Coming to know God

How to express the feelings in my heart? I'm not sure that it's possible.

Today I went to the temple. The kind of worship in the temple is not the same as the kind of worship in church buildings. Anyone can enter into the church building when it's open (unlike some extremely beautiful Catholic cathedrals and churches in France, for example, which are open all the time). To enter a dedicated temple you must qualify to have a temple recommend. It's a piece of paper that is signed by both your bishop and your stake president after being interviewed separately by them. The first and most important requirement to enter is to have faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ. Other requirements include being baptized, paying a full and honest tithe, keeping the dietary/health code, and following the law of chastity (abstinence before marriage, total fidelity after).

At church, we worship God in these ways:
- we sing hymns
- someone says an opening and closing prayer to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ, and we end by collectively saying, "amen."
- we listen to people share their testimony and when they close in the name of Jesus Christ, we collectively say "amen" again.
- There is one ritualistic, symbolic practice: the sacrament. A priest prays to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ to ask him to bless and sanctify the bread and the water to the souls of all those who partake or drink of it. We do this to remember the body and blood of Jesus Christ which was shed for us, and it's a symbolic witness that we are willing to take upon ourselves his name. We are promised that if we do this, we will always have the holy ghost with us.
- we separate into classes which are divided by age and/or gender and the singing, prayers, and teaching continue.

Inside the temple it's not like that at all.

In the temple, you present your recommend at the front desk. An officiater scans it. If it's valid, they let you enter. You go to a changing room. You change into white clothes: a white dress with long sleeves (and pockets) for women, white pants, white shirt, white tie for men. White socks, white slippers. If you are doing baptisms, you actually get changed into a thick, white jumpsuit which the temple launders. Usually when we go to the temple we do endowments or sealings.

The temple endowment is totally full of symbolism and ritual. Basically, you sit in a room and watch a film for about half of it. It's a participatory film which occasionally stops for you to do various things which are all pretty simple, but loaded with symbolism. At one point, you go into a new room. I am not sure how much of it I'm allowed to talk about so I'll err on the side of less.

The film is a narrative story about the creation of the earth and the point of human existence. Some big takeaways from the endowment ceremony are these:
- Jesus Christ is completely, perfectly obedient to the Father
- Adam and Eve's story is at least in part symbolic
- It was always the plan that we would need a Savior

Today there was a deaf woman in the room so the endowment ceremony had a film playing the entire time with actors signing the words as well as close captions.

And this is what really deeply touched me: I realized because of the deaf film that at the very end of the ceremony, the final reference to the Lord, it's actually about God the Father, not Jesus Christ. That... Completely changed my perspective about the entire endowment ceremony.

Beyond that, it changed my perspective about the word "Lord."

Actually, it very deeply bothers me - something about it, but I can't exactly explain what.

I had previously assumed that the word Lord was almost always Jesus Christ in the scriptures. I know that LORD in the Old Testament refers to Jehovah, who is Jesus Christ.

The first page of 1 Nephi has a reference to praying to "the Lord." I assumed that as Jews, maybe they were misguided in their understanding of the identity of God. That seems like a very reasonable assumption, one that I share with all Christian faiths, I guess.

The last page of 2 Nephi is a reference to calling on God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. This is how I worship God. I just assumed Nephi learned more about the nature of God as he got older and finished the record.

Turns out, the Lord can refer to God the Father. It is unambiguously a reference to God the Father in the temple. Therefore, mightn't it be similar elsewhere in the scriptures?

Ergo: I made mistakes in my interpretation of the scriptures. In my search to highlight parts of the scriptures that refer to Jesus Christ, I sometimes highlighted the wrong thing.

THAT BOTHERS ME. A LOT.

So here's the possibilities I came up with for what the words about God in the scriptures could refer to:
- God the Father
- Jesus Christ
- the Holy Ghost
- both God the Father and Jesus Christ
- both Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost
- both God the Father and the Holy Ghost
- All Three At The Same Time

(Oh how the medieval numerologists are shouting with joy to see there are seven possibilities.)

The eighth: it could be ambiguous.

I am really unsatisfied with the idea of worshipping and learning about an ambiguous, unknowable God. It actually...the feeling in my heart when I consider that as a possibility is complete incredulity and dissatisfaction. It neither fits with what I believe and feel to be true nor with any shred of logical reasoning in my head. Meaning: if God is ambiguous and unknowable, why should I worship him at all.

This new idea (to me) that the word Lord can refer to a member of the godhead that isn't necessarily Jesus Christ doesn't compel me to despair and give up my faith - ha! No.

But it does make me yearn with every piece of my soul to study this very carefully and thoroughly - and a highlighter, a book, and lots and lots of time is NOT going to be the most successful method to do that. It will take too long and be too subjective.

I need to find a way to search the scriptures for all references to all the names of God (including pronouns - eghh), export them into a spreadsheet including the verse in which they fall, label them as being one of the eight possible cases, and then study hard the ambiguous examples until I understand which "God" they actually mean.

I could spend my entire life doing this.

But though it seems daunting, I know it would be incredibly worthwhile. What is more worthwhile to study in the scriptures beyond the nature of God?

Just as ASL shed a whole lot of light on my understanding of this topic, so will studying the scriptures in other languages/translations. The word cruncher app I've been playing around with gets me all the scriptures in English, the Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek.

How I wish it could also have a parallel translation of the Bible - the whole Bible, not a dumbed-down abbreviated version - in Czech. I don't get why my church doesn't have its own digital version of the Bible in languages other than English; there has to be a way to get this thing I crave. But how?!

Just as strongly as I believe that God could, if he wanted to, make himself known to me through a visitation of an angel, or a clear vision, or any number of miraculous ways - I understand that one of the main purposes of this life is to try to walk by faith. It would defeat the purpose if I had the answers given to me. I believe that the promise repeated in the scriptures is true: if I ask, if I knock, if I search, if I ponder, if I pray - I can come to know God. 

But there is within me still a deep feeling of terrible loneliness that it has to be this way, that I have to be separated from God at all. I do not like it. It is so unsatisfying in a way that words don't come close to describing. 

Also, it's kind of like researching my ancestors. I really enjoy hearing people describe my great grandparents. I enjoy reading the stories. I enjoy collecting the records. I feel a lot closer to them as I hear their words describe these dead people.

