Categories
life

Mists of Fog

Last night was very foggy in the valley. I got to drive around in the very thick fog to run some errands and it got me thinking about the “mists of darkness” that Lehi saw in his dream. (see 1 Nephi 8) I noticed that the fog did not seem dark itself, it just muted all the lights so that my field of vision was extremely short (sometimes less than 100 feet to even see a light). The thought struck me that the “mists of darkness” might be just like this fog. They need not be dark themselves so long as they impeded the lights from outside them from penetrating to those within the mist.

In fact, within the fog (especially while walking) it did not seem dark at all. Again I suspect that this is like the mists that caused so many in Lehi’s dream to lose their way. It may not be that they felt that they were in the dark at all. Without an eternal perspective (which the fog would impede) everything within the fog seems just fine, even if there is reduced visibility.

As I was driving home I started lookinng to see how close I would have to get to the temple before I would have any glimpse of its very bright lights. The answer was surprising. I caught no glimpse of the temple until I crossed Davis Blvd. (about a mile west of the temple). When I crossed that street I not only got a hint of light from the temple, but I saw it across that mile with great clarity because the fog ended abruptly at that street. 10 feet back I could see nothing, but once I passed that boundary of the fog I could see everything. I guess those who stick to their goal even through the mists while they cannot see are safe if they do not forget their goal because of the lack of long-distance sight. Once they pass the msits they see clearly again.

Categories
life pictures

My New Car

My team will be moving to a new office in the coming weeks to a location that would add another hour or more each way to my commute if I kept taking the bus. I’ve known this for months so I have been thinking about the need to buy a car.

I hate the idea of a car payment and have been lucky in my previous two cars that I have been able to pay for them without a loan. This time I really worried that I would not be able to find a reasonable car for the amount of cash I figured I could afford to pay. Late last week I noticed a little truck at the side of the road along my bus route that was for sale in the right price range. That got me serious about shopping, especially when combined with the news that we would probably be moving a month earlier than I had previously expected.

After driving a couple of other cars (including the truck I had seen along the bus route) I finally found my new car:

my new explorer

It’s amazing that I could get everything I wanted at the right price. It drives well, has low miles, can hold carseats (the little truck couldn’t do that) or haul larger items, and it even has 4 wheel drive in case we ever need that on our hills. I feel very fortunate today.

Categories
meta technology

OpenID Enabled

I have been using OpenID for quite a while to comment on various blogs at Blogger. I never really considered it necessary to use here since I don’t require registration of any kind here – totally anonymous comments are fine becauseof great spam protection. On the other hand, people often want to leave some information and if they have an OpenID they might as well be able to use it. Because of that I finally installed the plugin called OpenID which not only allows people to use their OpenID to leave comments, but also allows me to use my own site as my OpenID – no more third-party site. (It would also allow people to make user accounts here with their OpenID’s if I allowed outsiders to register accounts on my site.)

I don’t expect that this will have any major effect on anyone, but if anyone finds OpenID useful because of this then I am ahppy to have shared. For myself, I like the fact that I have full control over my online ID and that I only have to remember my own domain name at many other sites.

Categories
thoughts

Questions for an Apostle

I have often thought that it would be exciting to have the opportunity to sit down with an apostle and have a conversation. In other words, more than simply shaking a hand, but really having a back and forth discussion. Today the thought struck me that I have no idea what I would ask or talk about if I ever got such an opportunity.

I imagine a biographer or a reporter getting those opportunities and realize that those situations have built in questions. The biographer knows what he has already studied and what more he wants to learn from the interview. The reporter knows the topic of the article he plans to write and asks questions accordingly. So I began to wonder – what would other people ask if they had a chance to speak to an apostle?

If you know what you would ask in such a situation please share – I’d really like to know.

Categories
life

The Chairs Are Smiling

While watching the video presentation prior to touring the Draper temple Savannah blurted out “the chairs are smiling” when she saw a picture of one of the endowment rooms. Later she repeated that when seeing a picture in the brochure and when walking through those rooms.

Leave it to a child to see things in such a simple way. Where else but the temple would even the furniture be happy? (I’ll have to get a picture from one of the brochures and post it here to show what she meant.)

Categories
life

Crazy Eights

My first blog meme – I’m not sure how I missed that Laura had tagged me with this 10 days ago.

