Once upon a time I was a member of my high school cross country team. On the last race I ran with the team (end of the season) I learned a very valuable lesson about running. We had gone over the course in advance of the race so during the race I knew where I was relative to the end of the race – I knew how much further I had to go and how much energy to put in so that I would not run out before the finish line. As I came to the last long incline before the end of the race I knew that I could push myself and I decided to attack the hill. I was a short distance behind another runner, perhaps 15 yards, and I knew that I was in tenth place overall. As I attacked that hill I quickly closed the gap and overtook him shortly before the course turned and went down a steep incline to the final flat to the finish line. As I passed him, he sped up, not wanting to lose a place. I was still ahead when I got to the edge of the hill and I stretched my stride and let gravity carry me down faster than I could have sprinted and certainly faster than I could have gone if I had tried to remain in control of my pace. I got going so fast down that hill that my momentum on the flat carried me to very quickly catch up with two more runners who had not even been in sight when I started attacking a the bottom of that last hill.
Category: thoughts
Sometimes I find myself feeling stuck in life; feeling that no matter what I do I have no real meaningful choices. I have described it as having, in any decision, a choice that is blatantly obvious (like deciding whether or not to wreck my car), or a choice that is meaningless (like deciding between Cheerios and Rice Krispies for breakfast).
Laura has asked me before if I have ever prayed for options and the answer is that I have with the result that I have still never felt like I had a real choice. Either the way was clear or the choice was inconsequential. As I thought about the feeling of impotence that comes with seeing no alternatives, no options to choose from, I realized that I was wrong about never having any options – especially in times that I have prayed for options. There have been plenty of instances where the choices really were black and white such that I would never take one of the options presented (wrecking my car for instance). The other times that I have felt stifled I realize that there are two different types of situations. First is when I have desired something only to be guided away from it. The second is when I have desired to do something and the answer from the spirit when I ask about pursuing it has essentially been “what are you willing to give for it?” The answer has virtually always been “not enough” or at least “not enough for the price that would likely be required.”
Anytime I am called upon to do something I am willing to do do whatever is necessary to complete the task but whenever I am left to choose my own direction I am unwilling to take significant risks for something I feel is entirely of my own choosing. That makes it sound like I don’t trust my own judgment, or that I don’t trust that I will be supported in my own choices.
There have been times when I have been willing to give enough but in the two cases that I can clearly recall – one resulted in me getting what I worked for on something that, so far as I can see, is transitory and unimportant while the other resulted in me putting in a lot of effort and making a lot of progress before I was instructed to abandon the pursuit (at least temporarily – maybe I have not seen the end of that yet).
Do you know how much people watch you?
Of course you are Eyrings and with that I guess you would have to expect that people would pay attention to what you do just because of your parentage. But are you aware of how much you are watched not because of who your parents are, but because of who your children are and because of the choices you have made about who you will be?
I can only speak for myself, but I pay attention every time I see your van on the street – watching to see who is driving and how happy they usually are. When I see the van parked somewhere I stay alert for the opportunity to see the Eyrings going about their daily lives.
Why do I do this? Because unlike so many, you have chosen to have more than three children. Unlike so many, you have chosen to have mother stay at home and devote her full energy to raising the children. Unlike most that we know who fall into the previous categories, you have some children old enough for us to get a good glimpse of how they have or will turn out. It is because of some of your older children that I pay attention to your family.
I have been blessed to see one of your daughters regularly as a Sunday School teacher. I am under no illusion that she is perfect, or that there is something about her that cannot be achieved by any young woman who is well taught at home, but I could clearly see through those interactions that she is the kind of young woman that I would hope for my daughters to grow up and be like – intelligent, affable, and good.
I have not known any of your sons so intimately as that but I have observed and clearly see that the oldest of your sons is clearly among the good examples of young men whom I hope my sons will emulate as they grow older. Like the sister I know best, he seems intelligent, affable, and good.
You stand out because your children are very good. Their goodness is a testament to the value of having a mother who knows that the greatest good she can do is to be fully engaged in raising the children rather than being lured out into working in order to provide some extra material goods.
Your children stand out, not because they are perfect, or even better than all the other youth around them, but because they have turned out so well while being raised with many siblings rather than few – and that gives me hope that our children may turn out to be very good even though we have chosen not to stop at three or four. It is because I have seen the results of your efforts that I watch in case I can learn any clues about what you do, and also to give me comfort that your have done so well even facing similar challenges to what we find ourselves facing.
Categories
Judging on the Wrong Metric
I have been reading the series of articles published by the Deseret News about the consequences of pornography addiction. It has been pleasing to see the problem explored publicly. One of the things that has interested me is in reading through the comments from readers. Some are obviously still in denial about how serious, dangerous, and pervasive the problem of pornography is in our society. One comment in particular caught my attention as it highlighted the kind of attitude that can completely hobble a discussion of how to address this issue. I’ll save my readers the trouble of trying to wade through the poor grammar and rambling thoughts of the actual text of the comment. Here is the idea it was conveying:
“who has never thought about, or done, from birth onward till today, any activity that results in erotic stimulation. Even after you read or heard about the Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children.”
The comment implies two things: 1) that anyone who who has ever done anything that could cause them to answer “yes” to the above query is unqualified to speak out against pornography, and 2) that virtually everyone has to answer yes to that query. The problem with that metric is that even if the second implication were 100% accurate the first implication is completely wrong. I suspect that the comment author considers it hypocritical of someone to answer yes to that question and then publicly speak against pornography. If a person is willfully and unrepentantly indulging in pornography then that is undoubtedly hypocrisy. On the other hand, The metric of that question ignores the option of repentance. It wrongly eliminates from the discussion those who have to answer yes who have subsequently rejected the legitimacy of whatever forces them to answer yes. That kind of thinking would reject the opportunity of an ex-gang member speaking out against gangs when the truth is that ex-gang members can provide an authority on the subject that others never could.
