The Daffodils Are Out!

Finally!

It is a wet Spring after late snow and we're only a month or so late for St. David's Day (Dydd Dewi Sant). Now I have the opportunity to share a poem I've been saving along with my dozens, if unfortunately not thousands, of daffodils:

Free-Will Families

One of the things I did right when I was a Bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 20 years ago, was to have some really good talks with the combined youth of the ward. One of my favorites was to talk about the joy there is in proper intimate expression between husband and wife and in creating families.

Not everyone has this opportunity due to circumstances of life - and we talked about that. We also talked about how rare it is in the world for a lot of reasons - mostly the unwillingness of males, mainly, to be responsible for sexual expression and the fact of much sexual activity outside of a godly marriage. Even in marriages supposedly done right, there is still a lot of abuse, hurt, and shame. Strangely, while all can sin, most of these are still male-caused problems.

To celebrate the positives and to try and promote agency, responsibility, and the male and female positives in life, I would have a young man stand up and read what Adam said after leaving the Garden and being instructed by the Angel of the Lord:

Twelve Steps to Recovery from Racism

"Hi! I'm Grant! I'm a recovering racist."

"Hi, Grant!"

This came to me in the night with a lot of other dreams of really weird stuff, but this might just work!

The LDS Church has done really well in applying the 12-Step program for drug abuse and some sexual issues borrowed with acknowledgment of and slight modification from Alcoholics Anonymous or AA.

So how does is apply in our Racism Recovery program?

How Thick Is Family Blood?

Back sometime in the lost, golden age when Barack Obama was President of the United States, I was engaged in a political discussion on the internet with a member of my extended family. This person said that Obama was the most racially divisive president ever, but that because I was blood family we would always be connected. I wanted a divorce.

Recently, that is since white-nationalists marched with torches chanting their antisemitism in Charlottesville, and since the LDS Church responded with a statement clarifying its first that "white-nationalism," "white-supremacy," and promotion of "white-culture" were sinful and unsaintly, another member of my extended family left voice mails for me saying that I was full of hate and a disgrace to the family name. I want another divorce.

It is odd that the only person you can divorce in your family is your spouse. I suppose you can disinherit your children and kick them out at some point from your basement. But I love my wife and kids. My wife is still with me going on 38 years of love amid life's challenges and my kids have pretty much moved out for good. Or, at least we can hope.

The concept of family honor and "blood thicker than water" strike me as pretty creepy when they are used to attack my beliefs and my personhood. It's probably a small fraction of what some minorities feel when under attack by antisemitism or white supremacy.

Standing for Something (You Don't Agree With)

We have some really good friends who are dedicated home-schoolers. I don't agree with home-schooling. I think that in spite of the best intentions, no parent is able to provide the wide diversity of specialized knowledge that a variety of teachers can in the public schools. It also tends to undermine the purpose of public schools which is to give every child an opportunity for a basic education to be a functioning member of a self-governing democratic republic. The socialization skills with children of different backgrounds also help in the melting-pot ideal of America.

Still, we love our friends dearly. We never debated our differing views on home-schooling. I'm not even sure of their actual reasons for doing it.

At their request, I once participated in a conference where home-schooling families got together to hear presentations on a variety of subjects. I was asked to do a session on the Founding Mothers concentrating on Abigail Adams and her influence on husband John through their rich trove of correspondence. It was fun!

The Charleston Address

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

June 26, 2015

Remarks by the President in Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney

College of Charleston
Charleston, South Carolina

2:49 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Giving all praise and honor to God.  (Applause.)
  

The Bible calls us to hope. To persevere, and have faith in things not seen.

“They were still living by faith when they died,” Scripture tells us. “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on Earth.”

We are here today to remember a man of God who lived by faith. A man who believed in things not seen. A man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered, knowing full well he would not receive all those things he was promised, because he believed his efforts would deliver a better life for those who followed.

Thanksgiving - Henry Vaughan

From my Cousin Poet, Henry Vaughan, the Silurist (1621-1695)

O lead me, where I may be freeIn truth and spirit to serve Thee!Where undisturb'd I may converseWith Thy great Self; and there rehearseThy gifts with thanks; and from Thy store,Who art all blessings, beg much more.
Give me the wisdom of the bee,And her unwearied industry!That from the wild gourds of these days,I may extract health, and Thy praise,Who canst turn darkness into light,And in my weakness show Thy might.

Brigham Young and a Letter on Apostasy

Some may be wondering with John Lewis lying dead on the floor of a gold-rush saloon. And we are not fully convinced yet, but are pursuing some pretty good leads that Jane (1827) remarried Abednego Johns in Jacks Valley, Nevada and joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And there is some indication that Elinor Jenkins Vaughan Hulet may have been with her, died between 1860-62, and was buried there. But the RLDS baptisms did not occur until at least 1865, after the Civil War.

