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.

Dreams Found and Lost

The joke yesterday was that I was getting my wife a new roof for mothers' day. She'll still get her regular flowers--in the garden. The Saturday before is time for the family tradition of buying and placing bedding plants in front of the house as we are solidly in May and almost past the freeze threat in the shadow of the everlasting hills. With global warming and all, we're pretty safe. However, there are no longer any children at home to help me plant annuals which is just fine as gardening is one of my new passions (note the lilac hedge above, lower right, coming in just fine!).

Waking up too early this morning due to other stresses, the thought came to me that the number-one, cliché responsibility of a good provider is "to put a roof over your head." As we're getting quality shingles with a "life-time" of 30-50 years, they will last me out and I have fulfilled my obligation here.

Sol Hurok is credited with:

"The sky's the limit if you have a roof over your head." 

We are getting a slate-colored asphalt shingle "a cool gray with a beautiful green undertone--exactly like real slate." Green is my wife's favorite color and slate matches with our Welsh homestead. (Our house, like nearly every home in Britain, has a name, "Tŷ Fychan" or "Vaughan House.")

Ride Bull At Six

Yes, I am a bit enigmatic and philosophical today. A matching clue is in the title of a Cat Stevens Album cover I used to stare at as I tried to figure out what it meant. That was in caveman days before the internet.

We went with some friends to see the Scottish play last night. The Cedar City Shakespeare Festival had its school-touring group at the Cultural Center in West Valley with an abbreviated version of Macbeth. They didn't seem to have cut out any of the murders or blood. It was a bit odd with an abbreviated cast with some playing several different roles. "Is that Banquo's ghost again? No, he's just a door guard."

Lady Macbeth was played well but by a short, light-haired woman. No one will ever match the one and only Lady Macbeth, my 11th-grade English teacher. Tall, dark, beautiful, and scary. That's the play we studied with her as my friends and I memorized all the lines with swear words in them. "Lay on, MacDuff! And DAMNED be him who first cries, "Hold, enough!"

The Spousal Connection & Singles

Caveats first. I have no answer for single people. This is not a preachment for people to get married. This is a feeble attempt to respond to a good friend's valid questions (and after consulting with her):

What I wish the Church would do is address the peculiar needs of singles in a practical, doctrinal way. Rather than telling us to bake cookies for the neighborhood kids as a substitute for motherhood – or, in the case of a current Ensign article, as a substitute for real integration into the ward – I wish the Church would get specific about why marriage and family are so great. I am told all the time that marriage is awesome. I want to know why it is awesome.

If we could tick off a few points about what eternal principles married people are enabled to learn and practice by virtue of their being married, and tick off a few other points about how learning such things enables a soul to progress on its eternal journey, then we could go on to the next step of thinking about how singles could, in part at least, work on those same principles, make that same progress, despite our singleness. It’s got to be about more than sex, right? But I have yet to have it made clear to me what marriage teaches that I will have to learn after I die when suddenly everything is supposed to get all better for me.

From Keepapitchinin: Being a 50-Something Single in the Church.

This pains me terribly because I don't have good answers. And I agree that I wish the church would. I could still find myself single at any moment through accident or whatever and I don't know how I could face that.

I think about this more than maybe I should. It comes to focus when I am required to travel without my wife or she without me as is the case this weekend. It is much more than the physical intimacy [my preferred term as it is much more than the sex act - whatever that is].

I reread the "50-Something" posting without reading all the comments again. I'm even in there with a comment and I tried to be as sympathetic as I could. I mean, I consider the author a good friend. We've actually made an intellectual and spiritual connection in my opinion and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We've shared our blogging and had lunch together a few times, and on rare occasion, we run into each other as we both work in downtown Salt Lake City. And all that is great fun.

But when I am physically apart from my wife, I notice the loss of something significant. She has become a part of me and I of her. This is in the same way it works with friendship but in a less all-encompassing way. I truly believe the scriptures that talk about a husband and wife "becoming one." But the household of Christ's Disciples also has the same charge. This may be where the imperfections of the earthly church come in as we humans of the "Kingdom of God" on earth may be failing each other. We are not yet one in the church.

