There’s a story many of us have heard: Once upon a time, we were born broken—sinful and degenerate. There was a chasm separating us from perfection. From our first breath, we fell from grace. Adam’s sin was stamped on us from the beginning. Our only hope was Jesus, who would impute His righteousness to us, snatching us from the inevitable trajectory of our own corrupt natures.

It’s the story of Original Sin. Though officially we Latter-day Saints reject the story, in practice we keep returning to it. We retell it with a twist. We agree it’s not Adam’s fault, but we affirm that it is ours: We’re still not good enough, and God will keep punishing us and letting us suffer until we are. He sends trials to purify and perfect us. Jesus will eventually wrangle us into starched shirts and straight pews, but it will require a lot of work on our part. We must put our back into it, and maybe—just maybe we’ll reach the heavenly destination.

The story needs a revision. A truer telling. Something like this: Once upon a time, we were born whole—magnificent and holy. As literal children of God, we were fashioned with the spark of divinity. Perfect and pure. As we grew, at times we forgot that we were “trailing clouds of glory,” as William Wordsworth wrote, and we rejected the gift of grace because we were convinced that we could do it on our own. In our suffering, we forgot both who we were and whose we were. We built up walls to separate us from God and each other. But Jesus intervened, sitting with us until we remembered—and sharing His life with us once we did.

The philosopher Adam Miller tells a version of this story that he calls Original Grace, and he juxtaposes it against the story of Original Sin. This version begins with grace, not sin. Miller writes, “My goal in life is not to prove that I will eventually deserve some future grace or salvation that God is currently withholding. Rather, my single Christian obligation is to stop rejecting the grace and redemption that God is already and continually willing into being.” Wherever we are right now, at our core, we are bathed in grace. Once we discover this, we discover ourselves and simultaneously discover God. You could call this process healing, repentance, or gracing. It’s all the same story.

Indulge me for a moment in a fish tale. Once upon a time, long before duck-billed platypuses or dinosaurs, a funny-looking fish was born. His pectoral fins were not sleek and aerodynamic like those of his brothers and sisters. They were stout and awkward, like beefy stumps jutting from his sides. Though he tried to keep up with his friends, he was often picked last for games and was the butt of all the jokes.

Mama told him he was special—that the stars and moon shone extra bright the night he was born. She called him her little slice of heaven; she’d take his face in her fins, her penetrating gaze reaching deep into his soul, and tell him he was magnificent. But he didn’t understand what she meant, and he retreated to the shadows.

The venerated church elders took Mama aside to speculate as to why God would give her dear child this trial. Perhaps Mama had forgotten to say her prayers. Maybe she harbored an unholy pride and this was her penance.

Or maybe the boy was to blame. Maybe he had sinned before he came to the ocean—he was a fence-sitter or a half-hearted, less-than-valiant milquetoast soldier, and this was the penalty. Maybe repentance was the antidote. Or perhaps, the elders speculated, there was no cure and the boy had been sent to teach everyone patience and compassion.

Mama listened, but she quietly rejected the idea of a God who would punish her beautiful boy. Deep down, she knew God was love. Both her heart and head told her that God was not vindictive or punitive. And she knew her boy was more than an object lesson; her little slice of heaven was magnificent.

The fish physician, weighed down by age, wisdom, and spectacles, took Mama aside. Perhaps, he suggested, he could design some prosthetics to facilitate easier movement through the water—amputate the aberrant fins and design some artificial ones that could attach to and be controlled by her son’s nervous system. (Technology was shockingly quite advanced.)

Before Mama had a chance to respond, an up-and-coming fish genetic engineer who had overheard the conversation broke in. Perhaps, the engineer suggested, she could sequence the boy’s DNA and locate the anomalous pattern. She could repair the mutant DNA in some of the boy’s select stem cells, allowing the mended cells the opportunity to grow new fish-appropriate fins. (Indeed, medical technology was tremendously cutting edge.)

At this point, the church elders, physician, and genetic engineer all began to quarrel about the best way to put the boy into their fish-shaped mold—to build the template and cookie cutter to get this boy to rights. They pulled out their graphs and scriptures, their white boards, arguments, and data.

Meanwhile, from the corner of her eye, Mama saw her boy venturing toward the edge of the world where the water, sky, and land all converged. It was dusk, and the quarreling faded into the background.

Mama swam to her son and then stopped, catching her breath. In awe, she watched as her boy dug his strong fins into the sand, propelling himself forward. She surfaced just in time to see him pull himself onto the land. His unique-looking fins, the object of ridicule and speculation, were now a superpower. All along, he had been a fish with legs. A whole new world awaited, ready for exploration. The stars and moon shone extra bright. He looked back at Mama and smiled.

They knew. He was magnificent.

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Chapter 12: Returning

I think we can learn something from a Christmas cactus that sits above my kitchen sink. The plant was given to me by my husband’s mother. She has a gift with plants and can coax beauty out of even the most persnickety varieties. The Christmas cactus, thankfully, is quite forgiving—convenient because my not-so-green thumb is often in need of forgiveness.

Around Christmas each year, the plant explodes in a spray of flowers that roughly resemble hummingbirds—some red, some pink, as if the plant can’t quite pin down its favorite color. The leaves are thick, no doubt designed for water conservation, with spiked edges, and are linked in chains like a toddler’s pop- together beads.

These leaves, like other plants, exhibit phototropism wherein they turn their faces toward the light. The cells in the stems that are farthest from the light elongate in response to hormones, thus propelling those nearest to the light to move even closer. The cells also strategically rearrange their chloroplasts—the suncatchers of the cell. Like little domesticates, the chloroplasts harvest and bottle sunshine for future energy use. I can sympathize with their need for sun, especially during the cold of Christmas.

Every now and then, I turn my plant 180 degrees and watch over the next couple days as the leaves, slightly disoriented, gradually reorient themselves toward the light. Unlike radical butterfly transformations, this one is soft. Like a newborn rooting for her mother’s breast, it’s a subtle yearning, the slowest of stretching, the most understated movement.

This movement reminds me of repentance, which comes from the Greek metanoia, meaning a change of heart and mind—a conversion, a healing, a turning, a spiritual overhaul. The word repentance unfortunately carries with it a lot of baggage such as penance, shame, and the idea that heaven must be earned, so the word is a mixed bag. But the reality it points to is worth noticing.

Gracing, I believe, is this reality. Repentance is the journey of turning to God again and again. We forget to join with God, and then we remember. We think we are right, and then we realize we are wrong. We stop living a lie. We stop telling ourselves stories that keep us stuck. We live with ego-driven, narrow vision, and then, as with a camera lens, we zoom out and see that God was present all along. Our experience and story changes. God offers alternate views, relationships, healings, and ways of being and seeing—over and over.

But through a softer lens, we also heal from our accumulated wounds. With Jesus, people who are blind see. People who are deaf hear. People who are lost are found. The lines between sin and suffering blur, but the solutions continually return us to grace. With Jesus, we wake to a new story and to the reality of a world embedded in grace. Of recognizing,

Oh, this person is my brother.
Oh, God was always here.
Oh, this hope is bigger than my pain.
Oh, there are colors and light and beauty I didn’t 
        see while living a solitary, detached life.

Every time we return and are transformed, we are saved. Every time we forget, we are damned—literally stuck, because there is no salvation without God.

We are saved by grace. Full stop. This is no cheap grace—a mere saving proclamation that we need Jesus regardless of any work we do. Rather, we are saved by grace because the freely given gift envelops us like air and does what it was designed to do.

Grace saves; work doesn’t. Work does other things. Knives cut and soap cleans. Work gets things done and displays God’s love. And grace saves.

Living without God, on the other hand, is the state of what the Book of Mormon calls “the natural man.” I don’t mean natural as in earthy and without makeup or artificial dyes, but as in “without God,” as Alma teaches (Alma 41:11). This supposedly “natural” condition is a false front that we put on, wherein we are an enemy to God simply because we have placed ourselves apart from God, in opposition, and not on the same team. This way of being is faulty, guarded with plates of armor. It’s not how we were designed to function, and it’s contrary to the nature of God and the nature of who we are. We weren’t created to flourish as a branch dismembered from its root.

In life, we tend to toggle between these different ways of being—with God and without. Far from God, we become stuck in suffering and sin. Returning home, we re-enter God’s embrace.

Reminiscent of my Christmas cactus, a similarly subtle movement once happened between me and my brother. Prior to this, dysfunction had plagued me and my siblings for various reasons—contention and hurt between various members that had occasionally turned into painfully ugly confrontations. People had been flat-out rotten to each other.

My family of six siblings and parents all live within an hour of me, so we have traditionally held family dinners to connect. Because of all the tension, though, I’d been hesitant to host.

One brother’s personal life had been brutal, including a painful divorce and ongoing court battles. He understandably felt like much of his life was out of his control and was therefore extremely sensitive to others exerting control over him. His strong political views were also highly alert to any element of control. We’d had disagreements on that topic. And his fuse seemed short.

