Tests

A classroom conversation about tests and heroes.

Luke Skywalker, hero of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

"Ok, by show of hands, who loves tests?"

Silence.

"Since I see no hands raised, let me ask the question a different way. Who likes contests--especially the kind where the winner gets a prize?"

Most hands go up. One student who has yet to raise her hand asks, "What kind of prize?"

"Oh, money. Exotic trips. New technological toys"

"Like a new i-Pad?"

"Sure. Maybe a new car too."

The student's hand goes up. All hands are up.

"So what's the difference between a test and a contest? Notice, contest has the word test in it."

A young man in the front row speaks up. "Contests are fun. Tests are a pain."

"Why are tests a pain?"

"You have to study for them, and then you hope the teacher gives you a good grade.  It's stressful."

"Don't you feel good when you do well on a test? Do you feel stressed then?"

"Not when I do well. I actually feel proud that I did well."

"And when you don't do well . . . ?"

"That's when I feel stressed. That, and when I'm studying. I'd rather be doing something fun."

"Such as . . . ?"

"Playing basketball."

"Watching TV!" pipes up another student.

"And what do you watch on TV?"

"American Idol. Survivor. Sci-Fi movies."

"All contests," I note.

"Sci-Fi movies aren't contests!"

"Sure they are. Most of them anyway. You have someone or some group challenged by an alien or a bad guy or a problem of some sort that could result in death, maybe even annihilation of the whole universe. The struggle between the good guys and the bad guys or the bad situation is as true a contest as you can get. It tests the strength, training, courage, wisdom, and creativity of the protagonists. The fun comes in seeing how the hero or heroes come out on top."

A student, normally reluctant to speak up, raises her hand. "So if contests are fun, why aren't tests?"

"They can be. It's all in how you look at them."

"So how do you make taking a test fun?"

"First, accept the fact that all of life is a series of tests. We may not know it, but as soon as we're born, we start testing ourselves to see how much we can learn. First, we struggle to walk, then to talk. We play games with others and with ourselves, most of which are contests of some sort or another. The results of the tests let us measure our progress. School simply puts some structure to the contests. If school isn't fun, we've either got a poor teacher or a bad attitude. With the right attitude, we can even compensate for a poor teacher."

Skepticism is visible on most of the faces in the class.

"Ok. Let me introduce you to the power of myth. As articulated by philosopher Joseph Campbell and psychologist Carl Jung, the word myth refers not to falsehoods but to spiritual patterns that transcend and give structure and meaning to everyday life. Jung referred to these patterns as archetypes. Campbell preferred the term monomyth to distinguish it from the usual understanding of myth.

"One of the most fundamental archetypes, or monomyths, is called the Hero's Journey. Sometimes, it's called the Night Sea Journey. In this archetype, a hero is called to leave the life he or she knows and enter a different world. There, the hero encounters trials and receives help from companions encountered along the way. Sometimes he or she obtains special weapons or skills along the way that helps overcome the challenges. If the hero succeeds in facing the trials, the hero obtains some kind of boon that, when taken back to normal life, makes his or her life and the world better.

"The variation called the Night Sea Journey identifies the journey as being from a world above to a world below filled with monsters that must be defeated to obtain some precious item or strength that will free the world above of the evil represented by the monster.

"Perhaps the most famous example of this monomyth is the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Descending from heaven to battle death and hell, the Savior defeated both and made it possible for all of us to be free of death in the Resurrection. His victory also outlined the journey we all can take to be free forever from the captivity of hell and return to live with our Father in Heaven eternally.

"You can see the pattern repeated over and over again in literature and movies. For example, George Lucas consciously used the Hero's Journey as the structure for his Star Wars movies."

One of the more vocal students in the class cuts in. "So what does all that have to do with taking school tests?"

"Look at them as a hero's journey. You're on a quest to slay the monster of ignorance and obtain the precious gift of knowledge. The only way you can obtain that gift is to go on the journey, face your tests--with help from friends, family, and teachers--and come off conqueror. As you do, you follow a pattern all heroes have followed since the dawn of time. Perhaps even before that.

"As you follow the archetypal pattern, you obtain power from the myth. You become smarter, stronger, more like the heroes in the myths themselves. These new powers become a boon to you and to those you love. At the very least, they enable you to earn more money, travel to exotic places, and buy technological toys. At best, they enable you to serve others in Christlike ways.

"Stop seeing tests as experiences to be endured, but as opportunities to be your own hero."

Class time is over. The students leave to live their normal lives. The teacher hopes that some, perhaps, will begin to see the power of the monomyth in all the tests they face.

The Joy of Words

I confess. I love words. I love how they sound (most of them anyway). I love how you can string them together to communicate ideas. I love how playful that stringing together can be.

Consider the following epitaphs found on headstones in various parts of the English-speaking world. I'm not sure when or how I obtained these, so I can't give credit to the collector. I can't even vouch for their authenticity (although you can find them in various places on the Internet). I include them here just for fun and because the joy of the words stands in stark contrast to the fact that they were chiseled on the headstones of people who had only recently died--a somber occasion if ever there is one.

Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:

Born 1903 - Died 1942

Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the

car was on the way down. It was.

In a London, England, cemetery:

Here lies Ann Mann,

Who lived an old maid

But died an old Mann.

Dec. 8, 1767

In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:

Anna Wallace:

The children of Israel wanted bread,

And the Lord sent them manna.

Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,

And the Devil sent him Anna.

In a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:

Here lies Johnny Yeast.

Pardon me

For not rising.

In a Uniontown, Pennsylvania, cemetery:

Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake.

Stepped on the gas

Instead of the brake

In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:

Here lays The Kid.

We planted him raw.

He was quick on the trigger

But slow on the draw.

A lawyer's epitaph in England:

Sir John Strange.

Here lies an honest lawyer,

And that is Strange.

John Penny's epitaph in a Wimborne, England, cemetery:

Reader, if cash thou art

In want of any,

Dig 6 feet deep;

And thou wilt find a Penny.

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:

On the 22nd of June,

Jonathan Fiddle

Went out of tune.

Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont:

Here lies the body of our Anna --

Done to death by a banana.

It wasn't the fruit that laid her low,

But the skin of the thing that made her go.

On a grave from the 1880s in Nantucket, Massachusetts:

Under the sod and under the trees,

Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.

He is not here, there's only the pod.

Pease shelled out and went to God.

In a cemetery in England:

Remember man, as you walk by,

As you are now, so once was I.

As I am now, you soon will be.

Prepare yourself and follow me.

To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone:

To follow you I'll not consent

Until I know which way you went

On a grave marker in Boot Hill, Tombstone, Arizona:

Here lies Lester Moore

One slug from a 44

No Les

No More

Somehow, the rhyming, the word play, the humor juxtaposed against the serious reality of death takes some of the sting out of what some consider our final destination.

Much like the Savior's resurrection did. Because of Him, "the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

"For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

"So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

 "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?


 ". . . Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:52-57).

I find it interesting that John referred to Jesus Christ as the Word (see John 1:1-4; D&C 93:8-11). Words have power. They can take the sting out of something as heart-wrenching as death. The Word has all power. He has for all time defeated death and injected joy into the living that takes place on both sides of that final mortal event.

Cosmic Design

In our first class, we talked about some fundamental principles of design: proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast, and balance. These principles are reflected in the cosmos.

Consider the universe as the work of a Divine Designer. At the macro level--the level of stars and galaxies--we see PARCB reflected in a number of ways:

• PROXIMITY: Stars govern a system of planets (many of which have at least one moon revolving around them), all of which revolve around the star in relative proximity to it. Stars themselves are grouped into stellar clusters called galaxies. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 500 billion stars and covers 100,000 light years (the distance light travels at 186,282 miles/second in one year). Galaxies are grouped into clusters, which themselves become grouped into super-clusters.
• ALIGNMENT: The great aligner in the universe is gravity. All the planets are aligned at pretty much the same level along the solar plane because most accreted out of the solar disk as gravity slowly collapsed it into the star now at the center of the solar system. Galaxies come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they all have a center of gravity that controls the movements of the stars in the galaxy. Gravity (possibly working through something mysterious called dark matter) keeps the galactic-clusters moving together.
• REPETITION: Planets, stars, galaxies--all repeat a limited number of patterns that enable them to be classified. Planets may be gaseous (like Saturn and Jupiter) or rocky (like Earth and Mars). Stars run from the smallest about 12 miles in diameter (incredibly dense neutron stars) to the largest and most diffuse more than two thousand times larger than our own sun (hypergiants). All emit light along a spectrum from the shortest gamma and x-rays through visible light to the longest microwave and radio wavelengths--all of which oscillate at regular frequencies.
• CONTRAST: The laws that give order to what could be cosmic chaos also enable uncounted variations in size, color, composition, and arrangement of organized units throughout the cosmos. Planetoids, like the asteroids, may be only a few yards across. Comets wander the solar systems consisting a little more than collections of dirty ice pieces. Planets come with or without rings and moons and are sized from so large they almost become suns in their own right to so small they become moons if a larger planet happens to get too close. They can be mostly rock or mostly gas or any combination in between. The variety of stars is even greater. From white to blue to yellow to orange to red to brown, their color runs the spectrum. The largest among them explode in supernovae that populate the universe with the heavier elements that become the building blocks of life. Some collapse to singularities that become black holes from which light itself can't escape. Galaxies appear as ellipticals, spirals, and irregularly shaped blobs. Some collide and become two pinwheels in one (as in the photo above). The photos of these galaxies collected by earth- and space-based telescopes only begin to reveal the awesome beauty and variety in the heavens.
• BALANCE: Without the laws in the universe that balance and counter-balance one another (see 2 Nephi 2:11-12), the cosmos would collapse into chaos. Without it, life isn't possible. Consider, for example, our own planet. Placed just the right distance from its star, it is neither too hot nor too cold for life, and its orbit around the sun is so stable that its surface temperature doesn't vary from the extremes life needs to exist. It is tilted just enough to provide seasons to its middle sections and generate weather needed for rain and wind. It has a moon at just the right distance and size to make our kind of life possible. Its core is hot enough, plastic enough, yet solid enough to generate a constantly changing, renewing landscape. What happens at the planetary level is repeated in infinite variety throughout all creation, each law counterbalanced by other laws to keep the universe ever expanding, ever renewing, yet ever stable.

Anyone who catches even a glimpse of this tumultuous order has seen the hand of God at work. At the not-quite-micro level, we have the opportunity to learn from the Master Designer and practice the same design principles.

The practice might come in handy if we ever have the opportunity to design something cosmic of our own.