create models about our very existence. I believe that God must have been responsible for all of it.

Now, I need to establish a few things. First, I do believe in science. I believe that our universe originated with the Big Bang 14 billion years ago. I believe that Earth formed from accretion 4.5 billion years ago, and that we evolved from simpler life forms over hundreds of millions of years. I believe that that was the way God designed it.

Furthermore, I am not trying to vilify those who don't believe in God. I can understand why they don't believe in God, since there is not hard scientific evidence for God. Furthermore, many Christians have stated that certain scientific principles are false, creating the erroneous impression that you must choose between God and science. Because there is so much evidence for science—such as background radiation indicating the Big Bang, and the fossil record indicating evolution—many people choose science. Thus Christians' attempts at promoting their religion end up backfiring.

But I do believe what Alma told Korihor—that all things denote there is a God. The fact that we humans find beauty in mountains and flowers, in enormous trees and sunsets, all made out of the same elements as we are, strengthens my testimony of the existence of God.

In addition to the world's beauty and amazingness, I also believe in God because of how much we do not know. We humans have learned about the various objects in our solar system, and we have sent spacecraft to many of them; in two years, a spacecraft will fly by Pluto. Our spacecraft have even landed on several bodies. Yet for all of our studies, the only body besides Earth on which humans have stepped is our own Moon—and only twelve people have done that (I think), and that hasn't happened since the 1970s. And yet Earth and the Moon are just specks in the solar system; the Sun makes up most of the mass in the solar system, with Jupiter making up most of the little mass that remains. And yet our solar system is a tiny speck in our galaxy, and our galaxy is a tiny speck in the universe.

Given all that we do not know, I don't understand how some can say so confidently there is no God. I can understand if they don't believe, but I don't understand how they can so condescendingly belittle those who do, especially if they say they like to promote love and tolerance. There is so much we don't know, and what we do “know” may be revised as we learn even more.

I believe that there will come a day when we will learn the answers that science has yet to, and perhaps cannot, answer. We will know what caused the mass extinction at the end of the Permian, we will know how the plates of Stegosaurus were arranged, we will know what was there before the Big Bang. I believe that the natural and the supernatural will merge together into one great whole of truth.

But for now, it's my duty to learn what I can, both spiritually and scientifically.