In finally making the leap to host dinner, I wanted to minimize the potential for conflict. So, I added structure to the event. Rather than our typical pattern of eating followed by unstructured play and conversation, I planned a show-and-tell where all the cousins and adults could participate. I planned to show my Johnny Apple peeler that cores, peels, and cuts apples into long, curly, slices. I emailed the invitation to my family. My brother responded with his intention to share “what’s really going on in the world”—not-so-subtle code for his contentious politics.

Oh boy. So, then I sent a clarifying email about the structure of show-and-tell—a limited amount of time so everyone could have a turn, with the event structured more as a presentation than a discussion. I also requested that if anyone wanted to have a confrontational or argumentative conversation with anyone else in the family, that they please take it away from the group.

My brother responded that he wouldn’t be coming—that I was censoring and controlling. He essentially argued that my approach would deepen divides. In suppressing free speech, I would be putting up barriers to future resolutions. I was allowing underlying issues to fester, ignoring deeply rooted problems, and putting on a façade of fake niceness. In retrospect, I see that his concern was like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s concept of negative peace in which there was an absence of tension in place of positive peace in which there was the presence of understanding.

At this point, I buckled down with renewed intensity, engaging in one hundred-plus back-and-forth emails with my brother and other family members. I was blown away, but not entirely surprised, that my request to take confrontation elsewhere was deemed so objectionable. At one point, I used an analogy that I hoped would connect with my music-composing brother.

Music, I said, needs both structure and flexibility. The structure includes a certain key signature, time signature, and other conventions. But if the music becomes too structured, it lacks room to breathe, becoming flat and boring. There needs to be balance. In creating an event, I said, too much flexibility leads to mayhem while too much structure stifles spontaneous expression. For the family dinner, I was leaning toward more structure; he wanted more flexibility.

Finally, we compromised and agreed that debates or disagreements with civility, respect, and good faith were okay, but contentious arguments that indulged hostility or contempt would have to be moved elsewhere. No topics would be off-limits, and my brother reasserted that he’d share his controversial topic for show-and-tell.

Sunday evening came. I was apprehensive. But when my brother came over, something in the air had changed. We hugged, and I noticed a black paperback about the composer Johann Sebastian Bach in his hand. My brother might be Bach’s biggest fan, and in my family, no one disputes Bach’s greatness. I don’t know what happened between our email exchange and the event, but for show-and-tell my brother completely dropped his plan and instead shared a story about Bach once taking a random melody given to him by the King of Prussia and turning it into an interesting piece of music with various opposing yet complementary lines of harmony. My brother demonstrated on the piano.

At the end of a pleasant evening, right before my brother left, I explained how because I had been a violinist, I was used to playing the melody. I didn’t have a good sense of how chords worked together in the interplay of melody and harmony, but I had great respect for composers who did.

“Would you like me to show you some basics?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He sat on the piano bench, and I sat with him. He showed me the structure for the easiest key: the tonic chord, up a fifth to the dominant chord, and down a fifth to the subdominant chord.

“These are your basic chords,” he explained, and with that structure in place he demonstrated moving up and down the keyboard, introducing novelties and flexibility, and always remembering and returning to the tonic chord—your home.

So, there we were. Two middle-aged adults, old enough that we were both going gray, sitting on a piano bench. Just me and my big brother.

He taught me how to combine structure and flexibility to create harmony. Mostly I saw flying fingers in a lot of different places, and I couldn’t quite keep track. But there was a pinprick of clarity in the chaos. I was figuring it out. Maybe there’s hope for us both.

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Hannah Packard Crowther has an MS degree in biological science education from Brigham Young University and a twenty-plus year vocation as a full-time mom. She aspires to become a theologian, a poet, or a beachcomber. Maybe all three.

Art by J. Kirk Richards.

What if we’ve figured God all wrong? We die and hesitantly head up the cloud escalator with a pit in our stomachs. We expect to greet the keeper of points, the tallier of wrongs, the rule giver and taskmaster of the sky. All solemn and serious. Loving, sure, but in the way of a gray-suited, sallow-faced elderly relative who is glad you came but was also slightly disappointed you haven’t brought cake.

What if the whole tone was different? Upbeat. A hearty clap on the back and a bear hug. What if He told you a joke? What if the expected He was a She—a Mother in Heaven when you thought you’d be meeting a Father? And what if She laughed with you—one of those minutes-long belly laughs where you can hardly breathe and you snort a little, and when you try to talk it comes out in high-pitched squeaks and tears ooze out of the corners of your eyes?

The God who weeps must also be the God who laughs, or what kind of heaven would it be?

I imagine that when you got to heaven, you’d run around the gardens picking flowers that sported colors you’d never seen before. And there’d be music—not just peaceful harp playing, but also jazz, and dare we suppose, something entirely new? Because surely there’d have been some collaboration for over a decade now between Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Cash, Johann Sebastian Bach, a Peruvian pan flute player, and an African djembe star.

Likely there’d be a party waiting, a quinceañera of sorts where you were the tiara-wearing guest of honor, thrown by God and all your past relatives and friends. Like the prodigal son, you’d be welcomed with a ring for your hand, shoes for your feet, and a fatted calf (though maybe the fatted calf would be vegetarian because do you eat meat in heaven?). You’d get to dive into the misty clouds, do a little teleporting and flying—yes, flying for sure! It would all be a breath of rainforest-fresh air, and you’d feel more awake and alive than you’d ever felt before.

Does this all feel a bit absurd? Blasphemous? Perhaps.

But the prodigal son returning to his father did return to a party, not a somber evaluation. And there are far more New Testament references to the kingdom of God as a feast, a wedding, or a party than there are to a courtroom or judgment. How did we miss that? If we envision God with one range of emotion, one way of being, our relationship is limited. In exploring the idea of God, playing with mystery and the unknown, we find space to expand our relationship. These imaginative, creative roamings seem to constitute a kind of theology.

Some approaches to religion feel more doctrinally grounded, telling us the tenets, creeds, boundaries, and limits of our faith. There’s an important place for coloring inside the lines this way. By excluding what our faith is not, having clear doctrine helps us understand what it is.

In contrast, an imaginative theology opens us to the possibilities—it’s exploratory rather than defined. It takes the unknown of our faith and imagines what it might look like. My attempt, anyway, involves playing with ideas rather than nailing down definitions. And while there is a place for scripts and clearly lit covenant paths, this theology points to something more like open-ended canvases and covenant gardens, just waiting for our imaginative creativity.

In the context of science, the astronomer Carl Sagan once asked,

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.”

Sagan was on to something. When I look at science, culture, other perspectives, and other life experiences, alongside my own, I conclude that God must be big. God creates, is surprised, weeps, laughs, and has found endless ways to love. God meets us in houses of worship, in dark alleys, universities, prisons, mountains, hospitals, offices, and playgrounds. We shrink God when we insist on never coloring outside the lines. In the words of the genie in Disney’s Aladdin: “Phenomenal cosmic powers! . . . itty bitty living space.”

In expanding our view of God, we can remember that Jesus said we should become like little children. I don’t think this is just because children are often humble, teachable, and forgiving—though of course, those are critical attributes. They also play; they engage with the world without an agenda. Rather than fixating on the past or planning for the future, they interact with the present just as it is. They show us a form of mindful grace that’s creative, open-ended, and free.

Adults tend to have an end in mind—wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes to eat from the next day, instead of stretching the warm sudsy bubbles between your palms. Rake leaves to clear the lawn, instead of flinging leaves into the air to watch the bright yellow somersaulting in the sun. Get dressed in the morning because that is the socially acceptable thing to do, instead of dressing up with your fluffy tutu, alligator socks, and superhero cape because why on earth would you not?

Imagine a pot. Adults learn to put the pot on the stove, add some broth, vegetables, beans, and spices, then bring it all to a boil. They let it simmer to make a hearty soup. It’s useful and nourishing. It’s a very good use for a pot.

Now put that same pot into the hands of a three-year-old. Doing some open-ended exploratory play, suddenly the cooking utensil transforms into a knight’s helmet to defend against a fire-breathing dragon. Or it becomes a drum—the wooden spoon sending a tink, tink, tink throughout the house. Or the pot could be a bowl, used to collect dried leaves, potato bugs, dandelion heads, milkweed stems, and rocks from the backyard. Turned upside down, it could be a table for a Mr. Potato Head and Superman tea party. Or a stool for reaching high shelves. It could be a marble swirler, a Play-Doh flattener, a boat in the tub, a stuffed-bunny hiding place, a yelling echo chamber, or a frame for a rudimentary rubber band guitar.

There are so many possibilities!

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Chapter 10: Resting

In addition to waking and sleeping, life is rhythms: working and resting, uphill and downhill, inhaling and exhaling, contracting and relaxing. It’s tempting to see the downhills simply as the recharge—as if we were a cell phone plugged into the wall at night, merely gearing up for the tasks ahead. But I believe there’s more to it than that.

