ONE FAMILY (part 2)

As we all try a little harder to be kinder to those in the circles which surround us, the dream of Universal Oneness seems to continue to mysteriously elude us and remains locked in some ghostly everlasting place. In real time we practice true kindness in a very tight knot made up of those who converge within our restricted personal communities.

My sister Geraldine had, what I always deemed to be, a believing spirit. The principles and doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ were always absolutes and she never seemed to be agonized by the struggle of having to gain a testimony of new truths as they were introduced to her.

As for myself, I always seemed to be the yang to her yin. All new ideas were met with doubt and skepticism, which were followed by, what seemed to me, a prolonged struggle to make my own peace with the principle.
I was always grateful that I seldom had to re-plow fields which I had planted and struggled with until they brought forth fruit. Thankfully, once my heart had been softened on a subject I was able to enjoy its sweetness from that moment on without further trial.

There are some principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which I, like my sister, seemed to have been blessed with, as a rite of passage, from my pre-mortal existence into mortality. The principle of the Universal Oneness of the inhabitants of the earth is one of those truths, which I was touched with by some power beyond my mortal capacities and which whispered to my soul that it is true and which gratefully was a field I never had to weed.

During my days of attending Primary in American Falls, Idaho, and Long Beach, California, we never sang what has become the Primary anthem, ‘I Am a Child of God.’ The words of this delightful song are from a poem written by Naomi Ward Randall. I somehow always knew that when I prayed to Heavenly Father I was not just using a catchy phrase for some unknown deity. This beautiful title had a familial tone. Therefore, when I first heard these beautiful words sung they came to me as a voice of remembrance not of revelation. (Romans 8:16, 17)

I am a child of God, and he has sent me here, has given me an earthly home with parents kind and dear.

I am a child of God, and so my needs are great; help me to understand his words before it grows too late.

I am a child of God. Rich blessings are in store; if I but learn to do his will, I'll live with him once more.

I am a child of God. His promises are sure; celestial glory shall be mine if I can but endure.

Lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way. Teach me all that I must do to live with him someday.

Likewise, sometime during the formative years of my life the words of the song ‘O My Father,’ written by Elisa R. Snow filled my soul and sent chills up my arms and across my shoulders and misted my eyes as a sure witness of a truth I had always known.

O my Father, thou that dwellest in the high and glorious place, when shall I regain thy presence and again behold thy face.

In thy holy habitation, did my spirit once reside? In my first primeval childhood was I nurtured near thy side?

For a wise and glorious purpose thou hast placed me here on earth and withheld the recollection of my former friends and birth;

Yet ofttimes a secret something whispered, "You're a stranger here," and I felt that I had wandered from a more exalted sphere.

I had learned to call thee Father, thru thy Spirit from on high, but, until the key of knowledge was restored, I knew not why.

In the heav'ns are parents single? no, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal, tells me I've a mother there.

When I leave this frail existence, when I lay this mortal by, Father, Mother, may I meet you in your royal courts on high?

Then, at length, when I've completed all you sent me forth to do, with your mutual approbation let me come and dwell with you.

How could I have possibly had a Heavenly Father if I did not also have a Heavenly Mother? (Conference talk –Gordon B. Hinckley – October 1991)

How could Eve have been created in the image of Deity without a glorified Model? (Genesis 1:27)

How could there be a child without there first being a Father and Mother? (Acts 17:22, 23)

Sadly, it was many years before I was able to connect the dots between knowing that I was a child of Heavenly Parents and the Universal Oneness of humanity. (Ephesians 4:6)

I will ever be grateful for my call as a young man to serve as a missionary in northern Mexico. It was there, as I started the phase of my life where I was slowly and joyfully increasing the size of my personal circle of acceptable others, that my belief in the fulfillment of that dream of an everlasting place of Universal Oneness took on a brighter hew of hope.

(To be continued)