Two Lessons to End Them All

So we have a double-header today. I failed to upload last week's lesson last week (as my sainted mother pointed out), so by way of repentance you get both lessons today.

Lesson 5 begins our discussion of the events immediately subsequent to the resurrection of the Savior. We cover that very busy first Sunday where He appears to several women in the morning, the faithful disciples on the road to Emmaus, and the ten apostles in the Upper Room that evening.

Lesson 5

The last lesson of the series wraps it all up. Lesson 6 picks up where we left off last week and talks about the Savior's 40 day ministry among His followers. We follow them to Galilee where Peter is given his chance both to repent for his denials as well as to accept his great commission as the chief apostle. We also discuss the Savior's ascension at the Mount of Olives and His subsequent appearances to the Americas as well as the lost tribes of Israel.

Lesson 6

You'll hear it in the recording, but I can't overemphasize the tremendous gift we have of being able to study the life of our Redeemer. I truly have gotten to know Him far better than I have before, and I know I can make these opportunities through the remainder of my own life. What a blessing!

Lesson 4

Sorry it took a couple of days to process. This was my first week back to work after vacation and things always pile up while you're gone. So, what with putting out numerous virtual fires and fighting a bad case of the doldrums (except for Wednesday's Institute class!), I think I'm lucky to be posting this at all.

Good news: the recorder worked for the entire run this time!

That 20 or so minutes I lost from the last lesson gall me... it reminds me strongly of my first missionary journal which was stolen in the highlands of Guatemala when I'd been out about 7 or 8 months. My entire MTC experience and my first two area assignments are gone forever. I did happen to write down quite a bit of what I'd lost, but you just know that there are memories on those pages that are unrecoverable until the hereafter. Phooey. Luckily, my notes for the lesson help compensate for whatever I lost, so it's not quite as traumatic as the journal was.

Anyway, here's the latest:

Lesson 4 (Quicktime, Ma!)

Here we play catchup with material that I didn't get to cover last session (not lost, just ran out of time!), and take a comprehensive look at the Savior's childhood leading up to His ministry. I make the case for why we aren't looking at the ministry itself; this is what we have Sunday School for, yes?

Enjoy!

Lesson 3

Oh, boy, this is embarrasing. The recorder stopped for some reason with about 20-25 minutes of lesson to go. Fortunately it saved the first 42 minutes, so I'm grateful for that. For those of you who happen to be my mother, I'll send my notes along under separate cover.

This lesson attempts to discuss the events of the births of John the Baptist and the Savior, including those which occurred in ancient America. Next lesson (July 9) will cover the period between Act I and Act II of "Savior of the World," which includes the Savior's childhood and his ministry leading up to the Garden Tomb.

Lesson 3 (Don't forget: QuickTime!)

Lesson 2

This lesson moves into the historical backdrop in the 600 years immediately preceding the Savior's birth, including the annunciations of the angel Gabriel. Mini history lesson for the first half, then a discussion of why the Jews seemed to be so confused with the scriptures that foretold the coming of the Messiah.

Lesson 2

Lesson 1

This past Wednesday we had our first Summer Institute session and I'm pleased with the result. For those who happen to be related to me and may therefore find this of some interest, I recorded the session. Unfortunately I move around a lot when teaching, so I'm not always at the best position to be picked up by the mic. You may need good volume control when listening.

The lesson ran just a hair over one hour. When you click on the link below, you'll be taken to a file sharing service (no worries... this stuff is most definitely not copyrighted!), and you'll have to scroll down to see the download button. It's about 25MB, and will require either iTunes or QuickTime to listen ( or anything that supports MPEG 4 or M4A format).

Lesson 1

Mouthpiece? Or Just Mouthy?

I think I finally figured out part of my patriarchal blessing.

I received my patriarchal blessing thirty-five years ago. It's fortunate that my mother was the patriarch's transcriptionist at the time, because her off-the-tape transcript is the only copy I have of that blessing. I'm told there's a way to get an "official" copy, but I've never really had the time or inclination to pursue it.

