 
Joseph Smith The Twenty-Fifth

Mel C. Thompson

Copyright © 2020

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melcthompson@yahoo.com

Mel C. Thompson Publishing

3559 Mount Diablo Boulevard, #112

Lafayette, CA 94549

*

The leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was convening a high court in a large conference room in their main office building in downtown Salt Lake City. They were there in order to cross-examine an already-excommunicated former church member who was known to everyone in the valley as a delusional lunatic. The mighty church would not usually be bothered by such a minor figure, but the church had lately received unconfirmed rumors that JS25 might be attempting to usurp the church's authority. They wanted to meet with JS25 and see what his motives really were. The church broke with its tradition of holding such meetings in private and held the hearing in full view of the press and select students, theologians, researchers and academicians.

The rather talkative and somewhat animated crowd of onlookers fell into a hushed silence as the church President, along with his two Counselors and the Quorum of The Twelve Apostles, entered the small auditorium and sat behind a long table on a slightly-elevated platform in the front of the room. The silence continued somewhat awkwardly until a moment later Joseph Smith The Twenty-Fifth, commonly known as JS25, along with his two Counselors and his own Quorum of The Twelve Apostles strode into the room.

Much to the dismay of the LDS church authorities, JS25 and his entourage seemed to bring a certain light and optimism into what otherwise seemed like a rather turgid and heavy atmosphere. JS25 turned to the crowd and smiled slightly, but even that slight smile seemed to spread a kind of festive electricity to the room. He himself was always dressed in a rather dapper way and exuded an easy self-confidence, but his Counselors and Apostles usually appeared a bit frumpy and insecure. However, today, even his Counselors and Apostles seemed infused with new life and an almost irrational excitement about being simply alive.

It went without saying that the women in the room, even the journalists and academicians, in spite of their attempting to keep their vows of objectivity and intellectual detachment, were utterly flustered by JS25's charisma. Even the theology teachers and researchers from the Institutes of Religion, if they were female, noticed that their hearts were palpitating and that their cheeks were flushing.

JS25, although he was not biologically related to the original Prophet, had many similar features. His gaze was penetrating, and he had a compact masculinity about him, not quite a traditional form of masculinity, but a gentler and more limber kind of manliness than one usually encounters. He wore his white shirt and his dark blue vest perfectly, and his curly, dark brown hair seemed to draw people in, make them want to be close to him. He was simply different than anyone in the room, and the contrast between him and everyone else was no small source of embarrassment to both the onlookers and the presiding church officials.

Before pounding his gavel to announce the beginning of the hearing, the President leaned toward his favorite Counselor and said, "I'll be damned, but this ragtag collection of pretenders seems to have us outgunned." The Counselor, sharing the President's concern but having no good reply, sympathetically whispered, "I'm so sorry, Mr. President. Pray God will have mercy on us."

The members of the media were overcome by their instincts and began, against the church's orders, to snap hundreds of photos of everyone in the front of the room. They knew they would regret it later if they left without a candid photo of this tense moment. And they rightly guessed that they would be forgiven for refusing to wait until the official photo session after the meeting. No serious photojournalist wanted to return to their employers with only standard photos of people deliberately posing.

*

The President lowered his eyes to where JS25 was seated and said, "Were you merely attempting to form another breakaway group, we would not have asked you to appear here today. But rumors have reached us that you are attempting to actually take over this church itself."

"That's not at all true," replied JS25. "There is no plan to supplant you as the worldly President of this institution."

"But you claim to be the true President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," exclaimed the President. "How could you make such a claim if you are not seeking to take our jobs as general authorities away from us?"

"I am only the spiritual leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," explained JS25. "In the heavenly realm, I actually am the prophet, seer and revelator of the one true church, but I do not seek to overthrow you, nor any of your counselors or apostles. It is enough for me that God knows who the true leader of this church is."

The President bent his ear so that he could hear his number one Counselor whisper to him. "Ask him about the members. Find out what he intends to do about them. And what about the proceeds from tithing?"

The President nodded in asset and asked, "Do you intend to poach members from our organization? If not, how do you intend to grow the ranks of your organization? And furthermore, do you seek a share of our tithing revenues, or do you have a plan for raising funds some other way?"

"You need not worry these things either," assured JS25. "I tell all of your church members to retain their membership with your denomination, the one headquartered in this very city of Salt Lake. We are neither recruiting your members to our organization, nor do we even have a church for them to go to. You and your colleagues will continue to rule the worldly church and retain your physical membership along with the tithing they bring. We don't need your members, your money or your positions of power. You may keep them all. Just be aware, spiritually, that I am the prophet in this dispensation for all of the world. That alone is sufficient."

"Then what is the purpose of your having formed your own First Presidency and a Quorum of The Twelve Apostles?" inquired the President.

"Their sole duty is to advise me if I appear to go astray and to serve as witnesses to the world that my words are true and that I am your truest prophet, seer and revelator. They are witnesses to the truth of my mission, and they stand ready to steady my stride should I falter."

The President bent his ear to his second counselor who whispered in the President's ear. "These people pose no threat to us at all. If they're not after our jobs, our members or our money, I say let them go and make fools of themselves. We're wasting our time with these wankers."

The President again nodded in assent while thinking to himself that his counselors were indeed worthy of their pay. And, noticing that the room had begun to erupt into murmuring and joking banter, the President banged his gavel lightly against the table and said, "Now my good brothers and sisters. Let us not give way to a spirit of disorder and disrespect." And with that the room again quieted down.

Lowering his eyes one last time toward JS25, the President concluded, "It seems that we had misunderstood the nature of the threat you pose to our institution. And, from what I can see, the threat amounts to little more than an empty set of abstractions about which no one will care in a year from now."

Looking up at the audience and the rows of journalists and photographers in attendance, the President added, "You will please excuse our having brought everyone here. We had mistakenly believed we were on the threshold of having to do battle for the very keys of authority over this church. We now see that no such battle seems to be taking place. As such, I ask your pardon, and on behalf of my Counselors and The Quorum of The Twelve Apostles, I wish you all God's speed. This concludes our meeting. Good day to you all. May your families be well."

*

As the meeting was concluding, and as the scribes, theology students, and the assistants of the church leaders, were packing their things and exchanging words with their fellow colleagues, Emma Lehi Pratt, a journalist, was conversing with five or six other reporters trying to get their take on the odd interaction that had just transpired. Emma worked for the Deseret News. She was a Mormon in name only, one who stayed with the faith in order to get along with her family and to smooth the way in her personal and professional life in the valley. She had no particular aversion to the faith and was proud of her pioneer stock and the long line of church authorities she was descended from. She considered herself a journalist, first and foremost, and a Mormon by default and by culture.

It had been a warm, breezy day outside and everyone in the room was in a good mood, and so people were not generally rushing off without connecting with old friends, good-natured competitors and hotshots who might give them the scoop on some other inside story. Strangely, even The Quorum of The Twelve Apostles sauntered down and mingled with their counterparts in Joseph's entourage. The whole affair had ended without anyone becoming particularly angry. The President and his two Counselors, along with a state senator who had dropped by, slapped each other's backs, joked around and discussed their plans for the week.

Emma Lehi Pratt was a bit more sought after than some other people in the room because she had been the journalist who had penetrated into the inner circle of JS25 and managed to secure an exclusive interview with him. And even before the interview, she had reached out to JS25's people to get as much background information as possible. More than most people there, she could lay claim to having really scooped the story that catapulted JS25 to prominence. It was probably people's reactions to her interview with him that caused the church to become so alarmed that it sought a hearing.

JS25 stood up from his seat and gazed over at his favorite Apostle, Jason Jacob Pratt, who, by sheer chance, happened to be a very distant cousin to Emma. JS25's face flushed and seemed to moisten, as if about to break into a sweat. Suddenly JS25 looked more formidable, more stocky than usual, as if he'd filled his chest with air and had pumped his muscles up. Upon receiving this cue, Apostle Jason Jacob Pratt turned and began walking with a serious determination to where Emma was standing as she attempted to organize her things and prepare to exit the building.

Emma was looking down into her briefcase and organizer when Jason Jacob appeared before her. A couple of seconds later she looked up and saw the apostle there and, for reasons she could not understand, felt her breath almost squeeze out of her chest. The man's face had a somberness and an urgency about it that frightened her, although she could not say why.

She looked around at the five or six colleagues standing around her as if to ask, "Does anyone know why this strange man has approached me?" But they all looked back at her as if they both understood her question and were also at a total loss as to what to say. But someone behind them, a reporter for a much smaller news outlet had the prescience to turn on her camera and film the exchange.

Jason Jacob boldly asked, "Mrs. Emma Lehi Pratt?"

"Yes?" she replied quietly but with alarm.

"The prophet and seer of God's true church has had a revelation that you are to become his second wife," he exclaimed.

The whole room, filled with hundreds of people, suddenly came to a total hush. Everyone was staring. Even the President of the official worldly church quickly turned and looked. The woman who'd turned on her camera stood with her eyes bulging, not believing her luck.

"But I . . . I can't . . . I'm already married," Emma protested.

"That is a worldly marriage. It in no way hinders celestial marriage and the high estates of polygamy and polyandry that infuse God's kingdom," replied Jason Jacob.

Then suddenly, a theologian from a rival sect stood up. No one knew how he had gotten into the meeting. But his sect vigorously opposes the Salt Lake church. This sect is known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He and his fellow believers are committed to polygamy.

And as he rose, he said, "No! Polygamy is permitted. The founder authorized it. But polyandry is never permitted. Women are not to have multiple husbands. Repent of your error!"

Jason Jacob turned his large, blond head with its heavy cheekbones toward to objector and said, "Our prophet has declared a new dispensation. From now on both men and women can enter plural marriage, if not in this realm, then in the celestial realm."

At that moment, JS25 strode forward and said to Emma and the crowd, "I do not seek to consummate my marriages in this world. When we are with our heavenly parents in the celestial realm — only then will I engage in love-making with my many wives. I only seek now to bind my whole celestial family to me for eternity."

"But you could get arrested," objected Emma, "if you go down to city hall and try to get a marriage certificate with someone who's already married. In case you don't know it, both polygamy and polyandry are illegal in the state of Utah."

JS25 replied, "My marriages are foreordained by God. I don't need marriage certificates from worldly governments. I only need to call my heavenly family to me, to seal them to me in the temple of the heart where our Heavenly Father resides.

Emma was flushing red, breaking out in a sweat, and finding herself wanting to say whatever she had to in order to get away from this man. And she didn't like the whole world gazing on as she twisted in the wind. Beginning to panic, she thought of a strange way to diffuse the situation and hopefully reduce the thing to absurdity, thereby generating a laugh instead of pitiful glances.

Emma did her best to force herself to appear casual and light-hearted. "Okay, let me get this straight: We won't have a marriage certificate? We won't have sex? And we won't live together?"

JS25 nodded in assent.

"Okay then," Emma said with a wide gesture of her arm and with a sarcastic smile. "Great! Then we're married. Is that good enough for you?"

The whole room erupted in laughter and JS25 bowed slightly and made his way to the back door. And as he began to leave, most everyone else, while joking and chuckling, began to make their way toward the exit. But just before he took his last step out of the room, JS25 stopped a second and peered seriously into Emma's face. She found herself returning his gaze. Right then JS25 knew that Emma loved him, and he was certain that she understood his love for her. And that was all he needed.

Recovering quickly from that lapse in her demeanor, she again resumed packing her things and putting on her sweater to indicate that all was well and she was preparing to go. The woman whose camera had been rolling, however, did not feel that all was well. She had filmed the glance between Emma and JS25 and felt she knew exactly what it meant. And she sent copies of that video to every major television station in the valley.

Emma's husband would be at home watching television that night. And he, like the reporter who filmed the caper, also thought he understood the import of all of it, but even so, he simply laughed out loud, far more amused than jealous.

*

As Emma Lehi Pratt drove home alone that evening in her blue Saab, she reflected, as she always did, on her deeply flawed marriage. Being of pioneer stock and having almost exclusively Mormon friends, and being in the realm of people who literally dine with Apostles and General Authorities, divorce was simply and utterly out of the question.

It's not that people would directly reject her if she divorced her husband, but rather that she would fall from everyone's "A" list to their "C" list. She'd seen it all before: A superstar couple gets a Temple marriage, and, if the marriage is constant, the social invites, the vocational promotions, and the privileged information, all come in a steady stream. But then the couple divorces and the invites trickle down to nothing, careers mysteriously stall and being out of the loop becomes a way of life.

