Sacred, AND Secret

Daltonboy and I attended the Sperry Symposium at BYU this weekend. It was good. Good workshops, good information, fun date. The audiences were varied, from students in jeans and uber-formfitting Modbe t-shirts to elderly persons in church dress. They seemed like normal people, except for the part about how some girls don't know those things are supposed to be undershirts. But I digress before I've even gotten started.

I was saying to DB that going to events like this makes me want to go back to school and get a graduate degree in some kind of religious studies-type subject, and then become a professor or teacher of religion, because then I could study all day for a living, and how awesome would that be? He didn't think that sounded like fun at all. Some people don't know what fun is.

Anyway, we (I) had a good time. Until we got to our last class.

First of all, I noticed that in attendance at this session was Sacred Book Guy, from my past as a singleton. I met SBG at a fireside where I had been asked to sing a special musical number. This meant that I was a prime target for any and all crazies who wanted to talk to me afterward, because we had already been "introduced," and now we had something to start the conversation off. "I enjoyed your singing. How about listening to me ramble on about something really boring and weird for the next twenty minutes?" There's a reason some people aren't married.

SBG: So. What do you do?

Me: I'm an editor.

SBG: Oh! I'll have to give you a call. I'm writing a book and I'm going to need an editor.

Me: Well, I do some freelance editing. I'd be happy to take a look at it when you're ready. What is the book about?

Just trying to appear interested, really, until I can politely end this conversation and go home. I don't mean to pry.

SBG (lowers his voice to a whisper and leans closer): Uh . . . I can't really tell you that. It's sacred.

Hmmm. Well, I'm going to have a heck of a time editing it, then, if I can't get any information on it.

I was a little worried SBG would call, because I was just stupid enough to give him my phone number, but he never did. All's well that ends well.

So when I saw SBG there, along with a roomful of other persons who looked a little . . . "less mainstream" (read: nerdular) than other classes, I had a moment of concern. But whatever. It was only going to be an hour of our time.

The entire class was on Doctrine and Covenants section 7. We thought that might be interesting. Instead, it was almost an entire hour of a guy making hypothetical statements about when that particular revelation might have been received. It could have been April of 1829, like it says in the Doctrine and Covenants, or . . . dun, dun, duhhhhhhn . . . it might have actually been May.

Um. Who cares?

And then you had short-sleeved plaid button-up shirt guy (with the top button buttoned) asking questions like, "What do you think Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery did on Sundays, before 1830 when the Church was organized?"

Blink. Blink. To the instructor's credit, he didn't know and didn't seem inclined to want to rush out and explore that untapped well of mysteries. But it left me wondering if my earlier enthusiasm was founded in reason. Do I really want to be hanging out with these people all the time? I searched my soul, and right then and there I decided that for my master's thesis I'm going to expound on all possible reasons an artist would portray the Resurrected Christ wearing a cape. Because some of them do, for some reason. Why?? And I will teach workshops on it, and SBG will come, and we will be edified and uplifted together. And maybe if I earn his trust, he'll let me sneak a peek at that manuscript.