But I never fully believe anything that is said or written about these dead ancestors of mine, at least completely. Like, I always have somewhere in my consciousness an understanding that all the records, all the memories of these people contain blatant biases. All of the records are flawed. I am certain that the scriptures - and certainly many or perhaps most of the interpretations of them! - are flawed. It definitely does not make it worthless to search these extant records meticulously. I don't even care that it's a weird approach to spirituality, to try to use computers to come closer to God.

But won't it be so great when we finally, finally get to meet our ancestors and actually know them? Far better than that - won't it be incredible to meet God and talk to him face to face? 

He feels so far away to me sometimes.

And even at the times when I feel closest to him, it is still farther than I want it to be. 

I believe and trust that there are multiple epistemologically valid ways to get closer to him. For example, trying to keep the commandments as I understand them. Trying to be like him, even if I fail. Just because I personally feel very little confidence that asking a simple, humble prayer will get me the closeness and the answers I seek doesn't mean I won't try it.

As with all of my really, truly deep interests, a thorough, thoughtful analytical treatment is probably my favorite way to try to come to know something because I probably overvalue facts and logic. I hypothesize that as I search the scriptures, there will be less cases of "ambiguous God" than I thought, and that the cases that are ambiguous will bother me less the more I study them. I also hypothesize that the ones that do bother me might be solvable through reading other scriptures (or perhaps even nonscriptural texts). Or perhaps answers will emerge through searching the scriptures through a different translation in a different language. We will see.     

Did Lehi see Jesus Christ or Heavenly Father in 1 Nephi 1:8?

1 Nephi 1:8

Lehi prays "to the Lord."
When he is praying "to the Lord" he sees a pillar of fire.
He was freaked out.
He goes home.
He lies in his bed.
He was "carried away in a vision."
He "thought he saw" God sitting upon his throne, surrounded by numberless concourses of angels.
He saw "One" who was really bright come out.
Twelve others followed the "One."
The "One" gave Lehi a book and told him to read it.
As he read he felt the Holy Ghost.

...and his dream continues, but that's enough for now.

Some observations:

It is ambiguous from the language whether or not the person on the throne is the same as the person who comes down. It could have just been a scene change in his vision.

But it kind of seems unlikely, because the word "One" seems to differentiate the bright person coming down from God sitting upon his throne.

If they were the same person - if Lehi recognized them as the same person - then I guess it would be much more likely for him to describe it differently.

Also, I've always thought it was kind of weird that Nephi says that his dad "thought he saw." In English, the pragmatic meaning of that is often, "...but he didn't really." Is Nephi saying that his father Lehi was wrong?

From what I understand, the Jews at that time were worshiping Jehovah - though I am pretty sure they did not call him that. I think there is something about the holiness of the name of God that made it need to be substituted with the vowels from the Hebrew word for lord, adonai, and when you mix that together with yhwh you get Yahowah and then there is a shift in the pronunciation of these letters in English to Jehovah. The King James translators used the word LORD in all caps when they translated this word. Jehovah is just the proper name of the God of Israel in English. He is the premortal Jesus Christ. 

Huh. In Czech it is translated as Hospodin?!

Which is not the same as Pán. To me, it seems to evoke some kind of meaning of like, one who gives or saves. Hospoda is a pub, a hospodář is one of the 23 jillion Czech words for farmer (sort of, more like a bailiff I guess), hospodárný is someone who is economical/frugal/saves, hospodárnost is frugality, hospodářství is administration, or a homestead. 

Side note: I am really sad that the Bible is not included in the LDS library (and thus in the wordcruncher library). I really wish I could search the word of God in Czech the same way. Also, my understanding is that Bible kralická was translated earlier than KJV from some of the same source text? I guess? So yeah, like...reading it in Czech will definitely be interesting!

I discovered that the article I read yesterday and posted about is actually wrong. The word Jehovah shows up 9 times (not 7 times) in the Old Testament. 

OT : 9

NT : 6

BoM : 13

D&C : 9

PGP : 5 <-- which is significant because this book is super short.

Meanwhile, I did a search for "LORD" in all caps:

OT : 6,468

NT : 5

...and that's it. When Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon, he did not put LORD in all caps. 

My understanding is that Judaism has always been extremely strictly monotheistic. It would have been majorly shocking for Lehi to see two different members of the Godhead.

I know that even very righteous prophets of old didn't have a perfect understanding of our relationship to God. For example, the brother of Jared in the book of Ether is scared out of his wits when he sees Jesus Christ's finger reaching out to touch the stones to give them light on their journey across the ocean. He never knew or even imagined that God had a body - I think he was even surprised to see God in a human form at all. 

I think it still took a while before Lehi and his family understood the godhead and our relationship to God. And that is okay.

I also know that we have been told that we live in a time when we have the fullness of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. This means we might have access to knowledge about God's nature that previous generations, including Lehi, maybe didn't.

It was sort of part of the Law of Moses to pray to Jehovah, though surprisingly less than I though. The Bible Dictionary has this to say:

Before the first generation of mankind had passed away, men began to call upon the name of the Lord (Gen. 4:26; Moses 5:4). Prayers, whether with (Gen. 12:8; 13:4) or without (Gen. 20:7; 32:9–11) sacrifice, were constantly offered by the patriarchs to God. The efficacy of the intercession of good men was recognized (Gen. 18:23; 20:7; Ex. 32:11).

Prayer is nowhere specifically commanded as a duty in the law, and prayers were not prescribed at the sacrifices except on two occasions: a confession of sin on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:21) and a thanksgiving when offering the firstfruits and tithes (Deut. 26:3, 13). It is, however, certain from the nature of things, and from the custom in later times, that prayer accompanied sacrifice.

and later: 

As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part (Matt. 7:7–11). Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.

Jews like Lehi didn't understand that Jehovah and the Messiah are the same person, and they believe that the Messiah 1. has not come and 2. will be totally human, not divine. They also did not really pray to God the same way as we do today at all. Remember that the word "Christ" is just Greek for "Messiah", which means "the anointed one." 

To Lehi, it would have been really surprising to learn that the godhead is made up of three separate beings, all of whom might be mentioned in this vision: God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. He would have been really overwhelmed. And he was.

There was a really inspiring talk given at last general conference about the nature of God the Father. It was literally just doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, and very positive doctrine at that.

