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Show S~F3 campfire. I/sensed t h a t they,(130 more than I,) did nrvb knew what they were doingv" Perhaps they were as l o s t and confused as I felt myself to be. One thing I could not d i s c r e d i t in myself: I knew that the complacency and s e l f - r i g h t e o u s n e s s of the group and of the Church was ill-founded. They had presumed that sin had been closed out, along with the world. But I had an inkling that sin begins within and proceeds out of the individual. Even if it was possible to close out the world, sin would occur. Just because i t has not been recognized as sin within the culture, because i t has not been abolished or limited, does not mean it will not have i t s dark way. And in a culture such as the one I had come from, where so much r e s t s on personal testimony, the p o s s i b i l i t y of sin, the r i s k of wrong-doing is greater, for i t e x i s t s outside the law in fact, if not in deed. Besides, i t seemed r i d i c u l o u s to t r y to keep out the world, to pretend t h a t one group was exempted from the workings of the race. Despite the attempts of a l l my parents to make the world go away, despite my own e f f o r t s to construct a protective shield with my books and daydreams, we had to face the world. They had gone to j a i l , to prison, had l o s t t h e i r homes and their jobs. And each day, I had to leave the beautiful somnolence of my yoga exercises and face two hundred and f i f t y hormone-crazy adolescents. The i l l u s i o n t h a t ' a l l i s well in Zion had only left us unprepared to cope with the r e a l i t i e s which bore down °n all of us. And so I told myself that I could not return to my |
