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124 pages

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Mormon conversion stories are like the ones in The Bible---the same redemptive pattern runs through both. Mine's no exception. But that's where the similarity endsInstead of recounting my conversion in a conventional narrative style, I offer readers two sets of contrasting papers by which they can judge its authenticityIndeed, if the prodigal son had kept copies of his letters during & after his years of "riotous living," he might've published a book like this one. To expand on the short summary of my book, please read the following excerpts from its "introduction" that will describe 1) the unique documentary approach I used to put my conversion on trial, and, 2) why I'm hoping that the evidence is good enough for a conviction. "But I want my past to catch up with me for another reason. I once heard a story about a man who appeared before a judge to be tried as a Christian, but the verdict came back "not guilty"---that's a sobering thought. I pray that won't be the case with me. Second only to my hope that this book will help my family and friends---and anyone else who reads it---to believe in the Message of the Restoration more than they already do, is my hope that there's enough evidence in it to convict me on a number of counts of having been "born again." (Jn. 3:7). "An open-and-shut case could have been made for my conversion if a film had been shot of my comings and goings in the years following the end of the Vietnam War protest movement in l973. It seemed like that was the event that ushered in a period in which I was cast into the lead role in a remake of the movie Rebel without a Cause---Hollywood's take on the parable of the prodigal son." But as far as I know there's not a single frame of raw footage anywhere to document what it was like for me to fill "my belly with husks that the swine do eat" (Lk. 15: 13-17), or what it was like to disgorge them. Instead, what I came out with was the next best thing---a thinly illustrated, two part book of "curious workmanship." (Ether 10: 27). "PART ONE contains a collection of "carnally minded media---personal letters, poetry, art work---generated between l975 and l981, a downward spiraling six year period in which my extremities became God's beginnings. "PART TWO, with its own body of evidence, or "fruits meet for repentance," covers that celestial event and the years of deliverance (Isa. 49:25) that followed, beginning with a copy of a "spiritually-minded" poem written in l982."

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	15 décembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781622877751
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0240€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Delivered Prey
Barry Moore

First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
The Delivered Prey

A Documented Account of My Miraculous Conversion from One of the Lost Boys of the Post-Sixties Counterculture to a Mormon, at Last

By Barry S. Moore
The Delivered Prey
Copyright ©2014 Barry Moore

ISBN 978-1622-877-75-1 EBOOK

November 2014

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means ─ electronic, mechanical, photo-copy, recording, or any other ─ except brief quotation in reviews, without the prior permission of the author or publisher.
For my family and friends, past and present, and for “some poor fainting, struggling seaman.” (Hymn 335)
“I will shew wonders in the heavens…” “…and the prey
of the terrible shall be delivered.” (Joel 2:30; Isa. 49:25)
“I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” (Acts 26:19)
INTRODUCTION

If a recent convert were to ask me, “What’s the point of dredging up your past?” I’d like to answer by saying, “The same as Alma’s, whose conversion you’ll remember from The Book of Mormon . I’m using it to teach my children to be wiser than their Dad, and to point out that acts of divine intervention have not ceased (Mor. 9: 15). Pulling up a few old memories for those reasons, and then publishing them, ‘that [my] children may know to what source they may look for a remission of sins’ (2 Ne. 25:26), is often part of a convert’s cross.”
But I want my past to catch up with me for yet another reason. I once heard a story about a man who appeared before a judge to be tried as a Christian, but the verdict came back “not guilty”—that’s a sobering thought. I pray that won’t be the case with me. Second only to my hope that this book will help my family and friends---and anyone else who reads it---to believe in the Message of the Restoration more than they already do, is my hope that there’s enough evidence in it to convict me on a number of counts of having been “born again” (Jn. 3:7).
An open-and-shut case could have been made for my conversion if a documentary had been filmed of my comings and goings in the years following the end of the Vietnam War protest movement in 1973. It seemed like that was the event that ushered in a period in which I was cast into the lead role in a remake of the movie Rebel without a Cause ---Hollywood’s take on the parable of the prodigal son. But as far as I know there’s not a single frame of raw footage anywhere to show what it was like for me to fill “my belly with husks that the swine do eat” (Lk. 15: 13-17), or what it was like to disgorge them . Instead, what I came out with was the next best thing---a thinly illustrated, two part book of “curious workmanship” (Ether 10:27).
PART ONE contains a collection of “carnally-minded” media—personal letters, poetry, art work—generated between l975 and l981, a downward spiraling six year period in which my extremities became God’s beginnings. Nothing short of a “wonder in the heavens” (Joel 2:30) could break that fall. PART TWO, with its own body of evidence, or “fruits meet for repentance,” covers that celestial event and the years of deliverance (Isa. 49:25) that followed, beginning with a copy of a “spiritually-minded” poem written in 1982.
By placing these two sets of documents on either side of that pivotal experience, I believe the contrast will at once underscore the relative “night and day” aspects of my conversion story, and the grace of God who truly authored it.
The contents of both sections of the book will likely resonate most with converts who survived the late 60’s and 70’s with stories similar to my own, some old scars to prove it, and a conviction in their bones that “broad is the gate and wide the way that leadeth to the deaths” (D&C 132:25). Each italicized document is introduced by a block of information about what I was doing at the time I produced it, a critical comment or two concerning its content, and some reminiscing about the person to whom it was written. Now, in some cases these quite lengthy prefaces may more interesting than the works themselves, since there’s usually more to be said about a piece after we can look back on it, than however much we got out of it at first.
I’ve changed the names of some of my old friends. Also, the minimum editing I’ve done to a few of the original letters and poems---omitting profanity and making clarifying changes where needed---was done simply to make them a little more reader-friendly. However, I’ve waived that consideration for those letters that show a willful disregard for a few simple rules of grammar such as when to capitalize. As a subset of their own they provide further evidence of the lengths I went to in my militant post-60’s crusade to subvert authority however I could.
PART ONE: The Captive Prey
1962; 1975-1981