I kind of like having the original. It's like listening to a recording of Wilford Woodruff bearing his testimony "into a talking machine" as he did over a hundred years ago. It's one thing to read it, and another thing altogether to hear it as it fell from his lips. I of course have no copy of the original recording of my patriarchal blessing, but having the unedited transcript is the next best thing. I remember the man's voice extremely well. He was a tenor, and tenors rarely forget other tenor voices. Also, he'd been our bishop at one time, and our family doctor for many years.

I received some wonderful counsel in that blessing. I was told in no uncertain terms that it was time to "turn away from the childish things." I'm sure that was included because that's always been a weakness of mine. I've been slow — very slow — to grow up. Part of being a performer for so many years, among other things. I was given many wonderful promises about my life as a husband and father, several of which have already come to pass. I was admonished to do temple work for my kindred dead. Took me a few years to catch on to that one.

The one phrase that always struck me, however, came about halfway through the blessing. I can still vaguely remember hearing it come from the patriarch's mouth when he said it. He said that I would serve as one of the Lord's mouthpieces, as it were.

A mouthpiece.

My siblings can read this and smile. They know what a mouthy kid I was (and still am, really). I may be painfully shy around folks I don't really know, but if I'm comfortable around someone, I talk. Probably too much. (This may be why I don't have many "close" friends.) At one point I wondered if this had anything to do with my acting skills. But the term "mouthpiece" usually put me in mind of a special witness. Something along the lines of an apostle or prophet. Something that I've never felt I could be.

Now I think I get it.

I've made no secret of the fact that I have a passion for teaching, and teaching the gospel is one of my favorite pastimes. I have taught in most of the Sunday School courses over the years, and substituted in nearly all the auxiliaries (excepting Young Women, of course). (Wait; not strictly true. I have on occasion taught young women as a visiting "specialist" on one topic or another. I guess that counts.) My favorite callings in the Church are teaching callings.

The funny thing is, most of us are called to teach. If we have families, we teach. We all teach by example, whether we intend to or not and whether that example is good or bad. Parents by definition are teachers, again for better or worse. Even as children and siblings we teach each other every day. It's a natural part of who we are as children of a loving Eternal Father.

The kind of teaching I love, though, is the kind that comes from having a spiritual gift. When in the presence of a teacher who has such a gift, I enjoy that experience more than going to the theater. When called to teach, no matter how challenging the class may be, I pour myself into that calling and will likely think back on it as my favorite. At least until the next such calling comes along. I believe this to be one of the gifts of the Spirit that were promised to me so many years ago.

When called to teach, I become a mouthpiece. I believe this is what my patriarchal blessing presaged.

I've been given a wonderful opportunity to do just that this summer. Every year our Stake sponsors a sort of Summer Institute, and I've been asked to be its instructor this year. Remember when I wrote that a member of the Stake Presidency can just lean over my shoulder in Church and tell me, "Say, Bro. Woody, I've been meaning to talk to you...?" Well, that's literally how I received this assignment. Fortunately, it's a temporary one.

Every Wednesday for six weeks I get to expound on the life of the Savior from the perspective of the Church's musical production of "The Savior of the World," which our Stake plans to produce next spring. Another Stake in our region produced it last year. We'd heard that they did fifteen minute devotionals before rehearsals to give the cast and staff the historical and spiritual settings for the scenes they were about to practice. Our Stake wants to expand on that idea and do something similar in six one-hour lessons beginning in June. That becomes my job, and suddenly I'm like the proverbial kid in the candy store. The problem is in deciding on which reference materials to use. The scriptures are a given, as are several of the available Institute and Sunday School manuals. But there are so many good scholarly books on this topic that it's nearly impossible to pare it all down into a manageable avalanche of information.

So if you're in the north Orange County area during June and July and have nothing better to do on Wednesdays at lunch time, poke your head in. I shouldn't be too hard to find. I'll be the guy up front wearing sackcloth and ashes. May even have a locust wing stuck to my long, flowing beard with a little dribble of honey.

I am a method actor, after all.

