Let It Snow

Today I went to the chiropracter and then for a hike.  I've been going for the hikes most days for a week and a half all twisted up.  Today I was able to get out of the car and stand up straight right away.  Felt good.  This is the first time I've gone to a chiropractor and walked out feeling better rather than worse.  But since the last time I went I had an infection that no chiropractor had any hope of dealing with, I'd say I'm batting 1000 with the "alternate care" crowd.
The other day I went up Beus Canyon and was lamenting the fact that most of the leaves had blown down.  I could see storm clouds massing in the West and the day had "winter" written all over it.  It made me melancholy; not because I dislike winter, but because I felt I had hardly noticed summer and autumn fly by.
Today the snow had already dusted Coldwater Canyon and nearly every tree was bare and there was no color from the leaves on the ground either.  (Except from one defiant Maple that still held a few bright leaves and was spread about by a carpet so yellow it almost shouted.)  I thought about November, and the snows that will surely come next month and be the last to melt next spring.  I remembered the bare trees piled high with fluffy snow crystals that sparkle in the sun and decided to make peace with the turning of the year.  Winter is also a perfect time to take a tramp through the woods.  Every day is a perfect day if we let it be so.
The only thing you can accomplish by pining away for spring is to miss the glory of winter.

Taking Time

I haven't really made a goal of posting to my blog(s) at any certain rate and so I don't feel guilty about the Sept. 23 reminder I got when I logged onto this one.  Nor am I wracked with guilt when I consider that this was the last of the three I own that I gave any attention to.  I've been busy with good things.  Actually I've been spending lots of time with someone else's blog lately.  Actually it's the only thing I've even blogged about for the past couple of months.  I'm really taken with the subject of focus.  At 53 I'm aware that my life is not going to last long enough for me to explore every topic or item that captures my mind.  And my mind is easily captured.  When I took the Gallup "Strength Finder" survey, (you can get a code to take it by buying a copy of the book: "Now Discover Your Strengths" by Markus Buckingham of Gallup.  The survey returns a list and description of your top five talents.  Three of my top five "talents" involve vacuuming up information and churning it around in my mind.  I can see how they can be called talents, but May West wasn't right about everything when she said "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!"  I'm at a point in my life where I really have to learn to focus.  And I've kind of fallen in love with the topic lately.
One of the best things I've found to help me stay on track is to be jealous of my hour in the wilderness each day.  Since I've made my walk a priority I've not only lost nearly 10 pounds in less than a month, I've learned to quiet my mind.  When I'm able to stop the constant internal chatter I've found that the more important things in my life bob to the top of the mind pool and I'm able to get clear on priorities. 
Ironically it's made me busier than I've ever been.  By committing myself to meaningful accomplishment in just a few, most important things I find I am unable to "drift" through life by touching a million other things lightly; going from one to the other without actually accomplishing anything tangible with any of them.  Such a course gives the illusion of being busy but doesn't allow me to get deep enough into any of them to do anything meaningful with them.

So taking an hour out of a busy day is another irony.  My best ideas come during my walk.  My mind is recharged and I get into my car at the end with a quiet resolve to make the most of the rest of the day.  Also I see truly stupendous displays of nature. 
This one is of what I like to call "micro vistas".  Beus Canyon is just a little defile in the face of Mt. Ogden with a great little perennial stream running down it.  It's an absolute oasis in the summer; cool, shady and filled with little pockets of wonder like this.  There are no grand panoramas to be seen, but if you're willing to look small, you'll see beauty unsurpassed in small scale, anywhere on planet earth.
The bottom picture is of a certain Maple tree near the bottom of the trail.  I've never seen a brighter one and while this one seems to be a bit brighter than its neighbors every year, this year it really outdid itself.  Take a walk in the early evening and be amazed.  This kind of fire can't last many more days.