(A few remembered details from shortly before, and during the day I was taken into captivity, and a paper trail of what I did to remain there for the years it lasted)
1962

Yucca Valley, CA

Of all the thoughts going through my mind as I stood at the edge of a baptismal font on the night of January 14, 1962, the idea that I was about to be overtaken by divine destiny was certainly not among them. Nevertheless—if I understand correctly what the scriptures have to say about the nature and scope of the Abrahamic covenant—that’s precisely what happened when I came up from the rippling waters of the font, white shirt and pants soaked to the skin, and a smile on my face as wide as Pinocchio’s the moment he came to life.
When my scoutmaster, John Groom, rejoined me in the baptistry, and then gave me the gift of the Holy Ghost, I was expecting to feel a spiritual growth spurt as a sign that my salvation was an imminent fact, but it didn’t happen like that. The adversary had other plans for me, benignly referred to in The Book of Mormon as “an opposition in all things” (2 Ne. 2:11).
That doctrine was fleshed out for me on a Sunday, less than a month after I had been confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The scene took place in my bedroom. I was getting dressed to go to church at our small meetinghouse in Yucca Valley, CA, when my mother—who until then had said very little one way or the other about Mormonism or how its theology was anathema to her own faith—walked in and tersely informed me that I wouldn’t be leaving the house that morning. She offered no word of explanation. Then, as if to compound the shock, she forbade me to have any further contact with anyone who was a Mormon. It made no difference whether they were my best friends or not, I was to have nothing more to do with them. I remember her saying that someday I would understand and thank her for it. (Eventually her prediction came true, but not before 20 years had passed away and I was restored to the teachings of the church she had banished me from, one of which holds that “all things work together for good….”) (Rom. 8:28).

“The Scream” by Edvard Munch

Before my mother had even finished speaking I began flailing my arms at her from across the room while screaming over and over, “No! No! No!” She didn’t even blink. Her countenance was fixed and as serene as if it had been carved into stone. Indeed, she appeared like a martyr standing in the doorway in an attitude of having “[done] God a service” (Jn. 16:2). The scene then shifted to the living room where my father waited for the aftershocks to reach him. I can still see him standing off to the side of the erupting conflict like some neutral country, reluctant to do anything that might compromise his ties with either one of us. By the end of that day a single thought had entered my bloodstream like snake venom: if my mother wouldn’t let me have the church of my choice, then I wouldn’t have any church at all. And by having nothing more to do with the Christian God, I calculated that I could tear out her heart even as she had torn out mine. In other words, I would get even.
So much for 1962 and that “bloody Sunday,” and for the 14 year old boy who came out of it alive, and in “chains” (2 Ne. 28:20-22).
1975

Redding, CA, San Francisco, CA

As a succession of Pacific storms came ashore in the late fall of 1975, northern California’s fire season officially closed, and I shouted my last hurrah as a hotshot firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service. Since 1969, I had alternated between that kind of seasonal work and my college studies and diminishing leftist activities, proving to myself that I could fight fire, get stoned, and quote Marx with “the best of them.”
Incidentally, I shouted that “last hurrah” at an end-of-fire-season bacchanal at a Holiday Inn in downtown Redding, with an emphasis that may have bordered on theatrics as I felt the curtain come down on the final scene of my perceived rite of passage to manhood. Against a setting of aluminum beer kegs, glittery disco balls spinning overhead, and friends as drunk as I was, I grabbed my autographed brush hook, jumped onto a tabletop, and danced full tilt while swinging it wildly. Anyone who was there that night would have agreed that it was time for Barry to quit while he was ahead and move on…but to what? That was the question.
While trying to think of something for which I could exchange my hard hat, I remembered some kind words which Ms. Wade, a former English teacher had once said to me about a few poems I had written. Me, a poet? The more I thought about it the more the idea began to grow on me. I began to feel like Poetry was there for me like Everest had been there for Mallory; the technical skills would come later. Hadn’t I become a lead hook on an IR hotshot crew, and before that, an “anti-war organizer,” simply by following my instinc