Simply put, she and her husband were world class Agnostics who didn't want children. In fact, it was their mutual secret that one of the main reasons they got married was their compatibility on this taboo preference. Along with the agreement to not have children came the agreement that the story for public consumption was that, astoundingly, they both had fertility issues that could not be resolved.

And so, in the rarified Mormon social spheres of Salt Lake City, they hypocritically told of weeping and despondency over not being able to have children. But, in truth, they were thrilled about not having children and thrilled to have found a spouse who could help them remain in the power circles of the Mormon world without ever outing them for the unspeakable preference of wishing to be childless. This point of marital compatibility unfortunately overshadowed a problem, a small lack of sexual chemistry in the beginning that had now blossomed into an inordinately massive disinterest in sex.

She had thrown herself into her work, which wasn't hard to do since, upon graduation from BYU, she was elevated, through ancient family connections, into the very height of the Mormon media world. For a person of her age, she'd had a heady, meteoric rise, often getting exclusive access to all the most interesting and hard-to-get characters of which JS25 was only the latest. The charade of the "plural marriage" with JS25, already being discussed on her car radio as she drove home, would make her even more the talk of the town. Her prank, far from disgracing her, would bring her even more name recognition and perhaps catapult her to national attention. With all of that to think about, it was sometimes easy to forget her marriage wasn't real anymore.

And she thought about her husband as the evening traffic in the valley clogged up and prolonged her drive home. She thought about how he was perfectly handsome, even if balding; and she reflected on the fact that he was slim and toned and took great care to exercise and eat right. But somehow his good looks and great health weren't enough to stir her emotions.

He kept up with his technical studies and was a whiz at math, science and the humanities. Able to converse fluently on any subject, even Mormon theology and world religions, he was a font of interesting ideas and information. But, in spite of his good looks, it was obvious that he liked ideas and information way more than he liked women.

Knowing that she would always be second to his life-of-the-mind, her sexual attraction to him, already not quite sufficient when they married, quickly faded to almost nothing. And her husband, far from mourning the loss of what tepid attraction she'd had for him, adroitly adapted to being her best friend and strategic partner in life. His total lack of mourning over the loss of his sex life with her made her dislike him even more. This had somehow produced an irritating power struggle between them which was pointless since there was nothing to win or lose by gaining the upper hand.

All these insoluble problems turned over and over in her mind, till she found herself thinking the same two dozen thoughts over and over again, as if she were arguing with an imaginary opponent whom she was going to beat in some chess game. Her husband, sometimes sensing this struggle going on within her, would confuse her even more by saying, apropos of nothing over coffee in the morning, "You know, I've thought about this a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that you're right about everything. I totally concede every debate point to you. So, there you have it. You win." And then he'd pause a moment over his coffee and add, "I hope that is a comfort to you."

Thus had they entered into a pointless war where there was no way to win sex, no way to charm one's partner out of their hostilities and no prize to win even if a debate point was scored. They were both unstoppable in their career progress and so they couldn't pretend to feel held back by their partner somehow. Their parents, at the time of their marriage, had given them a McMansion outright, so there was no way to claim to be stressed out about housing costs. And their combined salaries gave them more money than they knew how to spend, especially since they were both in perfect health and had none of the expenses associated with children. If they had wanted to, they could have, after each argument about nothing, bought each other a $500 makeup gift. They simply were deprived of nothing and so had no grounds for bitterness; and when either of them tried to manufacturer some phony bitterness, it came off as pathetically artificial. There just was no angle with which to attack this odd problem.

Emma Lehi Pratt pulled her absurdly-perfect car into a driveway without even a small weather crack in it and sighed. She reluctantly concluded that JS25 had some kind of prophetic gift after all. And that really annoyed her, and she found herself cussing to herself, something she rarely did, even if she didn't really believe it was a sin, since, after all, she didn't really believe in sins. Of course when JS25 shot her that look as he left the convention room, he'd obviously known for sure that she was a woman of passion, and that, equally obviously, her passions were unfulfilled.

The thing that drove her to distraction was not just that JS25 had seen through her. She could deal with that. It was that there was also some kind of moral fury in his momentary gaze, as if her lack of passion for her husband wasn't just a misfortune, but was rooted in something immoral or unethical in her. But then again, she thought, since JS25 was certainly a conman, why did he get to silently moralize about her lack of love? And again her mind went in circles, arguing all these same things to her self over and over again without any progress being made whatsoever.

*

When Emma slowly unlocked the front door of her home, she suddenly became aware of how tightly her navy blue dress fit around her hips. She was suddenly embarrassed that a bit more of her legs were visible than a good Mormon gal ought to show, even though the church had lately been a bit lax on that point. For reasons she didn't understand, sweat broke out on the back of her neck and it aroused her. She shook off those feelings briefly and entered the cavernous living room that she shared so often with her platonic husband.

"Hey, hey!" he said with a good-natured laugh. "How's my superstar polyandrous wife doing? I never thought you'd go for plural marriage, but hey, to each his own kink."

Instead of going along with the joke, even as the video of her encounter with JS25 was looping on the television screen, she found herself feeling a bit defensive. "It's celestial marriage. The word 'celestial' has more poetry to it, don't you think?"

Not realizing that she could be in anything other than a celebratory and jovial mood, he slapped her back like a drinking buddy at a bar would after cracking a joke. "Heh heh! Good one. 'Celestial.' I'll remember to use that word next time. I should be referring to you in more lofty terms now that you're the wife of a prophet and all."

The arm holding her briefcase went a bit limp and she exhaled rather pointedly, hanging her brown hair down over her eyes as she did. Something was taking over her and she had no power over it. It would be no use trying to compete with her husband, her buddy, who had all his faculties about him tonight. She would just have to play the fool. There would be no successful way to be his rival tonight. She kicked off her heels next to the fireplace.

She set her briefcase down behind the couch, wiped the beads of sweat off her forehead and put on something like the smile of a good Mormon housewife trying to be pleasant to her patriarchal husband. "Hey baby, how about we toss the 'Word of Wisdom' tonight and go ahead and crack open that big bottle of chardonnay your non-believer friend from Los Angeles sent us for our anniversary last week?" She gazed at him directly with her cheeks awkwardly flushing.

Her husband paused in silence for a moment and stopped in his tracks. He stared at her in disbelief, not quite yet registering that she was trying to be charming, perhaps even seductive. But being agile as he was, he turned the conversation around and said, "Great, we'll be a couple of Mormon alcoholics tonight. Apostles' great granddaughters are always fucked up that way, I guess." Then he added, "Bring that bottle in here and we'll do our work on the coffee table together while nursing a solid buzz. Just make sure you don't say anything about this to the Bishop when we both go for our next temple-recommend interview, okay?"

Instead of trying not to laugh at his jokes, the way she usually did in order to try to keep a check on his ego — something she was addicted to doing though she didn't know why — she laughed out loud at his joke and shuffled off to the kitchen in her stockinged feet to retrieve the chardonnay. And as she stared into the refrigerator, she noticed she was outrightly giddy. She felt like a total idiot, but for some reason she didn't even care.

*

She had the advantage because, not having any sexual tension between them most of the time, she was always welcome to work at night on the same couch and coffee table as he did. They were both workaholics and both good at their work. Unlike her, he could actually cook well, and effortlessly. Thus, in addition to sinful energy drinks on the coffee table, there was usually some semi-nutritious half-dinner to nibble on as they passed the hours in chaste professional co-laboring on the long couch together while music bubbled out of a speaker hung on the wall.

When she set the bottle of chardonnay on the table, she briskly poured out rather overly-full glasses for each of them. They toasted to her pronouncement, a belated follow-up to his previous joke, "to my entrance into the celestial heaven today. It's not every day you get sealed for eternity to a prophet."

Enjoying her take on his joke, he toasted her gladly and they both, for the mild drinkers that they were, took rather large and unseemly gulps of the high-end chardonnay. Their friend from Los Angeles apparently had developed good taste in wine after many pilgrimages to Napa.

She then allowed him to return to work studying some corporate manual. He stretched his feet to rest on the coffee table next to his glass of wine as he leaned back and resumed flipping through the pages of the industrial tome. She then pretended to diligently return to work by acting as if she were making notes in a journal. She had decided that the element of surprise was the only way to proceed. She also took some work-related correspondence out of her briefcase and pretended to be paying careful attention to it, smirking as her mind went a mile a minute.

Suddenly she turned, and, with what seemed like one extended motion, tossed her notebook and paperwork to the floor and pushed her husband's work-tome away from his face. At once she was on top of him and staring aggressively into his face.

He looked back in startled concern and said, "Stop that! What on earth has gotten into you tonight? Are you trying to freak me out?"

"No," she replied, as her grip on his muscular arms tightened. "Listen, I need to talk to you."

"What about?" he protested. "I'm fine. If I have a complaint, I'll tell you. Don't worry. I'm okay!"

"I'm not worried about you," she said. "It's me. Something's coming over me and I can't stop it."

"Did that JS25 guy put a hex on you today, or something? You look like a crazy woman."

"Yes, honey, he did. He got to me somehow. I need to hold you right now, okay?"

He began to try to gently push her away, but her grip tightened. "Do I have any choice in the matter? Am I going to have to shove you off of me?"

She then loosened her grip and moved her hands to his face and began to caress his cheeks and rub his ears. "Yes, you'll have to kick me off the couch if you want rid of me."

As fate had it, he did not kick her off the couch. The piles of work remained on the floor and the 1.5-liter bottle of chardonnay was drained. They had drunken sex for the next two days. Given how productive they both were, no one would even catch up to the work they'd already turned in for another week.

The couple were a bit too old to be having their first child, but after the first one came, more and more kept coming. The only lie they would have to tell to the people in their congregation was that, "After years of fervent prayer, the Lord has healed us of our infertility." And it went without saying that they would have to hid their little "chardonnay problem" from their Bishop.

*

The next week, while Emma was off on a special assignment for The Deseret News service, a knock came on the door. Emma's husband answered it. It was JS25's closest apostle and Emma's distant cousin, Apostle Jason Jacob Pratt, standing on his porch.

"I am here as a messenger of Joseph Smith The Twenty-Fifth, our Heavenly Father's true messenger for the saints of this dispensation."

Emma's husband was barely able to get out a word. Somehow his breath was suddenly short and he struggled to find proper words to greet this stoic and heavy-set preacher at his door. At last he managed to whisper, "What do you want?"

"The Lord has told my prophet and yours that you are not to be ashamed."

"Ashamed of what?" stuttered Emma's husband.

Standing even taller and more proud, with his thick, golden hair gleaming in the Utah sun, the apostle said, "Sex . . . children . . . wine — do not be ashamed of them, for our prophet has said that they are all to be ordinances of God to you, holy ordinances through which you and your wife shall be sealed for time and eternity into the highest level of heaven to remain in the presence of our Heavenly Father forever. Do not, therefore, forsake the ordinances of God."

"Sex . . . children . . . and wine?"

"Yes, you are to love your wife as our Lord loves the church, as the scriptures say. And never forsake her. If you will uphold God's sacred ordinances, our prophet will never forsake you."

Just then, out across their large front yard, on the other side of the sidewalk, stood Joseph Smith The Twenty-Fifth glaring back at Emma's husband. His mouth was clenched shut and his eyes stared straight ahead. His visage contained some combination of mild anger and great trust.

Emma's husband then turned back to the Apostle Jason Jacob Pratt who asked him, "Sir, do you believe in God, in our Heavenly Father?"

Emma's husband looked at the ground and searched his heart and mind and realized, although he was not yet a true believer, he was not quite a real Agnostic anymore either. He looked back up at the apostle and said, "I'm not sure, but maybe. Maybe for the first time in my life, I might."

"The prophet asks no more of you but that you open your heart. If you are meant to have more faith, only trust that it will be given to you at a time chosen by our Heavenly Father."

"Okay," said Emma's husband softly. "I think I can do that."

"Then I shall bid you good day," said the apostle respectfully. "You and your wife have pleased the prophet greatly. He wanted me to tell you that."

The apostle and the prophet turned to leave and Emma's husband very gently shut the front door. He went and stood out on his back porch and looked out at the large oak trees in his back yard. For the first time in his life he felt certain that he loved his wife; and he also felt, for the first time in his life, that it was okay not to worry about anything. Somehow he would be taken care of.

