Concluding Thoughts of 2011

“I have long believed there was a divine plan that placed this land here to be found by people of a special kind, that we have a rendezvous with destiny. Yes, there is a spirit moving in this land and a hunger in the people for a spiritual revival. If the task I seek should be given to me, I would pray only that I could perform it in a way that would serve God.” (Ronald Reagan)

“There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.” (Will Durant)

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and the virtue of our own.” (Abraham Lincoln)

“Sometimes a nation abolishes God, but fortunately God is more tolerant.” (unknown)

“If we spend sixteen hours a day dealing with tangible things and only five minutes a day dealing with God, is it any wonder that tangible things are two hundred times more real to us than God?” (William R. Inge)

“Here is my creed: I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That He governs it by his providence. That He ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render Him is doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.” (Benjamin Franklin)

“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas -- but for scars.”
(Elbert Hubbard)

“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31 NIV)

“…For hate is strong and mocks the song of Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men”

I have, for days, been pondering this line from the Christmas song, ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.’ The line, standing alone, is true. The conclusion that hate and its derivatives will win the day however is not.

News reports from the sectarian violence of the Middle East, and of the senseless violence in the drug wars of Mexico, and the sexual violence perpetrated upon children, and of economic and other social ills suffered by millions, if that is all one digests, discourages many into believing otherwise.

But when all the lines from the song are read we get a much more optimistic view of the story of mankind’s life and the destiny of this earth. Of course, you say, this is only a song; but Handel’s Messiah is “only a song,” and both proclaim great truths. The good will ultimately be victorious; evil, hate, and violence will not win the day. The Holy Scriptures and revelation to living prophets and to my soul strongly convince me of this.

These thoughts were brought to fore by a video on YouTube recently suggested to me by a good friend. I watched ‘Pale Blue Dot’ by the late astronomer Carl Sagan. The photographs from space and the musical score by Vangelis and the compelling voice and narrative by Mr. Sagan were beguiling but were symptomatic of the existentialism and nihilism of so many of today’s generation. As Brigham Young once suggested, there are 99 truths mixed with one falsehood that brings many down. Satan (yes, I believe he is real) is a great counterfeiter. Satan always has used ‘the philosophies of men mingled with scripture’ to good advantage.

After watching the video I read the comments made by other watchers of the video, most, I suspect who were young adults. Many of the comments were vulgar; most were nihilistic; and Mr. Sagan was elevated to the status of a secular scientific prophet (as I suggested was Steve Jobs as the tech prophet of our age). Sagan’s is the voice, I believe, of the ‘me’ generation or of ‘generation ‘x’ as you will have it.

Mine is a counterpoint (as you know if you have read any of my commentaries) that sustains me and gives me great hope for the destiny of mankind.

We will be in for some very rough times in the future—far beyond what many of us who sit in our warm and comfortable homes have ever experienced—but there are ‘islands of safety’ and messages of hope that ring true for any who have ‘ears to hear and hearts to understand.’ Seek, and you shall find them.

And you will probably not find these on YouTube.

Authentic Christmas

As we reflect upon the first Christmas—the coming to earth of the child Jesus—we cannot help but anticipate that it will not be long before our Savior returns to this earth much differently than he did 2000 years ago. It will not be, as before, as a humble babe in a manger, or a life lived out as a humble carpenter, or as a humble itinerant preacher and healer, or even as the humble and infinite Atoner for mankind.

Instead, his next appearance to the world will eclipse even the “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,” or the exclamations of the “multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” It will be, instead, His coming in glory with the hosts of heaven, in great power, as King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. It will be then that many of our great Christmas hymns will become a reality. And we will be in awe.

But we should also remember His first appearance. A little over two thousand years ago the archangel Gabriel appeared from the Heavenly realms and made a startling announcement to some faithful shepherds who were attending to their task in the dark of the night. Additional heralds, a multitude of what we suppose were singing angels, joined Gabriel praising God. They, too, left their message with the astonished shepherds. The shepherds responded with haste to this glorious outpouring to find this child, this long-prophesied Messiah—to gain a personal testimony of the things they were told. After they had seen for themselves, they enthusiastically told all they encountered of what they had heard and experienced.

What can we learn from this? What does God want us to learn from this? The scriptural record here shows that God will make known even to the lowliest of His children messages of transcendent importance. There is no indication in the record that the shepherds were aged or highly-educated sages; nothing is said about them holding position or priesthood. Nothing is said of their gender. The likelihood, instead, was that these were probably poor and uneducated young men and/or young women who knew how to care for God’s creatures, who were in the line of their duty, and who were not asleep.

Can you see the pattern? Though the wise men came later bearing gifts, the response desired by God of those who were in a position to immediately respond to this Holy day, this Birthday of Birthdays, was for them to listen to His messengers, to gain a personal testimony themselves, to worship God’s Son, and to proclaim to others what they knew to be true.

Could this not be the proper response for us to emulate during this Christmas season?

The Enduring Questions

I have on my bookshelves an old philosophy book titled The Enduring Questions. It contains over 800 pages of the thoughts of men (no women, interestingly) from Socrates to the 20th Century behaviorists who have grappled with the issue of man-- who he is, why he is here on this Earth, and what he should be doing with his time. In short, they are trying to get a handle on the meaning of life so we can live with meaning.

I suspect we all have given these enduring questions some thought. Or at least we should. They are of deep concern to every thoughtful individual. We should not just leave it to the philosophers and poets to worry about these things; metaphysics is that branch of philosophy that attempts to do that and true religion absolutely should do that. I testify that the answers are ‘out there.’

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, I disagree; it is worth living but it doesn’t amount to much until it is examined and measured against the standard of conscience and revealed truth and then set on a direction that satisfies that conscience with which we were programmed from our beginnings. Disregarding our conscience (that ‘ought to’ or ‘ought not to’ feeling) and not trying to educate it beyond what we came with by simply ‘going with the flow’ or even just sticking with cultural norms is not good enough. Doing so is an abdication of the highest in us that needs to be tapped and the highest outside us that needs to be explored.  

I feel that each of us should periodically take some time to stand alone without distraction under the stars and contemplate the enduring questions and the answers we have come up with. If we don’t “stand all amazed” we are avoiding the issues that make up the very purpose for which we were born. Or maybe we have not looked hard enough for answers and direction. You can tell if you are on the right track by having a reverence for all life and a deep feeling of gratitude for your own life—regardless of its circumstances.

I end with a statement from Blaise Pascal: “Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely transcends man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear God.”

To Live, To Love, To Learn, To Leave a Legacy

To Live -- survival
To Love-- relationships
To Learn—growth and development
To Leave a Legacy—meaning and contribution

As you may have noticed if you have perused my biographical sketch, one of the seminal books I have read that continues to influence the direction of my adult life is Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. A follow-up book, The 8th Habit, further develops our understanding of four great human needs, especially the last one, to Leave a Legacy or as the theme of the book, to develop what Covey calls ‘Voice.’ As I grow older I find myself more and more focusing on this one. This weblog, Omnium-Gatherum-Millerum, is an outgrowth of that need in my life.

The Biblical writer of Ecclesiastes says, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven… a time to be born, and a time to die…a time to heal…to build up…to dance…to lose…to keep…to keep silence, and a time to speak….” I read a book once: Black Elk Speaks. It was this great Native American’s legacy.

Though some of these human activities of Ecclesiastes may require, at times, almost undivided attention, I think that with planning and effort the four great human needs can be pursued contemporaneously. This has been a conscious goal of mine for the past 2/3 of my life.

I have begun to know a woman, a wonderful 98 year-old woman named Priscilla Nesbitt who lives in an assisted living home with my mother and several other fine women. Although she is very aged she has a wonderful mind and wit. Just today, as I was reading out loud to the women in the home she said to me, “I think it would be a wonderful thing to write a book like this and have it read.” (I was reading a 1944 novel, Winter Wheat, by Mildred Walker) To me, having known her for only a few months, I look at her as a living book. She was career teacher who, I am certain, wrote indelible lessons upon the tablets of the hearts and minds of her students for over three decades. She is leaving lessons with me each time I visit.

Priscilla Nesbitt has lived a long life—she is a survivor; she regularly tells me of how she loved her students—and her cats; she continues to learn—she reads constantly; and she is leaving a legacy with me without even trying.

My mother-in-law Beth Fischer is another 95-year-old plus who is cut of the same cloth. She has no middle name, but if I had my way it would be ‘Service.’