1862 US Survey of Jacks Valley, Nevada. Courtesy of the Bureau of Land Managment, US Dept. of the Interior.
Abednego John's patent was for the S 1/2 of the NE 1/4 of Sec. 22, and the S 1/2 of the NW 1/4 of Sec. 23.
The surveyor, while getting all the land features pretty well (doncha just love these old surveys?) marked A. Johns's house as "A. Johnson."

There were a lot worse things than the RLDS Church (now "The Community of Christ). They had the Book of Mormon, a good part of the Doctrine & Covenants, the Holy Bible and a commitment to the Prophet Joseph Smith (w/o plural marriage). If you had landed in Utah in the midst of the Mormon Reformation, a very bad winter, and the upcoming Utah War, Springville was about the second worse place to be. I don't blame anyone for leaving. It's not my responsibility to judge. And it's not like we've not ever had anyone else in the family choose less activity in the church.

Bastardy Re-Revisited

We're ready to call it. Rees Price, tailor of Glasbury, is the father of John the B born 1789. We have broken through the brick wall of illegitimate birth.

[Even thought we heard back from our researcher in Wales that the 5th piece is inoperable as a strange coincidence of names (it was a different village, different mother, and apparently a different "Rees Price"), we still think the first four are enough. We'll keep looking, but we may never find anything more solid.]

It's still only a circumstantial case, but all the pieces fit. Here are the parts. You can tell me if you think we got it wrong.

1.  6 March 1789, John, bastard son of Hannah Vaughan, christened in Hay, Breconshire.

The Day I Needed a Blessing

It was just a couple of years ago. One of those days where I was as close to the edge as I ever didn't want to be. With my dad far away, I asked my father-in-law, a real good guy, if he could give me a blessing of comfort and guidance. We planned to go there that Sunday evening.

My wife, our ward Relief Society President, got a call about a family in our neighborhood. Our friends were out of town and their son's step-daughter, playing with her twin sister, had collapsed in outdoor play, stopped breathing, and turned blue. The twin went running for help, found her step-dad and he, having been a Boy Scout, commenced CPR. The girl was breathing when the paramedics arrived but remained unconscious to the hospital and after while the doctors scrambled to figure what was wrong. My wife suggested that we stop by the hospital on the way to her parents' so she could visit with them.

I hate hospitals. I much prefer funerals. My faith in the afterlife is so solid that I appreciate the sense of earthly finality and closure. Hospitals are full of pain, suffering, anxiety, and uncertainty.

A Good Friday for Lilacs

The Lilac planted five years ago when my oldest son was married.

Lilacs have always been a favorite with me. The inspiration hit that rather than a fence, I could grow a lilac hedge. It would be prettier, less expensive, and less likely to blow down in a Davis County East Wind. It will take about five years to fill in as a solid hedge. We have the time.

Robert Frost reminds us that "something there is that doesn't love a wall" (or fence). I feel the same. The popular things now are the white, vinyl fences in their plastic shine. But they were the first things to go in the East Wind.

Some Just Want Hell

Two things in Mormon History & Doctrine just struck me. I think they make a connection.

I'm still finishing up the really good history, Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith's Ohio Revelations, by Mark Lyman Staker. The author makes a compelling case with contemporaneous sources and later reports from first-hand witnesses that the motivation for the mobbing, tar & feathering, and near murder of Joseph Smith in March 1832 had absolutely nothing to do with any form of polygamy or sexual impropriety of any kind. It seems Fawn Brodie carried over a mistake in history that the Eli Johnson involved was the son of John Johnson concerned about his sister's honor when he was actually John Johnson's brother, uncle to Marinda Johnson, who was opposed to Mormonism on doctrinal grounds. Several others in the mob were disaffected or former Mormons, even former leaders. The revenge motivation of speculative psychology dissipates and the only thing left may be religious persecution.

It's the chronology closely following The Vision, now known as Doctrine & Covenants, Section 76 that nails it. The mobbing in Hiram, Ohio happened just a week or so after The Vision became public. The controversy was the new doctrine with its near Universalism, dispensing with the either/or of heaven and hell in mainstream Christianity of that day. Well, just read The Vision and think about it for yourself. Some with interests in the Disciples of Christ, the Baptists, or having left Mormonism, took offense at the new doctrine and their religious fervor, resentment, and fury may have led them to violence.

