Other Stories

As I mentioned in my first post, my religious background is in Mormonism, and although I am no longer an active member of that community (specifically the LDS church), I still find myself thinking, speaking, and acting in that language and culture. 

I still feel that to be my foundation, in terms of beliefs, with the major caveat being that I think what Mormonism has become is a fairly confused and confounded (and cursed) version of what it ought to have been.

So, I am a bit of a free agent at the moment . . . which has its benefits and drawbacks.  One benefit is I get to be a bit more free to pick and choose, I guess, the stories that I believe in and explore (Mormonism has, it seems to me, trapped itself in certain traditions and chains for so long, extending all the way back to the time of Brigham Young, that I don't see any easy way out of it institutionally).  The drawback is that this is sometimes pretty lonely - I think the community, currently, is very small that would be willing to take the kinds of stories I attempt to integrate together seriously.  I do know of a few people - full disclosure - but I consider some of them to be potentially evil, so that obviously makes the problem worse, not better.

In any case, a reader should know that I take many of the writings and stories from JRR Tolkien to be something closer to real history than they are to fiction.  And yes, I acknowledge that this is likely crazy - I have accepted the terms of my potential insanity, if not initially gracefully, at least now more completely.  In my own thinking and developing beliefs, the stories of Tolkien combine with the stories and writings of Joseph Smith to create the beginnings of a fairly grand and true story, even if we only currently can catch glimpses or certain angles of it.

I just introduce this here since some of what I write about will make ties or connections between the stories of Tolkien and Smith, and some thoughts will just take as a given that the stories that Tolkien writes of are just as real as those one would find in the Book of Mormon.

One should also know that my thoughts on the bible are that it is not of much value in its current form as a whole, at best, and maybe should be actively avoided or at least forgotten for awhile if imagining a new story is of any interest.  Not to say there isn't much truth in there - there likely is, or has to be, in order for it to be so confounding (anything completely false would be easier to dismiss) - but my view is its not very helpful as a first articles kind of thing.  Meaning, it could very interesting once we have a better idea of what the true stories are, but of very little, to negative, value in actually uncovering them.  

If finding the true story is a ship setting sail for the horizon, the bible is perhaps the anchor that keeps it in port.

Having said that, I will likely reference bible stories in some thoughts to maybe put my own spin on what the underlying truth of the matter might be, or other types of bible references that are at least somewhat vouched for (e.g., Isaiah).  We'll see.