Turning off allows other mechanisms to work in us than what we’d initiate from our very useful but sometimes stubborn, self-concerned, and imperceptive brains. There’s much that can be “accomplished” while detaching and emptying. In Annie Dillard’s words, “Experiencing the presence purely is being emptied and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.”

It can be tempting to see this kind of rest as laziness or inefficiency. And it’s true that within the Church much good is accomplished through service and busyness. But if we forget to inhale, it can quickly lead to burnout and a sense of meaningless nothings. Our work can feel hollow when the sound of our running feet drowns out the still, small voice that guides our steps.

Meditation as rest is one area I have been exploring. One form is contemplative prayer, which was foundational for early Christian saints. In many strains of Christianity, including within the Latter-day Saint faith, this practice has largely been forgotten. But those who recognize its value are increasingly reviving it and sharing it across boundaries of faith traditions.

The contrast between contemplative prayer and my own prayer practice reveals that the speaking part of my prayer often feels like a gallop: Thank-you-for-this-day. Please-bless-the-food-that-it-will-nourish-and-strengthen-our-bodies. Please-bless-us-to-get-home-safely. It’s lots of petitions, lots of to-dos, and lots of hurry.

Contemplative prayer instead feels like the inhaling breath that precedes each exhale—the listening to the speaking of prayer. Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and prolific writer, teaches that when Jesus reminds us to go to our closets to pray, He is inviting us into that inner room of the contemplative heart where we commune with God. In prayer, thoughts will appear unbidden, our agendas and plans pulling us away from this sanctuary. Our busy brains have jobs to do. But these intrusions, he says, are like boats floating down a river.

Notice them, Keating invites. Let them float by. Then gently return. Consent to God’s presence and His work within you. Much like sleep, something happens when we’re in this restful state, apart from any work we initiate. Our only effort is simply a decision to participate.

As I understand it, the practice involves being completely receptive and embracing an intention to be open and present to human-divine relationship—a restful existence in communion. We stand with our empty cup ready to be filled. Rest in be-ing rather than do-ing. “Centering prayer,” writes Keating,

is a way of awakening to the reality in which we are immersed. We rarely think of the air we breathe, yet it is in us and around us all the time. In similar fashion, the presence of God penetrates us, is all around us, is always embracing us. Our awareness, unfortunately, is not awake to that dimension of reality.

The South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “I am learning to shut up more in the presence of God.” As opposed to a “shopping list” prayer, the Archbishop said he was “trying to grow in just being there. Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter, you are just there in front of the fire, and you don’t have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.”

Spiritual and secular resources abound to teach these practices. Various forms of stillness, relaxation, calmness, meditation, contemplation, and mindfulness have emerged from both the East and West. In taking baby steps, I notice gracing marked by a stillness that spills out into my daily activities in unexpected ways.

Once, for example, in the middle of a busy day, I was practicing a violin piece to perform at church. It was a beautiful number: “Savior, Redeemer of my Soul.” Alongside inspiring lyrics and talented musicians, I wanted to prepare well. But it was not an easy violin part. The notes approached dog-whistle pitch—very high with numerous ledger lines past the standard treble staff. And sometimes it felt like a Hail Mary pass to launch my finger up the string and land on the correct note.

As I concentrated and drilled, at one point I noticed a tension in my hand and shoulders. In what felt instinctive due to my meditation practice, the observation of tension initiated an easing in my shoulders and a softening of my fingering hand. My bowing arm relaxed—still firm but in a way which allowed the bow to glide smoothly rather than rigidly against the strings. The tone of the notes became clearer and more resonant. The quality of the music shifted ever so slightly. It was subtle, almost imperceptible.

The moment of noticing the tension and the subsequent relaxing felt so familiar and so much like meditation that I am sure the one must have influenced the other. The substance and practice of rest improved my work, though I could not have anticipated that occurring with the violin. I wondered how many other unexpected places this quality might manifest.

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Hannah Packard Crowther has an MS degree in biological science education from Brigham Young University and a twenty-plus year vocation as a full-time mom. She aspires to become a theologian, a poet, or a beachcomber. Maybe all three.

Art by J. Kirk Richards.

My father’s mother—my Grandma Florence—was a spunky, short, Italian woman who wore purple floral muumuus and smelled of Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion perfume. She pulled her thick, black hair, streaked with white, loosely back with bobby pins.

With a signature raspy laugh, she always made sure we had plenty to eat. She taught me that the foundation of cooking was olive oil, celery, onion, and garlic. She always knew the latest scoop about everyone in the family and was quick to send a little money to any she deemed in need.

An only child, she grew up near Hollywood, California. She was part of a large extended Italian family, whom I picture in my mind like Toula’s family from My Big Fat Greek Wedding—large, loud, food loving, and very invested in each other. But their strong tradition of family became increasingly fractured after they immigrated to America.

When Flo was only four years old, her father, Henry, left the family for another woman. On his way out, he told his wife, Esther, that he had met a woman in Portland and would be back if the woman wasn’t pregnant. He borrowed money from extended family, which he never repaid, and even took Flo’s piggy bank with him.

He never returned.

Flo and Esther were left shattered, with nothing. Flo remembered her mother holding her in bed, weeping and saying, “Why did he leave us? What did I do? How am I going to take care of you?”

Esther started a small restaurant, and the mother and daughter lived in an attached bedroom and bathroom in the back. She worked long days serving roast and potatoes, burgers and sandwiches. When her responsibilities became too much, Flo went to live with extended family while Esther paid for her care and continued to serve customers. She’d complain to Flo about “that no-good father of yours.”

Fast forward many years to after her mother had passed on, my Grandma Flo learned that her father had married the other woman and had raised three children with her. He stayed with his new family until his death. At one point, Flo was able to meet her half-sister, who showed her photos of their father with his new family—happy pictures like those celebrating birthday parties. Later, my elderly grandma, still wounded from her childhood loss, said, “I don’t know why he didn’t love me too.”

As her own life was nearing its end, her son—my uncle—reminded my grandma that she would be meeting her father on the other side. He put a picture of her father on the wall, in hopes that his image would facilitate forgiveness. Early on, my grandma would walk by his picture, point her finger at her dad and give him a what for.

“Bad boy!” she would scold.

As time went on, she softened ever so slightly. While never becoming particularly warm towards him, she at least became less hostile.

I wonder how the heavenly family reunion played out.

I wonder if there is still unfinished work.

Recently I did the unthinkable. I performed temple ordinance work for Beulah Elizabeth Schultz—the other woman who stole Henry’s heart away from my family. I pushed aside the sense of betrayal, as if I was condoning the harm to my family in which she was complicit. But I also had a meaningful sacred experience and felt like the work I was doing was holy—extending an olive branch of reconciliation between Florence, Esther, Henry, Beulah, and my entire family.

I have little clarity on what the whole temple experience means or what realities it brings about. But there is something powerful in the idea that remembering our dead—their suffering, their grief, their sin, their pain, their hopes, their missed opportunities—is in some way redemptive when we seek to make right what was wrong. In remembering Beulah, though we aren’t closely related, maybe I am offering something on behalf of my family that my grandma is no longer able to give but which Beulah can nonetheless receive. And maybe it’s not a betrayal on my part if I am simultaneously reaching for divine healing for all those harmed by this act of betrayal, both among the living and the dead. Maybe I am participating in something redemptive not just for Beulah, but also for my grandma.

I believe that is what Jesus’s grace offers. And as I seek to live in similitude of Him, I believe He asks no less of me.

Redemption may be another manifestation of gracing in that it facilitates not only divine forgiveness but also divine healing. Maybe all this points to Jesus—as everything seems to do—as a wholemaker who reconnects us with God, offering unmerited gifts which facilitate healing for both receivers and givers of wrongs.

The priest Gregory Boyle, who worked for years with gang members in Los Angeles, highlighted this paradoxical redemptive love. He recalled the “precocious, funny, bold” Betito, only twelve years old, who was gunned down by two young men that Boyle also knew. The bullet pierced one side of Betito’s abdomen and exited the other, and he died soon after a valiant surgical effort. How do I respond, Boyle asked in his grief, when “kids I love [kill] kids I love”? The faces of both victims and victimizers plead for compassion.

I love Terryl and Fiona Givens’s insight that sodzo, the Greek word translated as saviorin the scriptures, is elsewhere translated as healer. With equal linguistic justification, we could call Jesus not only the Savior of the World, but also the Healer of the World—healer of both hard hearts and broken hearts, of abusers and abused.

There is a need for redemption on both sides. In doing temple work, it may seem that our efforts are one-sided. Those with power are often those with records. The powerless often lack paper trails. We have records for the victors and those who were privileged enough to be buried in marked graves, while the slaves, the poor, and those who never bore children often had no one to record their names. Surely that’s unjust. And in linking the human family through temple work, we run up against these incriminating realities.

