Read a Chapter × The Way Back to Heaven The Power of the Parable Sometime in my early life—in the dawning of my awareness that God had truths to share with me, and goodness to instill within me, and beauty to show me if I would listen, and be open, and observe—I received, in a few brief moments of internal seeing, a key to life. It came in a series of images somewhat like a parable—"The Parable of the Crystal Stairs"—and I have learned from it ever since. God is a gracious and a giving God. As my life progressed, I came to view with greater clarity and appreciation the interior landscape that played out in the creative drama of my mind, and was able to more thoughtfully apply its realities to the lives and experiences around me. Perceptions given or enhanced by the Spirit are living things and grow continually throughout our lives. Their ability to guide and grant truth never diminishes. This is especially true of the scriptures and of the temple, and particularly true of the figurative, the symbol, the story, the similitude, the parable. That is the way of God. That is part of what it means to be infinite. God always runs ahead of our needs and, in his anticipatory seeing, prepares the way. Our job is to pay attention, to remember, and then to draw strength, insight, and intelligence from life?s encounters, God's gifts, and past endowments of mercy. We then come to understanding, recognition, and, above all, wakefulness. In that wakefulness we learn to be compassionate, to be kind, to show mercy, to love, and to be non-judging—to want as our deepest desire to think and feel and see just as Christ and the Father do. The Parable of the Crystal Stairs has one dominant, clarifying vision—there is only one way to get to heaven. This sounds obvious, but it is remarkable how many people have uncertainty about it, either in an unexamined, overconfident feeling that their way is the way, to the exclusion of all others, or in believing it doesn't much matter, as all roads lead to Rome, or they are simply apathetic or agnostic. To find that singular way back to heaven is humanity's highest searching. I am a Latter-day Saint speaking to Latter-day Saints, and though we may feel quite comfortable on our path—and with our plan—if we're not careful we'll miss the whole point and get lost in the details of living a Mormon life. I fear too many of us live in a lingering sense of inadequacy and misty guilt, weights from which we would be liberated. Jesus came to show us not only how to climb but also how to remove the burdens we will allow Him to remove so that the stairs rising before us may not seem so insurmountable. Ultimately I have come to believe that the climb—the ascent up the crystal stairs—has more to do with being and becoming than believing and doing. For me, that is the essential, never-to-be-forgotten truth. They are deeply interwoven but do not balance equally across the beam when weighed. Being and becoming almost always lead to correct and proper believing and doing, but the reversal of those positions does not necessarily hold true. We will explore this. People are usually somewhat surprised to learn that faith, in its earliest definition, seemed not so much centered on our assenting to a set of statements about God's nature and our relation to Him as much as it was focused on creating our character?the way we see and treat others, our pattern of thinking, and the quality of our soul. The stairs are there to help us on our upward journey; we all have different steps on which to work. All are beautiful when mastered. Those that are easy for you may be a lifelong struggle for me. In a sense, the placement and sequence of the stairs are individualized for us in our Father's grand mercy and wisdom. We also all carry with us various bundles and packages which we must part with if our climb is to be successful. Those can be painful and soul-stretching moments. I have stared into the contents of my own burdens with both a desire for release and a tenacious grip that whispers, "In time, yes, but not now." Yet the stairs forever beckon and we would be home. Joseph Smith once wrote to William W. Phelps—perhaps the most poetic soul of the Restoration—"Oh, Lord, when will the time come when Brother William, Thy servant, and myself, shall behold the day that we may stand together and gaze upon eternal wisdom engraven upon the heavens, while the majesty of our God holdeth up the dark curtain until we may read the round of eternity, to the fulness and satisfaction of our immortal souls? Oh, Lord, deliver us in due time from the little, narrow prison, almost as it were, total darkness of paper, pen and ink;?and a crooked, broken, scattered and imperfect language." I believe parables and stories—the figurative, images, metaphors, and symbols—are one of the ways the Lord holds up that dark curtain. We see rather than read; we sense rather than reason. So I offer a parable here in the hope that it may enable us to see, perhaps just a tiny bit more clearly, "the round of eternity" and our place within it. I do not remember the context in which this parable came to me; it happened so very long ago. I have no recollection of the catalyst, the source of contemplation that marked its creation. Perhaps that is best. Only the images have remained, but they have nourished me for a lifetime. I will portray the Parable of the Crystal Stairs in the pages that follow as I recall that first experience and subsequent pondering, followed by what I have learned from life and from the scriptures about the setting of the stairs, the distracting stairways of the world, the burdensome packages we all carry that delay our desired ascent, and, most importantly, a discussion about the Stair Builder and the beauty of some of the individual stairs we must climb. What awaits at the top of the stairs came to my understanding later in life and continues to be refined. I conclude with those insights. Close Our earliest scripture tells the story of those who thought they could build a structure high enough to get to heaven, and of the consequences of that mistaken belief. In contrast, the prophet Jacob dreamed of a ladder sent down from heaven by God, with rungs—steps—that we could ascend to return to Him. In The Way Back to Heaven: The Parable of the Crystal Stairs, award-winning author S. Michael Wilcox helps us discern the "stairs of man" from the "stairs of God." Using the metaphor of a beautiful crystal stairway, he shows us the difference between a focus on "being and becoming" and "believing and doing" in our life's journey. While we may think we know the steps we'll need to take, the author suggests some unexpected—even counterintuitive—yet essential stairs each of us will encounter as we make our way back to our Father in Heaven. Book on CD: Unabridged, 5 CDs Unabridged audio book