Unnecessary Things

Last night I helped LeeAnn edit an essay for school. I was reminded by the core message in Strunk & White's immortal style guide, Elements of Style. "Eliminate unnecessary words. I love words and it's difficult for me to eliminate them. And as I have mentioned in previous posts I have become enamored with a blog titled Zenhabits-Simple Productivity. The postings on this web log have helped me to identify more things in my life that would improve it--if they were eliminated.

Case in point: I believe that if I were able to catalog my entire waking adult life I would find that I've spent 5% of my time looking for things I need or want behind and under things I don't need and really don't want. Want proof? Here's my garage.


I like this web log so well I bought the author's print book: Zen To Done. (I got mine at Amazon.) In this appropriately brief book, I was treated to the notion that even too much food, and the fat it turns to, can be considered clutter. True enough. I'm a good 30-50 pounds overweight. Carrying that much weight in a backpack up a hill makes most people complain. Me? I carry it, pump blood through it, add another 50 pounds in a real backpack and then climb the hill. Trust me; fat's clutter. (I have a photo of me in a swimsuit on the beach in Antigua that I nearly inserted here. But since there are a couple people who read this I decided not to subject you to that.)
Today I got the coup d'etat to my guiding notion that clutter just happens in people's lives and there really isn't much you can do about it short of turning your whole life upside down. I found an audio copy of a book I read years ago: The Richest Man In Babylon, and I've been listening to it. (Great book. Simple and concise. Libraries have been written by authors who take the simple principles in it and then bloviate for dollars.) Here's the quote that shamed me concerning my tolerance for all things clutter in my life:

"If I set for myself a task, be it ever so trifling, I shall see it through. How else shall I have confidence in myself to do important things?"

I guess if I can't keep my garage clean how can I be expected to change the world? (Lately the world has a bitter need of being changed.) Keeping my hands in my pockets when I pass the candy dish has got to be counted a "trifling task" and so counts as another indictment.

The best parts of my life are at least partially buried in "unnecessary things".

Got to work on that.

Looking On The Bright Side

I was reading the Book of Mormon the other day and had begun to plow into "The Isaiah Chapters". I don't hate them as much as most people seem to--years ago I made a study of Isaiah and knowing a few language keys makes the book much less inscrutable. Anyway, I came to the 11th verse of the seventh chapter of 2 Nephi. (It's the same passage as Isaiah 50 in the KJV of the Bible.) "Behold all ye that kindle fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks which ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand—ye shall lie down in sorrow."
I've always understood that this verse refers to people who refuse to look to the scriptures of the prophets for guidance, but insist on making decisions based on their own understanding and desires. But I have also understood it to be applicable only to cases of good vs evil.
There are times when I get a little discouraged. Those times usually come when I feel like I'm over-extended and have more to do than I can do, or that I have something to do for which I feel incapable. I don't guess I'm unique in this. This morning I was attending a little pity party for myself. It devolved to the point where I opined (to myself; when you invite others to your emotional self-flagellations they generally neglect to attend) that I was really a phony. That I had a few talents that I leaned on over and over so I could look good and get by, but really I was incapable of most things and was going through life pretending. Actually I was praying these things. God, it turns out, will attend the occasional pity party--he breaks them up. Mine was broken up this morning by having the above scripture flash into my mind along with the firm impression that every natural man leans on a few favorite talents and goes to work faking his way through life by over-relying on them. But that God possesses all talents in infinite perfection and has freely offered to support us with them until we are able to make them our own. But we, most of the time, insist on relying on our own strengths rather than coming up with the humility to acknowledge that we are incomplete and need help. It's like we were dumped in the ocean. God sends a motorboat to get us to shore but we insist on swimming. Then we plead for a life ring when we become exhausted. This is not the path of wisdom. But it's the path of the ego. It's the path that we know.

Relying on our own light is very much leaning uphill.