These women are an inspiration to me and to any who know them, and for that reason alone, if for no other, their lives have value and they are making a contribution as they endure to the end.

May God continue to bless them.

Steve Jobs--Christ's Counterfeit

It is not my intent in this opinion piece to say anything derogatory or cast any aspersions upon Steve Jobs’ person. I know very little about the man’s personal life and make no judgment about him for good or for ill. But I do take issue with what he stands for as the media has edified him and where his products, and others like them, have taken so many unaware. Steve Jobs is, unarguably, the now-deceased human symbol of the changing of a millennium that we did not acknowledge on 01 January 2001—though the prime candidate, he had not yet been ordained the prophet of technology. Now he has been edified by the media.

In the decade following the turning of the millennial calendar, with its disappointments and disasters, the one bright point of hope for the secular world, seemingly, was a looking forward to each new miracle that Apple, under Steve Jobs’ innovation and leadership, could produce. The iPod and iPhone and iPad with their several updates and the competition’s hurried imitations became almost sacramental tokens of the gospel of secularism and the ‘me’ generation.

It is not, of course, the electronic instrument, itself, that is anathema, but where it has led so many.

In Andy Crouch’s piece on Steve Jobs (‘The Secular Prophet,’ Wall Street Journal, October 8-9, 2011), Crouch says, “[Jobs’] most singular quality was his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope.” He was the spokesman, by design or default, of that hope. That hope was that the promise of technology as the deliverer, or opiate, from the angst of a new generation’s existentialism now that they had put Christ as Deliverer, Redeemer, and Savior, and the hope of a better life beyond the troubles of this one, on the shelf of history. The ‘virtual’ or digital life that the possessor could live was now, as the ad-men would have you believe, as ‘good as it gets.’ (Until the next version comes out.)

The Holy Scriptures use the term ‘antichrist’: (e.g., “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists…. Many false prophets are gone out into the world…and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of antichrist…they are of the world…and the world [alas] heareth them.” (1 John 2:18; 4:1,3,5) The term ‘antichrist’ means ‘instead of, or in place of Christ’ and His function. The antichrist is a person or a concept or a philosophy that mirrors closely the Gospel of faith, hope, and charity and redemption but provides a distorted mirror with ‘self’ as one’s own savior and consequently operates in opposition to Christ.

I do not view Steve Jobs as a devil, but do propose that by this definition became an antichrist.

The W.S.J.’s reviewer Andy Crouch says, “Steve Jobs was the evangelist of this particular kind of progress…. He believed so sincerely in the ‘magical, revolutionary’ promise of Apple precisely because he believed in no higher power.” Jobs said this in a Stanford University commencement address: “Someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

If you are over 50 don’t you hear this as an echo of the mantra: ‘Do your own thing’ that you heard in the 1960’s and ‘70’s? My counterpoint to that is that most peoples’ ‘inner voice,’ if primarily trained by the video games and movies/television and virtual (i.e., counterfeit) reality that makes up so much of electronic fare, unless it is an educated conscience, leads them down the path of least resistance to a truly hopeless and virtually meaningless life that has little room in it for serving anybody but themselves.

“There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh [or selleth, if I don’t buy his product] a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian [I would hope] unto me.” (1 Corinthians 14:10-11)

But the voice of the True Shepherd still beckons. Steve Jobs’ last words were, according to his sister, “Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow!” as the light burst upon him and he slipped out of this life into the next.

Now that’s something to think about.

Thanksgiving

I am an unabashed fan of Norman Rockwell, iconic American artist of the 1940’s-60’s. It doesn’t matter whether you are 19 or 99, I am sure you have seen his famous Saturday Evening Post cover of a family sitting down to enjoy their turkey dinner. Although I don’t know for sure, I feel strongly that the artist implied that a sincere prayer of gratitude was offered over that meal as an expression of this family’s gratitude for the blessings of family, freedom, bounty, opportunity and prosperity.

I am afraid, though, that in many of our homes Thanksgiving may not be celebrated any longer as a significant religious holiday. I think many of our observances have become celebrations of consumption rather than spiritual feast of of love, gratitude, and sharing.

It hasn’t always been so. The first community Thanksgiving was celebrated by our Pilgrim forefathers at Plymouth in the fall of 1621. Theirs was a celebration of gratitude to a Heavenly Father who had sent a bounteous harvest to that beleaguered little colony. Almost half of Plymouth’s original 101 settlers had died during the severe winter of 1620-21, just 11 months before. Most of the Plymouth Pilgrims had been merchants and artisans in England, and they were woefully unprepared to live off the land. Fortunately a bounteous harvest came in that fall and the native Americans shared with them what they had and a grateful and relieved Governor Bradford proclaimed a three-day period of fasting and then celebration.

That celebration was at least partially borrowed from the admonition found in the Biblical book of Leviticus that provides: “When ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord. . . and ye shall rejoice before the Lord, your God (Lev. 23:39-40).

That first feast and many subsequent celebrations of Thanksgiving focused upon man’s relationship with his God. Our subsequent forefathers understood well their dependence on God.

George Washington, in his proclamation establishing the 1789 Thanksgiving celebration, said in part,

“Whereas, it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor. . . that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country.”

King Benjamin, in The Book of Mormon clearly taught the sacred origin of Thanksgiving when he proclaimed unto his people:

“O how you ought to thank your heavenly King! I say unto you, my brethren, that if you could render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another. . . . I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.” (Mosiah 2:19-21)

Regrettably, with prosperity came false and humanistic notions. People who once rendered thankful praise to their God soon came to praise their own industry and intellect and forgot their God. In like manner even Christmas and Easter have been grossly distorted.

I would suggest that our task today is to reconnect to the sacred principles of the past—to proclaim with joyful hearts and voices that the Gospel of God has been restored to the world, that this land, identified by God as the choicest and most favored land above all others is our land and that we respect it, will protect it, and not defile it, and that we serve our brothers and sisters more than we do and resolve to never take more than we give.

Remember always that it wasn’t our intellect or our acquired abilities that enabled us to be here today. May an attitude of thankfulness to God always be with us, and not just in the time it takes to listen to a blessing on our lovely Thanksgiving feast.

Notable--Quotable

I suppose that anyone who does much reading collects quotations or thoughts that are meaningful to him. I also know that reading a list of interesting or provocative or illuminative quotations is something like trying to get a drink out of a fire hose. I will, nevertheless, share a few of those I have collected in the hope that you may choose but one or two per day to ponder during the reflective pauses that the wise take time to build into their day.

• The things that matter most are not things. Possession is nine-tenths of our flaw.

• Consider this question: If your life were made into a movie, and that movie had an appropriate sound track, what kind of music would it be? What mood would it leave me in when I played it? Could I dance to it? The music of a sound track of a life will not be original, but it has passed into us and left its sound in the juke-box of the mind, becoming part of us. And we will likely pass it on.

• The most profound theological confirmations being made these days are in the photographs taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. And the most jaw-dropping picture I have ever seen is the Hubble Deep Field. It is a ten-day exposure, covering an area of the sky no larger than a grain of sand held at arm’s length. And what do we see? Galaxies beyond counting, eight to ten billion light years away. Astronomers have extrapolated the information about this tiny window in the sky to estimate that there are more than fifty billion galaxies out there. “And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose and… innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works….” (Moses 1:33, 35, 38. The Pearl of Great Price, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

• “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answer. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer some distant day.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

• “No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” (Helen Keller)

• “We all live under the same sky but we don’t all have the same horizon.” (Conrad Adenauer)

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.” (Benjamin Disraeli)

C. S. Lewis Day

Last year at this time I wrote a respectful and appreciative entry on C. S. Lewis, the eminent Christian apologist. In it I noted that this brilliant and influential man died on 22 November 1963, the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Although President Kennedy will always be remembered in American history books, Mr. Lewis will be thought of with appreciation for decades to come by untold thousands of solid Christians because of the illuminative insights he published in books and essays of his authorship:

Mere Christianity
The Four Loves
Surprised by Joy
The Great Divorce
The Screwtape Letters
Miracles: A Preliminary Study
George MacDonald: An Anthology
The Abolition of Man
God in the Dock: Essays on Theology

These, and other books of his letters, essays, and his fictional works (Space Trilogy and others) have been extremely valuable for me in my adult sojourn in mortality, and have been a delight to review regularly.

As noted previously, C. S. Lewis is highly ranked as one of my most highly esteemed and influential heroes. If your list of heroes is short, or your view of man and his potential is jaded, a sampling of his work is highly recommended.