Teaching and Inspiration

I'm still serving as 2nd counselor in our Stake Sunday School presidency, and I still have no idea what it is we do for a living. I'm not trying to be ironic about it. I'm merely pointing out that after nearly two years, the face of the Sunday School has changed to where our positions seem to matter less than perhaps they once did.

We had been a presidency only for about six months when the Church announced that they were doing away with the position of Teacher Improvement Coordinator (or TIC). This stymied us — and me, in particular — because my special assignment in the presidency was to "train the trainers," so to speak. When that position was retired, I was left with occasional visits to wards on Sunday, and our semi-annual Auxilliary Training meetings.

I bring this up, incidentally, because of something Mrs. Woody has experienced lately. At the turn of every year we receive new manuals (we call them "books" now) for Priesthood and Relief Society. Since we're both using the same book in our 2nd and 3rd week instruction, it's been fascinating to me how differently the two organizations approach a given topic. I'm not just referring to the stereotypical difference between Priesthood (read it, discuss it, deep-six it) versus Relief Society (doilies, graphics, object lessons) either. Mrs. Woody and I both teach 3rd hour on the same schedule. (This is my moonlighting job because it comes from the quorum.) Our approaches to any given topic tend to be vastly different, because we both understand our intended audiences and what will help them learn the main objectives of those lessons. We constantly bounce ideas off of each other, and we even occasionally use the same material, but our lessons are always quite different in execution.

In the front of each manual (or book) we find counsel from the brethren not to stray from the material presented in that manual. There are valid reasons for this counsel, primary of which is that these manuals are prepared under inspiration and give us valuable guidance regarding the topic at hand. My stake Sunday School boss takes the view that nothing should ever be presented in a class that isn't found in the manual. He has been in classes where a teacher may completely ignore the manual and take their material from, say, some book McConkie wrote forty years ago. He has asked us to pass this counsel along to the wards we visit, and we have done so.

At the same time, I find myself in a quandry as an instructor. I have never been able to stick completely with the manual. I have always taken the position that, as an instructor, I am also allowed a certain amount of inspiration in preparing my lessons. So long as I am careful to use materials that support what is presented in the manual, I feel that this is acceptable. Mrs. Woody has a similar view, and her style includes the use of stories that help illustrate the quotes she focuses on in her lessons.

When we received the Joseph Smith book this year, Mrs. Woody was determined to try it the way she felt the manual wanted her to. In other words, she was going to try to stick to the manual and not use the stories that have been such a huge part of her lesson plan. She has had two lessons so far this year, and has felt as if she weren't reaching her class the way she wanted. We discussed this after our first lesson in January and decided that it might have been one of those occasions where someone needed to hear that lesson, even if we ourselves didn't feel terrific about it. This past Sunday, though, she still didn't feel quite right about her lesson and we discussed it again.

Drawing on my long experience as an instructor in the Church, and perhaps despite the counsel I've received from my Sunday School president, I told Mrs. Woody about my views on personal inspiration in the preparation of our lessons. I told her that, as her husband, I supported her decisions to teach by the Spirit and take those lessons whereever he seemed to point her. She appreciated that advice and felt that this was in line with her own thoughts and feelings.

Her inspiration in all of this is our new President and Prophet of the Church, President Monson. Mrs. Woody found a quote by Orson Scott Card describing precisely why President Monson's reputation as a storyteller is a good thing for the Church. Key quote:

We have learned to expect that a talk by President Monson will include many stories about real people. I've heard some of my intellectual friends complain that it's all fluff — but that is only because they don't understand that the stories are the deep and important doctrines[.]

That's why Christ taught using stories.

There's so much more to Card's explanation, and I heartily recommend you read the entire thing. This quote, however, was exactly the vindication (or justification, if you prefer) that Mrs. Woody needed. If our living Prophet of the Lord uses stories in his teaching, and is, in fact, only mirroring the Lord's earthly ministry, why shouldn't she be able to continue to use stories to illustrate her lessons?

