Latter-Day Geek
As my contribution to "Speak Out with your Geek Out", there are a lot of things I could talk about.
I could talk about books – e- and otherwise. I could talk about gaming (PC, Gamecube, Wii, DSi, 3DS… Pokemon…). Or movies. (Star Wars…) Or anime… (working my way through Xam'd now – thank goodness for Netflix). Or writing.
But the point of Speak Out with your Geek Out is to talk about that secret geekiness that you aren't comfortable sharing out in the wide world. Which for me, means talking about me being a geek about my church.
I know, I've talked about being LDS on the blog before, (see my post on Being Unpopular, for example), but I don't know that I've talked about my geeky love for my church. Every morning, I make it a point to get out my scriptures and spend some time reading and thinking. And most of the time, I'm reading and studying in the Book of Mormon. If I'm driving somewhere in the car, chances are 50/50 that I'm thinking about something related to my church. Why?
First, because I am a big fan of story, and the Book of Mormon has great stories. Like the Bible, the Book of Mormon is broken down into smaller "books". So in the Old Testament, you have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and so on and so forth. In the Book of Mormon you have 1st and 2nd Nephi, Mosiah, Alma, and so on. One of the shorter books is the book of Ether, which is a broad-brush retelling of a particular culture. There are chapters in there that read like an adventure novel. When you have a king's son usurp his father's throne and imprison him, and then his brothers form an army to free their father and restore him to his rightful place? C'mon. That's classic story. At the end of the book of Ether, when this culture sort of self-destructs in civil war and they annihilate themselves, the battle goes on and on until there are only two men left – both completely exhausted by the exertions of battle. They're lying on the battlefield, both wounded. One manages to stagger to his feet, leaning on his sword, and stumbles over to the other – summoning just enough strength to swing the sword and kill the other. And then, the body sits up as though it was straining to get the other guy? C'mon. It's like something out of a Kurasawa film.
I've seen elements of the same kinds of stories in other authors' writings. In fact, I called one of them on it, pointing out how they'd essentially written a particular story into their book, just switching the good guys for the bad guys.
I grew up farming potatoes with my Dad in Idaho. Now, we didn't live on the farm. Dad had bought a farm a good 40-50 miles away from the house. So every day that we went out to the farm, we wound up talking, and most days we talked gospel topics. What's the right way to act? What does this particular passage of scripture mean? What's expected of us? Now, I was 15-16. It was not the coolest thing in the world to be talking church with your Dad. But I was also a captive audience. And I grew to really enjoy those talks, and I miss that sometimes. We still talk, my Dad and I, and we usually circle around to gospel topics (or politics), but it's not as often as I'd like. Those drives with my dad were some of the most important formative things I ever did, and they instilled in me my Dad's love of my church.
You may not share my beliefs. You may think that any organized religion is foolish, or dangerous. You may make fun of my church. People have always done that, and I imagine they will continue to do so in the future. But my church informs the way I treat my family and everyone around me. It gives me a sense of who I am and what my purpose is. The fact that some people make fun of me or my church is unfortunate, but is it all that different from people making fun of you for your RPG / Warhammer playing? Or LARPing? Or comics?