I end today with a very typical excerpt from Mere Christianity:

“Let us go back to the man who says that a thing cannot be wrong unless it hurts some other human being. He quite understands that he must not damage the other ships in the convoy, but he honestly thinks that what he does to his own ship is simply his own business. But does it not make a great difference whether his ship is his own property or not? Does it not make a great difference whether I am, so to speak, the landlord of my own mind and body or only a tenant, responsible to the real landlord? If somebody else made me, for his own purposes, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should not have if I simply belonged to myself….

“Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever…. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse—so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely the correct technical term for what it would be.” (Mere Christianity, Book III, chapt. 1)

The Unending Battle of Fitness

Nearly every person I know has fought this battle. It is a battle that is not won, but it can be managed. Just as we don’t eat a meal ‘once and for all,’ or take a breath of air and be done with it, we don’t get fit ‘once and for all.’ So how do we manage it?

First, know what you really want to accomplish. Most people who say they want to get fit really mean they don’t want to be fat. This little article is not really about fitness, but about fatness. This article is not for people who want to compete in some athletic event but is for people who want to look better and feel better (and as a bonus, the person who looks better and feels better usually performs life tasks better!).

I have been involved with physical fitness and athletic performance in one way or another all of my adult life. Movement, of course, is the key; the greater the demands of the performance the more movement (in volume, intensity, and type) is required. But what we are talking about here is not competition with another person, it is just about looking better and feeling better about yourself. So here are a few non-conventional suggestions that may seem just common sense, or too easy, but might be just what you need.

Realize that every movement you make that goes beyond what just gets you by will be for your good. That is to say, for example, that if you want to get to the third floor of an office building you could take the elevator or you could walk the stairs. Guess what you should do? You could even stop on a step and do some toe raises for 30 seconds or so—or even 10 or 20 squats if no one else is around. And you could probably do it several times a day. Similarly, if you are going shopping you could drive around the block looking for a parking place close to the store you intend to patronize or you could intentionally try to park a couple of blocks away and walk (just don’t forget where you parked!). Likewise, every time you picked up a bottle of water or a bag of groceries, or your backpack, or carried in some firewood, etc., you could do a few arm curls. What could you do when a television commercial comes on? Can you see where this is going? In short, don’t take it easy. Every repetition counts.

What you don’t need is to get a membership at a gym or to buy some expensive exercise equipment or special clothing before you get started. Just start where you’re at and with what you’ve got. If you do have an inexpensive piece of equipment such as an exercise ball or a dumbbell then great; keep it out and use it when you can (and be innovative with its use) but just use your own body weight when you can’t. Nothing should hold you back. One of the most physically fit men I ever met was confined to a jail cell. He ran in place, did one-legged squats, did handstand pushups against the wall, isometrically curled his bedframe and he didn’t eat too much. He did all this to try to save his life. Ask me about him sometime.

That brings me to my last piece of commonsensical but unconventional advice. Don’t go on a diet. Don’t buy a bunch of miracle vitamins or energy bars or supplements or other hyped junk. Just eat less of what you normally eat (smaller portions). Also increase your intake of water or food that has a lot of water it (fruits for the most part). Lastly, get rid of all the food in your house that you know is not good for you (high-fat, high-sugar foods). You know the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ –if you build it they will come? Well, if you buy it, you will eat it. So don’t buy it.

But do buy this advice. It works. I hope to see less of you. Hmmm.

Sexual Predators

Without trying to emulate the bulldog-like histrionics of outspoken and tireless advocate for victims’ rights Nancy Grace (a Fox News television personality), I feel the time has come to weigh in on the societal illness of sexual deviancy that defiles modern culture. With the sexual abuse scandals that have, in recent years, been reported in the Catholic Church, with the women school teachers who have seduced their young male students, with the incest and predation upon young girls that my wife and I learned of in our mission to a South Pacific nation (and the consequent highest suicide rate in the world) and with the frequent and horrible crimes perpetrated by male perverts reported in the media every day it appears that we have a systemic problem that poses grave danger to the future of our way-of-life.

I was saddened last night to learn of the immediate dismissal of Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno, one of my heroes, as part of the outfall of the child sexual abuse scandal perpetrated by one of his former assistant coaches. Coach Paterno, though innocent of wrongdoing himself, (he did immediately, as a mandated reporter, report to his superiors hearing the allegation against one of his former assistant coaches, Jerry Sandusky) got caught in the crossfire.

I believe that probably the only area in which Coach Paterno was culpable was stated in his own words to the media: “This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight I wish I had done more.” In one way or another, sexual deviancy by perverts affects us all and may be the catalyst that brings down the wrath of God and the downfall of this once-great nation.

A thoughtful recent editorial (09 November 2011) by the Christian Science Monitor says this:

“Sometimes such concealment is justified to protect a victim of sexual harassment, rape, or similar violation. States, for example, don’t release the names of people who make rape charges. And employees who complain about sexual harassment or sexual advances often want to avoid making waves or hurting their careers over such disputes.

“Institutions in many cases try to uphold individual rights, whether it is a presumption of innocence or a right to privacy. But such rights must also be balanced against the interests of other workers and society in general if an accused is truly a potential repeat offender.

“Simply paying money for a sex allegation to go away or easing the accused out of a position can result in someone else paying the consequences later.

“Courts are well placed to find that balance between rights and the collective interest. But such a judicious approach falters when a private institution doesn’t even make an attempt at it. Instead, it is easy to put reputation, stockholders, donors, or other concerns ahead of individual rights or prevention of crime.

“Colleges and universities like Penn State have a particular problem with cases of alleged harassment or rape. Young people are often sexually active or unaware of social and legal barriers for gender behavior. When should a school, for example, handle a sex-related accusation itself, rather than take it straight to law enforcement? Are schools even capable of discerning false accusations or whether someone is a real sexual predator?

“Both the Penn State and Herman Cain cases should stir every private institution to review its procedures for handling sex-related accusations. And managers need regular training to live up to the complex Supreme Court guidelines for determining sexual harassment.

“Institutional self-interest must be avoided if there is to be justice for either the accused or accuser in a sex case, as well as protection for others.”

In my mind the greatest crime against life, in our time, is that of abortion, but the crimes of sexual abuse and molestation of children by adults ranks up there with kidnapping and slavery as beyond the pale of tolerable human behavior. I hope my readers will, with me, be among the voices ‘crying in the wilderness’ for these things to stop.

Being Productive

You may have seen this before, but most good things need revisiting.

Persistence
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. (Ray Kroc)

Here is something that seems at first like a counterpoint to the above, but it may be just another approach to ‘persistence.’

Procrastinate
If at first you don’t succeed, give up immediately.
Move on to some other task until that becomes unbearable.
Then on again circling back around to the first problem.
By now, your sub-conscious will have worked on it; sort of like sleep but only cheaper.(Author unknown, found in the Wall Street Journal Magazine, Nov. 2011)

An interview I heard with author Jonathan Fields, who wrote a book titled Uncertainty, explored the same topic. He said “The really big insights and ideas usually come when we work really hard and then we step away. It’s the moments that we’re not working, the deliberate pauses that we create where we step away from work where the really big ideas and solutions and creations come to us.”

I agree. I often think best when I am not thinking. That is why, for me, dreams provide the best grist for productive mental output. But the grist for my dreams comes from my recent reading. Dreams provide for me the revelation that penetrates my consciousness that the regular activities of life may block.

Another way of saying essentially the same thing was said years ago by Stephen Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He addressed the habit of taking time to ‘sharpen the saw.’ The ‘saw’ of our mind, our body, our ability to interact effectively with other people, all, I believe, could be enhanced by some of the same tactics suggested above.

The Civilization of Man

I know, before being told, that treatment of such a topic for such a small essay as will follow is being way too presumptuous. I was taught in graduate school that one must always delimit. But I believe that sometimes one needs to be jolted into consideration of ideas beyond the prosaic before being forced into the mold of delimitation. True, you can’t eat an elephant at a sitting; you have to take one bite at a time over time; but also true, you have to have the elephant to eat it. Good advice that I have tried to integrate into my life is that we must ever keep in mind the ‘big picture’ and not continually get “caught up in the thick of thin things.”