*

The Nevada desert and the Utah desert; and those stretches of highway between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City; and the mighty I-80 between Reno and Salt Lake City — If there were prophets, it seems aesthetically plausible that these expanses would be their spiritual homeland.

One could imagine a voice crying in the wilderness from the many scenes of abject desolation or otherworldly beauty that dot those inconsolable and ecstatic stretches of road crisscrossing Utah. And what is a prophet anyway if not a force of nature itself? Religious geniuses are a symbol for the psychological wilderness and the social wilderness that proceeds from society itself. From out of a bleak and mundane social landscape comes a man or woman who will not settle for a life without revelation. People, in their unending neediness and loneliness, have little choice but to try to follow them as long as is humanly possible.

And what of the diversions in between those signal destinations in the Mormon world? Zion National Park, one such diversion, was so designated by the federal government in seeming agreement with the idea that such a landscape might really be the future home of the New Jerusalem. We can never know if the congressmen and congresswomen who voted to create that natural preserve actually believed in the coming holy land from which the Messiah would govern the world, but, nonetheless, they honored the idea by naming the land in such a way as to acknowledge the hope of just such a possibility.

Along the way, there is always the underrated and often overlooked city of St. George, where a rugged temple sits in seeming defiance of Salt Lake City, somehow managing to look more sincere, more tested by the elements, more transcendent and less complacent than that venerable apex of the world of the Latter Day Saints. What would it be like to try to live the kingdom of God from a town almost one third of the way between Sin City and the seat of God's priestly authority on earth?

Were you to veer too far from the main roads, you could even find yourself in Colorado City, Arizona, the sometimes-acknowledged Mecca of polygamous Mormon sects, some of which are called Mormon fundamentalist cults. If you really believed that the original Joseph Smith, 24 Joseph Smiths before JS25, meant what he said, then you could be tempted to live the law of celestial marriage, more colloquially called plural marriage.

Conversely, were you a poor man riding a Greyhound bus from Reno to Salt Lake City, you might awaken from a nap in your cramped seat to find the Bonneville Salt Flats stretched out for miles and miles before you. And you might contemplate the mad men and women who previously tried, and still try, to set land speed records in jet-powered cars while zooming over that immanently level landscape.

All of this could cause you to meditate on the idea of Brigham Young bringing his people, en masse, to the area that is now called Salt Lake City, and you could wonder how one human being could almost single-handedly begin a new civilization, a civilization that functioned as a nearly-independent country, a civilization which, until recently, was, for all intents and purposes, an island of theocracy in an otherwise formally-secular United States. Were one to argue that the U.S., before recent times, was almost a theocracy, one would still be forced to admit that no other state came closer to actually being a theocracy than Utah.

And for some people, Brigham Young has gone down in history as a monster, not unlike a less-harmful Stalin, not unlike a less-ambitions Genghis Kahn, and not unlike a less-famous Peter The Great. People can, and do, argue as to whether all of the charges of murder, sexual abuse and authoritarian rule leveled against these people are true, but there is one thing no one can dispute: No one really knows how such giants emerge from the loins and wombs of ordinary men and women. No matter how you try to study their life stories, still, you can never truly discover where they come from and how such creatures are made. This remains one of our greatest mysteries.

Joseph Smith Junior, for all his charisma, inspiration and creativity, could never do what Brigham Young did. Jesus Christ, for all his brilliance and boldness, could never do what the Apostle Paul did. Some people are prophets only and others are world-builders too. If a prophet doesn't have the world-builder gene in him, nor the luck to have a world-builder on his side, it will be as if God had never spoken to him or her at all. Such is the unjust state of the physical world. And we must never forget how very physical the Utah desert is. It is a miracle that such a place exists and a miracle that a people conquered it. The scholars of the world can study that people forever, but they will never fully understand them, because they will never understand, and never deeply know, the prophets that gave rise to such ambitions.

*

It was across just such desert roads that Sensei found himself driving over and over again. If anyone had the right to claim to be a know-it-all, it would be him. After all, he was one of the few people in the universe who had permission to transport himself across space and time. Only he and a few other people were allowed to poke around almost every dimension, heaven, hell and astral plane. And for all his up-close and personal knowledge of history and science; of gods and angels; of sages, scholars and gurus, he still had to admit that he didn't understand the Utah desert and he still didn't understand Joseph Smith The 25th, just as he had never understood Joseph Smith Junior in Upstate New York nor his astounding apostle, Brigham Young. No amount of meditating, chanting, austerities, exercise, yoga, fasting, praying or exploring was getting him any closer to the answers he was looking for.

On his way to Salt Lake City, he pulled his rental car over several times, got out of the car and stared at the desert. Nothing was coming to him. The wind was warm and the silence of the desert caused him to feel an aching in his chest. The sunrise and the sunset here had an almost agonizing beauty. He was in over his head and he didn't know why. There was only one thing to do, press onward.

He was a bit annoyed because he had been told by a Taoist sage a billion worlds away that if he wanted to understand JS25, he'd have to submit to human rules for a while, which meant he'd have to drive a car, be subjected to physical laws and, ultimately, be forced to go and confront JS25 just like any single-world being would have to do. Having lived thousands, if not millions, of human lives, he felt it was a bit beneath his dignity to have to go on a quest in such a primitive way. But frankly, he was backed into a corner. He was running out of ideas and was getting to the point where he began to doubt his self-sufficiency. He wondered if he'd be reduced to seeking help from a mundane psychotherapist in San Francisco or Vienna.

To make matters more embarrassing, he was now subject to something similar to human cognitive capacity. True, he could remember trillions of years of history from countless universes before the big bang that created this one, but alas, he still didn't have JS25's phone number or address. Like a low-level detective, he would be forced to go asking around Salt Lake City until he got a break. Sensei simply found it shocking that things were coming to this.

*

Just as the sun was about to set, Sensei thought he might like to stop at the last rest-stop before entering the Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area. For some reason he had come to have a little bit of dread about completing his mission and had wanted to stop and procrastinate. He was hoping that if he stalled a little longer, he might somehow get more enthusiasm for his quest, the significance of which he was confused about.

As he got out of his car and looked up at the mountains above the city, he again felt that uncanny, warm wind curl around him. He felt that somehow he was in the presence of something great; but for the first time in his life he wondered if he really wanted to get the answers he was looking for or not. There was something intimate in the landscape that he wondered about, something so intimate that he wondered if it would be wise to confront it. There was something in the landscape itself that was calling him toward something unknown, something deep inside him that he'd just not had access to in spite of his almost unlimited traveling, investigating and experimenting.

He went out toward a railing at the far end of the parking lot of the rest stop and looked out over a dry river bed, a kind of ravine that appeared to be subject to flash flooding. In the trees across the ravine, a lonely bird let out a kind of cooing sound. To the left, a few hundred feet away, a wiry-looking coyote with uncharacteristically reddish fur was foraging for food. Every few minutes a car or two would pull in near the entrance of the rest stop, but everyone seemed to keep their distance.

A few moments later, while he was lost in his thoughts, restless thoughts that could not finally settle down any which way, he heard the steps of business shoes approaching him from behind. He turned to see a man with mid-length reddish hair not so unlike the hair on the solitary coyote he'd observed. Sensei lowered his gaze to look at the man whose forelocks were being gently blown in front of his eyes. The man wiped the hair to the side and stopped and gazed at Sensei.

The man seemed to rather smirk and wince at once, as if he was not altogether thrilled to be meeting Sensei. For some reason this rather short man had a frilly, white shirt on and sported a cheap-looking bow tie. His blue sport coat and blue business slacks fit rather loosely. This character looked rather out-of-place and somehow miscast, as though he were some unfortunate job applicant who could never quite find his bearings.

The man reached out a strong-looking hand in order to shake Sensei's hand. That was awkward because initially Sensei went to bow to him casually, as a Japanese person from decades ago might do toward a person he despised but was obligated to respect. But recovering from this fumble, Sensei jutted out a fumbling right hand.

As they shook hands, the man said, "You are the time traveler?"

"Ah," quipped Sensei, "a low-level psychic. Well, so it's true. But I'm apparently not a very good time traveler, since I still don't know what's going on in the universe and I'm reduced to living a human life subject to dull physical laws."

Since the man failed to respond to Sensei's first sarcastic volley, he added, "So, why don't you tell me, how long have you been working as a psychic, and, most importantly, are you good enough to earn a living at it? From the look of your outfit, I have my doubts."

Although Sensei was quite irritable and might have hurt most people's feelings by such outbursts, the man humbly but unapologetically replied, "No sir. I am currently an apostle. My name is Brigham. I am not related to that august prophet, but my parents named me after him. I suppose my great, great grandparents may have served him in some capacity."

"And do you hope to rise to the level of prophet like the real Brigham did?"

"Oh no. In fact, I only took on this role because the prophet asked me to."

"The prophet?"

"Yes, he knew you were coming, and he also knew you didn't know how to reach him, and so he sent me to wait here at this rest stop until you arrived."

"Can this so-called prophet of yours travel through time like I can? Can he travel to other dimensions and other worlds like I can?"

"No sir, not at all. He is subject to all the laws of mundane life. He only knows what our Heavenly Father reveals to him. He has no paranormal powers at his own command. If he receives no word of knowledge, he may stumble in the dark like the rest of us. I'm afraid his life would strike you as extremely plain. And that brings me to a question."

Sensei looked on with his arms crossed impatiently as if to say, "Hurry up and ask it. I don't have all day."

"Sir, the prophet was only made aware that you were coming, but it was not revealed to us why you were coming. If it's true that you have been to times and worlds other than these, would you not already know far more than any earth-bound saint? The prophet does not understand what you would need from him. Would you not have been beyond Kolob? Would you not have made it your business to meet with our Heavenly Father to inquire of him directly? We are but prophets and apostles of this one small world for only a few fleeting years. Why do you not bring your concerns to throne of our Heavenly Father?"

"I'm afraid," said Sensei slowly and reluctantly, "I've never met Him."

"But have you not met with many entities more exalted than we?"

"Yes, yes, of course. But," and here Sensei again spoke slowly and hesitantly, "this one entity, the one you keep referring to as our Heavenly Father, I not only have never met him, but I'm not sure I know anything about him."

Suddenly the stern and businesslike look of the Apostle Brigham Kimball Murray turned merciful and enthusiastic. Brigham, seized by some impulse, suddenly hugged Sensei and then pulled away and exclaimed, while still holding Sensei's arms, "Then it is good that you've come to be in the company of the prophet and the apostles. All is well. As one of our prophets said only a handful of years ago, 'We know that our Heavenly Father lives, and we know His work is divine.' Then come and let us go be with Joseph Smith The Twenty-Fifth. He may not be much to look at or listen to, but it's all that we have in this dispensation. I hope we will not disappoint you."

They drove back together into Salt Lake City. They didn't speak much. A Mormon pop music station was playing Lex de Azevedo's piano-and-string version of an ancient melody that Sensei, in all his travels, had somehow never heard. The first verse haunted him and moved him in a completely emotional way. Somehow Sensei was raw with emotion, in a way he hadn't been since those lifetimes in which he was prone to falling in love and other irrational things.

As the darkness descended over them, Brigham, with a bright and furtive look in his eyes, sensed what was going on inside Sensei and said, "Do you like that melody. I'll bet you do. Would you like me to sing you a verse or two?"

Sensei, feeling totally ashamed of his emotions, still replied, "Yes, please, go ahead."

As Brigham held the wheel, he gazed out at the highway happily and, in just above a whisper, sang in a low and sweet baritone:

If you could hie to Kolob  
In the twinkling of an eye,  
And then continue onward  
With that same speed to fly,  
Do you think that you could ever,  
Through all eternity,  
Find out the generation  
Where Gods began to be?  
Or see the grand beginning,  
Where space did not extend?  
Or view the last creation,  
Where Gods and matter end?  
Me thinks the Spirit whispers,  
"No man has found 'pure space,'  
Nor seen the outside curtains,  
Where nothing has a place."

After Brigham sang those lyrics, the instrumental piano-and-string arrangement continued on for another minute. And for the first time in millions of years, Sensei remembered what a sweet thing it could be to be a mere human being. He also was presented with another riddle: How could human beings, while subjected to all of the grossest physical laws, and all of the most boring limitations, have stumbled upon knowledge about the universe that not even "exalted beings" had access to? In a moment of sentiment, Sensei even thought it would be beautiful if he could remain a human being forever.

