without a captain, the ship cannot navigate

To stay awake and alert, the captain, a Greek man of middle age, liked to take up provocative subjects. He knew that Zeitoun was a Muslim and a thoughtful man, so he sparked a debate about the existence of God. The captain began by expressing his utter conviction that there was no God, no deity in the sky watching over the human world.

Zeitoun had been on the bridge with the captain for an hour at that point, watching him pilot the ship through the many islands, avoiding high shelves and sandbars, other ships and countless unseen dangers. The Philippines, with over seven thousand islands but only five hundred lighthouses, was known for its frequency of maritime accidents.

“What would happen,” Zeitoun asked the captain, “if you and I went below the deck, and just went to our bedrooms and went to sleep?”

The captain gave him a quizzical look and answered that the ship would most certainly hit something – would run aground or into a reef. In any event, disaster.

“So without a captain, the ship cannot navigate.”

“Yes,” the captain said, “What’s your point?”

Zeitoun smiled. “Look above you, at the stars and moon. How do the stars keep their place in the sky, how does the moon rotate around the earth, the earth around the sun? Who’s navigating?”

The captain smiled at Zeitoun. He’d been led into a trap.

“Without someone guiding us,” Zeitoun finished, “wouldn’t the stars and moon fall to earth, wouldn’t the oceans overrun the land? Any vessel, any carrier of humans, needs a captain, yes?”

The captain was taken with the beauty of the metaphor, and let his silence imply surrender.



 
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. Random House. 2010.

the story is about moving forward

The acts of reading, of contemplation and discovery, of writing poems and finding cures and composing symphonies are, for the religious, acts of piety, and of thanksgiving. For the secular, such things may be about the wonders of nature, or of rationality, or of logic. So be it: the point is that we are all on the same odyssey, if for different reasons. In either case, the story is about moving forward, through the darkness, searching for light. Or at least it should be. Extremes make the journey more perilous.

American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Jon Mecham. Random House. 2006. p.18

great supplicators... great seers

Without prayer life is not a success. Prayer is just as necessary as work. Working without prayer is a form of atheism which takes no cognizance of God.

“Those who go farthest on in the school of prayer and learn most of its hidden secrets often develop a sort of prescience which comes nearest to the prophetic spirit, the Holy Spirit showing them ‘things to come.’ They seem, like Savonarola, to know something of the purpose of God, to anticipate His plans, and to forecast the history of their own times. The great supplicators have been also the great seers” (Arthur T. Pierson).


Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.96

the Spirit of revelation

The Spirit of revelation is the Spirit of prophecy; it reveals things past, present, and future. To deny this Spirit is one form of atheism.


Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.65