Missionary Update, All Saints Day, The Grail Quest Fulfilled

Yes, I couldn't be happier with my senior service missionary experience. The Church History Library is amazing! I was trained on document delivery which I won't go into as we're all behind security barriers. I can assure you that everything is very well protected to the max. I agree there should be more and easier access to all, but I'm not in charge and I will attempt my long-suffering persuasion to the extent that I can.

It is the greatest joy that two themes in my life have merged and I find myself viewing the Grail after traversing the wasteland of my legal career. I'm finishing up Joseph Campbell's Romance of the Grail and all things become interrelated in his mythic synergy. Outside of his book, I still make connections as I near the Nirvana of the Ten Steps of the Bull. Here, I am at step 7. The Bull Transcended (Bull Forgotten, Self Alone).

A Knight of the Table Round

How often do dreams you didn't even know you had come true? That's the nature of Quests for the Grail. It is always just out of reach until it comes to you.

We've been on these themes before: here, here, and here, as a few examples.

Mormon Heritage Association Tours has asked me to accompany the group to Britain this August!

Hiraeth 2016: Dydd 25, Stourhead, Stonehenge, Winchester, Avebury

The last day of tour was a whirlwind! We went back into England, but as we visited ancient megalithic sites, pre-saxon, pre-roman, likely even pre-celt, it was cool.

First we had to visit another grand estate. Stourhead was interesting, though, because of its grand gardens that have been used for filming many a movie including the Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley and some dude.

Stourhead

Hiraeth 2016: Dydd 21, Edinburgh, Sore Feet, Hadrian's Wall, and Hamilton

After getting home I was officially diagnosed with bone spurs. While they may help to keep me out of Vietnam and make me President some day, they are an extreme pain. The hike up Yr Wyddfa (Mt. Snowdon) did me in. After wandering around Edinburgh for a day, my feet would go no further. I went and sat in the Museum of Scotland (free internet). My wife went with the group to climb Arthur's Seat (still on my bucket list with better shoes and ibuprofen).

Our group with healthy feet on Arthur's Seat

I did see a few more sites in Edinburgh.

To prove I was in Scotland

Hiraeth 2016: Dydd 16, Big Pit, Blaenavon, Romans at Caerleon

It was good that I was uploading my pics every day as on this day, back in Cymru in the land of my fathers, my SD card failed. I only have a few that I took with my cell phone. We couldn't take pics in the coal mine anyway, and I had already been to Blaenavon. So really, only Caerleon out of Newport was lost. Well, so was the Round Table.

Our group readying for a trip down the mine.

This idea just came to me, but I wonder if "lift" for "elevator" in Britain comes from the industrial use of the 19th Century in these pits. One had to get out of those by lifting up to the surface while in America, we started building skyscrapers to "elevate" us.

Hiraeth 2016: Dydd 14, In which we travel to West Wales (AKA Cornwall)

Cornwall was known as West Wales in medieval times because the Saxons recognized they were up against another plucky group of strange little people with pixies. It is a Celtic country, if only a county of England now. And it is a strange, mysterious place.
We started off at Tintagel, the legendary birthplace of King Arthur. Here I am excited beyond belief at Merlin's Cave at the Sea below the Castle!

"You're a Wizard, Merlin!"

This place was just astounding, the ruins of the castle are high above the cliffs dropping off to the Sea.

My wife at Tintagel Castle

4-Star Book Report: "Taliesin" by Stephen R. Lawhead

These aren't really reviews because I'm more attuned to the book reports I used to do in grade school. (Man, I wish I had smply taken a pic with my phone of my bookworm on the wall of Mrs. Baker's 3rd-Grade class at Thoreau with each segment representing a book I had read that school year! But alas, "my" phone was attached to the wall at the end of the hall in the 3 bedroom, one bath, rambler I grew up in on 137th Street on Finn Hill, Kirkland, Washington, and it didn't even have a camera. The number was VAn-dyke 2-3072. And I couldn't afford to re-purchase that house now costing more than my present house of three times the size and more phones that we can keep track of. OK, that was a serious digression.)

It was a little house in the big woods. There was some magic in that.

But at that time in 3rd grade, I was searching for the kind of books I am only finding now - about my Celtic heritage I only vaguely sensed, but through the inspiration of my good Dad, who told stories to us and built us an amazing toy castle with knights of the round table. (See here for more digression that will soon connect.) My dad didn't know it either, but he still felt it in his blood. (I now have his DNA results!!)

President Obama in Wales!

Just as Jonah of old . . . No! Not whales. There is a real country called Wales in English and Cymru to the Welsh or Cymry. Wales is not England but like England is one of the four countries in the United Kingdom consisting of Wales, England, Scotland (at least 'til next week), and Northern Ireland. This should be known to most people in world, but you'd be surprised.

Anyway, I found this picture of the President with some Saxon lady.

President Barack Obama talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during the NATO Summit at the
Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Wales, Sept. 4, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Interesting that the NATO Summit in Cardiff, Wales has its participants staying at a resort in Newport on the River Usk just below my ancestral lands.

Glastonbury Tor

As the British people placed the Tor front and center in their opening ceremonies for the Olympics last night, I thought I would share our experience. I am certainly glad that my wife and I made it there on our trip to Britain two years ago. It's always good to find places the local people go for holiday, and Glastonbury is one of those. Climbing up the Tor was right in line with the British custom of walking the hills of that "green and pleasant land." I'll start with this excerpt from my "Journal of the Trip" picking up on the top of Cadbury Hillfort which some consider to be the original Camelot.

Glastonbury Tor from Cadbury Hillfort, Somerset

In Which We Discover "Camelot" at South Cadbury

I know, I know. Camelot was an invention of some crazy French guy 600 years after the possible historical period of anyone who could have closely resembled a King Arthur figure in the reality of British History. (And my professional historian friend Ardis still won't share that handout she got at church about how King Arthur had the priesthood taken away because he didn't follow Merlin's prophecies!) But take a look at this and tell me there wasn't just one, brief, shining moment!

South Cadbury Hillfort, Somerset, England

Paved With Good Intentions

A lot of the things so familiar by overuse can be seen in other ways. Sometimes this gives an important meaning that is truer than the ordinary. One of these is that if the Lord looks on the heart and not the outward appearance, then it's the path to heaven, not hell, that is paved with good intentions.

Of course we can't just sit around only "intending" to do good. The point here is that we will usually fail in our attempts, but if we try and our heart is right, then it doesn't matter that we fail or how wrong we are.