So, ahead with boldness. Consider the task of civilizing man. Not mankind. Just man—I’m talking about the gender ‘man,’ ‘maleness,’ much more so than ‘woman.’ But first, a little background:

I was, and still am—at least in my own mind—a teacher. For much of my life I taught mostly boys. I taught physical education—at least that is what the curriculum guide called it. But I knew that what I really was trying to teach was the whole boy—his mind and heart and spirit—as well as his physical body. I never did teach just ‘football,’ or ‘basketball,’ or ‘gymnastics’ or even physical fitness; these were simply the means, the media, the activities, through which I tried to teach the more important aspects of self-discipline, hard work, respect for self and others, rules on the field and in life; in short, I endeavored to teach character. I knew that boys would need it if they ever hoped to be successful with women, with their future vocation, with society and their place in the world, with themselves, and ultimately with God.

Therefore, here are just a few provocative ideas to get you started regarding man vis-a-vis women and man’s need for civilization. I will simply throw them out with no attempt at closure or even persuasion. That is up to you.

• I believe that the gender ‘man’ thinks fundamentally differently than the gender ‘woman’. Thinkers and writers have explored these differences from the beginning of mankind upon this earth. One example that explores this idea is a book popular probably thirty years ago: Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus (by John Gray, Ph.D). Men view things differently than do women. The earliest example is the response difference between a man—Adam—and his wife—Eve: Adam’s response to his Maker—‘I, me’—as contrasted to Eve’s—‘we, our’. Adam needed Eve to be his ‘help meet,’ meaning his finisher, to help him be fulfilled and complete. They were commanded to be ‘one.’ Adam was to provide and to protect; Eve was to refine and give life. Both were to work together in love.

• Men are inherently more violent than are women. Look at their recreations. Moreover, the proportion of men in prison to women in prison is remarkable. Why is that? I have read the review and heard an interview with author Scott Spencer about his new book, Man in the Woods which apparently addresses this assertion in a very insightful way. I look forward to reading the book.

• The ‘natural man’ (not necessarily, in my own mind, the ‘natural woman’) is an ‘enemy to God.’ I agree with this scriptural concept of indicting fallen ‘mankind,’ but ‘how so’ might this particularly be with the gender man? Could there be a gender difference?

• Governments are needed primarily to keep men in line. Therefore women as well as men are needed in government; their perspective is needed. I’m much in favor of women being men's counselors but not necessarily their head.

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.”
(Alexander Pope)

“Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.”
(Alexander Pope)

Footprints

“He who would leave footprints on the sands of time should wear his work shoes.” (LeGrand Richards)

I had this thought in my lexicon years before I had ever thought to do a weblog or leave some kind of memoir to my children or to my eternal record which I believe will be noted in each person’s heavenly ‘Book of Life.’ It was reinforced when I was courting my wife Cheryl. She sent me a card addressed to Wims. Queried as to what this (hopefully) endearing moniker meant she said, “It means that you have an invitation to Walk In My Soul.” Her soul. It implied to me that I, of course, had an obligation to walk carefully for the soul of another is sacred ground. I would have to walk carefully around the flowers she had planted and nurtured in the garden she had planted in the decades of her life before me. I have learned that you don’t want to clumsily leave footprints in the wrong places.

I have now done well over one hundred little essays in Omnium-Gatherum-Millerum. A few, I hope, have left footprints or a trail that others may choose to follow. Further, I hope that some of these essays, the deeply felt and well-crafted ones, have left the reader with a letter or two of my spiritual signature—a quality of my personality that remains, influenced by the giants in my life who have left deep footprints in my own soul and a path for me to follow. Following in their footsteps I hope that I may leave something that resonates with my readers that may give voice to some of the inchoate thoughts that they may have had.

What I do not want is the indictment that Tennyson (in a poem in the ‘Memoir’) gave to

“Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans…
Against you, you that do profess to teach
And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.”

A writer is identified in quality (and sometimes quantity) by his recurrent motifs. Like, I suppose, everybody, I seem to come back to familiar themes or more accurately variations upon a theme. Sometimes I come back too often, my wife tells me, especially to favorite stories or experiences or scriptures in my teaching. Of course she is probably right. But the fact remains that a speech, a sermon, an essay, a Sunday school lesson, even a conversation is usually forgotten, but what remains is the tone, the mood, the atmosphere, the feeling that is engendered or stirred up. The theme of my life—my values and aim—are hopefully emerging in these offerings, and I hope the good kernel that ‘feeds the heart’ comes to fruition and then the reader may blow the chaff away with a breath of charity.

So, I suppose I am all of a piece. As a daughter-in-law once said to me after reading something I had written, “That is so YOU.” I didn’t ask whether she felt it to be good; I hope it was. But some things you don’t ask.

Rats

I think, for the third and final time, that I’ve got rid of the rats in our attic. But I have come to the age, and prudence, and maybe some old rat, dictates that it might be better for me to say, ‘We shall see.’

I have had a running battle for many years with the rats. I have taken out a few by poison; two by a .22 rifle used at night with a flashlight; six by an electronic device; and a couple by conventional trap baited with blood. Our cat has caught one or two and lost a fight to one last year. A few months ago I was driven to discharge four shells from my 12 gauge double barrel into their tree nest outside our bedroom window and that helped for a month or so. I know they are still out there but at least they are not in here.

This reminds me of a Robert Browning poem, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ 1842):

‘Rats!

They fought the dogs and killed the cats.
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook’ own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.’

So, while enjoying my respite from the rats, I will conclude by quoting another of Robert Browning’s wonderful poems: (‘Pippa Passes’, 1841)

‘The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven –
All’s right with the world!’

Holier Than Thou

As a presidential candidate debate watcher and then as a brief follow-up political analysis watcher (I can endure only so much) I have been disgusted by the negative, close-minded and prejudicial attitude of numerous commentators—and some candidates—who seem to glory in ‘drawing blood’ from those who would be public servants for our country.

Interestingly, it is frequently the candidate who distances himself/herself most markedly from the pack by taking a strong moral stance who becomes the target for the critics. It seems that if a candidate is ‘too good’ that he/she is set up for the ‘slings and arrows’ of those who would want to see them brought down. It seems especially galling if the candidate appears to be what the critic labels ‘holier than thou.’ They can then dismiss the candidate as being unqualified simply by virtue of the label they affix. I guess, by their twisted logic, they feel that to be ‘holy’ is worse than being ‘base.’ They imply that you can’t take such a candidate seriously; they are not ‘one of us.’

True.

The way I view this is that a really good person is a reproach to the critic who himself probably has behaviors or tendencies that he tries to impute to others. In school it was the kids who were often in trouble or who were low-achievers who labeled the higher achievers as ‘goody-two-shoes.’ Jesus identified such persons as liars and hypocrites, whited sepulchers.

My wife pointed out that it seems to be the same type of behavior exhibited by lobsters that are thrown into a pot of water; the ones who have the skill or dexterity to start to climb out of the hot water are dragged back down in by the others below them.

As for me, I welcome being in the company of one ‘holier than me,’ or more skilled, or more erudite, or more charitable, or any number of virtues. These are the people, the noble and great ones, who inspire me to want to do better.

I’ll vote for this kind of candidate. 

Science and Religion

I recently came upon this interesting testimony from an internationally known scientist.

Testimony of John S. Lewis, professor emeritus in chemistry and professor of Planetary Sciences at MIT (from website, Mormon Scholars Testify):

“I was also familiar with the literature of [contemporary traditional Christianity’s] “scientific creationism,” which I found to be appallingly bad, full of glaring factual blunders and astonishing lapses of logic. I found their personal interpretations of scripture to be indefensible in the face of overwhelming evidence. Their mindset seemed to be that science was the opposite of religion; that their interpretations of scripture were right and anyone who disagreed with them must be evil, intent on destroying religion.”

“But the geological record is as much the work of God as the scriptures are. They together constitute two independent witnesses, satisfying the Old Testament requirement that two or more independent witnesses are required to attest to truth. That the two witnesses, science and scripture, should see different things is no surprise. After all, your own two eyes see different scenes; each eye sees things the other does not see, but by combining the witness of your two eyes you can see in depth, something neither eye can do alone. To assume that one witness is correct and the other is lying is to lose all perspective. It is to become half-blind. As the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin expressed it, ‘Science and religion are two complementary faces of one and the same underlying reality.’ ”

“I see no conflict between science and religion. I see many conflicts between the misunderstandings of science and the flawed interpretation of scripture of men who lack both scientific knowledge and guidance by the Holy Spirit. I invite any person who desires to strengthen his understanding and testimony of creation to study both the scientific and scriptural evidence prayerfully, with the goal of learning and understanding. Properly understood, this study will provide you with a rich and deep perspective.”

