Remedial Course on Mt. Aire

A month ago (September 29th), I tripped over my own feet and fell on my face on Mt. Aire. I broke three ribs, collapsed a lung, and spent the next eleven days in the hospital.

During that same time, Michelle gave birth to our 8th grandchild in the same hospital (St. Marks). That was convenient for Carolyn who could walk back and forth between 4-West and The Women's Pavilion and visit us both. Sometimes I accompanied her to visit Michelle. Sometimes I even went by myself.

That's where I ran into a few problems.

Homely old men in off-colored hospital gowns dragging oxygen canisters behind them are not common sights in the Women's Pavilion and I was frequently challenged. "Sir, may I help you? Are you lost?" "Isn't this 4-West?" "No, sir. It is not!" I learned not to make such flippant responses. It didn't help. For the most part I could convince them that I had a reasonable excuse to be there -- to visit my daughter and hold my hours-old grandson. Only once was my nurse called on me and even her I was able to convince that I did know where I was and how to get back to my 4-West home.

These experiences reminded me of when that same daughter had her learner's permit some 2 decades earlier. I was sitting in the obligatory passenger seat admiring the competence of my pretty little chauffeur. I knew that she would pass the drivers test with flying colors -- which proved to be prescient. She got 100%, something I have never achieved either before or since.

Anyway, on that particular occasion, the task was simple. She was to navigate the car from one corner of the large California mall parking lot to the opposite corner where we could get out on the road and go home. The trouble was that it was mid-December, the Christmas shopping season was in full sway, and the parking lot was oozing with vehicles, all trolling for parking places. It was a new situation for little Michelle.

I was a little startled when I had to yell, "Stop!" at the first intersection to keep her from colliding with a car. I was even more surprised when I had to yell "Stop!" for one reason or another at every other intersection across the parking lot. That shook my confidence a little. Hers, too.

I realized that she was navigating the entire parking lot simultaneously. She was attempting to gain and keep intellectual control of every turn and every route and every alternate turn and route, and every alternate-alternate turn and route between her and her destination -- the complete parking lot, all at the same time. In the process of filling her brain with all that data, she was missing vital info, such as the fact that within 30 feet of her were multiple moving vehicles, all on a collision course with her. "No, Sweetheart," I could say. "The human brain doesn't work that way -- not even super flexible, active, 16 year old, female brains. You know exactly where you're going and generally how you want to get there. That's enough. You then have to focus on the here and now -- exactly where you are at this very second -- and make those decisions which will facilitate your eventual arrival at your known destination." I was proud of myself for my great understanding of this life-metaphor and of my ability to explain it to my daughter.

Little did I realize, as I lay face down in the dust of the Mt. Aire trail, trying to relearn how to breathe, that I was beginning a remedial course on this same lesson.

After I mastered some of the more basic techniques of breathing, I got to my feet. There were only a few things I clearly understood about my situation. First was that I hurt something awful. The second was that, at that location just below the sharp bend in the Mt. Aire trail at the saddle, I was almost exactly 1 mile from the trail-head where the car was parked and about 1200 feet above it. That meant that the average slope was 25%. And that was the average. Often it was far worse than that.

It's strange what one thinks of under those conditions. What I thought of was the allegorical story of the man who looked back over his life and noticed that every where he went there were two sets of foot prints, one beside the other, and he knew, for reasons that I don't remember, that this was because the Savior had walked with him, hand-in-hand, his entire life. But sometimes he noted that there was only one set of prints. And he also observed that this always occurred when his life had been the most difficult -- when adversity had been most intense.

"My Lord," he asked, "why did you abandon me at such times to walk the path alone? How could you have done it?"

"My son," he replied, "those were the times when I carried you."

And I thought, "Ok, my Lord, feel free to carry me now. You won't find me complaining of only one set of foot prints here. I'm ready and willing for you to carry me."