Here is a very short excerpt with gajillions of links: 

During mortality, Heavenly Father provides us with the conditions we need to progress within His plan. The Father begot Jesus Christ in the flesh14 and provided Him with divine help to fulfill His mortal mission. Heavenly Father will likewise help each of us if we will strive to keep His commandments.15 The Father gives us agency.16 Our lives are in His hands, and our “days are known” and “shall not be numbered less.”17 And He ensures that eventually all things work for the good of those who love Him.18It is Heavenly Father who gives us our daily bread,19 which includes both the food we eat and the strength we need to keep His commandments.20 The Father gives good gifts.21 He hears and answers our prayers.22 Heavenly Father delivers us from evil when we let Him.23 He weeps for us when we suffer.24 Ultimately, all of our blessings come from the Father.25

So here's what I think: 

I think the bright "One" that Lehi saw was Jesus Christ. It seems like he did not yet know who Jesus was. I think it's possible that God sitting on the throne who Lehi saw was either Jesus Christ or Heavenly Father if his vision were some kind of nocturnal thing where he wasn't actually physically transported somewhere. Elsewhere in the scriptures, people have to be transfigured in order to endure the presence or glory of heavenly beings like God the Father. I think it would be super unlikely for Lehi to have been transfigured at this point in his ministry; that seems to be an end-of-one's-mortal-mission event, therefore Lehi's vision here was more likely some kind of nocturnal vision. 

I think it's possible that Lehi and Nephi disagreed about who Lehi saw. Perhaps Nephi thought it was more likely that he saw Jesus Christ sitting on the throne. There are lots of examples of the LORD sitting on his throne in the Old Testament (and a few in the New Testament). Jesus Christ definitely has a throne. 

In the end, I think it's not super important; I'd probably side with Nephi more than Lehi, but that's because I'm totally biased and have been reading his words my entire life, so I feel like he's an old friend. What do you think?

I finished President Nelson's Book of Mormon Challenge today

Today I finished reading the Book of Mormon. It was a challenge given by the prophet to all the women of the restored church of Christ to finish reading this book before the end of the year. By the way, I am also on schedule to finish reading it (aloud) in Czech by the end of the year.

We were specifically asked to mark each verse that speaks of or refers to the Savior.

This turned out to be somewhat problematic. Sometimes the scriptures are clearly referring to Jesus Christ. Sometimes, well...they aren't.

There are two very important things that I remember from when I did early morning seminary (which basically meant I woke up at 5:15 every morning through High School and studied the scriptures with my siblings and a really nice seminary teacher, except for the year when I was in France and we did a "home study" program where we met once/week at the church. Two of the other three years seminary was in my house and my mom was the teacher. My last year of seminary the bishop's wife (who was Japanese) a few miles away from us was the teacher and I drove there every morning with my little sister.):

1. A major theme of the Old Testament is being able to turn even some of the most awful situations into something good.
2. Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, is Jesus Christ.

The name of the God of Israel is יְהֹוָה/yhwh. It means "He is/He causes to be." This occurs over 6,800 times in the Hebrew Bible. It's called the tetragrammaton, and the TLDR version is that this word got warped into Jehovah in English as a combination of the word yhwh and the vowels in the word addonay (which can refer to lord as in, like, the lord of a manor, the ruler of something). And the King James translators basically always translates this word to "Lord" (only 7 times out of 6,800 does the word "Jehovah" appear in the KJV).

Apparently most scholars think these things:
1. the Israelite's ancestors (like in the book of Genesis), the Canaanites, and other Western Semites worshiped the god "El"
2. the Israelites later began to worship yhwh/Jehovah
3. ...except when they didn't; some Israelites worshipped yhwh/Jehovah from early on
4. much later, yhwh/Jehovah was seen to be the same being as El

So, back to my read-through of the Book of Mormon. I decided early on that I was going to try my best to only highlight passages that unambiguously had something to do with Jesus Christ.

A concise(ish) latter-day saint understanding of the identity of God is like this:

• There is an all-powerful supreme being called God. His name is Heavenly Father. In the latter-days, we call him Elohim. I haven't studied this word in as much depth as I need to. But I do know that it's both a plural noun (!) and it takes a singular verb (?). Weird.
• Heavenly Father is a member of an organization called the godhead.
• It is made of three separate, distinct, unique people: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. They are not the same being.
• But all of them have the same, totally united ultimate purpose: bring about the immortality and eternal life of mankind.
• The Holy Ghost is a person of spirit. He does not have a body. Which is weird. But this allows him to fulfill his own specific mission.
• God the Father is the father of our spirits (and as such, there must also be a God the Mother, but we don't know very much about her, which is frustrating to me).
• We lived with God the Father before we were born as his spirit children. We are all spiritual siblings.
• God the Father's firstborn, only-begotten son (the only mortal child he has) was Jesus Christ.
• Jesus Christ was foreordained to be the Savior of the world.
• Jesus Christ was perfect and sinless.
• Jesus Christ was born into a human(ish - I mean, a human would never be able to suffer for the pain/sin of the world and life to tell about it) body as the literal physical son of Mary. (Remember how above I mentioned that we are all the spiritual children of heavenly parents? Well, we are the physical children of mortal parents, who are actually our spiritual siblings. So is Jesus Christ - except he's also the literal son of God the father.)
• Jesus Christ suffered for all of the pain and sin of the world. This is called the atonement. It was basically almost all accomplished during his great intercessory prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, but he also sealed this act by his death upon the cross.
• Jesus Christ was resurrected into a perfect (i.e. not mortal) body.  
• If we want to be forgiven of our sins, we will do these things:
• have faith that Jesus Christ's atonement is real
• repent 
• take upon ourselves the name of Christ and prove it by being baptized
• receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (remember the third member of the godhead previously mentioned? This is basically a promise that if you strive to keep the commandments, you can literally always have a member of the godhead with you, helping you)
• endure to the end: basically, rinse and repeat this cycle. We don't get baptized again, but we take the sacrament in church as a symbol of our renewed vow to keep our baptismal covenant (this is why it a. does not bother me that non-believers do not take the sacrament and b. not only that - it sort of does bother me for non-believers to take the sacrament! They aren't supposed to.)
• When we pray, we pray to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. 
• When we pray, we can sometimes talk about how great Jesus Christ is, and thank Heavenly Father for sending him. This is done all throughout the New Testament.
• There is a rare case when it's appropriate to pray to Jesus Christ directly, and that is when he is literally with you. He has a body. If he literally stood next to you in his mortal body or his resurrected body, it would be appropriate to worship him. 