A Moderate Response to Mitt Romney (and me)

In response to my hyperventilation about Governor Romney being taped discussing the 47%, Anonymous/D provides the following:

Well, keep your head about you.  It is just politics after all.  The thing is, I hate to make anybody, in Isaiah’s terminology, an "offender for a word" - even Romney in his 47% comment. I think I know what he meant when he said it. I hate to hold it against him, or make myself feel better about voting for Obama.  It’s just not intellectually honest although you can score easy political points with something like that.  Maybe there are people out there who will change their vote because of it.  It wouldn’t change my mind were I on the fence.  He’s probably right, there are a group of people out there who will never change their minds.  It’s the thing I hate about politics, this constant point-scoring, the intellectual dishonesty of campaigning.   It’s all a show.

Sick to my Stomach

The worst possible thing has happened. I won't even link to the news articles. But a guy I know who lives two blocks away and served (until Friday) on our LDS Stake High Council was just arrested for child sexual abuse. I only wish I had been a better friend to him. Maybe I could have somehow helped him.

I don't know what to say or how to explain. As I'm still out of town, I've been calling and texting my boy who is the same age as our accused neighbor's son and has been a friend of his. Instead of trying to rephrase this, I'll paste in here the painful message I sent off to our Troop Committee members:

An Object Lesson in the Rough

Okay, I'll tell one bishop story. No confidences are revealed and if any one is offended, it's probably one of those "reproving betimes with sharpness" situations.

The "object" of the lesson

There was this Stake youth meeting I was roped into by a Young Women's leader. She said, "Bishop, would you help me out with something in my talk? You may need to take your suit jacket off and roll up your sleeve. Is the back of your shirt ironed?" No one had ever asked me a question like that last one before. So I was already a little befuddled. We iron the backs of shirts in our house. (OK, I admit my wife does much more ironing than I do, but I have been known to wield an iron on rare occasion).

In Which We "Niggle" J.K. Rowling on Grand Themes from J.R.R. Tolkien

On watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 on Blu-ray (which is pretty cool by the way), the reminder came that J.K. Rowling was clearly influenced by Tolkien. I think she's admitted this, but it became fairly obvious in  Harry's great life-after-death scene in King's Cross Station  where Dumbledore uses a single word that connected me back to my favorite Tolkien story Leaf by Niggle.

In the station, Harry asks Dumbledore what is to happen to him now. Dumbledore responds, "We're in King's Cross, you say. I think if you so desire you'd be able to board a train."

"And where would it take me?"

"On."

7n>∞ (where n=never)

I've had my troubles in life and still do. One of them is Math- so I think I got that equation right. Much more importantly I've had to learn and practice painful repentance because of problems I have brought on myself. The one thing I have learned above all else is that the Lord loves me and always will. I am nothing without His Grace.

This came to me a few years back with I was overcoming some challenges by my hard work mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. And absolutely none of it would have worked without the Grace of God.

We Can't Be Perfect without Each Other

While riding the bus to work yesterday morning, I had one of those flashes of spiritual insight. I was reading the latest BYU Studies, Vol. 50, No. 3 (2011), which about as far as I go with subscriptions to scholarly journals not being much of an intellectual myself. There is an article in there by a non-Mormon theologian, Stephen H. Webb, who stumbled on Mormonism while studying the obscure Christian concept of "Heavenly Flesh Christology." He was amazed to find in the unique teachings of Joseph Smith interesting reconciliation of many of the conflicts of the early Christians about the nature of God and Christ along with the whole concept of a physical world and human existence. If the internet still exists two years in the future, then you can read it on line at BYU Studies. Otherwise, you have to get a subscription or go to some library that has one. The article's title is "Godbodied."

My Tribute to Something Better

Sure, as an eternal optimist, I get awfully discouraged. 9/11 about did me in in a psychological sense even if my life was not directly threatened. I often wonder what effect I can have to improve the world in a positive way. I certainly can't  prevent that kind of horror. I have a job with the federal government. I try to do some good in the world. I volunteer at church with young men (well, not entirely voluntarily). I write a blog. I have a few dozen people who read me now and then. I get discouraged.

There's a movie that I very much admire on my themes of idealism and good intentions in the face of life's horror. Maybe you can catch a TV version where the worst language and a very graphic scene of violence are toned down because I don't like recommending movies of certain ratings. The movie is The Fisher King. Yep - a modern version of Holy Grail mythology. Jeff Bridges is a radio shock-jock who falls drunken into gutters and near violent death after his irresponsible remark on the radio sends a guy over the edge to commit a mass slaughter. Bridges's character "Jack" is redeemed by taking on the quest of an insane and severely wounded "Parry" played by Robin Williams. The grail is obtained in a very odd way, and the Fisher King is healed. And all that in New York City.