"Yes, my son," he said. "I will carry you by placing your feet exactly where they need to be all the way down the mountain," and I was filled with peace, love, joy, and security.

Then I looked down the trail and all those good feelings went away. They were replaced by uncertainty, doubt, and a fear that bordered on panic.

"You're doing it wrong," He said.

"OK, my Lord. How am I supposed to do it?"

"Don't look so far down the trail. Focus on the few feet right in front of you and I will show you and help you place your left foot. Then I will show you and help you place your right foot. Then move your focus a few feet further on and I will show you and help you place your left foot. Then I will show you and help you place your right foot, and you will be carried, inexorably, to safety."

"Yes, my Lord. I can do that." And I was filled with peace, love, joy, and security.

Trouble is, I kept screwing it up. I knew the trail and so I often looked around to see where I was, how far I'd come, and how far I still had to go, and, when I looked down the trail I was filled with fear.

"You're doing it wrong, again."

"Yes, my Lord. Focus. Left foot. Right foot...."

And, even though I kept screwing it up, eventually, with surprising abruptness, I found myself standing by the car door. I was filled with tremendous relief and gratitude for having been carried to safety.

I was then shocked at the agony induced as I folded my body into a configuration that fit inside the car and I drew all my body parts in after me. Then I gingerly drove down the canyon and was happy when there was cell service so I could reach out and touch Carolyn, and whine.

But I later could paraphrase Elizabeth Smart's statement to Oprah a few weeks earlier: "I'm not sure I'd ever choose to go through that again, nor would I ever want to wish it on anyone else, but good things resulted." In fact, I think she was saying some of the same things that the Willey and Martin handcart company survivors said. And although my tiny hour in no way compares to their multi-month ordeals, yet I can say that (1) I've never felt closer to the Lord in my entire life, nor (2) understood more fully the importance of continuously, day by day, minute by minute, making those decisions with the help of the Lord which will most optimally facilitate our journey toward the goal we all clearly have in mind. And (3) it doesn't matter how often we screw up. He has infinite patience and continues to give us help and guidance as soon as we are amenable to such. And (4) the peace of the Spirit is powerful and can coexist with physical misery, which is good because, having already had three different forms of cancer, I can expect my last days to be physically unpleasant, and (5) the Spirit is also quite different from the chemical effects of medication such as the well-expired Vicodins Carolyn gave me which induced a feeling of comfortable floating within an hour of my getting home. I've never had a clearer opportunity to compare these two effects, full-strength, in real time.

I can't think of anything I would be willing to trade for those experiences.

Grandkids are growing

Melinda's post re Dillon's talk reminded me that our grandkids are growing up so fast that it startles us. That's the case even for Claire whom we see multiple times each week. How much more is it the case for the ones we see only a couple of times a year.

In August, it was a novelty to carry on a conversation with Dillon. That's never been possible before. In this case it was about Melinda's instructions concerning his breakfast. I had questions: "Did she say..?" and he told me exactly what she must have said because that's the way she does it. And when I got it wrong anyway, he would correct me. "Grandpa, Mommy doesn't cut up my waffle." He ate it anyway.

And Claire comes up with surprises, too.

Grandma informed me in their presence, "When Claire allows you to put on her eye patch, give her and Dillon a see-oh-oh-kay-eye-ee." "No!" exclaimed Claire. "Only I should get the see-oh-kay-eye-ee."

Logical. But we're going to have to learn Spanish.

And at Wheeler Farm, Claire, Dillon, and I came out of the restroom and saw Melinda rapidly pushing Jeremy in his stroller up the sidewalk away from us. She probably didn't know where we were and she was hurrying to search for us. We cut across this huge lawn to intercept her.

Claire, at a dead run with Dillon in tow, headed for a foot bridge across a ditch made to look like a little brook that separated us from the sidewalk. I noticed that there was a tiny rope strung across the foot bridge with a triangular flag hanging from it to prevent someone from accidentally tripping over the rope. I looked around and noted that the entire huge lawn was roped off, apparently for a private reservation for a group I noted occupying a distant corner. We had entered it at the only place where it was not roped off -- near the restroom, of course.