So yeah. Back to my recent reading.

I had a really difficult time highlighting places that were definitely, unambiguously about Jesus Christ sometimes. Whenever the Book of Mormon referred to "the Lord", I highlighted it. When it was just "God" and it was not really obvious that it was Jesus Christ from the context (like, if it says, "God descends to redeem his people, it seems obvious it's about Jesus Christ. But it's not obvious in like, vocative cases. O God! Is that O God Jesus? Or O God the Father?)

I want to read the entire standard works and highlight it this way:

References to Jesus Christ: pink <-- because it stands out the most

References to Heavenly Father: yellow <-- because it seemed appropriate and is a common highlighter color

References to the Holy Ghost: green <-- because green is the color of life, this world, this earth

References to God that are ambiguous: blue <-- because blue rhymes with who

So what I am doing now is going back through all the pink sections that I highlighted (by the way, I went through seven highlighters) and underlining in a metallic gel pen these references:

Within the references to Jesus Christ I found that there are many cases that actually include:

- references to God the Father 

- references to the Holy Ghost

- references that are ambiguous about whether or not they are only referring to Jesus Christ

Some common ambiguous examples are: 

"the spirit of the Lord" - if Jesus Christ is "the Lord", then why is the Holy Ghost called "his" spirit? Is it the Holy Ghost? I am not sure.

"the Lord God" - is this God the Father or Jesus Christ?

I don't see how the scholars' understanding of the Israelite worship of Jehovah contradicts with the idea that Jesus Christ is the God of the Old Testament, though footnote nine of this article seems to indicate that? I personally don't have a problem with considering the Israelites were a bit misguided in their concept of God, even if they were the "chosen people." 

Actually, I rather think that there is evidence in the Book of Mormon that perhaps the ancient Jews did worship Jehovah. Here is why I think that:

Nephi was a Jew. He was born in Jerusalem to Jewish parents about 100 years after Isaiah, the great Jewish prophet, lived and preached. I really like Isaiah, by the way, even through the weird language of the KJV. I think I will like it more reading it in Czech, though. But that is just a hypothesis as yet.

On the first page of the Book of Mormon, Nephi describes how his father prayed "unto the Lord." (1 Nephi 1:5). Was Lehi praying to Jehovah (i.e. Jesus Christ)? I think he was. 

And I think it's evidence of his Israelite traditions that somewhat blurred the line between Jehovah and God the Father - or made them be the same thing, or perhaps before Christ's first coming - his mortal ministry - maybe people were supposed to pray directly to him (I think this is wrong, but I don't have evidence for why yet)?

Then on the next page, Lehi says, "O Lord God Almighty" which probably is that term "shaddai" which occurs 48 times in the Old Testament both in conjunction with the word El and yhwh. I think this word is specifically chosen to evoke the idea of power, supremacy, might, the ability to deliver and sustain etc. Does this refer to Jesus Christ or God the Father - and more importantly, did Lehi himself know who he was addressing? And beyond that, does it matter? If both Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are totally united in purpose, aren't they both "almighty"? 

So yeah, I observed that there were numerous examples of Nephi and his family praying "unto the Lord" throughout 1 Nephi: 

All of these refer to people praying to the Lord:

1 Nephi 2:7

1 Nephi 2:12

1 Nephi 5:9

1 Nephi 7:17

1 Nephi 7:21

1 Nephi 7:22

1 Nephi 8:8

1 Nephi 8:9

Then between these chapters, Nephi sees the vision of the Tree of Life in which he is shown Jesus Christ. I think it's safe to say he learns something about the nature of God. 

Examples that follow include other people praying to the Lord (not Nephi):

1 Nephi 15:8 <-- "have ye inquired of the Lord?"

1 Nephi 16:24 <-- he did inquire of the Lord

1 Nephi 16:32 <-- they did give thanks unto him

1 Nephi 17:8 <-- Nephi was literally talking with the Lord in this case

1 Nephi 18:3 <-- here ambiguous about whether or not he was literally talking with the Lord

1 Nephi 18:21 still praying to the Lord <-- the only example after his vision where he is praying "to the Lord"

1 Nephi 21:22 <-- reference to "the Lord God"

1 Nephi 22:7 <--- another reference to "the Lord God"

I have not gone through 2 Nephi yet to check for other ambiguities in Nephi's references to God. I do know that it isn't until 2 Nephi 10 that Nephi's little brother says Christ's name is Christ. After that, the references to Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon are significantly less ambiguous, which makes some sense; the Nephites had the plates of Nephi with his writing. They would have studied it. 

* * * 

I find it really interesting to study the scriptures in this kind of detail. It is deeply fulfilling to me. I don't expect everybody to "get" this, or to need to study the scriptures like this in order to have a good experience, but I really feel like clapping my hands for joy because there's a place for me and my weirdness in the world of gospel scholarship. 

I wish there were a "quad" corpus so that I could use other corpus analyzing tools to try to search the scriptures, for example there's this really fun "word mapper" tool that's pat of Lancsbox. But this wordcruncher tool is a pretty interesting tool that I've started to play around with a bit. I know that manually reading through the scriptures and highlighting the sections for Jesus Christ is valuable in its own way, but computers could do the job in a much more thorough, analytical, objective way that might be able to show us surprising things. Anyway, the constant invocation from the prophets is to "search the scriptures" - not merely to "read" them. 

There's this other really cool tool called the LDS Scripture Citation Index. It shows all the scripture citations from extant general conference talks from 1830-present (with a few breaks). From this tool, I learned that the most frequently (by a LOT) quoted chapter of scripture for latter-day saints is definitely the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. That makes sense, and I find it really interesting. 

Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. He is the God of the Old Testament. In the temple, we learn that Jesus Christ is completely obedient to Heavenly Father in every single minuscule detail. The way to eternal life and salvation is to accept his atonement, be baptized, and continue to walk down the covenant path. I have a testimony that Heavenly Father knows and loves us, that I have access to him through prayers in Jesus Christ's name. I know that Heavenly Father is the director of the plan of salvation. I know that Jesus Christ is also God and that his atonement is real, and that I can draw upon its healing and cleansing power when I sin by sincerely repenting. The scriptures repeat over and over that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is the Christ. When I sometimes feel like that seems impossible, I can read these words and receive renewed testimony in God's strength and power. One of the sweetest messages of the Book of Mormon is that God is capable of accomplishing his work. What a hopeful, positive message. I believe it.