Given this historical void, we could understandably give up on the temple project. But we’re a stubborn people. My hunch is that someday, when science catches up to the spirit of the temple project, we will be able to read our family records not just from birth certificates, marriage records, and tombstones, but from our bodies’ own genetic code. And whether we learn about our family in this way or another, there’s more to the project than linking names and checking off ordinances. We’re linking souls. We’re welding hearts from both sides of the veil and both sides of painful conflicts. In this effort, my overarching desire is in gathering the entire human family home to each other and to God.

That’s the fundamental work.

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Chapter 8: Wrestling

My own dark night of the soul has frequently reared its ugly head in the form of chronic illness. It began just shy of twenty years ago, when I awoke at night to use the bathroom and discovered it hurt to walk. It was as if someone had been hammering the tops of my feet in the night while I slept—some deranged little elf on a sadistic mission.

In the morning and as the day progressed, the pain would dissipate. But at night, the phantom would return for his nightly poundings. It was bizarre, because I couldn’t trace the pain to an injury and because it didn’t follow the predictable pattern of pain (more intense, then less, then gone). Rather, it would come and go, sometimes reappearing in a different location, sometimes increasing rather than decreasing in intensity. It was haphazard and unsettling.

Since the diagnostic protocol looked not just at lab tests or imaging but at a full clinical picture over time, it took several years to receive the eventual diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease that frequently affects joints. In autoimmune disease, the immune system is in overdrive. It detects pollen—attack! Peanuts—attack! Any number of other benign triggers—attack! It may even be bored due to our hypersanitized world—attack! Like other autoimmune diseases, RA warps the immune system into a trigger-happy mania that causes collateral damage as it fights against nonexistent enemies. Detonating its arsenal against vague shadows on the wall, it leaves a broken battleground in its wake—my body. And there is no cure.

In addition to my feet, other joints became affected in the initial years—fingers, wrists, knees, and shoulders. I remember those cursed little onesie snaps during my son’s nighttime diaper changes—how absurdly painful it was to pinch those snaps closed. Or lifting my arms slowly above my head to put on a shirt, wincing as my shoulders burned. Or doorknobs—those brilliant little inventions that keep young toddlers out of forbidden areas, but which at times required one hand bracing the other to ease the twisting in my throbbing wrist.

In addition to pain, there is frequently a dragging fatigue associated with autoimmune illness—as if you have ankle and arm weights as you walk through a sea of Jell-O wherever you go. Simple tasks take longer. They’re harder. It feels like the day after you’ve had the flu, when you’re achy and beat, but every day is Groundhog Day, and that day never ends.

Of course, the whole disease ebbs and flows, and some months or years are better than others. In my case, it has warped into a distinct but related autoimmune disease called scleroderma. Whereas rheumatoid arthritis frequently attacks joints, scleroderma targets the skin. The name scleroderma means “thick skin,” which describes the thickened skin that affects many sufferers. But like rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma causes pain and fatigue. It can also attack inner organs, becoming life-threatening if it decides to battle it out with organs such as the heart or lungs. It’s a confusing disease both because of its varied manifestations and its uncertain course.

Lately, it’s my muscles that cause me the most pain. I don’t know if it’s due to a different disease altogether, a side effect from medication, or an unusual manifestation of my growing list of diagnoses. It seems like a paradoxical response to pain, but many days there is nothing I would like more than that little maniacal elf to come back with his hammer and pound my muscles into oblivion. Wrestling with chronic disease often means wrestling with a language problem. I can’t go to my doctor and say it hurts here, and then point to my whole body. I can’t say, please doc, just send me to someone who will squeeze the deep aching from my arms and legs like toothpaste. Please just fix me.

Sometimes, in my dark nights, I pray God would swoop down and take me for a heavenly field trip—not a permanent one, mind you, but just a brief breather. Just for one day.

It’s tempting to wallow in an immature self-pity—turning into myself, becoming caged with only my own suffering. But this is not who I want to be. Another inclination is to downplay my own suffering because many have it so much worse: horrific abuse, loneliness, betrayal, slavery, gnawing hunger, and violent war. Yet I also know this isn’t a suffering Olympics. There are no medals for the most-wounded winners. Comparisons are counterproductive. I’m simply hoping to carry my own cross well, seeking to live a life imbued with grace.

And so, my question resurfaces. Where is God in the burrows of the gruesome, ugly tarantula hawk wasps? Where is God in chronic illness? Where is grace in the painful, distressing, soul-wrenching dark nights?

One of the unique challenges of chronic illness is its ambiguity. Most days, a person lives in a confusing no-man’s-land between health and sickness. It’s often a blurry place of not-quite-sick and not-quite-well.

I may show up to an evening event looking seemingly fine, but I’m able to be there because I have carefully and intentionally rationed my energy during the day. My cross is invisible. I almost never use a wheelchair; I don’t limp or carry a visible marker like an oxygen mask or feeding tube. But I also don’t run or even stand for long, nor do I spend long days meandering through shopping malls or amusement parks.

I’m careful—measured. Even my movements are rationed. There’s a kind of carefree recklessness even in something as benign as conversation—a gesticulation of the arms, large inflections of the voice, an unpredictable expressiveness of the face. But I’ve found that even my conversation reflects this careful conservation. I stay closer to my body. The words are rationed and the movements smaller, slower, and more intentional.

The therapist and multiple-sclerosis sufferer Robert Shuman observed of his progressing illness that “once-simple choices about trips to the city or walks downtown become intensive, hypervigilant, body-scanning, problem-solving matters.” I can relate. Is there a place to sit down? Can I politely excuse myself from a conversation without it being socially awkward? What is my body needing right now—have I demanded too much of it, stretched it too far? Is my body so bossy that it will prevent me from being sufficiently focused on the social task at hand? What will this cost me later today? Tomorrow?

A few years ago, I was at a low point. Daily I felt drained from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning. Even showering felt like a monumental task—so big. So heavy. One day I switched a load of laundry in the basement and then lay down on the floor because it was too much effort to walk the half flight of stairs to the family room. Sitting upright at the table for a meal was sometimes too much. There was no relief in sight, and I had no idea how I could be a mother and wife, let alone a fulfilled human being in this body that was absolutely void of vitality. I had nothing.

My sense of spiritual connection was also at an all-time low. The gospel message was “turn to Jesus. He will not forsake you.” But the invitation seemed suddenly inane, nonsensical. I felt forsaken. Utterly abandoned and forgotten by God. The chasm between what God offered and what I believed Him to be capable of offering was entirely too wide, and I found myself stranded in the gap. My arms stretched wide between two truths—the attentive God I trusted, and the absent God I experienced.

There in the dry, parched no-man’s-land was my wrestle. I was Jacob, wrestling with the messenger and crying, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” (Gen. 32:26). I was Sarah, abandoned between promises of a numberless posterity and the reality of an empty womb (Gen. 17:16).

And time stretched on. So much time.

In hunger, I turned anew to all the things that were supposed to help me discover Jesus. My scripture study was not orderly or methodical. I clung to the words of Isaiah, which became almost a mantra for me:

For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with ever- lasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. (Isa. 54:7–8)

I read the promises over and over, though deep down I wondered if the words were just pretty poetry and nothing more.

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour. (Isa. 43:2–3)

My prayers were urgent, though they were largely without words. I stumbled along, doing what I could to care for myself and my family, but feeling very much a forsaken failure. My attentive husband literally carried me when I needed it and, along with family and friends, sat with me, cleaned our house, brought me dinner, and pointed me to hope. I listened to Christian hymns on repeat:

“When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul!”

I practiced daily for grace. Absent experiences of grace, I clung to practices out of desperation.

“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that thou art
Thou my best thought, by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, thy presence, my light.”

One day—I can point to the exact place I stood in my bedroom, next to my Great-Grandma Esther’s hand-me-down jewelry box—I was pondering some scriptural examples of unflinching faith, including the biblical Esther, who declared, “if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). There were also Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who knew that God had the ability to deliver them from the fiery furnace, but also knew that if He didn't, they would remain faithful (Dan. 3:17–18); and Mary, who with absolute submission said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

And I asked myself, if I got to the point where I simply could not find the divine communion and spiritual healing I sought, what would I do? Would I give up on the Lord? Would I turn elsewhere?

Almost as I thought this, in a holy, perhaps mystical experience which I can only call gracing, I knew that I would never turn my back on the Lord. It was simultaneously a decision, a feeling, a direction, and a command. It was also a scripture and a hymn:

Even if I live my whole life and never find the peace I seek, I will not give up on the Lord. I will wait upon Him however long it takes.