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with its long tradition of free inquiry and of individuals prayerfully testing every point of doctrine for themselves, is fully compatible with the scientific method.”

~~~~~~~~
It is the doctrine of my Church, and my own personal conviction, that there is no conflict between true religion (divinely revealed truths) and true science (a method or approach that gathers facts and tests hypotheses with an object of trying to determine utility and expand knowledge) and that one need not be afraid of the other. Both have—or should have—a common objective of determining truth. The problem is where one accepts unproven scientific theories or inferences as ultimate facts and unwittingly builds or promotes a life built on a foundation of sand.

Texting

I don’t text.

I do, however, try to keep up somewhat with what is happening in my world.

I sometimes read the weblog of FOCUS ON THE FAMILY and came upon an article, a few weeks ago, ‘Texting Lingo Every Parent Needs to Know’. The article really opened my eyes – especially the 156 comments that were posted in response.

I guess I have truly lagged in this area of electronic communication. If you are a parent of a child I would guess between the ages of about 8 and 40 I suppose you have to deal with this issue of texting either to monitor it or to know that it is happening and is probably out of your control. The Pew Research group apparently recently concluded that “most teens prefer texting to talking—with a third of them sending over 100 messages a day.” I have concluded that this is a very big deal for parents to add to their plate.

After sampling a number of the comments that educated me to what is going on (some very negative things) I selected a few of the parents’ comments that might help some of my readers who have children:

I keep coming back to this . . . my children need technology in the culture they have been born into. They have to develop discernment and discipline in order to live with these tools and be able to still have righteous and pure lives. They won't be under my roof for forever and will need to be able to stand firm wherever they may be. So . . . that is where my efforts need to be concentrated. Standing firm on one's convictions has never been easy. But way too many times, young people get a free pass from their parents and other adults in their lives excusing their immaturity and poor choices as "Kids will be kids", "That's teenagers for you." Yep - when the bar is placed that low - it sure will be.

We've decided as a family to avoid the entire texting craze...while we have cell phones, none of us text (including mom and dad). Our kids are proud to tell people, "We don't text...we prefer real conversation." They've seen how it has affected teen relationships and how much they hate it when friends are so busy texting people who aren't there, that they miss out on face-to-face conversation with the people who ARE there. We aren't anti-technology, just anti-texting. It seems to be a fad that has been detrimental to grammar and spelling, and detrimental to relationships, so we've chosen to be counter-cultural and say "no".

Texting and text lingo is just another advance in real-time communication. This type of tech talk will not going away any time soon; it will most certainly develop into something even faster and more efficient over time. We believe it's a perfectly acceptable form of communication when used responsibly. For my husband and I, it saves us a tremendous amount of time as we converse with others on business issues or send quick notes back and forth. No face time has been lost because of it and we are much more productive as it eliminates the time we have to spend hanging on the phone having empty conversations. As far as children are concerned - it should be monitored like television shows, computer usage, language, or anything else. There must be boundaries, expectations, and accountability.

I simply cannot devote half of my day everyday to look over their shoulders and follow-up after them on every forum, website, or texting conversation they have encountered. I do try to do some of it each day though - at least they know that I do care and will be watching them somehow, somewhere! But they also know that God sees them 24/7 - no hiding anything there!

Our daughters have cellphones but like other parents, we let them know that they are a privilege to managed responsibly. We have set clear boundaries around how, when, and where, etc. For example, phones are not allowed at the dinner table. They must be left on the counter or in the other room. (Parents lead by example.) Phones are left on the kitchen counter at 9:00 pm on school nights, 10:00 pm otherwise. As parents, we must be given the passwords to their phones and they are aware that we may conduct random checks on them at any given time. One thing we do not allow is any picture-mail or pictures by texting. They understand that this is for their protection – we may trust them but not everyone who may send them a text message may be as responsible. All it takes is one wayward foolish teen to text/sext an unwanted picture and the one receiving is still held accountable and you can’t erase a picture in your head. Therefore, no picture-mail. If there are any concerns with how they communicate with us or others (ie: bad attitudes with us, family, teachers, or inappropriate texts w/friends), phone service is easily managed at the account level – where we can turn texting on/off, data on/off, manage allowable numbers or suspend service all together. We do not get into “tug of wars” with “hand me your phone”, etc. We just go to the internet and manage the account. Because they value their communication privileges, it is a rare occasion that we have to enforce the consequences and when we do, they respond with very sincere and quick repentance.

I'm just having to approach this all with faith. God loves my children, my children love God. They seek to follow Him each day as best they can. Because He loves them more than I ever could, I have to trust that he will convict them if they are going off-course and help them as they seek to get back onto the path of righteousness.

A Coat of Many Colors

One of the few regrets in my life is my inability to stay in touch with people who crossed paths with me in former days and who have influenced my life. I have been told that if I would ‘get with it’ and use social media such as Facebook maybe I wouldn’t feel this way. I’m not convinced. The few times I’ve done this all I’ve seen are some shallow, inane comments made by or about people that do not inform me about who the person really is; in fact, usually a distortion is suggested. I really doubt that many people, who have any self-esteem at all, want others to judge them by what they often so thoughtlessly post.

I came across this verse once:
New friends I cherish
And treasure their worth.
But old friends to me
Are the salt of the earth.

Unfortunately, so unfortunately, people come and people go. They drift in and out of your life almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you open another book with another set of characters, then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past. But your old friends have a way of staying in your memory, frozen as they once were.

New acquaintances are more immediate, their issues more compelling, and the others start to slip away. You say it won’t happen, but it does. When you do make contact with a friend from the past you always see how they changed; and they see how we have changed. I’m sure we surprise each other. Your memory doesn’t quite jibe with the new reality. More often than not you end up more nostalgic than before. The Barbara Streisand song, “The Way We Were” (at least the title), captures this nostalgia for me.

Though our old acquaintances (and we) have changed, we can and should still appreciate the part they played in the development of who we are. John Ruskin said, “Every good life leaves behind the fiber of it interwoven forever in the work of the world.” The fabric of my life has in it the fibers of many weavers of whom I am grateful. Indeed, I am a coat of many colors.

Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right: ‘you can’t go home again.’ If you do, you won’t find any of your old friends there, at least not as we remember them. Certainly, none of us is ‘the way we were. ’ Except for superficialitys I would say thank goodness.

Cleaning House

In these thoughts today I use the phrase ‘cleaning house’ to connote something other than the use of a broom and dustpan or a bucket of soapy water. Neither do I necessarily use it in the sense of being victorious over some opponent. But the phrase does have utility because I have been contemplating the foot-dragging task of going through my personal ‘treasures’ and things which are to me of value but in reality will be devalued and discarded by whomever might someday have to go through them.

I more keenly recognize the necessity of doing this house cleaning because of the imperative of my taking part in cleaning out, with my brothers, the effects of my dad who died early this year and of his house which burned down just a few months ago. My mom, who has Alzheimer’s disease, has no possessions other than the clothes she wears and has nothing else, including her cognitive and expressive abilities (deep memory we are not sure of). She has left a very positive record in the lives that she has touched and a record in heaven of her life that will be restored to her when she passes on, but nearly every material thing she and dad valued is now gone.

My own books and papers, of course, are of value to me. Lesser so is some of my sporting gear (I even have my Wilson 1957 Ted Williams personal model baseball glove, my 1962 tour blade golf irons, and my 1964 Head skis). Having disclosed this I know I might be judged as a hoarder, but other than these few anomalies I am not. The sporting gear, old clothes, and other material things can go, but it is wrenching to me to discard the things I have written which define who I am and books that I have read that shaped me.

Fortunately, I am strongly convinced that the record of my life, contributed to by many, is etched on my character and will remain with me on my eternal journey. I just don’t want to carry up the remaining mountains I must climb anything that could hamper my climb or that would impede me in my efforts to help others with theirs. Repentance is the process of jettisoning the immaterial encumbrances, but where does one start with the material things?

Character

As I get older I have increasingly been preoccupied with a personal concern for the importance of going out of this life with a refined character. This has been a concern for as long as I can remember (even my doctoral dissertation, twenty-seven years ago, was on character education), but it seems to be an imperative now. Maybe it is because of what I have been reading: Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo; Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays; the biography of Neal A. Maxwell; the Psalms and Proverbs and the life of Paul in the Bible; reflection on the teachings and character of Jesus and some of the prophets of the Book of Mormon; the noble or ideal man of Confucian thought. Or, maybe what I have been reading has been influenced by what I have been thinking—and if so, that is good.

