Nourishing The Tree, Discerning Your Calling, Fear from a Cosmic Perspective
The Disciple-Leader Newsletter #62
Discipleship
“And behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.
“But if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.”1
Alma
I believe that vegetables are good for me. I also don’t eat vegetables that frequently. Given that premise, do you think my belief in vegetables actually does anything for me? Am I any better off than someone who doesn’t even believe vegetables are good for them?
No.
Similarly, believing in God doesn’t do much for you.2
Let me explain.
Yale Psychologist Paul Bloom3 has published research on religion and how it affects human flourishing. His research found that the positive effects of one’s religiosity have nothing to do with one’s belief in God but everything to do with one’s worship of God. It wasn’t faith, rather it was the exercise of faith, that moved the needle.4
This is what Alma explains in this passage.
Here’s a scenario. Let’s say you have a rock-solid belief in God. Now, let’s say you decide to take a year off from reading your scriptures, praying, and worshipping Him at church.
Just like taking a year off from eating veggies is unlikely to change your belief that veggies are good for you, chances are you’ll still believe in God after a year away from spiritual habits.5 What you will have lost, however, is access to God’s power.
If you don’t consistently access His power by engaging with the doctrine of Christ, when the hard times come, you’ll be no better off than someone who flatly doesn’t believe in God.6
Both believer and non-believer have neglected their faith in Christ. Neither have access to His power.
The decision to nourish/exercise your faith is really a choice between Whose power you want to rely on. Do you want to go through the daily challenges of life relying on your strength? Or do you want to go through life in the strength of the Lord?
The Lord doesn’t give strength to those who claim to have faith in Him. He gives strength to those who exercise their faith in Him.7
Leadership
“We become whoever would have saved our younger self.”8
Unless you are uniquely fortunate, you’ve struggled to gain clarity on your calling in life. At some point, everyone has. Maybe you felt aimless in your youth, maybe you are having a mid-life crisis, or maybe in your old age you just feel lost. If you’ve ever been through one of these seasons, you know how challenging it is. You might even feel inclined to resign to the fact that your life just isn’t that meaningful after all.
But that’s a lie. And for the disciple-leader, it’s a particularly dark lie.
You have a calling on your life. You have a specific purpose. You have a work from God that He has called you to do. The greats internalize and embody this. They operate out of calling, not convenience. You can feel their conviction oozing out of them. It’s contagious.9
In fact, it’s hard—if not impossible—to have conviction if it doesn’t come from a place of calling. Conviction flows downstream from calling. Conviction can’t be manufactured, and neither can calling. Calling—like identity—is not created. It’s discerned.
Have you discerned your calling in life?
If so, how is it going? Do you treat it with the seriousness God intends?10 Have you consecrated yourself to it?11
If you haven’t discerned your calling yet, that’s okay. It can be hard. It’s helpful to have resources to help guide you in this endeavor.
I’ve found the two statements below to be a helpful guide in steering people into finding their calling from God.
You become whoever would have saved your younger self.
You become whoever did save your younger self.
It’s really that simple. This is the pattern most people who have discerned their calling have followed.
Think of your favorite teacher growing up. They certainly became a teacher—and became a great one—because either 1) The education system failed them and they were determined to right it or 2) They had a teacher who changed their life.
What about a father? If you had an amazing father it’s probably because either 1) Their father failed them and they determined that their children wouldn’t know the pain of an absentee father or 2) Their father changed their life.
If you want to find your mission and purpose, the very work that God sent you here to accomplish, ask yourself those questions.
What kind of person would have saved my younger self?
What kind of person did save my younger self?
This is how God consecrates our experience for our gain. By turning our lowest lows or highest highs into our life’s calling.12
Mental Performance
“Don’t let what you are afraid of keep you from what you were meant for.”13
Bob Goff
In The Liturgists meditation “Vapor”, they have an opening monologue that attempts to calm the listener’s fears and trepidations by appealing to their sense of reason. The transcript contains a welding together of the cosmic and eternal perspectives (something I’ve written about here). I do not necessarily advocate for or agree with all of the meditation’s positions. There are some notions brought forward in this meditation that aren’t congruent with revealed doctrine.14 However, there is value in internalizing aspects of this perspective.
Listen or read the transcript below.15
Most scientists estimate that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, that the earth is 4.54 billions years old, while human beings have only been on earth for less than 200,000 years. To put those numbers in perspective, if you stretched out your arms and your entire wingspan was representative of earth′s geological history, and then you took a nail file and took just a little bit off of the edge of your fingernail, you would have just wiped out all human history.
There's this Carl Sagan quote about a photo of earth taken from Voyager on its way out to deep space that echoes the sentiments of the Kohelet, the Teacher, in the ancient wisdom book called Ecclesiastes. Here′s the quote: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That′s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
So here we are, on this pale blue dot. Tiny specs of dust coming into existence for a moment. Hurling through space and time, only to flicker back out after a few moments. These moments, these are all we have in this life. We work, we laugh, we cry, we make love, we write books, we build empires, we wage wars. We often try to ignore the fact that these moments are temporary. That all our empires and the gross national product, our art and our literature, our $300 designer jeans, all of our knowledge and technology, creativity and legacy is erased. It′s all going to flicker out at some point with everything else.
Vapor.
Everything and everyone is a vapor. Here for a few moments, and then gone. This sobering thought can be depressing, Or it can be absolutely freeing.
We can either go the way of many around us and ignore this fact, medicating and numbing ourselves in avoidance of the truth of our humanity; or maybe there's another way: We can embrace it. We can recognize our humble place in this universe. We can recognize the silliness of human arrogance and empire. And perhaps as a result, we can learn to appreciate and fully experience the moments that we have as the gifts that they are.