Claire saw the rope just in time to avoid running into it and she stopped so fast that Dillon almost ran into her. Then she turned away. That surprised me because I expected the rope to be about as much hindrance to their progress as a sunbeam across their path.

Claire headed upstream to another little bridge which, by that time, was even closer to Melinda and found the rope strung across that one, too. At this point, she also looked around and saw that the entire lawn was roped off.

"Grandpa," she exclaimed in dismay, "we can't get out!"

I was startled and impressed with her respect for law, order, and barrier, and I considered turning around and exiting the area by the restroom where we had entered. I considered it for a good 2 milliseconds, then I lifted up the rope and invited her and Dillon to walk under it, which they did. Claire was wearing a little grin as she did so.

And I felt terrible. I hope I didn't permanently damage their respect for law and order.

Time for your swimming lesson, Claire.

I think I made a mistake when I pointed out to Claire that the only place she was allowed to run was on the diving board. I was shocked to suddenly see my 5-year old granddaughter sprinting the length of the diving board and gleefully leaping wide out over the rippling chasm. And here I am, sprinting through the water to grab her within 2 seconds after she hit the 9 foot bottom -- more for my peace of mind than hers, apparently.

She had found an exciting new activity we could do together and she repeated it over and over leaving grandpa exhausted and the lifeguard, observing all from atop her pedestal, giggling.

Claire is now registered for swimming lessons beginning November 1st.

If you're 50 and not a conservative....

I have a favorite quote which I often pull on my kids. They respond with eye rolls and other signs of irritation. The quote is attributed to Churchill:

"If you're 20 years old and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you're 50 years old and not a conservative, you have no brain."

This speaks truth to me, but the best expression of this truth was recently given by national columnist, Thomas Sowell, in his 9/11 column. From his picture, Sowell appears to be a good looking black man. This is his column:

Liberals' lofty vision often runs counter to real world threats, experience

Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the left.

Very few people have either a vested interest or an ideological preference for a world in which there are many inequalities.

Even fewer would prefer a world in which vast sums of money have to be devoted to military defense, when so much benefit could be produced if those resources were directed into medical research instead.

It is hardly surprising that young people prefer the political left. The only reason for rejecting the left's vision is that the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow.

Most of us learn that from experience — but experience is precisely what the young are lacking.

"Experience" is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong.

Those who are insulated from that pain — whether by being born into affluence or wealth, or shielded by the welfare state, or insulated by tenure in academia or in the federal judiciary — can remain in a state of perpetual immaturity.

Individuals can refuse to grow up, especially when surrounded in their work and in their social life by similarly situated and like-minded people.

Even people born into normal lives, but who have been able through talent or luck to escape into a world of celebrity and wealth, can likewise find themselves in the enviable position of being able to choose whether to grow up or not.

Those of us who can recall what it was like to be an adolescent must know that growing up can be a painful transition from the sheltered world of childhood.

No matter how much we may have wanted adult freedom, there was seldom the same enthusiasm for taking on the burdens of adult responsibilities and having to weigh painful trade-offs in a world that hemmed us in on all sides, long after we were liberated from parental restrictions.

Should we be surprised that the strongest supporters of the political left are found among the young, academics, limousine liberals with trust funds, media celebrities and federal judges?

These are hardly Karl Marx's proletarians, who were supposed to bring on the revolution. The working class are in fact today among those most skeptical about the visions of the left.

Ordinary working class people did not lead the stampede to Barack Obama, even before his disdain for them slipped out in unguarded moments.

The agenda of the left is fine for the world that they envision as existing today and the world they want to create tomorrow.

That is a world not hemmed in on all sides by inherent constraints and the painful trade-offs that these constraints imply. Theirs is a world where there are attractive, win-win "solutions" in place of those ugly trade-offs in the world that the rest of us live in.