Brigham, receiving a spontaneous word of knowledge about what Sensei was feeling, turned to him and said, "Don't become too attached to this situation here. You have to return to the higher worlds and live the life you were called to live, just like we must remain here and live our kind of life."

"I know," replied Sensei with a bit of peaceful melancholy in his voice. "I know, but thank you for reminding me. I'm not quite in my right mind these days. Do you know what I mean?"

"Don't worry, my friend," said Brigham reassuringly, "the prophet and the other apostles haven't been in their right minds for years. We just try to be there to guard over each other when we go off the rails a bit. Do see you see what I'm saying?"

"Oh yes," replied Sensei with a half smile, "I think I can picture that kind of situation."

*

It could not have been a more beautiful evening. A warm night-breeze had sailed in from the South and it was wafting lusciously through the half-open windows of JS25's latest compound, a slope-roofed, two-bedroom, heavy-brick outpost on the edge of the metropolitan area with a few vacant, sandy lots around it. In spite of the occasional dust cloud being stirred up by the wind, the night sky was simply fantastic. From this vantage point at the edge of the big city, the Milky Way Galaxy lit up like a ferris wheel in space, as if all of creation were a kind of circus made for the amusement of the gods.

Contrary to the traditional "Word of Wisdom," JS25 and a few of his closest associates were gulping down large cups of dark black English tea which was being served from a hulking Russian samovar. A gallon of heavy cream stood at the ready, and everyone there was cutting the tea with hefty doses of that cream, making a concoction that was both a hot dessert and mania-inducing stimulant.

JS25 had not yet begun to utter prophecies, but it was electric to just be in his presence as he paced across the room, smiling widely and warmly, stopping occasionally to pat one associate on the back and knowingly glance at another. As far as everyone there was concerned, all was right with the world. Only the unresolved issue of how to deal with the imminent visit of Sensei created an edge of discomfort.

Emma Lehi Pratt was there with her worldly husband's blessing. She and JS25 still had no physical relationship, nor had they any plans to. Furthermore, she warned JS25 that her worldly desire to remain a journalist meant that nothing said in her presence could really be regarded as private. JS25 replied to her, "If you betray me a hundred times, still I will not send you away, nor will you be denied entrance to the Celestial Kingdom."

For some reason Emma only laughed when he said such things and often replied, "You're such a drama queen. Dial it down a little, J —." (More than one apostle took issue with her casually shortening the name of their prophet to J —, but she insisted that she, as a plural wife of the prophet, had a right to give him a pet name.)

*

Emma was not actually required, or even asked, to enter into Joseph's company after the day he'd inspired her to reunite, so to speak, with her earthly husband. But rather it was the husband who said to her, after that strange, short visit the apostle Jason Jacob made at his doorstep, "Honey, could you do me a favor and just go check up on those people once in a while?"

"But that would be rather creepy, don't you think," replied Emma.

The husband turned toward a cupboard to reach up and get a glass, and, with his back turned to her, he mumbled, "It's just not right to ignore family too long."

This made Emma a bit nervous and she objected,"I'm afraid I'll mess it all up somehow. What if I say the wrong thing? What if he makes a move on me or something? Wouldn't it be unprofessional of a journalist to be hanging around a public person like that?"

Her husband did not answer at first, but instead took the glass and put it on the counter and then mixed an egg and some tomato juice in it. Then he headed toward the patio with his liquid lunch, but as he left the kitchen he replied, "You'll handle it fine. You've a savvy gal. You'll figure it all out."

Emma froze up a bit. For some reason this discussion was making her a bit angry and shaky, but she bit her lip and left the room without saying anything. A week later, before her husband could bring the awkward subject up a second time, she simply got in her car and drove over to wherever JS25 was camping out. She did this about once a week and reported everything that transpired to her husband who, after listening intently and quietly to her, would mildly smile, shake his head slightly and say something like, "Those people are just a trip."

*

When the wind hit the sloping roof of JS25's compound, it would quietly roar. It was like the desert was using the wind to speak. One occasionally heard the rumble of a motorcycle in the distance or the bright cackling of kids zooming by on their bicycles.

Jason Jacob would come in from the kitchen periodically bearing trays of crackers and sandwich meats. From time to time, some follower or two would gently rap one knuckle against the front door, then, before anyone could answer the unlocked door, push it softly open to deliver small wheels of cheese or boxes of cookies. Some of these visitors stayed only a moment, and some didn't say much. Few of them introduced themselves to Emma, and most only blushed upon seeing her. Several briskly excused themselves and, having completed their delivery work, ducked out of the front door with a confused half-bow.

The first time she attended such an evening at JS25's place, she looked up from her tea and said to everyone in the room, "Doesn't anyone around here eat any vegetables?"

*

Curiously, even though rumors had already spread that Emma was actually a follower of JS25, neither her church nor her employer ever insisted she renounce JS25's ministry, nor did they insist that she renounce her celestial marriage to the rogue prophet. Had she been backed into a corner, she might have chosen her official church and her prestigious employer over JS25, but, as of yet, no one had forced such a choice.

Before it was time to go in for her annual temple-recommend meeting with her bishop, the appointment was mysteriously canceled. She simply received a postcard in the mail notifying her that her temple-recommend was renewed and that no appointment with the bishop was necessary. Furthermore, none of her friends cut her off, even if relations with them had become a bit stiff and a tad more formal. They were obviously following instructions concerning her and forcefully holding themselves back from talking about things they were dying to talk about.

When she went to regular church services, it was apparent that everyone knew she was engaged in unorthodox activity that was simply unacceptable in every way. Even so, it was as if everyone had been ordered to be extremely cautious about how they broached the subject of her personal life. They smiled when they saw her, gave her warm hugs, asked a few vague questions and then meekly slipped away to visit other parishioners.

There was one memorable breach in the code of silence that had been implemented. (One of two such breaches in all.) It occurred when she was having lunch with her best friend, an enthusiastic church member and a closet drinker. The best friend was reliant on Emma because she was the only other Mormon woman who would go to brunch with her and help her drink carafes of mimosas at their favorite café, a bistro discreetly tucked into a half-underground office-space which one entered from a back parking lot. Everyone there wore sunglasses to avoid being easily identified.

One day, when they were already pretty buzzed, she confronted her best friend about her drinking. "I love coming to this café with you every week, but I'm worried that you're also drinking alone at home. Are you drinking every day now?"

Her friend smiled perversely and said, "Oh, so you think I have a drinking problem?"

"Yeah," said Emma. "I think you might have a drinking problem."

"Darling," said Emma's best friend, "I don't have a drinking problem. I've got a drinking solution."

They both broke into laughter and Emma didn't pursue the subject further.

But then her best friend turned to Emma and took both of Emma's hands in hers. Then she gazed into Emma's face and said, "But since we're talking honestly, I have something I've been dying to ask you."

Emma replied, "Is it about JS25?"

"Of course it is. But the church told my husband to tell me to mind my own business about that subject. 'Leave it alone,' he told me. 'Just leave it alone, okay?' Just like that. So I better keep my trap door shut."

"No, no. It's okay. You can ask me. I won't tell anyone you asked."

But Emma's best friend became silent, and said, "I better not. I just better not."

"No," said Emma. "Go ahead and ask me. Go ahead."

"Okay, I've just got to know, is JS25 good to you?"

"What do you mean by 'good?'"

"I mean is he a gentleman?"

"Sure. Of course. Why wouldn't he be?"

"No, I mean is he a total gentleman, a gentleman completely?"

"Oh, in that way?"

"Yes that way."

Emma laughed and then replied, "He is a total gentleman in every way including that way."

"Okay, okay," said Emma's best friend as she let go of Emma's hands and turned back to her mimosa glass. "I don't want to know anymore. Let's just leave it at that."

"Yeah," agreed Emma. "Maybe it's best if we change the subject and pretend it never came up. We don't want you getting buzzed some time and slipping up to the other church ladies, God forbid."

And thus did the two partially achieve some small portion of comfort on those most delicate of matters. Strangely, at that moment, Emma's husband seemed totally comfortable with all of the vagaries and complexities of everyone's situation.

*

There was one other breach in the code of silence regarding Emma and her husband. Once when Emma's husband was golfing with a friend, he began to notice his friend seemed uptight. His friend had, up till that point, discreetly avoided all mention of the JS25 controversy.

Emma's husband was golfing a good game, but his friend was messing up easy putts and not getting much lift on his ball down the driving range. And after watching a prolonged struggle on the part of his friend to get his game going right, he finally turned to his friend and said, "What's gotten into you, man? You seem totally off your game today. Are you feeling okay?"

The friend, who was about to launch another ineffectual drive down the fairway at the seventh hole, set his club down in the golf cart for a moment and said, "Hey, listen. If you want, me and a couple of unofficial Danites would be happy to drive by that bastard's house and blow him away. We could do that if you want."

Emma's husband let his club fall to the ground and said, "Now listen here. There'll be none of that crazy business around here. JS25 isn't hurting anyone."

"But it just makes me angry," replied his friend. "Sometimes when I think of it, him saying those things to your wife — it makes me so angry that I want to go over there myself and bust that guy's face."

Emma's husband grabbed the man by the arm and said, "It's not as bad as you think."

"It's not?"

"No, it's good. It's better than ever."

"Better?"

"Yes, better."

"How?"

"Before JS25 came along, you know, me and my wife didn't have any kids."

"Yeah, but that was only because of the fertility problem."

"Can you keep this just between you and me?"

"Sure? I'd so anything for you."

"Okay, so it was bullshit. There was never a fertility problem."

"But what kept you from having kids then?"

"Well, at first we didn't want kids."

"That's crazy. I would never have believed it. What true Mormon doesn't want kids?"

"I don't know, but we didn't want to be second-class citizens in the church, and so that's why we made up the infertility story."

"Have you been using contraception then? Because real Mormon's don't believe in that."

"No, we've never used contraception, not once."

"Then how else could you prevent yourself from having kids?"

Emma's husband stared hard at his friend without answering that question.

Then his friend, suddenly enlightened, said, "Oh my God. You mean you hadn't been having sex?"

"Like I said, since JS25 came along, our marriage is better, much better in every way," replied Emma's husband.

"It's hot, then?"

"It's steaming hot."

"Every night?"

"Let's just say we take a night off every once in a while, but not very often."

"Whew! Well, well. That sounds like it's from the Holy Ghost."

"Let's put it this way. And you better not tell anyone this, but I was a hard-core Agnostic before JS25 came along."

"And now?"

"I'm thinking that the church might be true."

"Say nor more, my friend. I shall not question the ordinances of God. Who knows. Maybe I'll have my wife pay him a visit sometime. Maybe me and my wife could use a special anointing."

After that conversation Emma's husband's golfing companion seemed to get his groove back, and came in a few strokes under par over the next few holes.

*

Some weeks later, the golfing companion looked up from the tee and said to Emma's husband, "I saw him walking into the old Zion Department Store building near Temple Square."

"You mean JS25?" said Emma's husband.

"Yeah, it was him."

"What did you do?"

"I hurried across the street. I caught up to him just as he was about to get in an elevator."

"What did you say?"

"I told him . . . I said, 'Me and my wife . . .' But he held up his hand, like the hand of God."

"Did he say anything?"

"He said, 'Sir, I know already. You don't have to say it.' And then I said, 'What should I do, then?'"

"Really?"

"Yes, and it was crazy, man, because he suddenly grabbed both of my hands, right there in the lobby."

"That's nuts. What then?"

"Then people started standing around us because, you know, even though they don't talk to him, even though they're afraid of him, still, they know he's a prophet of God."

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? If I broke away from him and ran away, it would be an even bigger scene."

"Did he say anything to the people standing all around?"

"He did. You know what he says? He says, 'I want you all to bow your head in prayer with me. God is about to work a mighty miracle among his people.'"

"No way!"

"I know, right? And so we all bow our heads and he's still holding my hands, and I'm so nervous that I thought I would freak out or something. And then he says, 'Heavenly Father, may this man, and all men, know that the seed of our Heavenly Father is within their wives. And may all women know that their husbands are the sons of our Heavenly Father. May they always make love in awe of You, oh Lord. And may they come to know that they do not make love for only themselves, nor even just for each other, but they do it as a heavenly ordinance in service of all humankind.' And you could have heard a pin drop at first. But then, you know, as he kept praying that way, pretty soon you could hear women weeping. And I turned around and the guys were trying to be brave about it, but you could see tears sneaking out of the sides of their eyes. And nobody knew what to say.