That comment reminded me of how dangerous quick and thoughtless judgments can be in hampering our efforts to seek truth and in hampering the process of repentance for ourselves and those we interact with.
I would bet that almost all the people who have read The Fourth Turning have wondered at one time or another whether 9/11 was our nation’s crisis as predicted in that book. I know that I read somewhere that the authors of the book indicated that they believed that 9/11 was the crisis that marked our passage into the fourth, or crisis, turning for this saeculum (for those who have not read the book and may be unfamiliar with that term, a saeculum is composed of four time periods, called turnings, which each have distinct characteristics and last for the length of a generation – roughly 18 to 25 years – and the saeculum is equal to a long human lifespan – between 80 and 100 years).
I have long felt that if 9/11 was our crisis then we failed because nothing changed – we have not addressed any of the issues that have been pushing us toward crisis over the last generation. Today I stumbled upon 9/11 – A Fourth Turning Perspective by James Quinn. He does a great job of identifying the things that made me think that 9/11, if it was our crisis, was a failed crisis. As he talks about the book he mentioned that a fourth turning crisis ALWAYS leads to substantial change. That gave me hope (and dread) that our crisis had not come. Certainly 9/11 had the potential to be such a crisis, but apparently we were not ready to enter the next turning at that time.
Mr. Quinn goes on to speculate that our crisis was really the market crash of September 2008 and that our reaction to that crisis is not yet resolved. We have not come to a point where the outcome of our crisis can be known. In fact, the crash might even be viewed as the catalyst for a coming crisis rather than the crisis itself. Quinn goes on to describe the types of crises we might yet face in the near future (and keep in mind that there is no guarantee that we will face only one crisis) and some of the potential outcomes.
I won’t pretend to be smart enough to be able to say with certainty how accurate his speculation is, but it is certainly worth a read and some careful consideration.
In the Old Testament there is a fascinating story about two and a half tribes from the 12 tribes of Israel. These two and a half tribes (Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh) were promised an inheritance by Moses that lay outside the promised land on the condition that their men would not reside there until the remaining tribes had taken possession of their inheritance lands in the promised land.
When Joshua took Moses’ place as the leader of Israel and was preparing to take the people across the Jordan River into the promised land he called the leaders of those tribes and reminded them of their promise to Moses. They responded by saying:
All that thou commandest us we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us, we will go. (Joshua 1:12)
As I read that response I realized that if they truly believed that Joshua had authority from God to speak for God to them there was no other answer they could have given. Any other answer to be given would be an indication that they did not truly believe that Joshua had the authority to speak the word of God for them.
Categories
Figurative Phylacteries
I was recently reading in Deuteronomy chapter six where Moses instructs the people thus:
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9)
As I read that, the thought struck me that there are some laws and instructions that must be followed literally, such as the command that the people mark the upper and side posts of their door with the blood of their Passover lamb (Exodus 12) but that commands such as this, which are literally kept by wearing phylacteries and having a mezuzah on their door, are more important to be kept figuratively if the people are to become covenant people with the Lord than they are to be kept literally.
Wayne and Etta, for those who don’t know, are my paternal grandparents. Both are deceased. After Etta’s death some of the cousins apparently thought that we should have a reunion so that we could get together. In the whole course of my life I can recall perhaps five brief interactions with any members of that extended family so I was reluctant to attend. Some might expect that reluctance to come from an expectation of animosity or dysfunction based on the fact that I have never succeeded in forming a functional relationship with my dad, and this is his family. Truthfully the reluctance was based on the complete lack of prior interaction and the expectation that we would feel like strangers among other people who had some level of common identity.
Over time my reluctance turned to ambivalence and shortly before the reunion I decided to go as a show of support for the one of my brothers who was planning to attend and who had put some work into pulling the reunion off – after all, the reunion was not 25 miles from my house.
I must say that when we went I was very pleasantly surprised to feel right at home talking with uncles, aunts, and cousins whom I have rarely seen and some of whom I had never met.
Last week we had a family reunion at Bear Lake. It was great for the kids to see their cousins and for everyone to have fun on the water and off. In planning for the trip the hardest thing was deciding whether we should come back Saturday night or whether we should stay over Sunday and come home Monday morning. For a variety of reasons we decided to come home Saturday.
We felt good about that decision but as if to confirm our choice, the discussion in Sunday School focused on the importance for each of us to be where we ought to be. Of course it included the declaration that “at this moment Sunday School is where you ought to be.”
As I listened to the lesson I thought about the fact that being where we ought to be, or as it was said of Gideon’s men, “{standing} every man in his place,”(Judges 7:21) is a prerequisite to obeying the counsel that President Uchtdorf gave in the October 2008 priesthood session of general conference that we should stand close together and lift where we stand.
I hope our family can always be found standing in our place and lifting where we stand.
Last night, before I realized that today was Father’s Day, Enoch taught me exactly what it means to be a father. He was fussy and tired, it was two hours past bedtime, and we had already had a long day. I went in and picked him up out of the crib and rocked/bounced/cuddled him until he finally fell asleep. I remembered times with various kids when I have done that despite being completely frustrated with the child and/or despite feeling that I simply could not meet their needs at that time.
The lesson was basically that fatherhood is all about doing what needs to be done because you love your children and it needs to be done even when you don’t want to do it or think it is more than you can do.