Cultivating Godliness in Mortality | Rachel L. Wadham | 2022

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To cultivate godliness within ourselves, we must develop wisdom, curiosity, and patience in mortality to prepare for what is to come.

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"When I was a child, one of the books that my younger sister and I loved was called The Judge: An Untrue Tale, by Harve Zemach and illustrated by Margot Zemach. My sister discovered it one day because it was easy to find at the end of the picture-book stacks in the Z’s, and after that it came home with us from the library quite often. In fact, my sister can still quote it in full to this day. As the title suggests, this is a book about a judge. Sitting at his bench, the judge presides over the court as prisoners are brought in one by one. Each prisoner has the same story: a large scary beast is coming! The prisoners keep repeating the same information:

A horrible thing is coming thisway,
Creeping closer day byday.
Its eyes are scary
Its tail is hairy
Its paws have claws
It snaps its jaws
It growls, it groans
It chews up stones
It spreads its wings
And does bad things
I tell you, Judge, we all better pray!1

Each time the judge pompously dismisses their concerns and promptly sends them off to jail. Now forgive me for these spoilers and the raw content, but the story ends with the judge, satisfied with a good day’s work, beginning to leave. Suddenly the exact beast that the prisoners had described breaks into the courtroom and promptly eats him whole, which allows all the prisoners to be set free. This book is exceptional, with rich, detailed illustrations and a perfect rhyme scheme. But as an adult, I have come to see a unique theme offered in this story—one that resonates with me as a librarian. Today I contend that The Judge is all about information literacy and that if the judge had been more literate, the ending might have been very different.

Throughout the story, the judge got a lot of information, but he clearly did not have the critical ability to evaluate and effectively use this information. He didn’t ask questions, and he didn’t send the police out to investigate. Also, as the pictures in the book make very clear, if he had just looked out the window, he could have learned quite a lot. Our doomed judge had a lot of information coming at him, and his failure was that he did not validate that information to make informed decisions.

One characteristic of our digital world is that we are also bombarded with information. It comes at us constantly through a wide range of mediums. Learning from our judge’s dire outcome, we can focus on being better than he was as we navigate the massive flow of information that comes at us each day. While our information literacy skills may not save us from a situation as dire as that encountered by our judge, I contend that information literacy skills can help us navigate our world in ways that can make us better human beings and better Saints.

One of my jobs as a librarian is to make sure that people know how to identify, use, create, and evaluate all kinds of information. This means that it’s my job to help guide and support people as they develop information literacy. Librarians teach classes and consult with students, faculty, and staff to help them navigate the information they use in all their learning and teaching. The import and scope of all the skills that encompass information literacy are too complex to address today, but if you want to know more, come in and see us at the Harold B. Lee Library and we will be happy to help you develop the skills you need for your project or discipline. If you are not part of our direct campus community, then please seek out your own local librarian and they will certainly be happy to help you."

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