Occasionally we do make those "becoming one" connections individually or in groups. There are missionary companionships or good friends that can become this way. I have one with a dear friend, my brother-in-law (technically my wife's sister's husband - aka "Anonymous D"). Our relationship connection is through two marriages. I have no idea if we would have had a chance to meet in any other circumstance. There is a true intellectual, emotional, spiritual intimacy. Physical - is to be in each other's presence (it certainly does not involve sex - but there is the odd connection that we are married to sisters - and I'd better stop there as our friendship does before this gets really weird).

So, what do I mean about becoming one in the all-encompassing way with a spouse? This is so difficult without lapsing into schmaltzy sentimentalism of a Hallmark greeting card. But here we go.

My wife and I understand each other better than any other person in the world. We are to the point now (coming to 33 years of marriage), that we can finish each other's sentences or thoughts or can understand each other without even speaking - not always. We are not completely one. We don't always agree. But we have learned where the principle differences are and we have found the common ground to carry on.

We operate in different spheres. I don't mean male and female roles. Generally, we are fairly mainstream and conservative on "roles." But my wife now works for wages and has in the past. I do laundry, iron (occasionally), clean anything (I actually am an expert on bathrooms having done custodial work while in high school), and I clean windows (and seem to be the only one who does.) My wife does home repair and shovels snow on occasion. She is more outgoing in the community and the world. I won't list all her engagements and accomplishments but it's quite impressive. I've done well enough with my career and financial support for the family. She went back to teaching because of our discussions that she has always loved it and is so good at it, she needs to be prepared in case something happens to me, and she is helping us get ready for retirement so we can go on missions - part of that is to pay for all her local and national activities because we "as one" joked that it seemed my salary was going to support her volunteerism (and our itemized deductions don't even come close to covering all of that).

What is making us one is common interest. And that's a bit of an odd statement. I spent the early years of our marriage often wondering and sometimes (unfortunately) expressing my questions as to why we were together because our personal and private interests are so different from each other. Even our personalities are in some ways directly opposite. Opposites attract they say and we balance each other. Yes, we have more than common ground from fairly similar family and economic backgrounds and certainly in a shared religious faith, giving us enough grounding to learn to respect, appreciate, and even share the differences. The actual common interest that I eventually discovered was simply us. The kids don't even come into it that strongly (no offense to our wonderful and well-beloved children, their spouses, and our grandchildren).

It has always struck me as odd that the most important family relationship in LDS culture and I think generally in world-wide, cross-cultural, family structure is between the two people who are not physically related. There are obvious biological reasons for that, I guess. But still, the commission is that we rely on our covenant made to each other and with God to make us "one."

So, marriage is an opportunity to work on being "one." A successful marriage means that it works, or at least is heading in the right direction. A failed marriage is when two individuals are not heading in the direction of becoming "one."

When I was a new bishop shocked by the realization of how few marriages in the ward reflected the process of becoming "one," I asked a friend with impressive academic training in family relations if he could recommend a good book on marriage. His answer, "Anna Karenina." I've read it a couple of times. And I see that he was right. Forget the main story-line as the example of how it can go wrong in so many ways. It's the fleshing out of all the other characters that makes the book, particularly the direct contrast with Anna and her "dashing" officer with the love of Levin and Kitty.

Check out a few random quotes like this:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” [opening lines]

___

“I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.” 

___

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

___

“And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.”

___

“Kitty got up to fetch a table, and, as she passed, her eyes met Levin's. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for a suffering of which she was herself the cause. "If you can forgive me, forgive me," said her eyes, "I am so happy."

And Tolstoy takes us out with my favorite quote:

"Levin had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult.

As a bachelor, when he had watched other people's married life, seen the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary importance that it was useless to contend against. And Levin saw that the organization of all these details was by no means so easy as he had fancied before."

I don't know that Tolstoy has any answers for Singles either. Except that the small boat Levin entered in marriage, is the same boat we climb into with any human interaction, even the most casual contact. How do we stay afloat? How hard is it to keep moving towards becoming "one" and connecting with that person? And married people in entering the boat with anyone single need to do a little better at the oars - maybe let the single person take a turn with them once in a while.