In my reading the past several months I keep bumping into the theory that we humans are connected to God: our source. The theme is tucked away in most of the ancient philosophies of the world. Some go so far as to say we are part of God. Others explain that we are living expressions of God Himself. Even some secular thinkers (I'm thinking of Maxwell Maltz of "Psycho-Cybernetics" fame here) insist that there is something in the universe that connects everything and everyone together. And that we have access to knowledge separated from ourselves by space and even time.
Christians believe this. Lots of them don't believe they believe it, but I don't see how a person can read John 17 and come away with any other understanding. Verses 21-24 sum it up but the whole chapter is of this theme:
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
I recognize that all of us have a kernel within us that is a unique individual that has always been and will always be an independent intelligence. But all that we are that allows for us to interact with everything else and express ourselves, is an expression of something that connects us all, and makes us all one. Or at least was intended to .
It's the Ego, the I.D., the Natural Man, Fallen Man, whatever you want to call it, that sets up this construct of our knowledge and our thoughts and our possessions etc. and convinces us that "It" is "Us". Dr. Wayne Dyer, in "The Power of Intention" describes the ego as a drop in the ocean that insists that it is separate from the rest of the ocean, and even goes so far as to imply that it is the ocean.
Sometimes my little drop tries to accomplish things that it takes a whole ocean to do and that's when it throws the pity parties.


We waste time and emotion kindling fire and compassing ourselves about with sparks to see by when we could simply step into the daylight and see the world by the light of the noon sun.

Minimal Post

I've been reading a blog. It's really cool. I think it may be the secret of the universe. In keeping with it's theme, I won't repeat any of it here. I will offer a quote: "The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence."
Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance
Everywhere I hang out; work, home, car...I look around me and there's so much stuff, that focus is pretty near impossible.
Here's the blog

Simple Truth

I have accumulated quite a stack of "Yoga Journal" magazines. Since I'm on vacation this week and have no trip to take, I'm spending time de-junking and the magazines have to go. I'm keeping them because each has an article or two that has information I want to keep. Last night I took an Exacto Knife and went to work reducing an 18 inch stack of paper to less than 1/4 inch.
One of the articles I wanted to keep was one on "Simple Living". I believe a good portion of my "stuff" gets in the way of my happiness. One of the premises of this article was that most of us need to reduce the "things" in our lives and acquire/keep/maintain only those things that we truly love. Of course some things are not so much tangible things as they are thoughts, attitudes, relationships or other entities that take up our time and emotions; not just space.
Yoga has a set of foundational principles upon which the whole philosophy rests: yamas (moral restraints) and niyamas (observances). One of the yamas is aparigraha,which means "greedlessness". But it can also be translated to include not keeping a lot of unnecessary things around you and not wanting what others have. (Thou shalt not covet... to us Westerners) The yama of aparigraha leads to the niyama, santosha, which means contentment--being satisfied with what you have and not constantly desiring more. (Or as Paul put it in 1 Timothy 6:8, "And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.") Both Paul and Patanjali, who wrote the Yoga Sutra, are agreed that materialism can eat our souls.
But you can go nuts with any good and true principle.
Proved by one of the article author's quoted "authorities". This guy suggests that our materialism doesn't just hurt us, it hurts others because we "take an unfair share of the world's resources, exploiting developing nations of cheap labor and destroying the environment."
Nice. First of all, for the most part the earth is a resource-generator; it recycles and reproduces resources we use. There's even evidence that some non-renewable resources like oil fields are actually in a constant state of regeneration. So as long as we define our stewardship of the earth in terms of being conservationists, managing resources to provide an orderly, constant resupply, there is in this world "...enough and to spare." (Quoting God; a bigger authority than the guy quoted above." It's only when we look at stewardship of the earth in terms of environmentalism, which seeks to "freeze" the environment and create a museum out of it, with little or no human influence, that we arrive at the notion that it's a closed system with a finite pool of resources that can't be renewed once used.
As for exploiting developing nations for cheap labor--How the hell does this fruitcake think these nations are developing??? By staying in the stone age and not producing goods that others desire to purchase? These "exploited" people are for the first time in history moving beyond bare survival. Their children are being immunized against childhood killer diseases. They are being educated, exposed to news and ideas from around the globe, saving money for what to them is an entirely new concept: the "future". What these folks need right now is a little more "exploitation" until they enjoy the same standards of choice and pursuit of happiness that we "exploiters" have. I don't see many of these hand-wringers renouncing their residency in the United States to go live with the exploited who supposedly live lives we have no right to meddle in by providing a market for the things they produce.
I heartily agree that many things that we demand from China should never find a market in the USA. We should be more discerning than to buy some of the crap that finds its way over here. We should indeed buy less, demand more quality for the which we should expect to pay more. And in doing so, we would create markets for goods and services that producers could find more fulfillment in creating and delivering. But to suggest that developing nations are actually being harmed by our consumption is just wrong-headed.
Having fewer things, that meant more to us would benefit us and those who provided those few things. And paying for them when we buy them, as opposed to partnering with Visa & Mastercard to delay payment and place ourselves in perpetual indentured servitude as part of the deal, would be even nicer.