Who can answer my questions about corpus linguistics intersecting with my study of the scriptures?

Sometimes - rarely - I have a dream that is so nice that when I wake up and realize it's not real, I feel very sad.

I had a dream just now that was nothing concrete, just feelings. But the feeling was that it was okay for me to be this way. It was acceptable.

By this way, I mean something like an incomparably nerdy dork. And I know that nerdiness is the new "cool" - I'm not talking about that kind of nerdiness. I'm talking about the other kind. The one that prevents people from ever getting too close to you. Or that prevents you from being able to concisely articulate your ideas. Or that prevents you from being able to inspire people to do something.

I emailed a BYU professor a short email with a question that's been on my mind for weeks. He happens to be the creator of several extremely important, influential corpora. He emailed me back. The exchange went like this:

Question about x
Terse answer that I didn't understand
Three more questions about x and an apology for not understanding
Terse restatement of first answer with a link, ignoring my questions completely

I guess he's busy. But like...still...

I would like to live in a world where my weird way of thinking and seeing things is valued more. Where I can feel free to be myself.

Sometimes I decide I don't care, and that I can just be myself anyway. And then there are moments like this stupid email exchange where I personalize everything. I'm not stupid; in my head I know that he's just busy, email doesn't transmit tone very well, and it's likely I was asking the question in the wrong way.

But it isn't my head that hurts, is it.

My Weltschmerz

This post has been a very long time coming.

I have two forces inside myself at war with very strong opinions that seem to completely contradict one another, yelling at me about how the world "should" be. It has been over a decade and I still don't have any exact answers about how to resolve these forces. So I have found a kind of meagre resolution in just accepting that is ok for the time being that I don't have acceptable answers, and trying to find happiness in it anyway.

I strongly believe that I should be the best wife and mother that I can be, that this is my most important role and contribution to this world, and that as such I should be present and work diligently with all my might in the real, physical world. This force probably has something to do with both evolutionary biology and being raised in a conservative religious culture that places great importance on family. Also, I probably innately value and idealize this role.

I also strongly believe that my ideas, intelligence, and contributions to the world can matter enough to make a big positive impact for good in the minds, hearts, and actual lives of people outside my family. This force strongly values my individuality. It probably comes from being raised in a family culture which highly values education and learning. It probably is also just an innate piece of me.

Do not tell me that my work in the home matters. Do you think I don't believe that? Do you honestly think I haven't thought about it in exquisite, frustrating detail? While you're sitting at a desk getting paid and praised by your colleagues - or even critiqued or yelled at by them - I have spent the very vast majority of the last ten years, "alone but not alone", with very little validation of any of my first goal's efforts.

My husband, you ask? Doesn't he validate me? Are we talking about the endless, mindless battle against entropy here? The thing about dishes, laundry, and organ playing on Sunday is that people only notice them when they are broken. So, you're a programmer who creates tools that only gets recognition when there are bugs or when they break, you counter? There are millions of ways to creatively optimize problems on a computer. There are limited ways to creatively optimize problems with housework, and all of them involve a lot of physical drudgery and immersion in the real, moist world of caring for small children. Lift this. Fold that. Wipe this. Clean that. You think *your* life is a daily grind, try living mine. You really haven't got a clue. You achieve progress with your next version. You receive feedback of many, many kinds. You have some measure of control over your efforts. I am constantly at war with entropy, and somehow no amount of my sweetheart's, "oh, you folded the laundry! Thank you!" is fulfilling to my individual intelligence and self-worth, the second goal, anyway.

Some days I just want to scream about the unfairness of it.

And I'm not talking about "gender roles," I'm talking about conditions of mortality that make it so that I must make continuous, massive sacrifices in order to fulfill both of these purposes - including goal number one, my greatest dream, my highest personal value of bringing children into this world and raising them into good adults. I know I wouldn't be happy as a man. I wouldn't be happy as the primary breadwinner, either. I think this housewife role is where I can be happiest. But it definitely still sucks sometimes. It isn't "the way it should be" - but then, I don't know what that really would look like. I have to just accept and believe that it's better for me to pass through this sorrow for some reason having to do with my eternal progression and that the pain of living will one day be resolved.

My nine year old summed it up nicely. "Your job is great because everything you do is for our family." I totally cringed when she said this. Fortunately I was making dinner and so my back was to her, and my husband sensed what was wrong and sent her away on an errand.

"She just succinctly explained the entire problem. I don't *want* everything I do to be for our family. I want to do other great things."
"That makes you a wonderful person, Kate." He proceeded to give me a quote by Joseph Smith about how people should not be content to bless only the lives of their family but to be anxious to make a difference in the world as well, or something like that.

Around 2012 my goals started to shift. I couldn't figure out the internal "mommy wars" thing so I just set it aside completely and started to pursue genealogy research more intensely. There's a fulfilling project if ever there was one. And it is an odd synthesis of both of the two goals I have: be a force for good in my family and be a force for good on my own. 

I have been so much happier setting aside my preoccupation with resolving my Weltschmerz and just DOING what I can to fulfill both of my bigger goals. It's easy to get lost in doing.

For me, "doing" seems to look quite different than it does for most of my peers. Example: the only path towards really being the genealogist that I want to be is to learn Czech. I find enormous amounts of joy in studying Czech. But it is sad to me that it's not something I can share with others around me in the real world.

You know what, though? There's a place for me. I don't have to "shallow" my way anywhere. I am okay being this person who I am; nobody ever said we should ignore the Weltschmerz or pretend it isn't real. It's ok that a lot of things around me are unsatisfactory and that sometimes causes me to retreat into my internal world. Still, I choose to live happily in my real world here in Ankeny in my warm, cluttered house with a basketball team's worth of children constantly playing "hot cross buns" on the recorder, slamming all the doors and cabinets, and running around outside in 37 degree weather without shoes (!!), and always yelling/complaining/whining at me. One day they're going to grow up and we'll be able to have the intelligent conversations I so crave. Also, Danny assures me that the day for my advanced degree will come, and probably fairly soon. Perhaps even in the next year or two.