On the surface, these words barely touch the significance of the experience for me; I admit they seem wholly unextraordinary. But the experience itself was fire. It was unclear what part of this lightning bolt stemmed from me and what part from God. In some ways, its intensity convinced me that it could not have emerged from my weak self, which was entirely too fickle and frail for such bold declarations. But in another sense, this conviction seemed to stem from the most authentic part of myself— the spiritual core that knew God intimately, even through veiled vision.

But also, in a strange inexplicable way, the demarcation between me and God seemed irrelevant. In communion with God, we were one and the same—indistinguishable. It was a duet, a dance, a covenant: a gift given and a gift received, a promise made and a promise trusted. It wasn’t submission; it was collaboration and union.

After the long wrestle, like Jacob, I had prevailed (Gen. 32:28). Like Sarah, I laughed (Gen. 18:12). I had been given power from God and all was new.

Isaiah had promised that the rivers would not overflow me (Isa. 43:2), and this moment felt like a gasp for air after having been held underwater for too long. It was an awareness of the feathers being lifted ever so slightly—pointing me towards the enveloping air that was present the whole time, embracing me in grace.

Over the next few months, my physical health improved and became more manageable. Though it continues to challenge me, and I still have bad days and months, the spiritual epiphany continues to center me when I feel the waters gathering blackness. When I pass through the waters, I remember: the Lord will be with me. And when I flounder in the gap between my hope and my experience, where it’s too dark to see, I wrestle.

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Hannah Packard Crowther has an MS degree in biological science education from Brigham Young University and a twenty-plus year vocation as a full-time mom. She aspires to become a theologian, a poet, or a beachcomber. Maybe all three.

Art by J. Kirk Richards.

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In trying to understand the interplay between grace and works, I’ve found several analogies to be helpful. And while all the various analogies have strengths, they also fall short. The trick, I believe, is to use the analogies to point us to what’s behind the curtain. Each story tells a portion of the big picture. And we can’t get so enmeshed in the analogy as to blind us to the parts the analogy legitimately fails to illuminate.

At the start of this book, I tried to explain grace through an analogy of a bird desperately trying to fly by relying only on its own resources before discovering it could simply harness the wind. My flight analogy has illuminated for me the now-ness of grace, the immediate access that’s readily available for those who seek it. It shows how heaven and grace can break through to the physical, ordinary moments of life. Grace is not simply reserved for a future paradise.

The analogy also highlights for me the participatory element of grace. Grace is not something that just happens to us—being changed by a godly magic wand from a sinner to a saint. It does not merely involve our acceptance of a divine gift. Rather, it’s something in which we play a part, and our participation helps to transform us.

One of my analogy’s weaknesses, however, is that it misses the relational, familial aspect of grace—a parent and child, the one who loves and the beloved. I’m certain time and experience will uncover many other aspects of grace which it fails to illuminate, but for now, it is pointing me to something for which I’m reaching.

A few other analogies of grace have schooled my understanding, and for that I am grateful. And despite their weaknesses, some of which are significant and have led whole religious communities to errant views of grace, each has some value.

One analogy is a courtroom: We stand accused in a court of law. Our accuser is Satan, emboldened by a litany of our offenses. God the Father is the judge. Jesus is the advocate who pleads our case.

In this scenario, Jesus understands us. He pleads on our behalf. As the first letter of John explains it, Jesus is the propitiation for our sins—meaning that He appeases God’s demands, helping us to regain favor with God (1 John 2:2).

But this doesn’t mean that the effects of our weakness and sin are ignored, the real harm we caused to the people around us simply swept under the rug. To extend the courtroom analogy, there would be plaintiffs in the case against us, with the faces of our families and neighbors. They’d read their impact statements to the court. In very concrete ways, the people around us have been hurt by our actions and inactions.

As a mother, if I’m constantly pardoning one child’s poor treatment of another, there may be mercy for the oppressor but no relief for the oppressed. And if God is constantly letting us off the hook in response to Christ’s pleas, there is no justice, and the pain of our victims remains. Considering both the oppressor and the oppressed is paramount; and the process involves healing as well as pardoning.

Additionally, the work of grace does not somehow mean that Jesus is mercy personified while the Father is justice personified, and that the two are diametrically opposed to each other. After all, Jesus said that “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). This is not a “good cop, bad cop” scenario. Instead, God the Father and Jesus are one.

We should resist relegating the Father to the position of one who has set an unattainably high bar for us while Jesus covertly moves it down. Why would the Father set up elaborate systems to meet His unattainable standards, when He could just change the standards? It would be like the parents of one of my students, who, knowing that their daughter didn’t earn their parentally imposed minimum “B,” advocated for mercy by requesting from me a change in her grade instead of changing their own rule.

But still, Jesus offers an unearned gift. That part of the analogy, at least, seems true.

A second analogy, popular among Latter-day Saints, comes from the religious scholar Stephen Robinson. More than anything, Robinson’s daughter wanted a bike. After saving all her pennies, she had a mere sixty-one cents. And while shopping for bicycles and seeing the price tags, she despaired at ever having enough. Her father replied, “I’ll tell you what. You give me everything you’ve got and a hug and a kiss, and the bike is yours”—to which she gratefully complied.

This analogy depicts Christ as a loving father who will step in and make up the difference for us after we’ve contributed as much as we can. Again, I believe this analogy points to truth: Jesus gives a gift we could not attain on our own. The gift brings us joy in the here and now.

But if we become too mired in the analogy, we may think that given enough time and effort, we could earn our bike or earn our exaltation. This is simply not the case. Perfection in our works does not make grace irrelevant, just as a bird flapping its wings flawlessly does not make air irrelevant.

Also, the analogy hints that Christ expects us to do some work first, and then grace will intervene. But Stephen Robinson himself acknowledges this is not how grace works. It is not simply the “cherry on top,” the godly power that kicks in once we’ve run ourselves ragged. Or, as Adam Miller puts it, grace is “not God’s backup plan.” It’s not “plan B.”

As a gift, grace is not offered merely after our inadequate attempts, but despite them. The divine gift opens a space for us to participate.

A third analogy comes from another religious scholar, Brad Wilcox. In this analogy, a mother pays the full price of piano lessons for her child. She doesn’t expect the child to pay her back, nor does she expect the child to pay the teacher back. Rather, she expects the child to practice—to use the gift of piano lessons to become a proficient musician. It’s not a tit-for-tat transaction; it’s appreciation and implementation of a gift.

In this view, grace is God’s gift to help us become rather than to be repaired; it’s about learning rather than earning. Practicing godliness is less about punishment or payment and more about change—about growing into godliness.

This is a needed contribution to the collection. It points to the relationship between the one who loves and the beloved. And like the parable of the bicycle, it moves beyond grace as a mere remedy for shortfall. However, it doesn’t point to the now-ness of grace. As something to attain in the future, it fails to illuminate the grace in the present—the analogy would need to somehow show the joy inherent in playing the amateur “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” but it doesn’t.

But as an analogy, we know it isn’t a catch-all.

And finally, a fourth analogy comes from the Latter-day Saint physician and author Sam Brown. Brown specializes in managing blood pressure. He points out that if blood pressure is critically high, doctors will attempt to expand a patient’s blood vessels and decrease fluid levels. On the other hand, if blood pressure is critically low, treatment seeks to narrow blood vessels and increase fluid levels. The cure depends very much on the diagnosis.

Similarly, Brown suggests that because the gospel includes messages of both grace and works, in determining which message to give, we first need to diagnose the problem. Since “grace raises blood pressure, while works lowers it,” we’d better be astute. Is the hearer trying to earn their place with God? Are they constantly feeling they are not enough? Do they struggle with scrupulosity? Perhaps they need a message of grace.

On the other hand, are they sitting back, avoiding actions that would make positive changes in their lives and bring them and their families greater joy? Are they being lazy? Rebellious? Maybe they need a message of works.

Brown’s analogy points to the idea that we be aware of the learner. If the defendant in the courtroom analogy was hiding his sins, or the daughter in the bicycle analogy was spoiled and demanding, some other response would have been warranted. Teaching calls for helping individual learners who are in very different states of mind. Grace is as much about the receiver as it is about the giver.

Yet, unlike the other analogies, Brown’s doesn’t point to the idea that grace is a gift. It’s the weakness of an analogy, but also its strength, in that it pointedly illuminates one particular portion of the sometimes-ethereal whole.

There is a real danger that analogies may misdirect us; we should be aware of how they may point us to things that aren’t real. But there is also a risk in getting so bogged down by the weaknesses of these analogies that we fail to see the very relevant and transformative truths they are pointing to.

Also, there is a risk that these analogies stay abstract and academic. For me, none of them mean anything when severed from my family on the lawn. Truth doesn’t exist as some high-floating abstraction outside my relationships and experiences. Only in the midst of my concrete realities do these teachings illuminate the expansive picture of grace. I need relatable teachings; I’m like my children in that way.