The Veil O'er The Earth

Today, church was a bishopric's dream; All meetings canceled on account of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple dedication. So at 7:00 I went to the usual High Council Meeting and then ushered for the 9:00 dedication session that was telecast into the stake center. I have to admit I didn't give the dedication a whole lot of thought. I figured it would be a repeat of the one for the Jordan River Temple that I'd been to years ago. I was prepared for a nice meeting, not a memorable spiritual feast. But as soon as the meeting was called to order by President Monson, I started receiving a spiritual feast that I wasn't expecting. I suppose it was God's way of nicely explaining to me that the dedication of a temple is not something to be taken casually.
For me, the take-away thought came while we were singing the closing hymn; The Spirit of God Like a Fire. In the second verse it says, "...the knowledge and power of God are expanding; the veil o'er the earth is beginning to burst." I can't remember anything I've ever heard swell up in my heart with much more power than that sentence fragment did this morning. I thought of all of the incredible insights that I've been receiving for the past several months and not just from "church sources". Most of them have come while I've been reading popular fiction or essays and memoirs etc. that have become topics of interest out in the world lately. Some of the things I've read from unlikely sources--like "Autobiography of a Yogi" of all books, have shed new lights on our own theology. In some cases I think a look at a topic from a slightly different angle has just added some insight to a truth I already know, and that if I hadn't already been familiar with the concept, I would have missed the insight entirely. But I've been impressed again and again with the thought that much truth all over the world was once had and has been lost or obfuscated and is now being reintroduced from many sources because people are looking for truth and are prepared to receive it. Not every scrap of truth that is revealed or is being rediscovered or illuminated is going to come from an office in Salt Lake City.
I'm impressed with the thought that in the near future missionaries will explain the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who already believe them and have only been waiting for someone to give them context and a system with which to apply them in their lives. I also am convinced that life-long members of the church are going to discover or rediscover sources of additional doctrine that will intensify the power of what is taught commonly in the church right now. (You have only to casually peruse "The Journal of Discourses" to understand that many things have been revealed that aren't included in standard lesson manuals for Sunday classes. This is probably because it's not comfortable for new members of the church to come to Sunday School or Priesthood meeting and be fed through a fire hose.)
Part of the Golden Plates were sealed and Joseph was instructed not to translate them because the sealed portion contained things that weren't to be revealed until later. I think most church members assume that when the time is right the additional truths will be translated from the formerly-sealed plates and sold at Deseret Book. It may be that they will be revealed simply by being allowed to filter out of the sources already existent on the earth under influence of the Spirit that will confirm to those who find them that they are indeed as true as what's in the canon of scriptures we tote to church each week.
At least I know one thing. If God wants to reveal something to the church, it could very well come in the form of a stanza from a song sung at a temple dedication. He may no longer have a need to send an angel with golden plates to get a message to us.