Words

When I was a kid on the playground I heard this: ‘Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’  How wrong it was.  The truth is, ‘Sticks and Stones can break my bones, but words can break my heart.’  Or, scripturally:  “…a soft tongue breaketh the bone.” (Proverbs 25:15) Words can also delight, comfort, encourage, and inform. 

Loving words and the English language as I do,  I was delighted a couple of days ago, as I drove to work listening to ‘Car Talk’ on National Public Radio (NPR), to hear one of the Tappet (actually Magliozzi) brothers read a very funny piece written by Jack Winter, from The New Yorker, titled ‘How I Met My Wife’ (Car Talk program #1332, 10 August 2013).  The piece used fairly common words in unconventional, altered, and even unique ways.  

 It went something (I couldn’t find a transcript) like this:

            ‘It had been a rough day.  So when I walked into the party I was very chalant  despite my effort to appear gruntled.

I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner.

She was a descript person, a woman in a state total array.

Her hair was kempt and she moved in a gainly way.

I wanted desperately to meet her so I made bones about it.

Since I was traveling cognito  I was not sure of the impression I would make.

But then, for some reason, she looked in my direction in a way that I could

make heads or tails of it.

I was plussed.

It was concerting to see she that was communicado.   I made only called for remarks.

I started talking with her about the hors d’oeuvres trying to abuse her of the notion that I was civic

But then the conversation became more and more choate. 

We spoke at length to avail and I was defatigable  and told her I had to leave at a godly hour.  

I asked her if she would like to leave the party with me.

To my delight she was committal. We left the party and have been together ever since.

I have given her all my love and she requited it.’

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In an earlier broadcast of Car Talk that dealt with words, I read another humorous segment titled ‘Learn More Better English.’ It gave four ‘definitions’ that might bring a smile to your face as it did mine:

            Abdicate. v.  To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach

            Balderdash.  n.  A rapidly receding hairline

            Carcinoma. n.  A valley in California notable for its heavy smog

            Flabbergasted.  Appalled at how much weight you have gained

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I have been reading (actually listening to on an audiobook) words used in quite a different way by the 19<sup>th</sup> Century American novelist James Fenimore Cooper.  In the first published book of his Leatherstocking series, The Pioneers,  Cooper tells the tale of the opening up of the frontier region of the Ostego Lake region of New York.  The book has a rich, opulent, romanticized writing style that many today would find tedious but which I find very refreshing as his many now-archaic words paint wonderfully descriptive word pictures of early America and his highly disparate characters.  I doubt if I will ever forget Natty Bumpo or Chingachgook, or even Judge Marmaduke Temple’s highly obnoxious cousin Richard.  

I have often thought how much clearer our communications with each other could be, and misunderstandings lessened, if we used language with the precision found in the great literature of the past. 

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” (Proverbs 25:11)

As it is now, well, like, you know. . . .

The Larger Picture

Anyone who has seen an electron microscope photograph of, say, a mite or been staggered by the Hubble telescope photograph of ‘the Hubble deep field’ knows that with our natural eyes we hardly see the whole picture of anything. 

This ‘observation’ (or lack of it) carries over to our encounters with everything around us or involving us—whether material, philosophical, political, religious, aesthetic, or interpersonal.  In dealing with anything we are often forced or invited to interact with whatever crosses our perceptual field and proceed with whatever light we have.  Our light, however, may figuratively be only of a 10 watt bulb illumination in fields outside of our own expertise. More light nearly always helps clarify things. 

Unfortunately many of us act or proceed or draw conclusions without taking the time or finding and using the resources that enable us to see more clearly.  With our own intellectual resources, alone, we would often do well to listen longer and respond later.

 But an informed conclusion or decision must also take into account the context and especially the larger picture in which the smaller object or issue with which we are concerned is embedded to make sense of our initial observations.  In coming to understand anything more deeply we need to know that resources we may have never considered may be available to help us see.

Having additional tools in our intellectual toolbox and then using them is part of what it means to be an educated person.  Discernment is greatly facilitated by having not only the hammer of tradition, the saw of authority, and the scale of the scientific method, but having other tools: an intellectual and/or spiritual tape measure,  square and  compass, and laser level that may come from such epistemological (a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge) resources of revelation, sudden strokes of personal insight, testimony of witnesses, and consultation with or readings by those who have greater experience and expertise than ourselves. 

I know of nothing in the human experience that is not part of something larger than ourselves and our limited understanding of it. We are but a small cog in big machine, but a machine that was made for us—and we are invited to learn more.

If you are a regular reader of my little essays or postings you will know that in one way or another I often harp on this notion of getting the ‘larger picture’; hence the photograph of me with my binoculars and the notation in the subheading attributed to Sir Isaac Newton.  So many live life with just a ‘thumbnail sketch’ and have a very limited field of vision and depth perception of our physical, mental, and spiritual environment.  I invite you to use the ‘zoom button’ on every intellectual device to which you may already have access.  