One day, for example, I witnessed a moment that served as a poignant analogy. It was Sunday, and I watched an elderly blind woman walk into my sister’s church, white cane in hand, muscular German Shepherd at her side. The huge dog walked with almost comically tiny steps, pausing and matching the woman’s slow gait—step . . . step . . . curb . . . step. Certainly, the dog could work as a vicious guard dog or an active mountain rescue dog. But following its training, this powerful, magnificent creature patiently provided eyes to a woman unable to see.

And once in the chapel, the woman took her place at the organ, no sheet music present, and played hymns from memory. She was a musician gifted and empowered by grace in the form of a trusted dog resting at her side. It was a vivid display of both the condescension and empowerment of grace. This image lifts me in the face of my own weakness and points me to grace.

Jesus, as the master pointer-to-truth, taught both the New Testament Sermon on the Mount and the Book of Mormon Sermon at the Temple.

In my life, He sits with me on the grass, surrounded by my family and friends, inviting me to see the ways grace emerges from life’s stickiness.

He points me to significant details and the developing big picture.

He tells me stories, with analogies and parables, using examples that are familiar to me.

He challenges my thinking and doing—“it has been said this, but I say this.”

And He guides me in making connections, as all good teaching does.

It’s the Sermon on the Lawn—our daily lesson.

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Chapter 6: Attending

When I was a little girl, I remember visiting my grandparents’ church in California, and someone at the pulpit expressed gratitude for belonging to the only true church. I was confused, because I thought my church—the brown brick building next door to my house with the detached steeple that I liked to ride my bike around—was the only true church. Surely, we couldn’t both be right.

It took a few years for my cognitive dissonance to dissipate. Time and greater perspective moved me to see church as more than just the physical building I attended, and that sufficed for a while—until it didn’t.

As an adult, the boundaries of church and the body of Christ have expanded even more. In my exposure to other perspectives and ways of being, through friends and books, I’ve seen people outside my faith tradition just as earnestly seeking grace as those within my faith. These people aren’t necessarily deluded or deceived or lost, any more than I am. And working to align my public faith with my private one challenges me to live with integrity, honoring both my faith and my doubt. Sometimes that means making both my faith and doubt more visible.

For now, I’ve landed on the body of Christ as being not just those who belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nor even those who call themselves Christians. Rather, the body of Christ includes all those to whom Jesus extends His grace, and all those who receive it—all those who participate in gracing. He likely extends His grace to those who call Him by another name, or those who call His grace by another name. “Know ye not,” says the Lord,

“that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth?” (2 Ne. 29:7)

From everything I hope about Jesus, I want to assume a larger reach over a smaller one—that He is gathering all the baby chicks under His wings, that He is pulling us from our root-bound pots and planting us in bigger ones. I crave an expansion of the rigid boundaries that we all draw too small.

But sometimes in trying to do this, I’ve gone about it all wrong.

Once, when my brother had recently left the Church, our family participated in virtual religious conversations. My brother was concerned with the “only true church” narrative, the whitewashing of our history, and the tendency to substitute works for Christ—prophets, temples, or baptism as replacements for Jesus and unnecessary intermediaries between us and Him. He disliked religious rituals such as group prayer being held up as substitutes for meaningful personal communion with God. He wasn’t a fan of checklists taking the place of Jesus or works as substitutes for grace.

I believe many of his concerns were valid. But I was slow to add my voice to those valid critiques. And I didn’t recognize the weight of his struggle with truth and belonging. I took the defense and he took the offense. Neither of us heard each other quickly enough. Our trust in each other waned.

As we conversed back and forth, wrestling through the weeds, ultimately, I think our relationship wasn’t strong enough to handle the struggle. Tension arose, and now we just keep certain topics off the table. I don’t know how to heal the divide, and it hurts.

My interactions with him felt helpful for me—in that they helped me slowly unpack my own beliefs, coming to understand the good and challenge the bad. But I didn’t know how to attend to my brother’s needs in a way that was helpful for him.

The alternative narratives replayed in my head. Maybe I could have said, “I can see how your experience of temple attendance and the sacrament was not one of grace for you.” I could have tempered zeal for the truth I saw with more seeing and validating of the truth he saw. Or I simply could have said, “I don’t understand, but please know I love you.”

Perhaps a more attentive response was called for: “Can you tell me what it was like for you to participate in all those rituals that felt hollow? Can you tell me about what practices work well for you now?”

I didn’t see how to give my brother what he needed. I tried to make it right but didn’t know how. I lost a part of him, and it will take time to recover.

Sorry, Brother.

In our attempts to speak truth, bear testimony, and defend our ideals, we can alienate people. We sometimes correct when consoling is needed. Our testimony that “marriage is between a man and a woman,” for example, doesn’t feel like a compassionate response to someone who feels no hope of marriage in that form within the Church. Telling someone who recently lost a loved one “at least we know they are in a better place” sounds like we’re being happiness bullies—so sure of our own hopeful ideology that we’re not willing to sit in another’s present pain. When we turn to Jesus in our anguish, has He ever responded, “Don’t worry about that. Just focus on the Plan of Happiness”? Too often, we fail to mourn when it is needed.

As members of the body of Christ, there is a “time to weep, and a time to laugh. . . . a time to speak,” and a “time to keep silence” (Eccl. 3:4–7).

I want to be better at weeping.

And silence.

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Hannah Packard Crowther has an MS degree in biological science education from Brigham Young University and a twenty-plus year vocation as a full-time mom. She aspires to become a theologian, a poet, or a beachcomber. Maybe all three.

Art by J. Kirk Richards.

A life in Christ is an intimate partnership—so close that it feels like Christ is alive in our hearts. In this kind of life, our works come alive as a response to both life’s giftedness and its need. We anticipate the givenness of God from moment to moment. This life calls us to internal dimensions of sacredness and outward dimensions of love.

A life lived this way is a dance. One partner’s hand presses lightly upon his partner’s back, and she pivots to the left. His hip leads, hers follows. Her eyes glance right, he follows. Each subtle movement is complemented by reciprocity, animated by the shared rhythm. One partner pulls back, while the other reaches forward, both breathing in tandem. A concentrated attention on every movement is complemented by a countermovement, creating a fluidity in which her movements flow into his. When the partners in this divine dance are us and God, we learn to respond to what God offers and give something in return. This reciprocity creates a kind of uninterrupted unity.

The partnership of this dance feels to me like salvation. Understanding this, I’ve stopped focusing on the Jesus who will come into my future and have started focusing on His coming into my present. The lines between a religious life and an everyday one blur. My search for a life in Christ requires a new kind of seeking and an entirely different orientation to my works. Works stop being a way to carry me into future grace and start being a way to orient me to present grace.

Consider baptism, one of the many works we do. I was baptized by my dad when I was eight years old. I have a photo of my baptism day, standing in front of the stake center with my family. With the summer sun in my face, I am smiling and squinting. I don’t remember much about that day. I remember a boy in my Primary class also got baptized. And I remember the water was warm. I assume that I was pleased to be making that big step. I made a choice I didn’t remotely understand. But I did it gladly.

Afterwards, I learned more about what this decision meant. I went to Primary and Young Women’s. I learned about the temple and the promises we make there and how everyone would have the chance to be baptized in either this life or the next. I tried to choose the right and sometimes chose wrong. The sacrament was a way to renew the covenants I had made at baptism. These covenants, I learned, were like a two-way contract between us and God. We made promises, and God reciprocated. We lived good lives, and God would eventually welcome us home.

Many years later, though, questions arose. What was it about baptism that made some people fit for heaven and others not? Why require such a seemingly arbitrary entrance requirement for heaven? Sure, there is deep symbolism built into baptism, but wasn’t it still just symbolism? It seemed that when all was said and done, God would be less interested in the symbol and more interested in the real thing—the transformed heart.

While these questions simmered, I heard a Jewish rabbi speak, and something became clear. While this rabbi was only tangentially speaking about covenants, he reframed them for me. He said that he was sometimes asked by people who were not Jewish, “What makes you so special?” The implication was, “What gives you the arrogance to call yourselves a chosen people?” Latter-day Saints could ask themselves this same question: among the billions of people who have lived on earth, why would God give this unique piece of saving information to just a few favorites? Who made us the teacher’s pet?

The rabbi’s response to this question was simple: God chooses those who choose Him.

This felt like a mic drop moment. It was so basic. Could it be that this was the essence of covenant? Fundamentally, it’s not about reciprocal duties, but rather, reciprocal relationship?

And could it be that at the heart of every covenant we make is this one same truth? It’s not just separate and distinct agreements made at baptism, during the sacrament, and in the temple. It’s not a legal contract with pages of clauses. It’s one promise. It’s one choice. It’s saying yes to gracing. Fundamentally, it’s not making covenants (plural), it’s living in covenant (singular). It’s living in Christ.