Think about when you were young, do you remember getting worried and stressed about things that seemed so important at the time? Now how do you feel about those things? The issues that felt like life and death, like how the kids didn′t give you a fair turn on the playground that day? How do you feel about that now? Do you laugh about it? Does it seem silly?
So what are you worried about today? Do you really think it is any less silly than what you were worried about as a child?
Your job? Vapor.
Your apartment? Vapor.
Your school loans? Vapor.
Everything and everyone you love and worry about—it's all Vapor.
Are you worried about being unique or important? In our society we worship our individuality, we love to talk about our fingerprints and snowflakes and how every individual is unique. But, have you ever looked at a snowflake? I mean, they′re all kind of the same. Back the camera up a little bit, and you are nothing but a human being, a spec of dust in time and space, not all that distinguishable from the 7 billion other specs of dust swirling around you. How many of our moments on the pale blue dot do we waste worrying and stressing about the Vapor? The Kohelet, the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, shows us the vanity of human toil and worry.
Another Teacher came and taught about the Vapor like this: "Come to me all you who are weary, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
So what are you so worried about? What causes you stress? Because it's going through the dirt like everything and everyone else. It is Vapor, mist, smoke, Hevel. This doesn′t have to be depressing, in fact, it might even be liberating. Finitude, after all, is actually what makes life sweet. Christmas time can be such a wonderful and magical time of year because it only happens once a year. Parents treasure their moments with their young children at home precisely because they know those moments won't last forever.
So take a breath. Recognize your frailty. Recognize that the things that feel so weighty and wearisome in the back of your mind right now, are nothing but Vapor.
Feel your breath. Recognize your lungs keeping you alive without your ability to make them work or not. Your heart is beating. Your cells are working together to keep you alive. And it's all magical and mysterious and beautiful. Life on planet earth is a gift, and you only get it for as long as you get it. And then the match gets blown out.
So set your hearts, not on things of earth, not on the vapor, but let go. Fully open your heart to both the Gift and the Giver. The Mystery. The Beauty. That in which we live and move and have our being. That in which we call God- The Oneness who holds the Vapor together- who somehow bring meaning into the meaningless.
Esoteric? Yes. A little abstract? For sure. Doctrinally sound?16 Not exactly.
But there is great value in embracing aspects of this cosmic perspective. Life is way too short and the universe is much too large to let fear hold you back from accomplishing the work God has given you and becoming the person God intended you to be.
If you’re holding back, now is the time to change.
Alma 32:37-38. One’s faith is symbolized by a tree in these verses.
“Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” James 2:17.
Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Progressives? Plain English podcast.
This is different for those without a rock-solid belief in God who skip out on spiritual habits.
But remember that he that persists in his own carnal nature, and goes on in the ways of sin and rebellion against God, remaineth in his fallen state and the devil hath all power over him. Therefore he is as though there was no redemption made, being an enemy to God; and also is the devil an enemy to God.
Mosiah 16:5
And because of this their great wickedness, and their boastings in their own strength, they were left in their own strength; therefore they did not prosper, but were afflicted and smitten, and driven before the Lamanites, until they had lost possession of almost all their lands.
And they saw that they had become weak, like unto their brethren, the Lamanites, and that the Spirit of the Lord did no more preserve them; yea, it had withdrawn from them because the Spirit of the Lord doth not dwell in unholy temples—
Therefore the Lord did cease to preserve them by his miraculous and matchless power, for they had fallen into a state of unbelief and awful wickedness; and they saw that the Lamanites were exceedingly more numerous than they, and except they should cleave unto the Lord their God they must unavoidably perish.
Helaman 4:13, 24-25
Refer to footnote 2.
Kobe Bryant had a great quote about this. Listen to it here or read the transcript below.
“People have a certain energy about them. When there are people in the world who are focused and wake up in the morning with a purpose, this is what I’m doing, you can feel that energy. You can feel it. It's kindred spirit. Those are the people that I tend to work with a lot. And if you don’t have that, I can sense it. I can sense it. We are also very disciplined. If you are a person who’s very distracted, hanging around the wrong crowd, and not having that sense of purpose, we don’t want to be around it. We don’t want to be around it. Because that stuff will bring you down, man. That stuff will bring you down. We are very very disciplined, very very focused on finding writers, editors, and story artists that have a true passion for what it is that they do.”
“I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.” (1 Nephi 3:7)
Notice the urgency, seriousness, and conviction that Nephi exudes when talking about this commandment God gave him. Do you treat the commandment (calling) God gave you with this same passion?
And Him.
But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul.”
2 Nephi 32:9
“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. … All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable. … It is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire.”
Orson F. Whitney, as quoted in Faith Precedes the Miracle. Book by Spencer W. Kimball. Page 98.
Live in Grace, Walk in Love: A 365-Day Journey. Book by Bob Goff.
“Bring with you all that you have of good and truth which you have received from whatever source, and come and let us see if we may add to it.”
Gordon B. Hinckley
Vapor (A Meditation). Track by The Liturgists.
*My sharing this track and transcript is not me necessarily advocating for or agreeing with all of the meditation’s positions. However, there is value to glean from it regardless if there is disagreement on some of the finer points of doctrine.
Also, I edited out some things from the transcript for brevity and doctrinal consistency.
The cosmic perspective is awesome, but not complete. Not doctrinally sound. The Eternal Perspective, on the other hand, is the restored gospel’s answer to the cosmic perspective. I wrote about it here.