"When the prayer ended, he let go of my hands and turned to everyone and said, 'The spirit of The Lord has moved over the hearts of the people today just as He moved over the the waters when He first created the world. Go in peace and serve all the world.' Then he waved goodbye to everyone and got in the elevator, and we were all just standing there. And no one knew what to say, so everyone just slowly kind of slipped away out of the lobby and pretended like nothing happened."

"That's almost as wild as when he proposed to my wife."

"I know."

"So then?"

"What can I say, it's like you said."

"Steaming hot?"

"Totally hot."

"What has this done to your testimony?"

"I've never been surer that the church is true."

Emma's husband said, "Hey look. Who needs to finish this long golf game. Let's say you and I go back to the club house and get a big pitcher of beer? We need to celebrate."

The golfing companion heartily agreed and they both tossed their clubs back into the golf cart and headed off to continue their discussion and celebrate the expansion of their faith.

*

The evening at the outpost, having started out almost perfectly, was on the verge of becoming an anxious one. JS25 was getting more restless. He was not prophesying as usual. The meeting now had a fragmented feeling about it. Various people were stepping outside to indulge in the Mormon sin of smoking tobacco while Emma pulled a novel out of her purse and began reading in order to pass the time. Jason Jacob was almost sullen.

At last Emma looked up from her book and said, "J —, what's gotten into you? What ever is the matter? You're just not yourself tonight. Do you know that?"

JS25 turned to her and said, "When will Brigham arrive? I am so tired of waiting for him. I feel that I just can't wait much longer or my head will explode."

"Chill out," said Emma. "You know Brigham's car has been having problems. He probably got stalled somewhere and had to call a mechanic. It's happened before. He's just a bit late. That's all. Settle down, okay! Just try to relax."

Seeing the truth in what Emma was saying, JS25, without saying anything, threw himself into an armchair and began to pout moodily. He eventually picked up his copy of The Doctrine and Covenants and began to whisper the words of the scriptures to himself, obeying Emma's implicit demand not to pace around the room in an agitated way any longer.

*

The door flew open and in stepped Brigham with a beaming smile. "I am pleased to announce to you all the arrival of Sensei who has come to be in the company of the prophet and his apostles. Glory to God!"

A few seconds later, Sensei stepped into the room and looked around, uncertain of what to expect. Emma, who had, as of late, gained a lot of intuitional powers, got up from her chair and walked right over to Sensei. She gazed into his face and said, "There's something wrong. You're not supposed to be here. You have no right to come from another world and interfere in this one. You're not a normal human being. Why are you here?"

JS25 stepped forward and said, "The Lord has commanded me to receive him. The Lord foretold of his coming to me. I am commanded to receive him, but it was not revealed to me what exactly he would do or say, or what exactly I should say to him once he got here."

Emma turned to JS25 and said, "So, I'm right, aren't I? He's from somewhere else — but I think it's wrong for people from outside of our world to come and interfere in our lives. It's not fair. They know too much more than we do. It feels like a form of bullying. I don't approve."

JS25 said, sympathetically, "I understand. I understand. But there's nothing I can do about it. I was warned of his coming, and I was told to receive him. It was even revealed to me where I should send Brigham to meet him even though he himself did not know where to meet us. How could I have known these things if they were not revealed to me? And if they were revealed to me, how can I turn my back on the mission I was given?"

"Then what were you told to say to this man?" inquired Emma.

"As I have said, I don't know. His coming was made known to me, but how to respond to his appearance was not made known to me. It's true he's from another world, or maybe another time. That also was revealed to me. But now that he has appeared, I must proceed in faith, knowing that everything else beyond that is unknown to me."

Emma, flustered, but unable to summon up any more objections, returned to her chair and sat down. She looked away from Sensei as if to communicate that she still did not approve of the situation.

Not knowing what else to say to Emma, JS25 turned back to Sensei and warmly shook his hand. "Welcome, my friend. Welcome to company of those who, each day of their lives, live by the ever-expanding word of God."

Sensei looked into JS25's face, observed his warm smile, his seemingly infinite sense of hospitality, and his genuine love for everyone who came into his presence, but still, he could think of nothing to say. Then JS25, moved by some impulse, reached out his arms and warmly hugged Sensei. And if one could describe Sensei's feeling at that moment, it would have been the feeling one might have if one had been an orphan for countless eons and had finally found one's parents, as if one had, at last, arrived at one's true home after a seeming infinity of exile.

JS25 motioned for Sensei to take the armchair directly across from his, giving him the seat of honor, albeit a rather sparse one compared to the seats of honor occupied by the Prophet, First Presidency and The Quorum of The Twelve Apostles of the worldly Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Sensei wandered over to the seat and took it.

Taking his usual seat in the chair directly across from Sensei, JS25 said robustly, in a most friendly and upbeat way, "So now, what brings you to our humble desert outpost today? As I have been saying, even though I am a prophet, I simply do not know anything about why you would traverse both time and space to come and inquire of a minor prophet in a small world during, if God will forgive me for saying it, a rather unimpressive dispensation. As such, I cannot deliver any message to you unless you reveal to me what your questions are. As a prophet, my only duty in this world is to speak, but, for the life of me, I was not given knowledge as to your motivations. I know no specifics about who you are, where you have been or what you might be looking for. And so me and my companions await a full explication of your mission."

When pressed, Sensei could not really ask a reasonable question. He scoured his mind. Yes, from an emotional standpoint, he knew why he had come. And he had felt that once in the prophet's presence, he would, like an ace koan student, spontaneously come up with a good question. But when faced with this simple man and his ragtag band of followers in this simple rental-house at the margins of Salt Lake City, he felt that anything he might say would sound stupid, somehow inadequate. These people were impressive to him in spite of their limitations; and, by contrast, in spite of his superhuman powers, he felt weirdly inauthentic and shallow.

Sensei begun to stare around the room desperately. Finally, his eyes landed back on JS25. All he could do was stare at him, and as he stared on, he gulped nervously. He opened his mouth to speak a few times, but the words simply would not come out. His mind went blank.

*

After a moment of Sensei failing to communicate, JS25 rose from his seat and said, "I have a word from the Lord." At this, Jason Jacob and Brigham stood at attention, as though ready to receive commands from a senior officer in the military.

"This man," said JS25, "is what the hippies of California used to call 'uptight.'"

"What are we to do?" said Brigham on behalf of himself, Jason Jacob and the other apostles and counselors.

"There is nothing you are to do regarding this matter." Then he turned to Emma and said, "Emma, the Lord has called you to aid your prophet."

"Aid you? How? I'm a journalist. I don't have any prophetic messages. I only know that this man is like a big fish in a little pond. It's not fair of him to be picking on us. It feels like he's up to no good."

"You are not called upon to prophesy at this time?"

"Then what?"

"I need you to go into the kitchen and call your husband?"

"My other husband?"

"Yes, your worldly one."

"What can he do for us?"

"The Lord has revealed to me that this time traveler, this space traveler — he's going to need some weed in order to fulfill his mission."

"You mean he's going to need some marijuana to get up the courage to speak his mind?"

"I would not put it that way, but it is something like that."

"How can my husband help you with that?"

"The Lord has revealed to me that your husband always keeps a stash of marijuana hidden underneath the floor mat of his car?"

"My husband is a pothead?"

"I would not say that in those words, but I see him in my mind's eye referring to it as 'the sacred herb.' I see him in his car, parked in the hills above Salt Lake City, smoking to the tune of Bob Marley songs coming through the speakers of his car stereo."

"He's a Rasta?"

"Not exactly. The exact nature of his faith is not fully revealed to me at this time."

"So you want me to get dope from my pothead husband so this cosmic-alien guy can loosen up and tell us what he wants?"

"I will not quibble with your wording as the needs of the children of God are urgent just now."

"You're saying that all these years my husband has been a dope friend behind my back? Oh my God, I could strangle that man! I cannot believe he would deceive me this way for so long, me, his faithful wife, (well, almost faithful). I think I'm going to freak out or something."

"You must forgive him! Please, sister, do not let your anger get in the way of God's work?"

Emma shook her fists in the air and said, "I've been good. I've been a good girl. Why am I always being treated this way?"

Before JS25 could say anything more, Emma stormed into the kitchen and out the back door of the house. In the sacred Utah desert night, she could be heard kicking the trash cans by the side of the back porch and screaming, "Fuck! God Dammit! I cannot fucking believe this!"

A bit of terror passed over Sensei's face. JS25 turned to him and said, "Do not be frightened. The path of revelation is not an easy one. We must allow the children of God to find their own way to the truth."

A couple of moments later, Emma appeared at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Using a great deal of will-power to suppress her anger for several seconds, she said, in a pained and forcibly-gentle way, "Excuse Mr. Cosmic Alien Guy. I got upset. I'm very sorry. You are our guest. I shall try to do better next time."

With that, Emma went back into the kitchen and called her husband. From the living room one overheard Emma say in a very stern, but no longer shouting way, "Hey Babe, I need you to hurry over here now. — No, right now. — We need some fucking pot, okay? — Don't lie to me, asshole. Just bring the shit you keep under the God damn floor mat in your car. — Yes, I know. — I know because JS25 told me. That's how I know. — Don't worry, I will fucking forgive you. I have too. I can't not forgive anyone and live around JS25, so I don't have a choice do I? — No, I'm not leaving you. I'll get over it, okay? — Okay, so just get over here right now. — Alright. Yes I still love you. — Look, I'll smoke some with you tonight and we'll listen to Bob Marley tonight and have make-up sex. Is that good enough for you? — Yes, I know you're a Bob Marley fan. — I don't know how he knows, but I guess he knows whatever God wants him to know. — Yes, God. — Okay, see you in a minute. — I love you."

Emma again appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and living room and said, "Sorry again, Mr. Cosmic Alien Guy. I got upset again. I will keep trying to do better next time."

JS25 smiled broadly and proclaimed to everyone in the room, "The mighty workings of the Lord are most excellent."

*

Emma's husband eventually arrived with a substantial bag of marijuana and said nonchalantly, "Hey guys, sorry it took me a few minutes longer to get here than I expected, but I only had enough for one joint left, and that seemed rude. So I had to stop by my dealer's house to get a big bag. There's enough for everyone."

All of those present stared at Emma's husband like he had broken some taboo or was being alarmingly disrespectful.

JS25 replied, as he looked around the room, "The Lord has granted a special dispensation. All the children of God are to partake in the sacrament."

"The sacrament?" said Jason Jacob disconcertedly.

"No man can comprehend all of the mysteries that our Heavenly Father will reveal to us," replied JS25. "Please have faith that the Lord will guide us forward in the way we ought to go."

When pressed, neither Sensei nor the believers, nor Emma resisted the proposed ordinance. An hour later, one saw apostles and counselors singing hymns with great enthusiasm as Emma and her husband slipped into the hallway to make out. When the moment was right, JS25 called the meeting to order again, and again everyone assembled in a circle around Sensei and the prophet.

JS25 then asked, "My honored guest, are you feeling a bit better now that the 'sacred herb' has been administered?"

Having had a full joint to himself, Sensei was able to utter the words, "A bit better. Maybe not so bad. Okay, I guess."

"Good," said JS25 with delight, "Then you could perhaps do us the honor of telling us why you came here to be with us."

Sensei said, "There is something missing in my life."

Just as Sensei said that, Brigham suddenly got the spirit of prophecy and declared, "I now know for sure who this man is!"

Sensei turned to him and said, "You do?"

"Yes, I can see it all as plainly as I see you right now," said Brigham. "I see you now going to millions of planets in thousands of solar systems and looking around. I see you greeting all of the gods of the Hindu Pantheon. And yes, there you are at the throne of every Buddha. Millions of sages, gurus, saints, philosophers, theologians — you spoke to them all. I'm seeing centuries, thousands of centuries going by. The Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon, the stoics, the existentialists, the Kantians, the Hegelians, the political philosophers, the psychologists, all of them, Freud, Jung, Rogers, Piaget, Maslow, Pavlov — you've seen them all."

"It's all true," replied Sensei.

"Then the mystery of your being here is even more profound than we thought," continued Brigham. "How can people such as we surpass, or even match, the wisdom you've already been exposed to? Had I understood the scope of your experience, I might have been disconcerted to meet you in the first place. The sheer breadth of the phenomena I witness now as the Lord reveals to me your journeys — it's truly awesome. Why then, after all of that, are you still searching?"