RULES

  1. Post rules on your Blog
  2. Answer the six “8” items
  3. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 FAVORITE TV SHOWS

What’s TV? I’ll dig way down deep to see if I can even remember 8 shows.

  1. Star Trek: The Next Generation
  2. Monk
  3. Little House on the Prairie
  4. Highlander
  5. JAG
  6. Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
  7. Sesame Street
  8. Duck Tales

8 THINGS I DID IN THE LAST 24 HOURS

  1. Work
  2. Watch the parade for the Utes
  3. Geocaching with the family
  4. Set up a visit with the optometrist
  5. purchasing the supplies to put tile in the bathroom
  6. Eat at a restaurant with the kids
  7. Blog
  8. Talk to my two of my brothers on the phone

8 THINGS I LOOK FORWARD TO

  1. Paying my house off
  2. Buying a new car
  3. Having our new camera delivered (Amazon is usually so fast . . .)
  4. Blogging
  5. Replying to comments
  6. Road trip in June with the guys
  7. The weekend
  8. Scripture Study every day

8 FAVORITE RESTAURANTS

I’m shamelessly borrowing many from Laura’s list 😉

  1. Olive Garden
  2. Carrabba’s
  3. Los Hermanos
  4. Bajio’s
  5. Quark’s Bar in the Las Vegas Hilton
  6. Chili’s
  7. Mimi’s Cafe
  8. Kate’s Kitchen in Logan

8 THINGS ON MY WISH LIST

  1. More time with my closest friends
  2. A chance to influence the political process on some level
  3. More honesty in society
  4. To get my dining room table secured so the kids can’t break the top off of the base
  5. To not have my team move to West Valley next month
  6. More time to watch the deer in my back yard
  7. Two new senators for Utah by 2013
  8. A constitutionally limited government (actually limited, not limited lip-service)

8 PEOPLE TO TAG

  1. Carl
  2. Jared
  3. Jason
  4. Hyrum
  5. J.P.
  6. Marie
  7. Adele
  8. Bill
Categories
culture life meta technology

It Takes a Village

Most people have heard the proverb “it takes a village to raise  a child,” especially since it was made more famous by the book “authored” by Hillary Clinton when she as the First Lady. (Personally I doubt that she “actually wrote the book” as she claims. She probably commissioned it, helped edit it for content, approved it, and wrote the acknowledgment section.) Of course, Mrs. Clinton meant that society was very important in raising a child – which is true on the surface – but the real value in the proverb is not what it means about child-rearing as what it means about society. What I take it to mean for society is that we must build societies that are large enough to provide the support necessary to raise a child to adulthood and intimate enough that each child is more than a statistic in the process. That’s the main problem with the government approach – government solutions must reduce everyone to no more than a statistic. A village, in other words, consists of those outside the immediate family who are familiar and trusted by each other (both children and adults) and who have an interest in the successful raising of the children in the village.

A perfect example of the village approach occurred last night. We went to see a performance of Annie being put on by Bountiful High. Soon after we arrived we ran into my cousins, JP and Marie Feinauer. The kids were well behaved for the first song, but then their ages began to catch up with them. Isaac started running up and down the aisle. He wasn’t very noisy, but with the light coming from the open doors at the back he cast a long (and distracting) shadow. Mariah was pretty good, except that she had to keep switching laps. Alyssa could not seem to stop herself from changing seats, bouncing, and talking (without her whisper voice). Savannah was perfectly behaved. Considering how late it was (late for young children) we decided that we needed to leave at intermission, but that was really not fair to Savannah who was enjoying the show and acting appropriately. This is where JP and Marie, members of our village, come into our story. At intermission I asked if the Feinauer’s would be willing to drive Savannah home at the end of the show. They agreed.

Because they were there, and were trusted by both us and Savannah, we were able to take the three home who were not acting appropriate to the setting while allowing Savannah to stay. Not only was this fair for all of the children, but being able to make that distinction showed in a very tangible way what behavior was appropriate at a public performance. I honestly expect that at the next public performance we attend Alyssa will act appropriately (and possibly even Mariah) because of the lesson from last night – made possible because of some help from our village.