Theirs is a world where we can just talk to opposing nations and work things out, instead of having to pour tons of money into military equipment to keep them at bay. The left calls this "change" but in fact it is a set of notions that were tried out by the Western democracies in the 1930s — and which led to the most catastrophic war in history.

For those who bother to study history, it was precisely the opposite policies in the 1980s — pouring tons of money into military equipment — which brought the Cold War and its threat of nuclear annihilation to an end.

The left fought bitterly against that "arms race" which in fact lifted the burden of the Soviet threat, instead of leading to war as the elites claimed.

Personally, I wish Ronald Reagan could have talked the Soviets into being nicer, instead of having to spend all that money. Only experience makes me skeptical about that "kinder and gentler" approach and the vision behind it.

The Church Will Prosper

In Tuesday's live BYU devotional, Scott M. Ritter quoted a scripture that I've been thinking a lot about recently:

"As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints." (D&C 121:33)

I've been thinking about that with respect to Anne Osborn. See my blog of Sunday, June 29, 2008. Recording our thoughts in black and white helps to solidify them and to reveal previously unrecognized correlations. This is the epiphany that resulted:

The Church will continue to prosper.

Why? Because the Lord is providing a steady stream of souls of Anne's caliber who have amazing spiritual experiences and who then become powerful tools in His hands.

In Tuesday's devotional, Ritter also offered a number of interesting quotes about the effects of the Spirit. (He also commended and praised Darwin's Theory of Evolution, which was startling but with which I totally agree, but that's for another journal entry.)

It's as I generalized from one full-time mission and three stake missions: If a person sheds tears during the first discussion, that person will be baptized and will remain active. It's not necessary. We saw many who were not immediately so affected but who were still baptized and remained active, but from the handful of examples of those who were so affected, it appears to be sufficient.

Why? Because we are more convinced by our feelings than by our intellect. Bruce Springsteen was right when he said, "I continue to do this [make music and go on concert tours, etc., even though he has plenty of money for the rest of his life] into 'old age' [he's 58] because of the way it makes me feel and because of the way I can make others feel." (A quote from tonight's 60 Minutes.)

And that's what the Holy Ghost did to Anne Osborn. It provides the most intensely euphoric "high" possible. People know, intuitively, that they should have and should be having this "high" and they try to find it or find out how to get as close to it as possible.

So much of what people believe will lead them to it turns out to be a chimera. I'm not saying that Springsteen's music falls into this category. Music, if wholesome, leads to this high, though often only the way I-80 leads to Cheyenne. We can get on it and reach Cheyenne, or we may get on it and then get off at Park City or maybe even at Parley's Way. To reach the destination our numinous sense perceives and longs for, we have to go way beyond Springsteen. Anne found this way and fully pursued it.

And, as D&C 121:33 says, the Lord doesn't give us this high just to make us feel good. It's accompanied by tremendous insight and knowledge. The mysteries of the heavens are opened to us. The Holy Ghost places pure knowledge into our minds and this is always accompanied by this highest of all highs and greatest of all joys. Nothing else even approaches this for compelling conviction. It is knowledge in its purest sense.

Because of Anne, and so many, many others like her, the Church will prosper and continue to prosper.

We can be part of that if we choose. We can allow ourselves to become amenable to the greatest blessings, insight, and joy the Lord has for us and be a great benefit to the Lord, or we can take the first convenient exit off that freeway or even plunge into the tragic dead-end of a chimera pursuit and become irrelevant.

It's our choice.

Thinking of Nothing is a Productive Thing to Do

There's more to the mind than thinking, more to learning than reasoning, more to memory than observing, and more to productivity than frothy white activity.

The lead article in this week's MormonTimes has the headline “Noise reduction” with subhead: “Making time to reflect allows spirit to connect.” It derives strictly from LDS sources and quotes multiple prophets including President Hinkley. The bottom line is that we need to allocate time for pondering and meditation, and this time should be free of noise and other sensory stimulation, and that is difficult in today's world.

