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Pingback: Juvenile Instructor » Reflections on Taves’s Revelatory Events, pt. 1.
Thank you for an excellent article. If academics, scientists, or those of us who are average searchers of light and truth, approached our investigative endeavors with an open and non-judgmental methodology, allowing the facts to take us where they may without regard to a personal or popular paradigm, we would learn so much more and make much faster advances, and the “windows of heaven” would be opened far wider.
Kevin,
Just a note about Martha Jane Coray.
According to on-line sources, she was baptized in 1840 at the age of 18, so when she performed the dictation of Lucy Mack Smith’s history in 1844-45, she was indeed a member of the Church and in good standing.
However, I think your other observations about 1) Lucy’s history being late, and 2) that the actual contents the Book of Mormon don’t relate well to Lucy’s memory of Joseph’s “story-telling abilities”, are very insightful and much appreciated.
Kevin:
While I still need to finish (and digest) this article, your last paragraph is going to become my mantra- a mission statement about why I must keep writing. I just self-published my first paperback on Amazon. It’s a memoir that touches, in part, on what it was like to serve a mission after growing up Methodist and being inactive for a while. Though, at times, I wasn’t sure where the writing would take me, I did know that the audience needed to be everyone- not just LDS folk. The thought process involved in crafting that narrative is reflected in, and expressed by, the last paragraph of your article. Thank you for sharing it with the world so that struggling amateurs like myself have a “motto” to cling to- a reminder of why writing is so important to the growth and replenishment of our souls.
“But most of all, I cannot forget that as a believer, my audience also includes God.”
That is a beautiful and powerful statement, worth the entire read…
though the article is gorgeous.