Thomas d Kempis (The Imitation of Christ) recognized the struggle of such a focus: “Who hath a harder battle to fight than he who striveth for self-mastery? And this should be our endeavor, even to master self, and thus daily to grow stronger than self and go on unto perfection.” Socrates concurred: “We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.” The outcome of a life-time of striving should be an acceptable human being: “Goodness is richer than greatness. It consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are.” (Edwin Hubble Chapin)

Though I have to strive daily for this ideal (yet I find joy in the striving) it is apparent that there are some noble souls that seem to come to this earth already well-furnished. I have known a man, Gerald Herbert Lindsey, who seemed to be such a soul. C. S. Lewis has said that there are a few of this caliber of men around and as we accrete some of their qualities we will find them for there is likely to be a mutual attraction.

In the scriptural book of Abraham, the Lord Jehovah shows Abraham: “many of the noble and great ones…who were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.” This man, and others, came, as the poet Wordsworth said, “…trailing clouds of glory” to this earth to mingle with the rest of us.—to serve us and to give us the example of the higher life.

The American 19th Century philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson was such a man in our history. I have been especially intrigued by two of Emerson’s essays, The Over-Soul and Character in which he acknowledged by name some men who had this ineffable quality: “I have read [he said] that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there was something finer in the man than anything which he said. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch’s heroes, do not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, are men of great figure, and of few deeds. We cannot find the smallest part of the personal weight of [George] Washington in the narrative of his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is too great for his books…but somewhat resided in these men which begot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest part of their power was latent. This is that which we call Character…a reserved force…a Genius, by whose impulses the man is guided…a stellar and undiminishable greatness. [He] inspires respect, and the wish to deal with him, both for the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intellectual pastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords. The will of the pure runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel. With what quality is in him, he infuses all nature that he can reach. He animates all he can.

Of these ‘noble and great ones’ “Plato said it was impossible not to believe in the children of the gods, ‘though they should speak without probable or necessary arguments.” (Emerson) In other words, those who have achieved or will achieve this status don’t declare their ‘chosen’ status but rather simply live and radiate it.

“The history of those gods [men with a God-like character] and saints which the world has written, and then worshiped, are documents of character.” (Emerson)

Being a Survivor

Today’s thoughts are a continuation of my last weblog entry and come from summary findings of Ben Sherwood’s book, The Survivors Club, Grand Central Publishing, 2009.

Since my wife and I fly quite frequently I thought it would be informative for other flyers to know who survives airplane crashes—and, surprising to me, most (95.7% according to the National Transportation Safety Board) do—and how they go about it. Moreover, “40 percent of the fatalities in plane crashes around the world occur in situations that are actually survivable.” Before blowing off these assertions as nonsense read the book, pp.58-59.

Here is how it is done.

• Decide before the flight that if any accident were to happen ‘I will survive if I do not panic. I will not freeze, but I will keep my wits and will act purposefully and quickly.’ Then review how you will act, envisioning several scenarios. You will have a maximum of 90 seconds to evacuate the aircraft. If you don’t get out before that time you are dead.
• Take the emergency procedures reviewed by the flight attendant seriously. Listen carefully and read the printed instructions every time you fly; it will pre-set you for action should action be needed. In other words, keep your shoes on, your safety belt tightly fastened across your hips and know the best impact position to take (lean forward with your head on or close to the surface in front of you, hands and arms forward near your head and feet flat on the floor). Don’t go to sleep or start reading until the plane attains altitude.
• Know the concept of ‘plus 3 / minus 8.’ Plus three is the first three minutes of the flight—down the runway and pulling up into the sky. Minus eight is the last eight minutes of the flight—the final approach including touchdown and braking on the runway. Eighty % of all plane crashes occur in those critical eleven minutes. Be alert and ready to take action, should it be needed, during those eleven minutes.
• Memorize where the emergency exits are located and arrange ahead of time to be seated in an emergency exit or within five rows of one. Count how many rows you are from your first and second alternative exits. You likely may not be able to see them in an emergency because of smoke or the crush of bodies. Discuss your escape plan with those seat-mates or family members you are flying with.
• Forget your carry-on luggage, books, laptops, purses, etc. Just get out once the plane comes to a stop. “Lugging your bags will slow down your escape and block others, too.”
• Proper flying clothes includes lace-up or Velcro shoes, no nylons or skirts or high heels for ladies, no shorts for anyone, long pants and long sleeves made of non-synthetic material. Fire especially and shredded aluminum are your biggest hazards to escape. You might consider buying and carrying a smoke hood in your pocket.
• Know that if you are young, slender, fit, and alert you will have a much greater chance of surviving than those who are not. If you are old, slow or have, shall we say, large girth then try to get a seat near the floor exits—the larger wider main doors usually at the front and back of the plane; the smaller over-wing exits are more difficult for the less agile to negotiate. Conventional wisdom says to sit toward the rear of the plane for greater survivability, but FAA safety experts do not agree. Isle seats, except in exit rows, have a slightly better escape chance than do window seats.

In this weblog I have dwelt on air flight safety. In the book there are chapters or sub-chapters on outdoor survival, being lost and getting found, parachute jumping accidents, accidents on the sea, who lives and dies in the emergency room of the hospital, hypothermia, the power of mental/spiritual attitude in survival, fear, surviving trauma of animal attacks, vehicle accidents, postponing death, resilience genetics, Holocaust survivors, how adversity can be good for you, and other interesting sections, and finally ‘The Survivor Profiler’ a predictor of your own personal chances of being a survivor.

I end with the U.S. Air Force ‘Rule of Three’: You cannot survive

 3 seconds without spirit and hope
 3 minutes without air
 3 hours without shelter in extreme conditions
 3 days without water
 3 weeks without food
 3 months without companionship or love

Keep your priorities straight and you can be a survivor until it is really your time to move on.

Gas in the Tank

I’ve lagged this week in producing my humble essays because I’ve been at the filling station (I know, this is a 1950’s-‘60’s term; gas stations were also once known as ‘service stations,’ can you believe that? When was the last time that anyone served you in one of these places?). The point is that sometimes one must stop to take in new information and then take time to process it (ponder, weigh, evaluate, compare) before you apply it to powering up your engine. The gas in my engine is knowledge; applying the knowledge to my life is the key to survival and growth.

This week I read a fascinating new book, The Survivors Club, by Ben Sherwood. This book is the fuel for my topic today. Since I cannot, obviously, do justice to a 400 page book in a 500 word essay I will review just a few insights that my reading disclosed. I hope you read the book.

• When faced with a crisis face it: don’t deny it or pretend it doesn’t exist. Take action. Then keep trying to solve the problem at hand. Stay positive and don’t give up hope.
• Assess situations as quickly as possible. Develop priorities and then follow them. Divide big problems into manageable tasks and then perform them, step-by-step, one bite at a time.
• Don’t wait to be told what to do. Oftentimes time is critical to survival.
• Develop the habit of situational awareness. Pay attention to your surroundings. Be observant.
• Believe that you are stronger than you know, for you are.
• Before a crisis identify a resilient role model, someone who inspires you, and see how they operate. Determine to develop their characteristics.
• Stay (or get) physically fit. You have a much greater chance of surviving almost anything.
• Consider this interesting paradox: Posttraumatic growth is much more prevalent than posttraumatic stress syndrome.

I end with an observation by Nietzsche: “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” This is not just cliché, it is true. Adversity is not the enemy we think it is.

...Solely Responsible for Content

I am aware that as a writer I am responsible for my views and that they do not necessarily reflect the views or position of others who may be attached to me or with whom I am affiliated by membership—such as my Church. Yet it should be obvious that everyone’s opinions are a reflection of what they have come to believe as a result of familiarization and association with some influential source.

For me it very definitely is my Church.

And so when I say, as did the Apostle Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth…,” I believe in the content of that gospel as I have had it delivered to me, studied it and have interpreted it. I have striven to be a disciple of Christ in orthodoxy and orthopraxy (belief and practice) but from a Latter-day Saint point-of-view.

It is acknowledged, however, that even within an orthodoxy there are degrees—from the conservative to the liberal; and I lean more to an unabashedly conservative point-of-view. Therefore, I am rather closed-minded on some issues; that is, I believe that many issues, for me, after careful exploration, have been settled. I am also rather discriminatory; meaning that I intentionally try to discriminate between right and wrong, good and bad, helpful and hurtful, life-promoting and life-defeating and align my behavior with the ‘right.’ I sing often to myself one of our Church songs, “Choose the right when a choice is placed before you….”