One thing I've learned about the Church over the years: Rigidity has its place, particularly where saving ordinances are concerned. There can be no wavering when administering the sacrament, for example. The baptismal prayer is so essential to our individual salvation that we say it, word for word, as it was dictated by the Lord to his servants on earth.

But nearly everything else has some wiggle room built into it. I have known a man in my life who was able to serve in the temple, even though he had a Word of Wisdom problem. Clearly he had worked that out between himself, his bishop, and the Lord. I have heard just about every interpretation possible of what the phrase "love thy neighbor as thyself" means, and they are probably all correct as they pertain to the progression and understanding of the individuals involved. I myself have made mistakes in my instruction over the years — again, based on my level of progression and understanding at the time — and have never been called for "false doctrine." I have been corrected, certainly, but the people who heard me probably realized that it was never my intention to deliberately lead my class astray.

One of the problems the Israelites had throughout the years in which they labored under Mosaic law was their increasingly rigid interpretation of that law. Had they restricted themselves to observance of the law and an understanding of the intent of that law, they would perhaps never have had organizations such as the Pharisees leading them astray.

So Mrs. Woody will prepare her next lesson under the direction of the Spirit and allow herself to find just the right material that will support the topic. My money says she'll probably find a story or two. (For the record, she has never used a doily in her lessons since I've known her.) She will likely feel better about her lesson, and the sisters will respond as they have in the past. They will give her the attention that says "that's a wonderful story, and, you know, it reminds me of something that happened to me..."

Which thing is, I believe, very pleasing to the Lord.

I Don't Do Windows®, Either

I'm just certain I've mentioned before that, while I do have a modicum of musical talent, I have never undertaken any real formal musical education in my life.

Ever.

Oh, yeah, okay, I did take a couple of semesters' worth of theory and such on the off chance that I might parlay that into a career as a music teacher. It only took a few months, however, to realize that I could never get serious about such a career for one reason, and one reason alone: I don't play the piano.

Music majors are expected to be able to hammer out their "compositions" in theory class, for example, and my piano skills were (and still are) non-existent. A few years (okay, many years) later I tried one last time to get serious about studying music, despite my fear of learning to play piano. I applied (and was even accepted!) for the musical pedagogy course at Southern Utah. I auditioned for a man who told me that his own reputation as a pianist was to be nicknamed "The Claw" by his professors in college. I suspected that I would never rise to that level, even, and soon dropped out without ever having set foot on campus as a new student.

I find it thus ironic that I have been asked to teach men at church how to sing.

Our Stake is sponsoring a music workshop this coming weekend that is designed to help folks get more comfortable with certain basic musical functions. Things like learning how to conduct hymns, for example, or beginning organ skills. When I saw that there would be classes in learning how to sing different parts, one for women and one for men, I wondered what poor sucker they'd nail to try to teach a bunch of recalcitrant men to follow a tenor or bass line in a hymn book. What loser would even attempt to teach men who have never sung anything but melody by rote for the last 50 years to sing a tenor line?

"Hey, Brother Woody, I've been meaning to ask you something!"

That this person is our Stake Music Chairman fills me with a sudden dread.

"Oh, yes?"

What ensues is begging at its most refined. She was so desperate to find someone to take that workshop that she even contemplated asking her husband to do it. I know her husband, and he is a terrific guy, but music is not his strong suit. I think he plays some piano, but in the six years we've been in the ward, I've never once heard the man sing. She had wanted to ask me sooner, but knowing of Mrs. Woody's convalescence had been hesitant to ask at all.

"Will there be a pianist?" My last possible out. I don't do piano.

"I'll make sure you have one!"

I really can't turn the lady down. She was my first choir accompanist when I got the calling in our second year here, and I'm sure I owe her far more than this measly workshop will ever repay.

"Sure. I'll just make sure it won't conflict with anything we've been planning at home." (It doesn't.)

So now I'm on the hook to teach old dogs extremely new tricks. For some of them, at least. My current plan consists of dividing them up by voice, hammering out their parts on a hymn or two, and telling them what a wonderful job they're doing.

I plan to wear ear plugs and smile a lot.