Of course I enjoy some of the non-LDS confirmation sources as well.

The Larry Fleinhardt character of NUMB3RS is an introspective genius who tends to perceive the human condition in terms of cosmic metaphors. He seems to believe in meditation and he practices it but characterizes it as “trying to think of nothing.” The writers skillfully leave it to the viewer to decide whether this is valid and, if so, whether it's productive.

I believe that it is both valid and productive. There are a number of documented evidences for this. I will reference two:

1. A recent NOVA episode and a recent 60 Minutes report both featured the same study that shows that deep sleep facilitates learning and memory. Subjects are instructed to type an unfamiliar and awkward sequence of numbers with the non-dominant hand. It requires many minutes of practice to do it easily and accurately. Twelve hours later they are found to have lost quite a bit of facility and accuracy, as expected, unless they have had a significant amount of sleep during that time. In the latter case, it is found that both the speed and accuracy have significantly improved! In other words, while the person sleeps, the brain is constructing new connections to facilitate the activity and this is found to occur during the deepest part of the sleep – the delta-wave sleep, the time when the person is most nearly comatose.

“Let me sleep on it and get back to you,” is a reflection of the historic recognition given to this phenomenon. Many people have observed that they go to bed with confusing, insolvable problems in their heads and wake up the next morning with confusion dissipated and the solutions clear.

This is found to benefit both learning and memory. A person of my age spends much less time in this deep sleep phase and this is seen to be a possible factor in an older persons degradation of memory and of ability to learn new things.

2 In skilled meditators – e.g. the Dahli Lahma and his associates – where they are able to closely approach Dr. Fleinhardt's “thinking of nothing” state, brain scans show that the brain actually increases in its energy consumption, and a larger than normal quantity of the brain is involved in this energy-consuming activity. What is the brain doing when one would think that it is not doing much of anything? That brings up the advantages of meditation which are touted as ability to reprogram the subconscious, alter one's basic personality and intuitive/reflexive responses, and solve problems as mentioned in number 1 above, among other things.

In other words, there's more to the mind than thinking, more to learning than reasoning, more to memory than observing, and more to productivity than frothy white activity. If we rely on thinking, reasoning, observing, and activity alone without the quiet interludes to allow the subconscious sorting, cataloguing, referencing, and correlating activities that turn data into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom, we are impeding, even laming our effectiveness.

If we can't find time to sit down and meditate without grabbing a book, a TV remote, a game control, or counter-cross-stitch, we are denying ourselves a great deal.

And, of course, the temple is an ideal place for the kind of meditative reflection mentioned. We should not have to immediately grab the scriptures when we sit down in the assembly chapel or even in the Celestial Room. The Lord wants to reveal amazing mysteries of the kingdom to us. We should give him the chance. Prayer is supposed to be a two-way conversation.

Claire Casitgates Legs

It's been a big week for Claire and her two-wheeler. She crammed to prepare to be in the Evergreen parade. She was close to being able to ride without the training wheels, but not quite close enough.

Her cramming did some good and now she's much more at ease with the bike. Today, even after the parade, she wanted to go, go, go on her bike -- long trips with Mommy and Daddy who accompanied her on foot (Grandpa concentrated on the shorter practices up and down the hill in front of the house).

Such activities produced a new effect for her: leg aches! She became noticeably irritated with her legs and chewed them out for slowing her down! She then insisted that they stop at a bicycle gas station which she identified and had to point out to Mommy and Daddy. After pausing there for 30 seconds, she declared the bicycle gas tank to be full and off they went again. That particular round trip was close to two miles. She did a much longer one earlier with Daddy. Good exercise for all of them.

Two weeks later, she was riding comfortably without training wheels. If there were a local parade for the 24th....

(And now I've learned to upload pictures! Getting them positioned where I want them is another issue. Anyone got any hints?)