Baptism is not fundamentally about keeping some people out of heaven and letting others in. The symbol is an invitation. Baptism says, “Salvation is here.” Right now. Enter God’s presence and start living life as it was meant to be lived. Baptism says, “In Christ, your old self has died and your new one has risen.” Don’t wait. Enter into the divine dance now, so that when you mourn with those who mourn, and comfort those who stand in need of comfort, you will do these things differently. You will do them in Christ.

When we haven’t quite learned this participatory dance, we can practice. When life’s activities seem hollow, we can learn the steps. If we haven’t figured out how to play the duet, we can learn scales. We can read scriptures without really understanding them, or minister without real connections, while being ready to pivot into the relationship when it presents itself in unexpected ways. It’s the karate kid sanding the floor and waxing the car. It’s going through motions, through rituals or habits, in hopes that they may lead to something good. It’s the children of Israel looking to the serpent on the staff, and it’s trying different parenting approaches. It’s the bird flapping in imitation of the other birds. These works are a vehicle to grace. They school us in how to draw peace from conflict, clarity from heartfelt prayer, or joy from a chaotic evening bath time.

I’m inspired by those who have shown me how this is possible. The Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren describes something similar in her book Liturgy of the Ordinary. Liturgy is not a word Latter-day Saints use frequently, but it refers to religious rituals and habits such as the sacrament or daily prayers. Warren explores the idea that the common daily liturgies of making our bed, brushing our teeth, or checking our email can be opportunities for practicing holiness. They can be practiced as liturgies to experience God in even the most mundane tasks.

In addition to the many chore-like daily routines, a more intentional motherhood has often involved reaching for what lights my children up. With my Minecraft-loving son, that might mean some stumbling around in the game. With my math-loving son, that could mean learning about the Fibonacci sequence and how its mathematical patterns show up in nautilus shells and galaxies. Too often I’m cluelessly going through motherhood, not paying attention. But my experience changes when I reach for connection with my children through the things they love. I bring God into the dance.

I can also shift the way I speak about my activities. This can open me to deeper engagement. Sometimes a subtle word change can alter the way I engage. Instead of going to church, I could worship at church. Instead of being an active Church member, I could be a practicing member. Instead of saying my prayers, I could seek communionwith God. Each of these shifts challenges me to see if I’m coming from a place of complacency, seeking, or loving engagement. It keeps me open to relationship.

When I find myself frequently thinking, “Let’s get through family prayer and scriptures so we can go to bed,” I can shift to a more seeking attitude: “Let’s reach for some good to come from all this wrangling.” As I practice, gracing sometimes emerges in the form of meaningful interactions or deepened understanding. More and more, I hope to embrace these experiences.

Life is busy, no doubt. And it can easily become a long list of empty nothings if we constantly find ourselves checked out or oblivious to our divine partner. We may think we’re on our way to heaven as we do all the right things, but in this frame of mind, we could arrive in heaven and not even know it. All these works, even if performed exactly and by the book, will be hollow. They will fail to transform us. They won’t help us fly.

Going deeper, we can repurpose our tools. Learning to bring God’s music into our activities often requires practice. Our intention shifts. We say yes to God. We invite God into the process, even if the end result is unknowable or undefined. It’s characterized by hope and seeking. It has a wholly and holy different feel.

When loving, grace-filled partnerships arise, we rejoice in the truths we have discovered with the people we love. We do good from a place of communion with God. Life here feels like the call and response of a harmonious conversation between two violins. Here we’re serving or praying or playing or exploring math because those activities are intertwined with divine joy, peace, love, or power. They teem with truth, wisdom, or light. We are the bird flying, flapping our wings or soaring in the updrafts. The law is written on our innermost parts, engraved on our hearts (Jer. 31:33). We live the law in response to the crux of all the commandments: love God and love your neighbor (Matt. 22:36–40). As in Jesus’s parable of the vineyard workers, we stop worrying about who has labored longer, and instead rejoice for all who have learned to live in Christ—whether that realization came early or late in the day (Matt. 20:1–16). Works performed in response to grace are an expression of our intimate connection to God and all creation. We’re in partnership with God—in gracing.

My daughter’s interests and activities have been different from my sons’, but my interactions with her, when they have been gracing, are similarly lovely. Once, she was behind the wheel and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on the radio. We blasted the music and sang at the top of our lungs. She knew the words, and I tried but have a terrible memory for song lyrics. The car windows were open, the wind blowing her brown curls, and my heart took a picture.

I have no memory of where we were going or where we had been. It was joy and laughter—my beautiful daughter, a ball of sunshine. The commute wasn’t simply moving from point A to point B—a task to be completed while both of us were stuck in our own heads and lives. It was alive. Wholehearted. The connection with my daughter was full-on gracing.

Embracing these moments leads me to God in the here and now. In all the works I do, from math, to raising children, to taking the sacrament, to belting Queen, I can live more fully in relationship with Christ. I can stop living a severed life. I can learn that life in Christ has been the natural state of affairs all along.

We have a divine and willing partner.

And an invitation to join the dance.

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Chapter 4: Creating

My children are made from the apples, hamburgers, and pumpkin pie I once consumed while eating for two. That walnut on my oatmeal became building blocks for the hypothalamus deep in my yet-to-be-born son’s brain. And the milk I poured over it, a portion of his heart. That grain of oatmeal . . . well, that became a portion of his upper lip that tilted upward into that crooked smile while he slept.

All of us live in borrowed bodies, not entirely our own. My son and I are part tree, part grass, part cow, part deep-sea halibut. And even further back in time, our atoms were held in the sky as stars. All of us are just recycled, repurposed stuff—with shells of skin that separate us into distinct packages of me and you, plant and animal.

And when we die, we become like a sandcastle wiped smooth by an ocean wave—the shovels and buckets simply build again from the carcass of what was left behind.

Even the bodies with which we emerged into the world are not made from the same stuff they are now. Cells are constantly being shed and replaced. Every few days, our colon cells are replaced using the available muffins, miso soup, and peanut butter from our diets. Brain cells and egg cells stay around longer, but the lips I kiss my husband with are not the same lips he kissed on our wedding day.

And though we like to think our bathroom time is truly solitary, every day our skin and intestinal tracts are teeming with microscopic creatures—bacteria, fungi, and viruses. There are trillions running rampant. We paint them as threats, yet the vast majority are benign or even helpful, contributing to the body like flora and fauna contributing to a world.

We’re each a globe—an ecosystem colonized by thousands of species. In the planet called us, scientists estimate that these microscopic microorganisms outnumber our own cells. Our person is more them than us.

Not only that, but from a certain perspective, the parts we claim as our own are not uniquely human. At some distant time in our evolutionary past, a cell that looked more like us likely engulfed an Archaea cell that looked more like bacteria. Together, they joined forces. This engulfed cell had its own dna and continued to replicate independently inside its host. Our current mitochondria—the energy-creating powerhouses for all our cells—are thought to be these organisms’ babies, the progeny of early engulfed Archaea. And astonishingly, they make up about 10 percent of our body weight. Considered this way, we could see ourselves as petri dishes, or microorganism nurseries—incubators raising generation after generation of little energy generators.

Even the “human” genome, the DNA inside the nuclei of our cells, is not entirely human from a certain perspective. Not only is the homo sapiens body borrowed and repurposed, but its DNA is as well. Scientists estimate that at least 8 percent of human DNA, for example, originated from ancient viruses through a process called horizontal gene transfer; basically, these genes were borrowed by our prehistoric ancestors from their most foreign cousins, the viruses. Our ancestors took hold of these viral genetic treasures, tucked them into their own genomes, and then proceeded with business as usual. This radical approach would be like taking some bat DNA and inserting it into our own genetic code, allowing our future children the ability to hang upside down to sleep. We’re not completely human.

And after we die, despite all our efforts at embalming and preserving, we become food for armies of microorganisms. Through microbe metabolism, we eventually break down into earth, becoming elemental building blocks ready for new forms and expressions of life. As such, we are picked up by oak trees and grass, our former bodies resurrected in a way.

After considering all this, I see myself differently than I used to.

As God’s unique creation, I’m more a hodgepodge than anything—a collage. Part bug, part banana, part animal instinct, a little bit of Grandma and her somewhat Roman nose, some viruses and bacteria thrown into the mix and voilà—Me!

This business of creating is not what I originally thought. I used to picture Adam and Eve developing from the dust likesome kind of abracadabra magic. I imagined creation from nothing, ex nihilo, in a specific place and time—be it 4000 bc in the Middle East or Adam-ondi-Ahman, or two million years ago in Africa. Whenever it happened, I imagined that afterwards, God wiped His hands, wrapped it all up, and then moved on to more pressing business.

No. It seems to me now that creation is more an ongoing tinkering project, a long discovery embedded in deep time—a gathering of available resources, a repurposing of the material of the world to build new forms and new bodies. It’s taken millennia for creative hands to pull together the stuff to fashion me and all my other fellow humans, not an instant. And rather than being finished, God is still in the work—a master chef, pulling from a little of this and a little of that, taking stock of ingredients from the nearby gardens, pantries, woods, and stores to add spice and flavor.