There isn't an easy solution to solving my personal Weltschmerz, but perhaps there's a simple one: believe that it's going to be okay. Love the people around me and myself. Focus on doing what I can to be a force for good within all my spheres of influence. The validation piece is still pretty lacking, but I guess since it might be that way for the other moms in my life, instead of trying to tease it out of others I should shift my focus on giving it to others in great abundance. That, and do my best to give it to myself.

Genealogy Friends

[I originally wrote this in October 2016, reread it as I was refiling some stuff, and decided to both publish and add to it.]

My two best genealogy friends fell from the sky into my metaphorical lap. They are both Czech.

There's nothing like a good friend who shares your same interests to make you realize how much you wish you had more of them. Externism again: the more close friends you have, the less close friends you feel like you have.

Every day my husband goes to work and I count down the hours until he can come home again and we can talk about everything. Or rather, that I can spill my soul out and have him collect it again. I have so many thoughts and feelings and they are not shareable with the majority of my current friends. One of my close friends moved to St. Louis recently, and I feel that loss.

Danny has very few friends and doesn't seem to mind it very much. He tells me that he sometimes wishes he could just have close friends without the effort of making them. I understand that feeling. Cultivating friendships is a little bit like planting a garden with a package of mystery seeds. It takes a while to figure out if anything you've grown will be beautiful or edible.

When you find a beautiful flower, or a tasty pepper plant, you try to overwinter it in the safety of your house. I have 10 pepper plants I started from seed that are on a counter next to the windows in the basement, one of the few sunny rooms in our house. They are nice to look at when I'm typing at my computer. I also brought the red geraniums inside and they are by the sliding deck door in large window boxes I built and painted by myself. If they bloom all winter, it will be much more cheerful than last year when somebody drained all the color out of the landscape for months and months, and we were stuck inside with nothing to do and four very energetic small children.

I also have some begonias, impatiens, and one habanero plant that I overwintered in 2015. If it is possible to overwinter plants, it should also be possible for a housewife in Iowa to make lifelong friends with whom I can discuss my nerdy interests and explore the exciting world of transcriptions and genealogical proof without abandon.

Maybe someday I will be friends with my children. As long as they still lick the floor, that day is not today.

Motherhood is very hard, but in ways I hadn't foreseen. It's hard to be home all day with a mountain of meaningless jobs to do. I sometimes feel like a slave. But I am fully aware that this would be the same if I were a father, and in some ways worse because at least I have the small benefit of being my own master. I can and often do intersperse the most obnoxious chores with exciting transcriptions, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. Unless the 10 minutes turns into two hours, and the school bus suddenly has arrived and we still have no groceries because I was supposed to have gotten them earlier…

But the way motherhood is most painful to me is the loneliness.

Although, claiming motherhood is the loneliest stage of life is wildly inaccurate because absolutely nothing competes with being a celibate unmarried college student while Danny was serving his mission. I dated so many guys but the whole time it was so, SO pathetically empty and miserable. I can relate very well to Škvorecký’s lovesick novels and the desire for human connection.

The loneliness of motherhood is not like that. I have found another human soul, my beloved husband, who understands me and loves all of me. If we could spend every waking second of every day together, maybe it would not be like this, but since we can’t, it's like loneliness of the brain. I want meaningful intellectual connections with humans.

Teaching English to small humans is neither easy, nor mindless. But it is tedious. Other tedious jobs include teaching basic morals (no you may not punch your brother in the back with your shoes), basic manners (no you may not fart on purpose at the dinner table), basic religion (no you may not fart on purpose during the prayer either!), and basic common sense (no you may not lick the floor!!!)

I try to reach out to smart people I know in the real world. There are many well read, witty, fun moms out there… somewhere… right? Maybe it will require me to try to focus more on their interests rather than luring them into indulging in mine. But that sounds so...boring...

My close friends from college all have infants to worry about right now. If I become pregnant again anytime soon, it will most certainly not be out of boredom or an attempt to address an identity crisis - which maybe is an accurate description of how I feel. I'm turning 30 next week but I feel 15. This stupid trampoline injury from three weeks ago that refuses to heal tells me I'm not 15.

I went to Las Vegas in April on a “girl's trip.” I spent a week with my awesome mother in law, who I admire and get along with well, since she is Danny's mom and they are very similar. Also on the trip were my sisters in law, a cousin in law, and Katie the close family friend. It was not for gambling. It was for a cheap resort hotel, human interaction, and tradition. We do this every other year or so. I would never be invited if it weren't for my family connections, though I get along well with all of them. It’s just I would never naturally fall into their friend group. But then, neither would Danny. It was just the luck of fate that he would be born into a “cool” family.

For example, there I was, reading “Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents” by Robert Minert by the pool… for fun. Despite (or probably partially because) they all made fun of me for it.

“What are you reading, Kate?”

“Oh...just my book about German handwriting.”

“Let me see.” [looks at it] “Um...I would never read that. I would rather die”

After talking about the Family History Library, and how the women lucky enough to live in the vicinity (cough cough) really should go do some look-ups for this specific British genealogy problem Danny and I were working on back then, his oldest sister Ruth Ann said, “I would literally rather poke my eyes with a stick than do that.”

This increased my feeling of gratification by 1,000x when, a few months later, I won the ridiculous diet competition that I was pressured to join with these 8 women. Everybody else’s requested prize was something like money; I asked for 3 hours of their time in which to teach them how to do some family history. I shall claim this prize when we visit there at Thanksgiving in the end of November. Ruth Ann will definitely need to bring a stick with her.

I don’t naturally fit in with these people, but with conscious effort, I can be relatively happy. Of course, know also that the way these women show their love is through their teasing, and nobody is exempt. It’s a compliment that they tease me for my bookishness. In the end, of course I swam in the pool with everyone instead of devouring my glorious nonfiction book. Later, though, as we were loading the cars to leave, I somehow became engrossed in my first ever texting conversation about Czech nationalism with my friend Lukáš, and the contrast was palpable even to my mother in law. I was beaming.

“Who are you talking to?”

“oh, just my genealogy blogger friend. He says that Czech nationalism is a really interesting but complicated topic, that maybe people weren't as oppressed under the Habsburgs as we sometimes pretend they are… which I had never considered… but maybe it's because blah blah blah”

Her eyes glazed over as she stopped listening.

“How did you meet this guy?”

“oh just through blogging.”

Out of the sky.