In coming to understand anything more deeply we must first not forget that there is much that does not immediately meet the eye.

Happiness

I believe most people think their happiness depends upon circumstances largely beyond their control.  Perhaps in the short run this is true; I am not happy when I am seasick or when somebody ‘keys’ the side of my car.  But I am glad I have seen the sea; and at least I had a car. 

But in the long run I believe we can be happy—indeed are designed and encouraged to pursue happiness:  “Men are [alive] that they might have joy” (Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:25).  Also, “Happiness is the object and design of our existence, and will be the end thereof if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God” (Joseph Smith). 

If there be a ‘secret’ to happiness it might consist not of ‘having,’ in the material sense, but of ‘being;’ it is the warm glow of being at peace with yourself.  A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy.  Joan of Arc (d. 1431) is an example of that.  It is a life lived in harmony with high ideals. 

We all know that one person will get discords out of a piano, another will get beautiful harmonies; it is what you do with the piano.  What you do with the piano will take time and practice.  Practice is not trying something once, falling flat, and never getting up and trying again.  Practice is falling down seven times, but getting up the eighth and doing it again. 

Here are some sources of happiness; I am sure you can add more:

·        A sense of being free—free to choose, free to try.

·        A sense of self-mastery and the integrity to really stand for something.

·        Taking advantage of the privilege of work.

·        The possession of health.

·        The ability to see God’s beauty about us.

·        The harboring of upbuilding thoughts.

·        Knowledge that you are true to those who trust you or who have helped you. 

·        The power of faith rewarded.

The Art and Science of Homemaking

The wife of my youth and mother of my children (d. 1992) was awarded the Betty Crocker homemaker-of-the-year award at her high school.  She was also a prom queen, a student body officer, and named best all-around student in her senior year.  As a rather average boy from a different high school, I of course, considered her to be a great catch. I was well-aware of her attractiveness and sparkling personality, but I had no idea at the time the significance of what her homemaking potential would come to mean to me and our family-to-be. 

My current wife in many ways raised a large family by herself.  She proved herself to be an excellent mother and for me is a fine wife and companion and stepmother.  Fortunately she had learned the art and science of homemaking from a loving and competent mother of her own, from teaching and role models observed in our church, and from her own tenacity, strong faith and hard work.  

Not all men or children are fortunate to have women of this caliber in their lives.

The schools of the past several decades, at least in California, no longer offer Homemaking classes.  Many girls today would not appreciate the honor of receiving the Betty Crocker homemaking award (or its equivalent), or have a clue in their young age of the value of learning what went into earning it. My point today is they are missing a crucial aspect of their education.  

  

I, of course, do not fault the girls—they do not set the curriculum in the schools and many, I am aware, do not have stellar parental role models in their own  homes who are providing a happy, functional, and effective home environment.  As the years have passed I have come to appreciate the great importance of homemaking skills for a woman, especially when the woman becomes a wife and mother. 

The reality is that many girls really do not know how to purchase healthy food, cook a good meal, keep a clean and orderly house, manage money, calendar and time, take care of clothing (sewing is long-gone), know how to mother and teach a child, know first aid and practices of healthy living, or take care of the myriad other details of the business end of home management. Neither do many young women know the psychology of how to manage themselves, let alone a man and get him to willingly and happily perform his role as husband and father.  

 I have particularly observed how overwhelmed many young mothers of this generation seem to be with their first child let alone their second, and how few white women in our general population even consider having more. 

Our young women have not been trained for one of the most challenging yet rewarding jobs of mankind.  The school has not trained them and many of their own mothers were working out of the home during their formative years and did not have the vision or time or energy or knowledge themselves to do an adequate job of preparing their daughters.

Indeed, many young women (and young men) are ill-prepared for marriage, let alone parenthood. They see, or have experienced dysfunctional family life and may have become afraid of it and have opted for the lucrative career as the higher value.  I still believe, though, they yearn for what they too often have been denied.  Dysfunctionality and fear, I believe, often stems from lack of knowledge.  And homemaking skills are a branch of that knowledge that builds confidence and maintains strong marriages and families. 

So where does this leave us?  Maybe one thing caring mothers and fathers of these ill-prepared adult children might do is to update their own requisite skills regarding marriage and parenthood.  They could then try, or at least offer, to teach their adult children now what their children should have learned by whatever means in their pre-adult years.  

Or, since the parents’ own children may not be too receptive to hearing these things from their own parents who failed them during their own growing-up years, older adults might make themselves available to their extended families or, through churches or neighborhood associations or civic organizations, to mentor other struggling young marrieds and parents.  After all, ‘a prophet (or parent) is not without honor except in his own country (or home) but may be valued by others.   Maybe our older folks could be something like a ‘visiting professor’ in someone else’s home—not to do the work (too many grandparents, in my opinion, are raising their own children’s children) but to show how it should be done and where the responsibility really lies.

  

It might help both the grandparent and the parent generations to bring up a happier, more responsible and better-prepared young generation. 

This nation needs it now and will need it more and more in the years ahead.