God is still creating bodies and spirits and me.

… I suspect our individual creative undertakings are not unlike God’s creative process, despite the vast difference in scope and know-how. In the beginning, we are told, God moved upon the face of the waters, divided light from darkness, brought forth herb-yielding seed, set lights in the heavens, and created great whales and winged fowl and every creeping thing, using atoms from stars as His medium. The whole process required as much aesthetic sense as technical ability. Eventually, God’s children were set on the earth, with their own charge to create.

Immersed in grace, God’s people would follow suit. Moses would create a people chosen by God out of a people who frequently forgot Him. Noah would create a refuge from the storm. Joseph of Egypt would create family reconciliation from estrangement. Esther would create a way to save her condemned people—as would Jesus. Isaiah would create prophetic poetry that would point to truth through all ages. And Peter and Paul would create community among a hodgepodge of Jews, Greeks, and Romans, all bound by a testimony of Jesus.

In my own sphere, I occasionally emulate my creative Heavenly Parents—the Ones who fashion their grand creations from grass, pond scum, and stars. Immersed in grace, I gather orange construction paper, green grapes, Jesus Christ lizards, and whatever else I can find, recycling and repurposing the stuff of my little universe. I create a meaningful life from a jumble of days—order from chaos, light from darkness, and beauty from ashes.

One day I hope to find it all on God’s fridge—and proclaim that it was good.

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Hannah Packard Crowther has an MS degree in biological science education from Brigham Young University and a twenty-plus year vocation as a full-time mom. She aspires to become a theologian, a poet, or a beachcomber. Maybe all three.

Art by J. Kirk Richards.

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Chapter 1: Specializing

We all start out no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence.

Look at it. That was us.

Just tiny specks holding tiny libraries with all the instructions for building two-legged creatures that hug, cook, and jump out of airplanes. From this one wee cell, the dot begins to copy itself—2, 4, 8, 16—each new cell emerging from the others to become no more than a minuscule raspberry.

But now these cells begin to diverge. Each holds a copy of the entire library, the human genome, but now starts to focus—to specialize. The workers in the various cells pull out books from the figurative library’s first floor, second floor, or third. They use the instructions to build a three-layered pancake stack—an ectoderm, a mesoderm, and an endoderm. And from there, the little creature goes gangbusters.

A mere ten weeks after the sperm and egg have merged, the tiny being has optic cells capable of harnessing light, cardiac cells that pulse, delicate fingernails, and an alien face. Bone cells, anything but lifeless and inert, build and shape scaffolding for the amorphous mass we would otherwise become. Energy-hungry muscle cells, insulin-growing pancreas cells, and meaning-making brain cells: all these develop from that one tiny speck. And all are enclosed in a delicate, transparent wrapping of skin.

What if I was just one of those cells—one person with something specific to offer and a certain perspective of the whole? Paul thought about this in terms of the body of Christ: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12).

When it comes to my fellow humans in Christ, I’m like one cell within one body.

In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at least, I wonder if we sometimes limit our application of the body of Christ idea to our callings within the Church. I hear it said that bishops are no more important than librarians or Primary teachers. Which is true, but maybe we should think more expansively, in terms of our individual vocations—those pursuits and ways of being to which we feel called, based on our unique life experiences, opportunities, and interests. Specializing our lives in this way seems to me a manifestation of gracing.

Casey¹, a no-nonsense mentor, gives tough love to struggling youth in both informal and formal ways. Sarah, who suffers from lupus and diabetes, makes it a priority to reserve her strength to be present and undistracted when her young children return home from school. Jessie serves—always doing the quiet, behind-the-scenes neighborhood work of moving the Happy Birthday sign from yard to yard during her morning walks. Mark travels the world with his family, eating with Moroccans and exploring tropical rainforests. Amanda, a professor, is intelligent and thoughtful—with her, conversations are always engaging.

And even within the realm of Church callings, our offerings are unique. Lauren was initially overwhelmed at being called as Relief Society president, panicking as she envisioned herself carting a wheelbarrow full of cleaning supplies and lasagnas through the neighborhood. Later she found grace in recognizing that her brand of love looked different but was no less valuable. The way she sat on my couch, listening with her whole body, was a beautiful form of love. No doubt she showed up for others in this way too.

The body of Christ has comedians and dancers, activists and healers, politicians and painters, musicians and athletes, those who cherish the good and those who root out the bad. There are thinkers and doers, speakers and listeners, teachers and learners, people who have found grace and those who are still seeking it. In my ideal conglomerate self, I would be all these things. But my life is embodied, not ideal—lived out with a particular personality, body, and mind. In choosing one life, one way of being in the world, I don’t need to assume my work matters less than others. I also don’t need to judge my friends for not choosing the life I have.

In the body of Christ, Casey is a foot, Mark an eye, Sarah a shoulder, Lauren a neck. My friends are elbows, ears, hearts, wombs, and backs. Part of choosing a certain devoted life involves un-choosing other devoted lives. It means appreciating and supporting other vocations and ways of being that look vastly different from our own.

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Hannah Packard Crowther has an MS degree in biological science education from Brigham Young University and a twenty-plus year vocation as a full-time mom. She aspires to become a theologian, a poet, or a beachcomber. Maybe all three.

Art by J. Kirk Richards.

REFLECT:

Join us in our Substack chat on Friday at 12pm Mountain time to discuss—and if you can’t make it then, please feel welcome to share your thoughts and read the thoughts of others at any time.

Chapter 2: Transforming

My friend has been known to collect particular milkweed leaves. Clinging to the undersides of these leaves are small, off-white eggs, no bigger than a pencil tip. She takes them home, places them within jars and other containers, and then waits for them to hatch. After the hungry caterpillars emerge, they feast on the thick, white milk oozing from the milkweed leaves, and my friend generously shares the caterpillars with neighbors eager to witness the extraordinary monarch metamorphosis.. My children and I have been some of the lucky recipients.

The transformation is radical. The caterpillar starts as a thin eating machine, striped with yellow, white, and black. It moves like a Slinky toy, alternately expanding and contracting its various midsections—each set of legs grasping its own foothold while its mouth rhythmically clears slices of leaf, harvesting its dinner like corn on the cob. Its head pings back and forth like a typewriter. In searching for new landing spots, the caterpillar arches its back in an upward dog yoga pose, then gently stirs the air with its head while its antennae flit around—searching.

Eventually, after becoming sufficiently and uncomfortably plump, the caterpillar climbs to the top of our kid-friendly butterfly enclosure, where it spins a sticky silk pad into which it wriggles and twists its rear end to firmly attach itself. Now upside down, it hangs suspended like an acrobat preparing for a marvelous trick. Its body swoons, settling gently into a curved “J.”

At this point, the caterpillar essentially unzips its outer skin, shedding it to reveal a pale green inner skin, or chrysalis, inside. Contrary to popular belief, the chrysalis is not like a sleeping bag the caterpillar builds around itself. Rather, it’s part of the caterpillar’s own body—like a deeper layer of skin. Throughout this shedding process, the caterpillar wriggles and twitches and heaves, looking very much like my swaddled babies, restless before sleep.

Soon, however, the chrysalis relaxes and stills. If we could peer inside, we would see the tissues of the caterpillar essentially liquefy. The caterpillar is basically digested into a chunky bug soup. Along with a few portions of muscle and other tissue, some small bundles of cells, called imaginal discs, remain intact. These undifferentiated cells were present, but dormant, in the caterpillar. But now they are given the green light and grow rapidly into the legs, body, eyes, antennae, and wings of the developing butterfly. The body is assembled using building blocks from the bug juice. It’s an astounding process, as radical as if humans were unzipped, then slowly digested in a sack, leaving inner gravel-sized pellets intact, and from which albatrosses grew from the same genetic code.

After one or two weeks, the pale green chrysalis becomes transparent, and the black and orange wings and wriggling limbs become visible inside—like a baby who is newly delivered inside a miraculously undamaged amniotic sack. The clear casing fissures, like an opening bud, and the monarch crawls out, crinkled and wet. Its straw-like proboscis flexes and extends, readying itself to feed.

After our butterfly is born, my children place orange slices in the enclosure and watch the butterfly slurp up the juice. The butterfly’s wings harden as blood-like hemolymph fills the flaccid wing veins.

We take the enclosure outside and unzip the exit door. Like a gangly newborn giraffe, our butterfly awkwardly starts and stops and flutters against the enclosure until it finds the opening, then dances its way out into the sunshine. It has gone from Slinky to bug soup to flying flower—taking flight alongside the fledgling bird. Who would have thought?

All this has me thinking about transformations—the radical, revolutionary kinds that turn the world upside down, disorient and then reorient, and birth mind-altering ways of being in the world. I don’t think these transformations are confined to butterflies. And I do think they highlight yet another way we enter the flow of grace.

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