I think there are absolutes or at least universal principles, therefore trying to be too ‘tolerant’ in one’s own convictions is an admission that one is ‘double minded,’ and as the Apostle James observes, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways,” or as Jesus (and Abraham Lincoln) said, “every kingdom divided against itself [mentally or philosophically] is brought to desolation; and every city or house [or person] divided against itself shall not stand.” Walking the borderline of any principle is not living the principle; so orthopraxy is very important to me. Therefore, when Jesus says, “he that is not with me is against me…” (Matt. 12:25, 30) it tends to bring one up short. It forces one to take a stand.

Though we must be ‘tolerant’ of those who do not see things as we do, for it is an article of my faith that, “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let the worship how, where, or what they may (Article of Faith #11), we had better come to some pretty clear convictions on “things as they really are.”

And sure conviction forces one to be solely responsible for the content of his character.

Creating Emotional Word Pictures

Communication skills are among the most important acquisitions a person can make. Among these skills is the ability to create a word picture that taps into the life experience of the person with whom you are interacting. One must ascertain, of course, what some of those life experiences are and this is done by careful listening and observing the interests or recent experiences of the other.

An historic example of the skilful creation of a simple word picture that created an emotional response that focused the attention of this nation on our political stance vis-a-vis the Soviet Union during the Cold War was President Reagan’s use of the phrase ‘The evil empire.’ This was done at the time the movie ‘Star Wars’ was being seen by millions of Americans. The people of this country could immediately connect to what this phrase implied. It didn’t take a long speech to convey what he meant and he got America on his side. Of course, Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, a couple of decades before did the same thing banging his shoe on the table before the leaders of nations.

Jesus’ use of parables created the same unforgettable mental images in the minds of many of the people he was trying to teach. Who could forget the prodigal son (or his offended brother or welcoming father)?

Among the most memorable and clarifying images in Christendom were created by C. S. Lewis, an author who has had a great influence upon me.

It would pay all of us to develop the skill of creating word pictures, analogies, or metaphors that activate an emotional reaction in our hearer that gets him/her ‘on the same page of music’ with us.

Working With Imperishable Materials

No, you were not a professional physician, yet you have kept more souls and bodies together than many a doctor.

No, you are not a gifted singer or great musician. But you have made hearts sing.

No, you have never won a Pulitzer Prize for literature. Yet you have given happy endings to thousands of stress-filled or otherwise unfulfilled days.

No, you have never preached a sermon in a great Conference Center or Tabernacle, but the little sermons and lessons you have taught with your wisdom and encouragement and example have kept many children and men and women on the right path and in hope.

Yes, you have worked with mediums of pencil and paint and bronze, but your greatest art and work has been with imperishable materials—the children of men, the greatest workmanship, also, of God.

Spiritual Experiences

My readership is of two types—those who have had a potentially life-altering spiritual experience(s) and those who have not. Among the second type are individuals of a further reductive subset: (1) those who think that there could be no such thing—that those who claim such experiences are deluded or deceivers; or (2) those who think such a thing may be possible, but because they have not had one (or have not recognized it or have forgotten it) that for whatever reason they feel it would be highly unlikely they have one now or again.

I would like to declare that legitimate spiritual experiences are possible and have happened to honest people, and that I have had them and further that they could be had by others. Usually, however, a price must be paid by the recipient.

I suppose one could actively pursue the extraordinary but I think it would be like capturing the ‘elusive butterfly’—possible but difficult and probably highly unlikely. The reason for this is that true spiritual experiences are not personal contrivances or given to satisfy idle curiosity but gifts given by a divine gift-giver. And, they are given in response to legitimate desire, motivation, or need or as a reward or blessing for righteous behavior.

Since I am a religious man I will tell you how spiritual religious experiences usually come . They come through prayer. They come through addressing your prayer to God, our Father. They come through faith in and in the name of Jesus Christ. If one does not have faith in Jesus Christ, a sincere desire to believe in and have faith in Christ will suffice.

First of all, realize that God, the giver of the experience is the judge of the need and intent of the potential recipient. Next, realize that the timing of the experience is on God’s timetable; it is given when it will best benefit the one in need. It may be immediate, but in my experience has more often been after a period of testing or proving or suffering.

There are a few things that can facilitate these blessings:

• Go to a place where you will not be distracted and that has a wholesome ambiance.
• Be clean physically and well groomed and dressed in simple, modest attire.
• Allow yourself time and don’t take a watch. The experience may not come in that hour or that day. It may take persistence on your part.
• Prepare yourself by appropriate reading, seeking, ridding yourself of other things that occupy your mind.
• Take a notebook or something to record your feelings afterward.
Recognize them when they come:
• Rid yourself of preconceived popular or Hollywood notions of what a spiritual experience should look like or feel like.
• Realize that most spiritual experiences are felt; they are not necessarily seen or heard.
• Know that others, in your presence, may not be experiencing what you are experiencing.

What is a spiritual experience?

• It is detected, not created by you.
• It persists. You will not easily or quickly forget it.
• It impels to action.
• It produces a sense of rightness and completeness.
• It is consistent with scriptural truths.
• Though it may have strange symbolic elements, it is not terrifying or gruesome.
• It is accompanied by a great sense of peace.

Gratitude for the experience and compliance with the direction that most spiritual experiences give tends to produce more. I suppose this is what is called ‘spirituality.’ It is a dimension to living that far too few have experienced. It is an experience that far more could have and would enrich their lives. I would encourage all to seek for spirituality.

Leaders in Hard Times?

As the world continues to stagger along with life-shattering troubles in Somalia, in London, in the stock markets of the world, in the Middle East, in our job market, in weather-generated catastrophes, etc., my wife and I talked today about hope and from where it derives. Although my hope is centered in Divine aid that, if we were worthy of it, I am convinced we could get, another place from where it derives is from political leadership. Being on the same wave-length, as we usually are, we both immediately thought of Winston Churchill and the type of leadership he demonstrated in the darkest days, for the British, of World War II.

What was the difference between the type of leadership Churchill demonstrated and the lack of leadership we see emanating from Washington D.C. in these dark days? As I reviewed mid-20th Century history in the West I could not find then the finger-pointing, bickering, posturing, take-a-vacation, type of ‘leadership’ we now see from our elected ‘leaders.’ What I did see, from Mr. Churchill especially, was down-in-the-trench, call-it-like-it-is, require-from-the-people sacrifice that everyone, from the ‘leaders’ down, would all need to make in their darkest hour.

What I haven’t heard from our ‘leaders’ in Washington is the request for the American people, as well as themselves, to make some specific sacrifices, for us to become involved in the great power that is latent in our democracy and to quit pretending that ‘government’ by these ‘leaders’ can solve all the problems we face. They have quite forgotten, it seems, as Abraham Lincoln said, that “this nation, under God…[is] of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The focus should be, as the Constitution says, “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility…promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….”

It is illuminating to contrast the focus of our ‘leaders’ to make their number one concern their own reelection with what the Prime Minister of England, this master statesman, said when the Western world was facing their darkest hour:

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.
You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terrors—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."

A month later Mr. Churchill continued to encourage his people:

"I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected…we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm….
We shall go on to the end…we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength…we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets…we shall never surrender, and even, if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, …would carry on the struggle, until in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might , steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

And then, three weeks later this great man said this:

"I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire…last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’"

Seven years before, in our country, the president of the United States said this:

"This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory."

Though I take issue with the political philosophy and policies of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, there is no question that the American people rallied to his type of leadership in the time when leadership was needed.

Harriet Beecher Stowe had it right when she said, “Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly and in a spirit of love.”

Where are the leaders in this hard time for America and for the world? They don’t seem to have their offices in Washington D.C.

Fractured

In doing research for my doctoral dissertation (Character Education and the Development of Moral and Spiritual Values … Brigham Young University… [1984]) I read a 1978 address given at Harvard University by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn titled “A World Split Apart.” His address, and a book he wrote a few years before, “The Gulag Archipelago,” had a profound influence upon me. Now, thirty-three years later we are still a world split apart, we are still imprisoned—only in different ways. We are not split apart by communist or fascist totalitarianism, but we are split apart by other ideologies, by political loyalties, by religious beliefs, by unkept marriage vows and forgotten family hopes. We are imprisoned by selfishness.