Maybe if I work really hard I can trace the living descendants of my Czech ancestors who stayed in Moravia or something. Maybe I can fall into their metaphorical lap “from the sky” (ha! the “sky” that actually represents hundreds of hours of research spent in trying to find them). Maybe I can find another brain with whom I can share my genealogy musings, thoughts, wonderings…

I haven't heard from Roman in about a month. He's been busy. He says he's “lazy.” I have been wickedly hoping he breaks his ankle at badminton again, like he did when he found me in 2012, so that we can discuss the important pressing genealogical issues for our family. This desire is partly so that I can solve the puzzle, partly so that I don't feel like such a pariah, worthy of only one single good Czech genealogy friend with whom to discuss time machine envy, negative evidence, whether the letter is a capital H or not (and thus changes the meaning of the sentence), etc.

No, I simply refuse to accept this. It’s time to start searching through the wide, blue sky for some more geraniums to overwinter: friends with whom I can share my brain freely, and who in turn help mine to expand and bloom.



Update November 2018:

Two years later, I can attest to these facts:

Friending is still a struggle for me, and will probably continue to be for the rest of my life.

But it really can happen. People do exist in this world around whom I can be my mostly unfettered self.

But like, perhaps sometimes being a good friend means "fettering" yourself. And that's okay.

I really wanted to keep this blog upbeat, positive, non-melancholy, non-bitchy. The 2016 section of this post is not really any of those things, at least to me. When I reread what I wrote, I am flooded with memories of how I felt and who I was. It is so difficult to love one's past self.

I am choosing to be confident that there are people in the world who share my deep passion for somewhat eclectic things, who are interested in reading my thoughts and feelings, and who love me. This is a really difficult choice to make. I realize that my personal anxiety refuses to trust anything or anybody. But perhaps to really have the kind of friendships I really want, that's what is needed. Trust in people, that they won't let you down, that they don't implicitly hate you, etc. etc.

I think I can try out this trust, even if it is not my natural state of being, and even if parts of me would rather not. I am quite sure there is a version of myself called "Tragically Romantic Kate." She's pretty much a myopically stupid super-female drama queen who deeply enjoys writing awful poetry. Maybe I'll allow some of the poetry writing, but mostly I think she belongs in a nursery with all the other helpless crybabies.

PS

The 3 hours remain owed, but I've accepted that it's not going to happen, least of all how I imagined it.

Why would you choose to live in hell?

I don't really believe in hell, or at least the traditional version of it.

It's just too ludicrous. Satan and his devils with horns and pitchforks surrounding some giant lake of fire and brimstone. This is, quite literally, the stuff of comic books.

Ludicrous things are quite often very funny, and I can't help but laugh at this, nor its caricaturesque counterpart of pearly white gates guarded by Saint Peter (I guess that's the stereotype? It's not even really "a thing" in my own personal religious/cultural experience, not even in jokes), a befuzzled God with a halo and white robes, bunches of winged angels standing around on clouds and playing harps - etc. But right now I want to talk specifically about damnation and hell.

The scriptures are full of references to what at first glance is something similar to the above depiction of hell. Here are some examples:  "A lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end" (2 Nephi 9:15-23) or the beast from Revelation being taken and "cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone" (Revelation 19:20) or how, "upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup." (Psalms 11:6 even though I don't really like the Psalms that much yet) - or in reference to the days of the Lord's vengeance, how the "streams [of Zion] shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch." (Isaiah 34:9) Later, how "the fearful, and the unbelieving, and all liars, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." (Doctrine and Covenants 63:17).

And, just because I am pretty sure you probably just skimmed the above paragraph, know that the point I was trying to show was that images of a brimstoney hell are completely laced throughout the scriptures.

But I'm sure it's not literal.

I am also quite sure that this particular kind of hell as described is not a post-final judgment experience, but rather, that we experience this when we are separated from God.

Like, now.

During our every day existence.

Brimstone is sulfurous. It's this nasty smelling stuff present in hot springs all over the "Holy" Land (I personally think this title for this land is the biggest misnomer of all and wrote a tiny bit about my time in Israel here, though it is highly abbreviated and doesn't really express this idea perfectly - but the unholiness of the holy land deserves its own rant, not here, not now). It is mentioned in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and other various cities throughout the Old Testament. It's a symbol of God's displeasure and anger.

Does God's anger only come upon us after we are dead and judged for our actions?

No way.

If the God of the Old and New Testaments and other books of scripture is real, for sure he interferes with our lives while we are yet living. Or at least, he has with some people, and certainly has the power to interfere in our lives, even though that might seem difficult to believe in our "modern, educated world" that is allegedly devoid of angels, communication with God, revelation (hint hint: it's not devoid of those things!).

The meaning of "damnation" has changed over time to imply something final. But in the past, and in its use in the scriptures, it actually described the state of being that is the opposite of salvation, which we know exists in various degrees. It's a spectrum, guys - which means it's infinitely personal. That's the only way it makes any sense. If you are not "saved" then you are "damned" - i.e. hindered in your progress and privileges. But precisely where you're hindered totally depends on you, yourself, where you choose to be on the spectrum of salvation.

And it really is up to you because salvation itself - the possibility of being saved - is freely given to all mankind through Jesus Christ.

It's for everyone. "He cometh into the world that he may save all men if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of all men, yea the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam. And he suffereth this that the resurrection might pass upon all men, that all might stand before him at the great and and judgment day. And he commandeth all men that they must repent, and be baptized in his name, having perfect faith in the Holy One of Israel, or they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God." (2 Nephi 9:21-23)

Basically: Jesus Christ, aka God himself, came down to earth, lived a perfect life, suffered individually for our sins (I referenced my time bubble theory in this post - I really don't know how this is possible, but I have a big imagination and God is all powerful so I can just trust/believe that it is), and all of us - EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US including nonbelievers, sinners (ahem that's all of us), murderers, etc. - Every single human that has ever lived and ever will live will be resurrected into a perfect physical body, which is very different from what we experience in this life (I reference my displeasure at having to live in this crappy human frame in this post as well).

I know we will all be resurrected, and that after resurrection we will be judged.

If we want to receive salvation, i.e. be saved, the steps are clear: repent and show your faith by being baptized. And then continue to walk on the covenant path. Keep going. Keep repenting. Keep showing your faith. Keep growing it. Keep fighting the good fight.