Instead of answering Brigham directly, Sensei turned to JS25 and said, "Because there is something missing in my life. I don't know what it is that I'm missing. I only know that something is missing and that my intuition told me to try coming to you."

"That's it?" said JS25 incredulously. "There must be something more."

"No," Sensei said, now more firmly, almost confidently, "There is something missing in my life."

*

There was something also missing in Fanny Eliza Bountiful's life, a fact which made her last name all the more ironic. What was missing was the enormous respect she'd had for the LDS church for most of her life. She had lost all her respect for the church her first year at BYU, where, you would have thought, her faith would be properly nurtured and made to flourish, well, bountifully.

At BYU she was introduced to a certain type of Mormon male who had already figured out that the church wasn't true, but had also figured out that leaving the church was just not worth it. Not wanting to go into educational, vocational and social free-fall, and feeling that the chances of successfully starting a new life from scratch were remote, they opted resolutely to stay in the church as covert non-believers. Some would even rise to the offices of Bishop or Stake President without ever being exposed or ridiculed. For real fellowship, they regularly sought out the society of brethren in precisely their same position. (They needed someone to go break the rules of the Word of Wisdom with.)

These types of males were to be found at every corner of campus, often at the very center of various social cliques. Accompanying them were the women who'd "had that little talk" with the man of their dreams and found out that a marriage full of financial success, non-belief in the church, and complete public compliance with key obligations of the church, was the most sure path to victory on every front.

Such couples had freely noted amongst themselves that the businessmen who took the Book of Mormon to be literal truth were sometimes way too emotional to navigate the financial world with a cool head. Their decisions were often strange, inconsistent and sometimes weirdly unethical. The true believers, having deceived themselves habitually, sometimes found themselves in trouble with the law, or found themselves embroiled in pyramid schemes or laughably-silly multi-level-marketing schemes. They were a pray to all manner of fantastic ideology in both the spiritual realm and in the worldly realm.

They also talked about the public apostates they'd known and what a dead-end that often turned out to be, and they cooly observed that those types tended to lose a decade of their lives just trying to recover from the setbacks inherent in leaving such a big tradition. Better to know the truth but stay the course. These couples tended to agree that both true belief and apostasy were for suckers. Truth seeking and honesty were just not so important that it was worth essentially committing social and financial suicide over them.

But not all of this type of man was already taken by a happily-compromised woman. And so Fanny Eliza Bountiful found herself on the receiving end of the informal recruiting efforts of these men, the recruiting being two-pronged, one aspect being the effort to convert a woman to covert Agnosticism and the other being to convert a woman from spinster-in-waiting to fiancé. The appeal of these men came from their supreme self-confidence. Having already solved, to their own satisfaction, the riddles of life, and having clearly decided how to handle all of them, they walked through life smiling assertively, asking for what they wanted and needed without any second-guessing or self-consciousness.

As she thought about these men, she looked in a long mirror in her dorm room. She saw her long, straight, brownish-black hair which hung down with a traditional Mormon woman's submissiveness, and she looked at her eyes, which were dark green and seemed willful. Her dress was plain and also dark brown with ineffectual, little fringes hanging off the seams. Her whole act might not have worked at all if not for the exciting cleavage between her swollen breasts, breasts which, at her age, were still perky and symbolized nothing but the abundance of God. She was clearly marriageable due to that one asset about which those young Mormon men teased her as they attempted to recruit her. "Hey babe," they'd say, "you're looking very, very bountiful today."

At first she was offended and even felt sexually harassed, however she eventually figured out that these men usually did not accost anyone further than the issuing of teasing words. And so, rather than shun them, or report them, she decided to socialize with them, since, for some reason she could not figure out, the Mormon college girls were not so thrilled to be her close friends.

In spite of her bounty, her life did indeed seem to be missing something after a fateful day. On that day, one of her suitors casually handed her a copy of a theology book. The book had been written by a church apologist with the goal of winning back people who had fallen into doubt after, usually quite accidentally, they found out the real life story of Joseph Smith. The book freely admitted that many of the controversies surrounding the prophet had not been resolved to the satisfaction of many people. But the author went on to argue that a seemingly-flawed human could be forgiven his flaws and still be regarded as a prophet of God. However, many readers found this unconvincing and, in practice, it turned out that the book was often the doorway too all things critical of the church.

Her suitor lied to her when he said, "You should read this. It will strengthen your testimony." He knew full well that the book would probably have the reverse effect and weaken her testimony, but he didn't care. He was not going to marry a sucker who believed in official church history, nor would he marry a non-Mormon. For him there was no other way than this. You had to marry a cultural Mormon who privately disbelieved. No other type of person would do.

After reading the book and finding that she now doubted the church deeply, she went to her suitor and said, "You liar. You knew that book wouldn't strengthen my testimony. What are you trying to do, get me to leave the church?"

"No, quite the opposite, he replied. I'd like you to stay in the church like I plan to, with eyes wide open."

"You mean remain in the church as a non-believer?'

He shrugged his shoulders and pouted as if to say, "Oh well, Too bad. Nothing we can do now."

She then pressed him further, "So is there something else you think I should read?"

Without answering her question, he slipped out of his backpack a copy of Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History."

She held the volume in her hand. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

"How many people know about this book?"

"Way too many people. One day millions of people will know about it."

"What will happen to the church then?"

"By then we'll be comfortably retired. It won't be our problem. Our grandkids will have to sort it all out."

"If I read this, will I believe the church is true anymore?" she inquired solemnly.

Her suitor just patted her on the shoulder in an almost platonic way and, as he turned to go to class, added, "I hope we'll have a few decades to talk about that."

*

Fanny ended up getting engaged to her suitor, and he continued to send her down the rabbit hole of hostile critiques of Mormon history and Mormon theology. She at once had found the love of her life and had lost her lifelong faith. It was a lot to undergo while trying to get through college.

And while she would survive the rigors of college, the onslaught of sexual love and the loss of her belief system, she found herself stuck with a profound anger and bitterness that she could not shake. The emotional pressure of so many forces acting on her life at once left her wanting to cuss someone out, but she could not very well confront the officials of her church since she'd agreed to be a hypocrite within the church so long as she was engaged to, or married to, her new lover.

She needed help with her psychological problems, her burgeoning anxiety disorder which alternated with something like depression. But whoever helped her must not rat her out to the church. Should she play the detective and find out where people went for advice and solace when they found themselves in her position? She clearly was not the first person to ever be confronted with this dilemma, so there must be answers, so she thought, and people around who knew those answers. Would she just have to dig around till she found those people?

Her loss of faith made her always somewhat angry with her fiancé, but she also knew she could not lay the whole burden of her "minor nervous breakdown," as she called it, onto her boyfriend and future life-partner. She had to find a group, or a person, with whom she could diffuse her anger. If she could find somewhere to let out her negative emotions, maybe they would fade away in a healthy manner. Who could she consult? Maybe an ex-Mormon group-member? A former bishop? A Buddhist monk? What?

One day while on campus, much to her surprise, a plausible answer came to her. Among the Agnostic suitors on campus, there was one curious guy. He was casually lumped in with the Agnostics, but she had a feeling that his situation was more complicated than that. Her instincts told her she ought to try to wait till he was alone and approach him.

Sometimes he would be seen talking very seriously with small groups of students; but whenever people approached in hopes of joining in on the conversation, the gatherings would quickly disperse. She guessed that he knew something the others didn't, something that was important, something more than her boyfriend or her professors.

Before she got engaged, he'd flirted with her several times, and had, like several men, teased her about being bountiful. But after she was known to be already-taken, he drifted away without ever engaging her in conversation again. It was clear enough that he wasn't yet engaged, and this might have been, so she thought, because he didn't seem to need love as much as the other students around him. He was a bit too aloof, or so she thought. That was probably part of the reason she'd chose another man over him.

But over the months, this erstwhile suitor had changed. He'd become "a thing" around campus, but also a person about whom even her most opinionated friends were very vague. The catty ones no longer judged him much and the meek ones avoiding discussing him altogether.

He never greeted her anymore, nor even waved at her politely. She had always assumed this was due to some hard feelings left over from his failed attempts to court her. She was shocked when she got the impression that he was apparently out of her league and might not speak to her, even if she wanted to speak to him.

She was able to find out that his new nickname was "The Guru." She wasn't exactly sure what that implied, but thought she had an idea. Was he the man that non-believing students went to with their spiritual problems, spiritual problems the church and their believing friends couldn't help them with? Certainly, she concluded, that was why the clutches of people around him had an earnest and serious demeanor. That was why they scattered when approached by people without permission to hear those conversations.

*

"The Guru" was known to hang out around the grassy area just outside the men's soccer field. That looked like the place where the insiders were most comfortable meeting him. The school administration knew well enough who he was and that he was a doctrinal misfit, however, for some unknown reason, they kept out of his way. He never made any public statements against the church and never publicly took any unorthodox positions. He lied all through his temple-recommend interviews and church officials knew he was lying to them, but inexplicably they granted him temple access anyway. If he taught some kind of heresy, no one was yet willing to reveal to Fanny what that heresy might be.

For several days she strode by the grassy area near the men's soccer field trying to spy out his routines in more detail. Although she'd decided she was going to eventually approach him, she wanted to get a clearer sense of just what such a meeting might be like. However sneaky she might try to be when she walked by, he still spotted her instantly and glanced at her as though she were pathetic. Embarrassed, but not deterred, she ate at a fast-food place across from his regular spot and watched. From time to time his acolytes would see her and look back at her like she was an idiot. Her sad, little espionage attempts were getting her nowhere, largely because it seemed she was the last to know everything.

For days on end she racked her brain trying to think of the perfect question to approach him with, one that seemed innocent enough but could segue onto any topic, especially theological ones. At last she came up with the ideal question and then made her mind up to approach him regardless of how awkward it was.

Her quarry was more elusive than one might imagine. Whenever he was not near the men's soccer field, he appeared to be perpetually on the move. The meetings he had with small groups of people always seemed to be just breaking up. When not at his usual spot, a spot that seemed protected from outsiders by a wall of disapproval, he looked down or away. His head was always in motion and always moving away from outsiders and toward insiders. He was a master evader. His elusiveness seemed just like that of a woman who is far out of most men's league. She even thought to herself, "Wow, now I think I know a little about how hard it might be to be an unattractive man."

At last she had her chance. She was again seated at the fast food place across from The Guru's hangout spot when the one man and three women who were talking to him abruptly broke away. Finally The Guru was alone. She should have approached him at once, but could not resist studying him more.

When alone, he looked nervously about, as a drug dealer might scan the landscape for undercover cops. He was dressed in a rather loose, white dress-shirt that was untucked; and he wore no sport coat. A few pens and several index cards were sticking out of his shirt pocket. His hair was a bit too long in the back and his untied blue tie was simply draped around his neck like a scarf. He shuffled back and forth a bit nervously and beads of sweat on his forehead reflected the bright Utah sun. Glancing at his watch fretfully, he looked about ready to leave, as if hanging out alone too long might be dangerous.

She stood up immediately and walked toward him at an unusually brisk pace. A bit of fear seemed to pass across The Guru's face and he began to pretend he was just leaving. He had a way of disguising his ability to walk briskly by making his movements seem easy and relaxed. Her old suitor had become an expert at evading people while always maintaining plausible deniability. His long legs meant that he began to outpace her.

He was heading into a large multi-story building she knew well. It had several stairways and several bathrooms and dozens of classrooms. Sensing she might not have this chance again in the near future, she broke into a run and simply chased him down and cornered him between the front wall of the building and a planter box that ran perpendicular to it.

At first he just stared at her disconcertedly. She was now a mess, having broken into a sweat with her cheeks flushed red from frustration. Her expression was one of agitation and a loss of all pride. His expression changed from fear to perplexity at how ridiculous she looked.

*

He shrugged and said with insincere coolness, "Hi Fanny. Long time no see. How's your family?"

"Family?" she replied as her forehead wrinkled and her eyebrows moved upwards. "We never even talked about my family."

"Well, you know," he said with almost a snicker, "family is everything in the Mormon church, right?"

Still stuck on her original strategy, which now looked even more silly and misguided than it did in the beginning, she pressed onward. "Never mind that bullshit!"

He laughed, "'Bullshit?' Ha! I don't remember you cussing like that before."

She wiped the sweat off her forehead and said, "Ugh, listen. I have a question for you."

He looked at her sideways in disbelief, but replied, "Fine. Ask."

Collecting herself she seemed to exhale the question, "So did you go on your mission already, or were you going to take a year off to do it?"