When we have a broken limb we splint it, we cast it and protect it, we rest it; we don’t just automatically cut it off. Most of the time it will heal just fine. In the meantime, we do things for the person who is doing the work of trying to heal. We serve them, and when we do we come to love the object of our service.

In seeking for freedom, for expression of individual pleasures, for wealth, for ‘entitlements,’ we have lost our sense of unity, of ties that hold us together as ‘one nation, [or family] under God,’ indeed we have lost our connectedness as a human family. In fighting for our ‘position,’ or our distorted ‘identity’ we lose sight of the larger picture and our place in it.

We need to seek things that encourage our cohesiveness as families and as a nation and as a world community of people who have the same fears and aspirations, the same needs and hopes as we have. We are more similar than we are different. We all bleed when cut. We all can rest when the noise ceases and the cold is kept out, when we are fed, and we have some place to lay our head.

One thing that holds us together is our history—family history and national history. We need to learn it better. We cannot expect an individual or a family or a nation which has lost its memory to keep its vision. There may be rough brush strokes in what we paint of our families, there may be blemishes in our national history, but we are much more than the flaws—we are more good than bad. We must remember the good things and emphasize these things and hold out hope. And we must do this for others.

Things can get better; fractures can mend. Remember, “Faith, hope, [and] charity [all are needed]…but the greatest of these is charity.”

Tragedy

Of the more than 11 million people who are suffering from severe drought in East Africa, over 1 million are very likely to die of starvation/dehydration in the next few weeks unless food and water reach them soon. Can you imagine the despair these desperate and afflicted people must feel?

We can decry this and go on with our lives as usual, or we can at least try to help alleviate suffering by contributing to a humanitarian effort for relief.

I have, like most decent people, been sorry for the suffering of the betrodden people of the world but self-justified my inactivity toward their relief by saying that my money contribution would probably go down-the-drain in corruption or be taken by thieves. One way or another relief would be diverted. Oh well.

I have come to believe that that is an unacceptable attitude. Do we not sing, “Because I have been given much, I too must give…?” We have and we must.

Even if the probability of graft continues to exist, my wife and I feel we must make a contribution and do it now. In addition to our usual monthly contribution to my Church for humanitarian assistance for worldwide need, we feel that further assistance now is an imperative.

The history of our Church reads that when Latter-day prophet Joseph Smith learned of a neighbor black man’s misfortune (I think the man’s house burned down) the prophet said, “I feel sorry for brother ______’s hardship to the extent of the $5 gold piece I have in my pocket. How sorry do you feel?”

Well, how sorry do we feel?

Contributions can go to the United Nations World Food fund or UNICEF, International Rescue, Catholic Relief Services, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints humanitarian effort, or other reputable agencies.

Do I feel that a massive aid response will resolve the Somalian drought or perpetual political instability or root causes of their poverty? No. But it will help some of the innocents live and it will show our maker that we appreciate our many blessings and are willing to share them with our less fortunate brothers and sisters who are in their extremity. Wouldn’t we want someone who had the means to come to our aid if we were in the same situation? You bet we would.

My Line in the Sand

Every person must at some point draw the line or define what is beyond the pale. I hereby draw my line in this essay.

California governor Jerry Brown and his liberal Democrat legislature recently passed a bill to require that “contributions” of avowed homosexuals be taught in our public schools. It is not that people of every moral and ethical and religious or irreligious persuasion, every race, both sexes, and every nationality have not made contributions to the good of mankind, but it is that the blatant promotion by proponents of a militantly deviant lifestyle should get the protection of law that goes beyond the pale.

If a nation hopes to be great it has got to be good. The standard of what is good for mankind, and good for me, is what is natural or goodly (Godlike if you will) and is congruent with nature. It is not what is deviant or deviates, intentionally, from the nature of how God designed things to operate. The ‘Green’ movement goes to great lengths to protect and promote the ‘natural’ in our physical environment; but besides the physical environment, there is a social environment, a political environment, and an educational environment that needs protection—at least as much protection as our physical environment.

It is incumbent for me to, as contrasted to Governor Brown and his Lieutenant Governor, stand up for the moral ‘movement’ and public behavior that is at least decent, and live up to our country’s foundational underpinnings of being one nation under God’s watchful care.

In enthroning the value of ‘tolerance’ we have devalued the virtue of goodness. Some have tried to make the aberrant appear to be the normal. Well, it is not the norm, or normal. In the minds of children it adds to the confusion of a life-stage that is already confused by the disintegration of marriage, of the behavior of our public figures, by the distortions of pornography, by the violence perpetrated by the fanatical extremes of a religion that most in our nation do not belong.

I thought the low point of our political history was the debacle of United States President William J. Clinton despicably disgracing his office and his smiling, lying way of getting out of his publically-exposed weakness. Of course our womanizing congressmen as well as characters such as International Monetary Fund president Dominique Strauss-Kahn have disgraced theirs, but their public prominence does not legitimatize their unacceptable behavior. It is not so much their personal moral weakness and lack of self-control, but their strident denials and self-justification that galls me.

As for me,
I cannot say it is sunny when it is dark outside.
I cannot call black white.
I cannot rewrite the English language to call ‘gay,’ a word that was previously defined as good, happy, and cheerful, as anything other than what Holy scripture calls an ‘abomination.’
I cannot tolerate what is intolerable.

It seems we are asked or required now by force of law to tolerate what generations deemed the intolerable. But I ask, would we tolerate a surgeon who didn’t wash his/her hands before surgery? Would we tolerate by re-electing a dishonest sheriff or judge or retaining a police officer ‘on the take?’ Would we tolerate a cigarette-smoking seat-mate on an airliner who intentionally blows smoke in our face or who starts telling dirty jokes to our children?

I was reading a computer softwear license agreement [from Memeo, Seagate Dashboard] the other day and it had this language in it: “Content that is harmful, abusive, violent, racially or ethnically offensive, lewd, vulgar, defamatory, [or] unreasonably offends …others or otherwise in a reasonable person’s view [finds] objectionable [is not permitted to be placed on this product.] Memeo reserves the right to make the final determination about whether content is objectionable or not.” Should not the public, in their schools, be able to make a similar determination for their children? Should we not as citizens make the same sane “final determination” as to whether our public officials’ conduct is objectionable and therefore unacceptable?

In our public schools we don’t need homosexual ‘history’ or ‘contributions’ any more than we need Black history, or women’s history, or Hispanic history, or Mormon history. If the person or group reported on has a significant historical involvement which is related in a material way to a discovery or an event to their uniqueness, fine. Otherwise their personal proclivities should not be mentioned.

If, to take a hypothetical example, let us say Mr. Levi Goldstein invents a perpetual motion machine. That is a significant historical fact and the subject should be explored. That he is a Jew, votes Democratic, belongs to the B’nai B’rith, drives a Jaguar, and is homosexual is irrelevant and need not be taught. Likewise every Christian or atheist who does anything noteworthy does not need his/her religion or political affiliation or what he/she does in the privacy of their own home brought up. It satisfies nothing but prurient interest.

The military ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, now retracted, seems to me to have been a reasonable approach to the reality of having homosexual individuals serving in our armed forces. The same approach could be used in our public employment: Hiring officers would not (and do not) ask about sexual preferences and by the same token those hired would not promote their agenda once on the payroll. Neither should the ‘gay rights’ agenda be promoted by our children’s textbooks or mandated curriculum. The policy should cut both ways.

As a former California public school teacher I would not teach the ‘acceptability’ of this now-mandated agenda to my students; I would quit instead. In like manner, I would not now send my children to a California public school; I would move to another state, find an acceptable Christian school or have them home-schooled by myself and my wife.

So, to reiterate, I deplore the homosexual political agenda that is, in effect, trying to get the dictionary rewritten by dignifying what should be the private behavior of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community with the time-honored words ‘marriage’ and ‘family’ and by trying to get the protection of law to promote their aberrant viewpoint. Our system, traditionally, does not and should not protect, and most certainly should not promote, everything it tolerates.

A few years ago Robert Bork, supreme court nominee, declared that our states’ movement toward same-gender marriage “would ratify in the most profound way, the anarchical spirit of extreme personal…autonomy that is the driving force behind much of our [current] cultural degradation” (Bork, Robert H. “The Necessary Amendment.” First things, Aug./Sept. 2004, 17).

Finally, has the world already forgotten the etiology of what this type of aberrant behavior, this abandonment of moral scruples since the 1970’s, has brought to the planet with the AIDS epidemic? If you don’t remember, it has brought about the virtual destruction of a continent’s people (Africa). I fear, as did Abraham Lincoln, the abandonment of Almighty God of this nation of the protection and preservation of His bounteous blessings should we continue down this path.