In my elders quorum I only hear about half of what the teacher says. Don’t get me wrong – we have amazingly good teachers. One of them always walks in with a coil of heavy rope, two hubcaps, and an aspirin. Or a water ski, a snow ski, and a banana. That’s Rod Miller, who I watched grow up in Alpine and who is big on object lessons.
Matt Bean is starting out as a family shrink (someday I’m going to ask him how he does it and if he thinks it’s entirely consistent with our mission to “replenish the earth”). He has an enourmous (that’s for Meridian readers in the British Commonwealth ) intellect, which he uses very much to bless us, but is moved by memories of passing the sacrament. He seldom brings rope or hubcaps, but yesterday he brought milk and cinnamon rolls, to no objective purpose I could discern except to be nice.
Our third teacher is Rick Koerber, who is noted for two things, the first being that he is home taught by a bona fide (fair dinkum, for certain members of the British Commonwealth) Meridian Columnist, and the second being that he is on billboards around here as “The Free Capitalist” (as opposed, I suppose, to a capitalist for which money is charged). But that’s just his day gig. Then he comes home to us as a devoted Latter-day Saint and a voracious Gospel Scholar with the extra spark of the convert, which he came by honestly, because he is one.
(Speaking of converts, I’m leaning toward becoming a capitalist. This is mostly because every time I tell somebody that I write for Meridian, I get this twinge of embarrassment from having been tempted to read, in my youth – quite without my parents’ knowledge or consent – that one book by Cleon Skousen, The Naked Columnist .
I don’t hear only half of what the quorum instructor says because we’re misbehaving in there (you may remember the milk and cinnamon rolls? ((Hey! I just discerned the objective purpose!)).) I hear only half because I’m trying to capture in my journal the last thing they, or, more often, the Spirit, has said to me.
“The woman and the moon, they do the same to me.
They change me for the moment.
They make me think my whole life white and still.
The woman and the moon have found a heart to fill.
“The woman and the moon, they live outside my reach.
They call me ‘cross the evening.
They touch my face and teach me holy dreams.
In my elders quorum, the Spirit often requires me to imagine things I’ve never imagined before.
I love my elders quorum. If ever anyone grabs me by my white beard and pulls me through the partition, the high priests group better be awfully good.