The scriptures talk about two different, distinct kinds of death: physical death and spiritual death (or sometimes called "the second death"). Physical death is when our spirit is separated from our bodies. You know, the death we always think about when we hear the word "death."

But the other death is when our spirit is separated from God. This is "spiritual death." Because of Adam and Eve's choice in the garden of Eden (well, however literal that story is - which is also a totally different topic for another day), we have the possibility to experience both of these kinds of death. We make our own spiritual death by what we do, what we think, and our daily actions. Paul talks about this, by the way. "Some are "dead" while they "liveth"" (1 Timothy 5:6).

"And if they will not repent and believe in his name, and be baptized in his name, and endure to the end, they must be damned; for the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has spoken it." (2 Nephi 9:24)

Clearly, this scripture infers that you can be damned while you are still alive. You can choose to separate yourself from God. You can feel great agony and misery now. You can choose these things.

But why would you?

Does that make any kind of sense?

If you had the chance to be happy now - wouldn't you take it?

I think the Old Testament in particular talks a lot about damnation and hellfire and that kind of stuff for this reason: it works. Nephi, who lived about 100 years after Isaiah (so, right in the thick of this damnation and hellfire rhetoric. Yay ancient Israel and the Mosaic law - not! So glad I live now, not then) talks about how it works, about how he continually had to preach to his people in this way.

I am not sure that this rhetoric of damnation and hell works so well today because it has become such a caricature that it is almost impossible to think seriously when confronted with it. It's easy to be dismissive of this image. And it's also easy to think, "well, a loving God isn't going to be this way." It almost sounds like some kind of temper tantrum - that's how I would describe how "God's anger" seems to me when I am not thinking introspectively and seriously about what a paternal kind of anger that is fully justified and real must actually be like.

But the thing is, I have a firm understanding of hell as guilt, hell as anxiety, hell as the feelings of anguish and nastiness that well up within yourself when you willfully separate yourself from God. I understand that and experience it. It is a constant struggle to me to repent.

Hence why I go to church. At church I can literally be "baptized" again - except it's not through baptism, but taking the sacrament. A symbolic gesture, a physical way of re-covenanting with God, recommitting myself to try my best to do his will. 

The "chains of hell" are metaphorical. They are the feelings which overpower us and bind us to misery when we choose not to repent and come unto Christ, and accept the salvation he's willingly offering us. The scriptures talk about how the devil will "rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good." (2 Nephi 28:20) He also talks about how he uses other strategies like pacifying and lulling us into carnal security - i.e. a state of not caring about anything. Or how he flatters us and tells us that everything we hear about religion is just one big lie.

It's not a lie.

Salvation is free.

We can turn ourselves - our problems, our worries, our anxieties, our fears, our physical suffering and pain, our personal individual hell that we naturally and willfully create for ourselves - over to God. We can ask to be forgiven, and he will forgive us.

Because he loves us.

Do you really think that a loving God would make a plan whereby the majority of his children would not receive salvation? Does it really make sense that we are here and then our bodies get old, decay, crumble, and eventually rot away - that all of this is meaningless and we have no reason to hope or to try to become the best kind of people we can, and to create the best kind of world that we can? Is our existence puny, pathetic, and meaningless or are we joint-heirs with God, with the possibility of exaltation and limitless creative powers (!!!!) and glory? What makes sense? Everything around us testifies that God is real and loves us.

If infinity is real, in one of the infinite possible scenarios that could exist, God must be found in one of them. Why not in this existence?

Why not search your feelings and find a space to trust that God exists and loves us? Even if it weren't real, faking it would make you happy.

How much more so then if it were real?

It is real!

We bring hell upon ourselves when we willfully turn away from God. Sometimes this is not really our fault (see Limited Agency Theory). I have firm faith that God will judge us fairly, and that we will all end up somewhere on the spectrum of salvation, limited in eternal progress only by what we ourselves fairly and rightfully choose. So let's choose God!

I think that it should be very easy for most of us to understand what faith looks like in a digital world. We engage in this kind of action all the time. We post things out to some Great Unknown Nether - a black hole - a nebulous connected labyrinth of wires and electricity connected all over the world (well except maybe not North Korea) - with a firm hope that somebody out there will read what we have to say. That our message will make it to its final destination - but even more specifically, that it will be understood by the recipient. I feel especially close to this metaphor of faith being like digital communication because I love to blog and I love to interact with far away, distant friends who live on the other side of the world yet somehow, for some reason, seem to really get my mind (Nowadays I feel that I could probably end that really lonely poem in that aforementioned post with, "oh! Right there!").

But even if you're not a blogger, I mean, we all send emails and texts and write social media posts all the time. We never (or hardly ever) see the recipient open them. We just know they will be read. We know that someday, what we write will be received. We trust that it will be understood, and perhaps even reciprocated.

Faith is just like this, only it's not about typing on a keyboard but about prayer. But even if you can't or won't bring yourself to like, kneel and pray, either silently or aloud (and maybe you're limited, and it's not your fault that you can't do these things), you can still direct your thoughts to the possibility that God loves you (ha! Just by reading this I tricked you into doing so! Master Manupulatrix mwahahaha). You can direct your curiosity and wonder towards considering that God wants you to be his, that you matter, that this world and this life matter, that there is meaning. You can, in your mind and in your heart, start to think about these things.

After you think about these things, you can wonder to yourself if they could be true. You can pretend that they are true for just a moment, and this is how: you can create the words in your mind to ask God for yourself if they're true.

And he'll answer you.

He speaks your language, and I'm not talking about crippled languages we can speak.

I mean he knows exactly how to communicate with you so that you will understand and get the message he wants you to have, and because he loves you, he will!

I had a dream the other night which was a great comfort to me. (By the way, apparently this is the way that I best communicate with God, perhaps because it is the only way that I will shut up enough to listen? Or - perhaps because I think in really strange metaphorical ways, so a dream with completely unrelated images can end up making sense to me, carrying a precise, direct message straight to my heart. Also, I'm not insane: I am fully aware that my dreams are not all divine. Sometimes they are just random neurons firing. But I really have experienced, and quite recently, an assurance from God that he cares about me, given to me through a really personal dream that I just know would make sense to nobody else, therefore it is not worth typing out for the world to mock.) 

Just try it. What's there to lose but your pride, and in any case, isn't that something worth losing?