He smirked for a second and said, "You made this scene to ask me about my mission?"

She dug in because she just had to get the conversation going no matter what. "Yes, I need to know if you went already."

"Um, okay," he said slowly, "No, I didn't go yet. I'm going to finish my general education requirements and all my lower-division units. After that, I'll do my year of missionary work and then come back here to do my upper division work."

She stared at him as if he owed more explanation. So he added, "But why would you care? You're marrying someone else, and all we ever did was flirt. And, as I recall, I was the only one doing the flirting while you looked at me like I was boring."

"I need to ask you why you're going on your mission?"

"Um, so my family isn't disgraced by me forever?"

"Why else?"

"So all the Mormon employers in Salt Lake City don't think I'm a complete jerk-off?"

"Why else?"

"Because no respectable Mormon woman wants to marry a draft-dodger, a coward, a half-man?"

"Well, those don't seem like very spiritual reasons."

"Spiritual? You've got a lot of nerve bringing up religion. You're marrying a big-time Agnostic, not that we don't have a couple thousand in this school. But what kind of position are you in to judge my spiritual life? You're the one they tell me is seen at cafés on the infidel side of town reading Fawn Brodie."

"I need to know if you're a believer."

"Let's just say you might think of my testimony as rather weak."

"Then how can you go on a mission if your testimony is weak?"

"I don't know. How can you get married in the temple with Agnostic?"

"Stop being so cold to me. I need your help."

"Help? I'm sorry, but I'm not in the psychotherapy business."

"But you're in the guru business."

"Who told you that?"

"The girls."

"What girls?"

"It was the cats."

"What did they say about me?"

"They hinted that you were a spiritual teacher; but when I asked them what kind, they changed the subject. It seems like nobody wants me to know what you teach. I guess I'm always the last to know, always out of the loop."

"Why don't you ask your fiancé? I'm sure he knows."

"I'd like to leave him out of this, if you don't mind"

The Guru put his palm to his head and said, "Oh God, this is just not my day."

She looked at him impatiently as if demanding his continued attention though she was not sure what else to say at that point.

He then suppressed his frustration with her and took on an empathetic demeanor. And as he patronizingly patted her on the shoulder, he said with exhausted resignation, "Okay. Okay. Just hold on a few minutes. I'm going inside to tell my teacher that I'm skipping class today, then we can have our little talk, okay?"

She silently and earnestly shook her head up and down to indicate that she agreed.

*

They walked all over campus for over two hours, during which time she told him her whole life story, her story about growing up in a Mormon family, her first experiences in the temple, what it was like to have Family Home Evenings with religious parents. She enumerated her many spiritual experiences, the many times she went into ecstasy or was moved to tears. She talked about going to seminary classes at the Institute of Religion. The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, The Doctrine and Covenants, The Bible — she had read them all, over and over again.

And then she spoke of meeting her fiancé and how he'd introduced her to anti-Mormon literature, how he'd essentially converted her to Agnosticism. She described what it was like to lose her testimony. At great length, she described all of her anger, frustration and disillusionment. During this time, "The Guru" barely spoke, interrupting her here and there to ask more questions.

At the conclusion of their walk, they arrived at The Guru's car where they concluded their discussion. He had other matters to attend to that evening and would have to go, but before he left, he gave her a brotherly hug without any romantic edge to it at all.

Before he got in his car to drive off, he said, "I can't solve your problem today, and I don't really have a teaching, a gospel or a doctrine to give you. I'm not asking anyone to leave the church, and I'm not starting a new religion. The people around me — maybe they just trust me, or feel safe around me. They've got a lot of the same problems and questions you do, but I don't have all the answers. There are smarter people than me out there who know a lot more than I do. All I can do is kind of point people in directions I think might help them."

"Do you have a direction for me?" Fanny asked.

The Guru thought for a moment and said, "I've got an idea."

"What?" said Fanny.

"Have you ever heard of a koan?" said The Guru.

"A koan?"

"Yes, it's a Japanese riddle of sorts, the kind a Zen Abbot might give to an aspiring student."

"You have a koan riddle for me?"

"I think so."

"What is it?"

The Guru said, "How can everything the church says be a lie and the church still be true?"

"I don't know," replied Fanny.

"Exactly."

"Exactly?"

"Right. The whole point of a koan is that there's no one answer, no permanent answer, and no one can be totally sure they ever have the answer."

"But how do I get the answer?"

"No one knows for sure."

"Then what do I do?" wondered Fanny.

"I'll tell you what," said The Guru. "Let's meet again in three days, just for a couple of minutes, out by my usual hangout. In the meantime, you think about the koan I gave you. Just live with the question for a few days. Don't try too hard to solve it. Don't push too hard for an answer. Just hang out with not knowing the answer, and see if something comes."

Fanny looked at the ground a moment confused, then raised her head and said, "So I ask myself, over and over, for three days, 'How can everything the church says be a lie and the church still be true?'"

"That's it!" said The Guru.

"What if I think about it for three days and don't come up with an answer?" inquired Fanny.

"Come and see me anyway."

"What happens then?"

"Then, I'll have one more step for you."

"One more step?" said Fanny

"Yeah," concluded The Guru. "There's another koan that goes something like this: 'When you get to the very last step on a ladder, take one more step anyway."

*

A couple of days later, Fanny was laying in her boyfriend's arms in a kind of dreamy mood. They were drifting in and out of sleep, but fully woke up at the same time.

She turned to her fiancé and said softly, "Honey?"

"Yes, baby," he replied.

"Can the church be true even though everything the church says is a lie?"

"That's a fucked up question, baby."

"I know, honey, but I just thought I'd ask."

He slowly propped himself up on the bed and said, with a groggy voice, "Wanna go out for some pizza?"

Not wanting to press her question any further she replied, "Sure. Why not?"

*

When she arrived at the grassy area just outside the men's soccer field, she found The Guru with two guys and a woman in the midst of some kind of half-joking banter. She stopped about ten feet away out of respect or uncertainty, or both. The Guru spotted her and told the others, "Excuse me, but me and that young lady have something personal to talk about."

As the others left, she took her place in front of him.

"Well?" he said. "What do you have for me?"

Fanny smiled and said, "I asked myself, over and over again, 'How can everything the church says be a lie and the church still be true?' And I only came to one conclusion."

"Tell me what you got."

"My answer to your question is, 'That's a really good question.'"

"That's a really good answer."

"Yes, I'm kind of proud of myself."

"Well, then if you like that question, maybe you'll like this."

The Guru then pulled one of those index cards out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her.

"What do I do with this?" said Fanny. "The front just says JS25, and there's an address on back to someplace way out in the sticks."

"Go there if you want you."

"Who or what is JS25?"

"He's that last step after you've run out of steps on the ladder."

*

Now that Sensei had loosened up, he and JS25 were about to try to have a far-ranging discussion. But before they could do that, the front door flew open and there stood Fanny Eliza Bountiful.

Immediately sensing that the woman at the threshold of the door was in a faith crisis, he turned to Sensei and said, "I'm so very sorry, but I must interrupt our meeting to care for this woman."

The woman presumptuously walked over to an empty space on a couch and flopped herself in it and proclaimed, "I've lost everything I grew up with, everything my family believed in. It all seems meaningless and perfunctory. The church is a lie, and I'm a phony. I'm trapped in that church forever. I promised my boyfriend I'd marry him in that church, but it's all phony. My life feels so empty now. I can't make any sense of what I've been through."

JS25 moved his chair so that it could face the couch Fanny was sitting on and inquired, "Ask me any question. Any question at all. I cannot promise I'll know the answer as I only know that which our Heavenly Father reveals to me."

"Okay," said Fanny. "What do I do about the fact that the Old Testament isn't true. Archaeologists have scoured the deserts of Egypt and Israel and can't find one scrap of evidence that the Exodus ever happened; and all the historical evidence points to the fact that no such migration of people happened. Such a mass of people never moved from Egypt to Israel ever.

"Just yesterday," Fanny said, "I looked at a map of the Middle East and saw that you could walk from Cairo to Jerusalem in days. A car could make the drive in hours. There's no way two million Jews were wandering lost there for forty years, since in that forty years, anyone could have just pointed them in the right direction. There were traders, armies, politicians, bedouins and priests dotting the landscape. They could have simply led them there themselves. The whole 'let my people go' thing is a hoax."

"I'm afraid to say you're correct," replied JS25 with solicitous earnestness. "Two million Jews never escaped from Egypt because two million Jews were never in Egypt as slaves. I cannot deny the obvious truth of the matter."

"And what about the Book of Mormon's claim that the Native Americans are descendants of the Jews and sailed here from Israel? Anthropologists are now certain that's a fraudulent claim. Native Americans are originally from Siberia, or Mongolia, or Northern China, or someplace like that. They probably don't have any Middle Eastern blood in them."

"Right again, young woman. The Book of Mormon, like the Bible, is completely fiction. The Lord revealed that to me straightaway some time ago."

"And what about the Book of Revelations in the New Testament where God sends all the non-believers to Hell for eternity? How could anyone believe in a God that hateful?"

"Like you, I cannot accept a God who would condemn human beings to Hell for eternity. Our humanity could never allow us to accept such a thing."

"And what about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and all the illegal and immoral things they did? How could anyone forgive them for that? And, if there's a God, how can anyone forgive Him for allowing us to believe in books like the Bible and the Book of Mormon? And what about all of the half-truths, cover-ups and deceptions my church has been involved in throughout the decades? How can we forgive that? It's just too awful."

"But there's where you and I disagree," said JS25 as kindly as he could. "I say you must forgive the church, and you must forgive God."

Fanny broke into a cynical and bitter smile. "Forgive God? Since when are humans entitled to forgive God?"

"They always have been," said JS25. "You see, our Heavenly Father was once a man, just as we are now, made of flesh and blood and bones. He still is that way.

"He was not always our Heavenly Father," noted JS25. He was once young and underwent training in a world made by His own Heavenly Father. As we do now, He underwent difficult trials and faced unimaginable temptations. Throughout time, He kept learning and growing, just as we do now. He attained exaltation, just as we must one day attain exaltation, through undergoing tribulations and remaining faithful."

"Before our Heavenly Father, there was another Heavenly Father," explained JS25. "And there was another Heavenly Father before him. Who the ultimate Heavenly Father is — perhaps no one will ever know. Perhaps even our Heavenly Father does not know. The eternal progression of men and gods is everlasting. Those who are gods now, and those who will become gods — this is beyond numbering."

"I don't see how," inquired Fanny, "this excuses scriptures that are all wrong, commandments that were all wrong and a long line of corrupt men who are hardly ever right."

"Please, if you can, forgive all of them, and our Heavenly Father too," said JS25. "Our Heavenly Father is always learning how to be a better God, just as we are always learning how to be better human beings."

"But why did God pick a corrupt man like Joseph Smith to be our prophet?"

"Recall in the Old Testament that King David murdered a man and stole his wife. Recall that he was forgiven and reinstalled as King and Prophet."

"How can scriptures and God make an endless succession of errors?"

"Almost everything we are doing now will one day be seen as inadequate by future generations. The prophets who arise now will look absurd within a generation. Things are moving very quickly now. We must have mercy on our forefathers, on our countrymen, and yes, on our Gods. We are all doing the best we can. It is not wise to disown your own history."

"What about the part of the Book of Mormon that said Christ came to America?"

"The mystical interpretation of those passages is this: America is a special place, a place of revelation, a place of a great moving of our Heavenly Father's spirit. Joseph was through with us relying only upon legends from the old world, and so he produced new legends so that we, in the New World, might see our own land as the New Jerusalem, the New Zion. And for that I will always love him. He was a dreamer, a madman, a saint and a criminal; and he is our founder, 'an American Prophet.'"

Sensei then stood up and said, "I think I've just found what was missing in my life."

*

The party went on till the early morning. Most of the people there fell asleep on the floor while a few wandered out to the patio to fall asleep under the stars. They were so high that no one needed pillows or beds or blankets. Most of them did not get up till the afternoon.

When they all finally came out of their haze, they noticed Sensei had gone. There was a small slip of paper left behind on the chair he had occupied. It simply said, "Gone off to search for our Heavenly Father. Won't be back to this world for a while. Will update you when I can."

*

Some months later a nondescript postcard arrived in the mail. It was from Sensei. It said, "Saw our Heavenly Father's secretary. Was unable to arrange an appointment. There was a billion-year waiting list. Put my name down anyway."

