Morning Thoughts: Ether, Mormon, or Moroni

 

Ether Hiding in the Cavity of a Rock by Gary Ernest Smith

This morning I've been thinking about how a lot of members of the church these days want to be Ether, Mormon, or Moroni. 

Around eleven years ago I wrote a post on a different blog exploring something similar with Latter-day Saint artists, especially filmmakers, so I suppose I'm just prone to this kind of thinking. 

Anyway, it seems to me that many of us want to fit one of these three paradigms, or maybe I just feel them warring within myself:

Ether: the non-interventionist chronicler of the times who observes, records, and moralizes without engaging. He can hide in the day, go forth by night, and condemn from a distance. He's watching the final destruction of his people, and he knows it. His words will be the vessels of divine consequences for the wicked.

Mormon: the ultra-engaged warrior for Christ, who goes back and forth on how he serves his people, but never wavers in his love for them. He gets to fight and he gets to conscientiously abstain from fighting too, depending on the circumstances. He mourns for what his people have lost, and longs for prior days. His enemies are clear-cut, but rarely does he wholly approve of anybody, even if he knows how to speak comforting words to them.

Moroni: the glorious messenger with special providence to proclaim long-awaited truths. His words carry the weight of centuries of moral and religious authority. He knows loss, but also redemption, and his role in the grand unfolding of the ages is memorable and essential.

I suspect in reality though, that most of us are more like Nephi's sisters at best. If we sometimes do important things, few people will remember or take note, and they will mostly just wonder what exactly it was. Our place in the grand scheme, if it's remembered at all, is likely to be summed up as, "Oh, and that person was there too." 

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but this is what I've been thinking about this morning.