Close Reading The Book of Mormon

I grew up with scriptures. My church had four sacred volumes: the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine & Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Cheap paperback editions of the Book of Mormon popped up like weeds and multiplied like bunnies, it seemed. They were everywhere all the time. And when I turned eight, I got my own set of scriptures, bound in bonded leather, embossed with my name in pink, held inside a zippered case (also pink). I liked underlining certain passages with my sharp red pencil, and I read the chapters and verses, but really, the scriptures were never all that important to me. They didn't capture my imagination or fill me with spiritual nourishment, not even when I became a teenager or an adult or a mom. Between the parts that offended me and the parts that confused me, I figured I wasn't meant for great intellectual engagement with the stories on these pages.

And that was all fine and good, except for my patriarchal blessing. That's Mormon-speak for a special, individual blessing given to a member of the church -- often in their teenage years -- and then transcribed for future reference. A patriarchal blessing is meant to be a source of guidance and insight throughout the recipient's life. I received mine when I was 14, and I've occasionally returned to a certain line in my blessing and wondered what to make of it. The line talks about how important the scriptures will be in my life and advises me to make a serious study of them. It seemed out of keeping with what I knew about myself.




In October, I had a dream. I was on a walk in my neighborhood, and I came across a little library. Just as I sauntered by, a robot (yes, a robot) showed up to return a whole bunch of hymnals, the green ones used in the LDS church; I assumed they'd been borrowed by local congregations for church meetings that day. 

The library was closed, but the robot was able to get inside, so I followed in after it — just out of curiosity — and went to the section where it was putting the hymnbooks back on the shelf. There were dozens of old church books on the shelf, dusty and battered. Almost immediately, I found a set of black leather scriptures that had my name on it. My whole name, embossed in gold. The book was old and weathered, and I assumed that I must have received these scriptures as a gift at some point in my life, used them heavily, and then lost them or given them away. 

It felt like this enormously meaningful coincidence as I stood there at the shelves, that of all the scriptures in the world, this one with my name on it would somehow have been acquired by this library and that it would be here on this shelf on this day for me to find it. So I took it off the shelf and walked out of the library with it, even though I knew it was against the rules. I passed it around the outside of the sensors that libraries have by the doors as you’re walking out, because I didn’t want an alarm to go off (or whatever happens when you take a book without checking it out).

When I woke up the next morning, I thought about scripture. I wondered if my subconscious was reaching out for a way to claim and connect with scripture, telling me to prioritize something I've been procrastinating my whole life. This dream put me on alert for something that might change my longstanding meh attitude toward my religion's holy books.

A few days later, through the mystical Facebook algorithms, I was introduced to a podcast called "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text." I downloaded the first episode, then the entire first season, and had myself a proper audio binge over the next several days. Listening to hosts Casper and Vanessa discuss each chapter of this epic tale was a joy. They set out with the intention of "reading something we love as if it was sacred," and by treating JK Rowling's words with such respect and tenderness, they discovered layered meaning.

Here's how Casper and Vanessa do it: 

1. They read each chapter with eyes on a specific theme. For example, they approached the first chapter of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" through the theme of Commitment. This prompted insights into the Dursleys' commitment to normalcy, Hagrid's commitment to Harry, and so forth. Themes for subsequent chapters included Promises, Friendship, Rebellion, Destiny, etc.

2. After discussing what they noticed through that theme, Casper and Vanessa take a second pass at the chapter, this time with some kind of spiritual practice from one religious tradition or another. There are a few they've used; my favorite is called lectio divina, and in the podcast's version, this involves looking at a randomly chosen, very short passage in the chapter (usually just a sentence or two) and then asking a series of questions about it. What is literally happening in the story here? What metaphoric or symbolic meanings are contained in this excerpt? What does this excerpt remind the reader of in his/her own life? What does this passage call upon the reader to do in the future?

3. The hosts end each episode by offering a blessing to one of the characters who appeared in that chapter. This typically means honoring that character for some choice they made or quality they demonstrated.

This three-step process brings so much depth and curiosity to reading, and it occurred to me at some point: What if I did this with actual scripture? What if I took the Book of Mormon (the touchstone religious text of my people) and approached it with this method? This thought came as a welcome response to my dream, a way I could take something difficult and make it mine.

So with this idea bubbling inside me, I quickly came up with a list of thirty potential themes, wrote them on slips of paper, and put them in a small Tupperware container (the Tupperware Container of Fate, I call it). I read the first five chapters of the Book of Mormon (using this edition, gifted to me by my husband some years ago), and when I finished up, I picked one of the themes at random, then read those chapters again with my mind on that theme.

And I'll be darned, this idea actually worked. Reading those verses in this way really did reveal new meaning for me. Even though the theme I chose was arbitrary, I saw it echoing all over the place.

Being the oddball, unorthodox Mormon I am, I have some complicated feelings about the Book of Mormon. There are well-documented problems with its historical authenticity, and there are good reasons to question the story of how it was acquired and translated by Joseph Smith. To believing Mormons with a testimony of the book's divinity and truth, such issues hardly even matter, and I fully honor that, but I've never had that particular testimony. It just hasn't come into my heart, even though I've wanted it to. Still, if reading Harry Potter tells us anything, it's that lasting truths and valuable lessons can be taught through stories completely independent of how factual they may be. The verifiable truth of these events really having happened in the real live world ... it doesn't make any difference. There are dozens upon dozens of differences between HP and the BoM; I don't at all mean to equate the two. What I'm saying is that I want to see what the Book of Mormon can mean in my life, at the intersection of my thoughts and its words, and that desire is separate from my interest in whether it's factual.

I'm going to keep reading the Book of Mormon this way, and I'll write about it, starting at page one. No goals for how often I'll publish a new post, no deadlines for completion, but I hope it will start me walking in a good direction.