Categories
life meta

Backfilling

When I came back to WordPress in February of 2007 the focus of the site (Recovering Technophile) was technology and social/political commentary. I imported my writing from the blogger blog I was leaving and those posts which fit that focus from my earlier blogs. After the technology portion withered and the politics portion blossomed I spun off the political blog – what had become Pursuit of Liberty – and removed most of the posts from that spinoff that had no connection to politics. Here I could now focus on personal, spiritual, and other topics without reservation. In that spirit I finally got around to importing my posts from those ancient blogs (2005 and earlier) so that I have over 100 “new” posts here (an additional 12.5%) in the last 24 hours.

Those who are curious can poke around my archives, but I suspect that I will be the only person who recognizes any benefit from this. I will be tagging and categorizing those posts (since tagging was non-existant and my categories from multiple blogs are disorganized) but I have all the old blog posts here now that I am ever likely to get (I would say all of them, but I leave open the possibility that some have been lost in all the shuffling). I will also be going through my journals and making some old journal entries available here as I see fit so my archives are going to start stretching into the past – potentially as far back as 1980. (That’s about when my earliest journal entries are – I don’t know yet what I will be making available.)

Categories
life

Gathering – President Eyring

In Stake Conference today, when President Eyring got up to speak he started by saying, “President Taylor (our newly called Stake President) said that he would speak later on gathering – I would like to speak about gathering now.”

President Eyring assured everyone at conference that they were not there by accident, but that the Lord had gathered and continued to gather people in. He said, “None of you are here by accident.” He said that when he was called as Deputy Church Commissioner of Education in 1977 and had to leave Rick’s college, where he had been serving as President, he asked the Presiding Bishop for the data (demographics and church activity I imagine) on all areas within a 20 minute commute from downtown Salt Lake City. He was looking for a place where he could raise his children. He identified “this area” (I’m not sure how specific that was, I imagine that he identified the southeast area of Bountiful) as the place to move his family. He did not know how to go about finding a house there (he was still living in Rexburg) but he mentioned to one of the men who came from the church to load the moving truck and move his family that he wanted to live in that area. The man told him that he was a bishop in that area and would find him a house. That is how he came to live on Chokecherry Drive. He said that when they moved in they could feel that it was a very special place but they knew that over time it would change. He said that all the time he has lived there, whenever someone moves out someone else wonderful moves in to take their place.

I thought it was amazing how his concerns were the same as ours and how his reaction to that little Eden was the same as ours too. We know that it will change, but being on the vanguard of young families moving in we have the opportunity to help it remain a very special place.

President Eyring gestured with an embracing motion as he quoted from the Savior, :”How oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chicks.” He told a story of a visit he made in recent months to a place in northern California where he had not previously visited. While there he noticed a man who, he was informed, was visiting the church for the first time. As he observed the man through the course of the meetings he expected that the man would never return to such a foreign place. After the meetings the Bishop asked President Eyring if he would meet someone in his office. It was the man wtih the beard whom he had been observing through the day. President Eyring said that he was prompted to do something that is very uncharacteristic of himself – he told the man that the next time they saw each other he would be a member of the church. He recently got a message from that bishop that the man had been baptized and would be confirmed the next day.

After the story President Eyring said the following:

I don’t always  know what the Lord desires, but I love Him and will do what He asks of me – and He knows that I will. Because of that I would step out of character when speaking to that man. I pray each day to know what the Lord would have me do and to do it. In answer to my prayers He lets me know what He would have me do. (This includes some paraphrasing and I added the emphasis here.)

President Eyring then challenged us that we would pray daily to know the will of the Lord. He assured us that we could do whatever we were called to do by the Lord and he emphasized parenthood as a calling that nobody is prepared to do on their own (meaning without the Lord).

The more that I record and read of my account of this talk, the more President Eyring sounds like Nephi in his willingness to be led and his desire to do the will of the Lord no matter what that turned out to be. He also sounds a bit like Nephi the son of Helaman in Helaman 10 who has the assurance that the Lork knows that he will do nothing contrary to the will of the Lord.

Categories
life

Today’s Adventure

Laura called at 9:42 this morning and told me that she needed to take Alyssa to the emergency room at Primary Children’s Hospital with a cut on her face. I told a couple of people at work so they could cover for me as necessary while I helped Laura. Thankfully it turned out that Alyssa only needed three stitches and was very brave about the whole affair. We even ran into our cousin who has been there with RSV for a few days.

After the whole thing was over I just had to think that we have been very much blessed that this is only the second time that we have ever had a child in the hospital (Isaac’s bout with RSV two years ago being the other time).