When will we be one with the household of Faith as our Father in Heaven and Jesus are One?

Bullies and Heroes

Scout-posted flag for Presidents Day, 2013
Washington's Birthday (and Lincoln's) on a Monday

Something is happening here. And with apologies to Buffalo Springfield, what it is ain't exactly clear.

I already committed to fight bullying in Scouting. There's not much I've done directly, but I try to influence boys for the good when I can. I'm now Troop Committee Chair so I do get involved in Boards of Review, Courts of Honor, and I help out when I can like with the flags on holidays.

My wife is working on BSA National Council committees to rewrite some handbooks and adult training curricula. She also teaches Science in Jr. High. We often talk about kids and bullying and maybe my influence is through her as she has so much more clout in these things. Although she hardly needs me to do the right thing to address bullying.

And then this seems to tie right back to the whole Scouting and Gay policy thing and the current review of the recent review that is now going on. I've stated my position that the BSA ought to at least accept the current official LDS Church position that same-sex attraction is not  wrong and to be concerned only with the behavioral aspects. There have always been Gays in Scouting, there are now, and always will be. I see no problem in acknowledging it and keeping proper behavioral standards. I mean, Scouting isn't supposed to be about any kind of sexual activity. And it shouldn't be about denying reality either. But I won't speculate further as to what the LDS Church or Scouting may do with this. I've made my views known to the local council leadership.

Live-Blogging April 2012 LDS Conference - Sunday Morning

Of course it's snowing for April Conference.

I apologize only slightly for the following political-philosophy comment, but I find it very gratifying that Larry Echo Hawk was called to the First Quorum of the Seventy, leaving his current political position in the Obama Administration. He ran for Governor in Idaho a few years ago and got a lot of political flak for being a Mormon, Indian, Democrat - I don't know which negative was more prominent in Idaho politics. My point being, he was called to a significant position in LDS Church leadership which has to presume some level of personal worthiness and example of a good life. I don't think Democrats (or Native Americans, or even Mormons) are necessarily better or more righteous than other people. I just resent the implications from some that any of those would justify the judgment that they are less than worthy in a religious sense, or less than patriotic (or less a respecter of the Constitution) in a political sense. OK. That's off my chest. Now on to Conference.

Live-Blogging April 2012 LDS Conference - Saturday A.M.

We're settled in. I was up early enough to transcribe a few pages of 2nd-Great-Grandpa Wood's journal, then the neighbor called. My wife, bless her (!?), had mentioned to a sister of an older couple I home teach that we needed to get our small garden plot roto-tilled and she offered up her husband to teach my 18-year-old boy who had helped on his roof this last summer. But the neighbor called me this morning and not sure whether he really wanted my boy on his machine, I said I was happy to borrow it and get it done this morning before conference. So, I went over there and he showed me the basics on the old, large-size tiller and I rolled it over and got it done. It was sort of like wrestling an ox. Well, I haven't ever done that, but I was looking for some pioneer analogy.

So having done my exercise, good turn, and "honey-do" task to the point of my wife actually apologizing for getting me into it (and I was gracious and didn't complain), I am finally in the big chair to watch conference.

Keep clicking for my updates, but you don't have to rely on me, conference is better direct at this link.

Live-blogging LDS Conference April 2, 2011

We'll give this a try. I think the way to do it is to type and post then edit the same posting. This may even help me stay awake as I take notes for the world. Of course, there may be a few private inspirational things that I will not launch out into the cyber-ether.

So the big news from the Saturday Morning Session, besides the new Temples, one in Meridian, Idaho closer to my parents and sister's family than Boise, was Elder Cook's talk that we should respect women who choose to be in the workplace outside the home and President Eyring's talk that we should be doing more to live up to our covenants in the nature of the Law of Consecration to serve the poor in the Church Welfare Program.

Saturday Afternoon was about Charity, Testimony, Families, Faith, Desires, and Miscellanea from President Packer.

Errors in reporting are mine and not from the speakers or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.