My Time on the Other Side of Heaven

Title: The Nonouti Resort
Kairos: This story is one that I tell in two situations: when mission stories are swapped, and when somebody says that my mission in the Pacific was "basically a vacation." It tends to prove those people wrong.
Story: At 6:30, the rising sun wakes me up. No alarm clock, because there's no electricity, but that's okay. We don't have walls on our house either, and the sun on the equator is remarkably dependable as a time-keeper. I instantly feel a familiar urge, the one that comes every time something was eaten for dinner the night before that didn't settle quite right. Unfortunately, there are no toilets in our thatched hut, so we use the beach, about a hundred yards away. I swing out of my mosquito net, jump off our platform onto my flip-flops, and begin my awkward waddle-run to the beach. The coral-gravel paths wind through big bushes of meo, a leafy plant that forms like a bush, with leaves big enough to blow one's nose with. As I power-waddle my way to the relief that the beach will bring, I feel my face smear into a spider web, with the spider perched, waiting in the middle to drink my blood. I rip it off, and continue my dash down. Then I see it. There it is! Two big boulders on the beach, with a crack down the middle, perfect for use as a toilet, and with an excellent view of the rising sun. My journey is a success.
As I walk back, I walk much more leisurely. I approach our thatched hut, and see my companion putting coconut branches between the piles of rocks that we use to set our pot on to boil water for breakfast. I hear the neighbor's pigs rummaging through our garbage, think about the people we will teach today, and thank the Lord that I am a missionary on the other side of heaven.

Retelling
Title: Living Conditions on Nonouti
Kairos: This is written to a missionary who is going to live on Nonouti soon.
Story: Nonouti is a great place to live. Your house is a local buia, a local style house with  coconut leaf roof and a platform that's about 8'X16'. [definition] You'll love it. There's a well that doesn't smell TOO bad [litotes] that you get to shower out of. The bathroom is the beach. No, it's not on the beach, it is the beach. There are two stores close to you, with some important differences. The Taotin store is close and you can get some bulk items there, but Nei Fong's store has a refrigerator (one of three on the island).[parenthesis] You can get cold coke and fanta there! [similarity/difference] The people there are great, you can really just pull over at any house, ask for food, and they'll be happy to sit you down to the greatest meal they can afford. The people are super kind, but since there's not much rain, there isn't much plant food,[cause/effect] so it's rice and fish for dinner every night! Lots of variety. [irony]  Honestly, it's great. You'll love the food, you'll love the people, you'll love the house, you'll the island, you'll love the work, and everybody there will love you. [anaphora] Best of luck out there, say hi to everybody there for me!

Justice and Mercy: If Electra knew Jesus

I thought that Electra was an excellent window into Greek culture. It's interesting that the ostensible "hero", though obviously flawed, was obsessed with justice. This is a theme that we see also in The Iliad, both in the reading we did in our class and in other areas of the book. Greeks seem to be obsessed with justice and being treated fairly, though I would say that their poets saw how this societal trend could lead to hubris and destruction. I'd like to compare this, however, to our ideas of Justice and Mercy in an LDS context, as opposed to the Christ-less concept of Sophocles' culture.





For us, any time that we think of justice in a moralistic sense, we must view it in relation to mercy and the Atonement of Christ. For Electra, her inner sense of justice demanded that a vile murderer, her mother, must suffer as she had caused another to suffer. This drive seemed to be her main motivation in the play. An interesting twist at the end though, her tears over her mother's death, showed how her inner need for mercy was pulling against that drive, tearing her apart. It highlights so much the need for a Redeemer. The Savior already payed for her mother's sin! He already stood in her place and payed the price! (Or, I suppose, the Savior WILL, from the time frame of the play.) He payed, and forgiveness was secured, so we can forgive, knowing that justice is payed both for us and for others, and we don't have to suffer the terrible moral dilemma that Electra faced.

Persuasion of the Mind and Heart

I'll admit it. As a high school runner, I pursued victory with a missionary zeal. While this meant training hard to make myself as competitive as possible, it also meant recruiting my friends who were in good shape to abandon whatever endeavors they might feel like engaging in on a fall afternoon to slap on trainers and shorts and beat their poor bodies into submission over miles upon miles of twisting forested mountain trails. Believe it or not, this is as hard as it sounds! Nonetheless, I was consistently inviting potential runners to evening runs, fun little cross country socials, and other fellowshipping events in the hopes that some of them might feel the truthfulness of my message and join the team. There was one friend, Dylan, whose story highlights an important aspect of persuasion.

Dylan was a fine young man, who was in great shape and, more importantly, had the defiant disregard for reality that characterizes those who see mountains as molehills and pain as a pleasant companion. He was a clear candidate for the XC team, and had always been a good friend of mine. I decided to try to recruit him. I invited him on runs, told him about all the fun stuff we'd been doing as a team, and even tried to get him to come to some non-running activities. It was all to no avail. Perhaps he knew what I was trying to get him into, or more likely he just had better things (he thought) to do. Regardless, all that changed one night. I invited him to a stake dance. He's not a member, but he loves to dance, so he came and had a great time. While there, he met the vivacious and flirtatious Bianca Flufferhoffer (name has been changed.) They had a great time at the dance, he got her phone number, and when I drove him home, he could not stop talking about her. That was when I said, "You know, Bianca runs cross country..."

Dylan was a member of the team that ran at state in 2012.

An Ancient Greek Song in an American Ear

I suppose this particular blog is as much a response to some posts that have gone before as a stand-alone post. One thing I've noticed reading through various posts and comments, particularly "Arete and Greatness in a Different Light" but also some others, is a lionization of Thersites. I believe that this is a mistake, occuring because readers are applying their modern American way of thinking to an ancient Greek speaking to other ancient Greeks.

I think that as a modern American looking at Thersites from our culture of challenging undeserved authority, pushing for peace, striving for what we view as right regardless of circumstance, we can see Thersites as a classic underdog hero. To be honest, from our set of ideals, he very well might be, and had his suggestions been followed, many lives may have been saved. Looking at this through Homer's eyes, however, do we see any evidence that this was how he viewed him? Read the paragraph beginning at line 212. Some excerpts: "Thersites still went on wagging his unbridled tongue - a man of many words, and those unseemly; a monger of sedition, a railer against all who were in authority, who cared not what he said," "with a shrill squeaky voice he began heaping his abuse on Agamemnon." And then just read Homer's physical description of him! Homer is trying to make this man the most ugly, unappealing, hated character, and not just by the Achaeans, but by us as well. He specifically tells us that this man is a no-good "monger of sedition", he isn't wanting us to make any mistake of calling him a hero.

Compare this to his portrayal of Odysseus. To us, Odysseus seems quite the bully, beating men left and right, insulting them like a "Call-of-Duty obsessed 11-year old," to borrow Eli's phrase. However, what is Homer's view of him? He says he "masterfully [went] about the host," and that the Argives thought he had never done something better. Odysseus, at least in Homer's book, is an absolute hero!

Cramming Homer's story into an American mindset is like forcing Vikings into a law office! {source Capital One}

Cramming Homer's story into an American mindset is like forcing Vikings into a law office! {source Capital One}

This brings us to an interesting point about the importance of audience in rhetoric. To our modern American ears, an appeal against the rich ruler becoming rich off of the suffering and death of his subjects sounds really good! To our mindset of equality and individual worth, Thersites probably deserves a medal. To Homer, however, with his ancient Greek mindset, it should be quite clear that a message of loyalty to king and courage is the more resonant argument, and the one that resonated well with the audience he sang to.