*

In another three months another nondescript postcard arrived. It said, "Taking a vacation on planet Kolob. Amazing place for a tourist. Going to see about getting a timeshare here. The women are amazing. Thinking of trying to help make some spirit children, maybe try out this celestial marriage thing."

*

Like clockwork, every three months for a few years, the postcards came to JS25's house. And while JS25 had barely known Sensei, he still felt profoundly connected to him, and the postcards provided a great source of comfort to the prophet and to Brigham.

*

Emma and her husband continued with the "ordinances of God," namely having sex, having children, drinking wine and smoking weed. Emma and JS25 never had sex and he never did try to seduce her. After the burden of taking care of the children got too great, she cut back her work as a journalist to part-time.

She was home one afternoon taking care of her brood. Her husband was at work. The phone rang. The caller ID showed that it was JS25.

"Emma, Can you drive me to the hospital?"

"What's the matter J —?"

"I'm feeling ill, very ill. Can you come over?"

As luck had it, a good Mormon mother next door agreed to watch Emma's kids, since her own were still in school and would not be back for hours.

She rushed over to find JS25 on the floor with labored breathing and a bad fever. He was drenched in sweat and found it difficult to get up.

Her husband left work early and came over as fast as he could after Emma had apprised him of the situation. Together they managed to escort a limping JS25 to the car. He was gasping and leaning heavily on their arms.

He was admitted to the emergency room, and his condition continued to deteriorate. It was as if he were suffering a major infection, but doctors were unable to find the cause of the symptoms. It was not the first time doctors had seen patients begin to pass from this world for no reason anyone could find. And they did their best to treat him, but the outlook was not good.

*

Fanny and her boyfriend were eventually married in the temple and had their family sealed for time and eternity. They remained firm Agnostics and happy hypocrites, not believing a word the leadership of the church said, but thrilled to remain in the company of their people, the only people they'd ever really known.

Fanny and Emma, who had met at JS25's on the odd night that Sensei appeared, remained friends afterward, and their two husbands also golfed together. When Emma called Fanny to let her know that JS25's condition was becoming critical and that no one knew what was wrong with him or how to treat him, she too rushed over to the hospital.

By the time Fanny got to the hospital, the apostles Jason Jacob and Brigham were already there.

*

By this time, The Guru had gone on his mission and made many converts. He commanded each of his converts to never believe in the literal truth of any of the scriptures or sayings of the church leaders. He also promised them that if they would pretend to believe all of the scriptures and all of the sayings of the church leaders, they would enjoy social success, career success and community security for the rest of their lives. Armed with these commandments, most of his converts remained in the church for the remainder of their lives.

Like all the others, he'd gotten married and was getting on with the business of trying to bring more spirit babies down to the worldly plane in accordance with God's plan, even though he'd never believed God was very good at planning things. As in the old days, he still wore a loose, untucked, white shirt with those curious index cards sticking out of the pocket, hence JS25 never lacked the company of inquirers and seekers.

The Guru got the news that JS25 was in the hospital and he also raced over to see if he could, at the very least, comfort the others, even if he had no way to help JS25 in his increasingly dire state.

*

While everyone in JS25's hospital room was full of grief at the prospect of losing a prophet, it had been years since they'd all been in the same room at once and they were greatly consoled by seeing each other. Although they all maintained contact with each other, they tended to meet one on one, or two couples at a time. And so the events of the day, as difficult as they were, reminded them all that there was a community that was always there for them. It was a bittersweet time.

They stood there in JS25's hospital room, not knowing what to do. Occasionally Jason Jacob or Brigham would lead them all in prayer, even though some of them clearly did not believe in prayer.

And while the hospital staff was ordered to maintain strict confidentiality regarding patients, there was one nurse on staff, a short, steely-eyed creature, who was unable to maintain that strict confidentiality. She glared at JS25 and his cohort as if she didn't approve of them, though this was far from the case. However, for some unknown reason, she kept walking by, sticking her bobbed, strawberry blond head into the room and then sighing impatiently, after which she turned and stamped off without a word.

Finally The Guru said to her, "Look, lady, what's your problem?"

She looked at him and said, "I can't let this happen! I just can't!"

The Guru, not happy that he was having to try to calm down a nurse who should be calming them down, said, "Get a grip on yourself. These things happen. Nobody lives forever." But then just as he said that, he caught Brigham's eye and then corrected himself, "Er, well, maybe they do, but . . ."

The tense and grieving nurse broke away and shuffled off unconsoled and angry.

"Damn," said Emma's husband, "that chick is uptight. I ought to help her out."

"No," said Emma, holding him back as he started to leave the room. "You do not dole out free drugs in a hospital. No!"

"Oh, right," said Emma's husband who then shook his head and said, "What the fuck ever."

Jason Jacob glared at him.

"Oh sorry, Mr. Apostle." said Emma's husband. "I'm a little out of it today."

A few moments later, from the nearby nurses' station, one overhead the upset nurse saying over the phone, "You have to do something! — You're the one who knows people. Who do I know? — Listen. Have I ever asked you to do anything for me? — No. You're the one with connections, not me. — Don't give me that shit that you're busy! — Yes, at the hospital. You know where I work. — You have to come through for me on this one. I have no where else to turn. — No, I haven't been to church for years. — Yes, yes. I know. — But I still believe . . . apparently more than you do. — I'm going to freak out if you don't help. — I can't stand here and argue with you while I've got two dozen patients to deal with today. Hurry! — Alright. — Alright. — I apologize for being mean. — You'll do it then? — Oh good. I knew I could count on you. — I promise I'll make it up to you. — Okay, see you later. Gotta' go."

The Guru shook his head again in disbelief. "Whew! That girl is a real head case."

*

The nurse reappeared in the room an hour after she'd made that disturbing phone call, but this time she was more composed. "Sorry, everyone. I've been under some pressure lately. I just need some time off."

Everyone in the room nodded solemnly, as if they understood. Then the nurse went over to JS25 who, by that time, was already going in and out of consciousness. She took his vital signs and said, "It's getting worse. I don't know what to do."

Just then two doctors filed in and approached the patient. They looked at J25's chart and quietly began to mull over various possibilities. They poked and prodded the patient, and kept quietly commenting to one another in a discontented way. Then huddling with the nurse in the corner of the room, they begun to debate various treatment options but could not arrive at a satisfactory treatment plan. Deciding to call another specialist they knew, they left the room to see if someone outside of the hospital might have some insight into this puzzling case.

The nurse resumed standing over JS25, and a look of great sorrow came over her face, but she resisted the urge to weep, having already been too emotional that day and having upset the visitors. Everyone in the room just stared at her, and her inconsolable sorrow seemed to speak for everyone.

A slender brown-haired nurse of about thirty stuck her head in the door. But before she could enter the room, she said, "Oops, gotta' go. Something's up."

After she said this, several other hospital employees were running down the hall, some of them seeming to object to something. An administrator ran by and said, "Why didn't anybody tell us? We're not ready!"

An announcement came over the intercom that said, "Employees, code 04-99 in progress. Please see your supervisor for more instructions."

General chaos among the employees and management continued for a moment more and then two squad-car sirens could be heard blaring through the parking lot below.

At that, the formerly-anxious nurse stopped leaning over JS25 and stood up. She turned her head to the others with a relieved smile on her face. "It's going to be alright now. I just know it. Everything will be alright."

Behind the squad cars came a black limousine and a black Ford Escalade with tinted windows.

The nurse hurried over to the window and pulled the curtains aside quickly. "He's here!"

*

For several moments, the hallways outside the room went silent. In the meantime, JS25 had lost consciousness fully. For the people in JS25's room, a great emptiness seemed to come over the building. No one knew what to say.

Then, at first, a light babbling could be heard in the distance along with the soft shuffling of feet. This babbling turned into a boisterous cacophony of voices and a stampede of dozens of footsteps echoing down the hallway, and it all seemed to be heading in the direction of JS25's room.

The procession stopped near the nurses' station and a voice said, "Is he in there?"

"Yes sir," came the reply, "in there."

Two policemen burst into the room and said, "Please, everyone, stand aside."

After them came two more men, but they were dressed in black and had dark sunglasses on. The large room was becoming extremely crowded, but no one was asked to leave.

Then, to everyone's astonishment, at the threshold of the door stood the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They were all stupefied.

"Emma?" said the President.

"Yes, Mr. President, it's me," Emma replied.

"I haven't seen you wandering the halls of the Deseret News Service lately. Where have you been?" he inquired.

"Sir, I've cut back to part-time. The children, you know," she said.

"Of course. Very well. Of course," said the President as he turned to Fanny.

"Fanny, I still see your family around town. I remember when you were just a little girl. Are you still a member of the church," he asked.

"Yes, Mr. President," replied Fanny. "I don't come as often as I should, but I'm still on the rolls."

The President looked around and saw Emma's husband and The Guru. He chuckled and muttered under his breath, "God help us," and proceeded to enter the room.

He looked at the nurse, and his intuition told him what had happened. "You're the one?"

She agitatedly replied, "I'm sorry, Mr. President. I just . . ."

But he held up his hand to silence her. "No need to explain. The Lord will reward your diligence. You have been faithful enough."

As the President proceeded toward JS25's bed, behind him, at the threshold, could be seen his First Counselor who disapproved of this mission and only came because the President insisted on it. He and the President had just been arguing in the limousine before they arrived. His lips were pressed tight and his arms were crossed, as though he was not impressed and not amused. But he was obliged to accede to the will of his prophet, and so, not willing to enter the room, he looked on from the doorway.

In spite of it being a sacred moment, the beep and chatter of the security peoples' radios could be heard in the background.

The President looked into JS25's face, then turned to the people in the room, "Our Savior said that he had come that the children of God might have life, and that more abundantly." His face had changed in an uncanny way. It now radiated with a power quite different than that reflected in his usual bureaucratic and functionary-like demeanor. And with a booming voice, he inquired, "Do you children of God still believe in prayer?"

And while many of them had been, up till that point, rather skeptical about prayer, they all shook their heads up and down to indicate that they did.

"Very well," said the President, his eyes now gazing slightly upward in an ecstasy that would have amazed the audiences that usually saw him in public appearances.

He turned back toward JS25 and took in a massive breath before saying, "As the holder of the keys of the Melchizedek Priesthood, I hereby, in the name of Jesus The Christ and his Heavenly Father, call upon this spirit of sickness to flee from your body. Oh prophet, rise up and live!"

And as the President raised his hands above him, JS25 instantly sucked in a lung-full of air and his eyes popped open. He gasped and then bolted straight up as though an electric current had shocked his body, and said, "Mr. President!"

The President then turned to everyone in the room and proclaimed, "So spake our prophet Spencer W. Kimball:"

My beloved brothers and sisters,  
This is a great experience for me.  
We know our Heavenly Father lives.  
We know his Glorified son, Jesus Christ, lives;  
And we bear this solemn testimony to you.  
Mortal, and immortal, never-ending —  
Of these truths, I bear witness.

Then, as suddenly as he had come, the President turned and left, followed by his counselor, his security detail and the police. The hallway outside was packed with hospital staff staring on in complete disbelief. And by the time the President and his entourage had made it to their cars, JS25 was standing up next to his bed, the intravenous feeding tubes and monitoring wires hanging off of him. He then lifted up his chin and sang a verse from that same song that Brigham had sung to Sensei:

The works of God continue,  
And worlds and lives abound;  
Improvement and progression  
Have one eternal round.

*

After the events in the hospital, JS25 continued his ministry as usual. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints never interfered with the prophetic work of JS25 nor commented publicly about the matter of his hundreds of platonic celestial wives. No one demanded to know exactly how many church members secretly availed themselves of the peculiar teachings of JS25 and no one offered to tell. And so the organized church and the informal one lived in symbiotic harmony, deliberately staying out of each other's way.

*

Some months later, there had appeared a strange, thin, bald man in Temple Square. His skin was inexplicably luminescent. He had the strange habit of stopping passersby and claiming to them that he had been to the throne of "our Heavenly Father," and claiming that his skin glowed for just that reason. Having had their share of lunatics making similar claims, almost no one paid any attention to his ravings.

Sometimes people saw him at a smoke stand several blocks away from the downtown area. On cold days he could be seen smoking his cigarettes alone beneath the awning of some shady liquor store. His black leather jacket had large, white letters on back that said, "Kolob Timeshare Corporation," which everyone assumed was some kind of joke.
