Anybody Have a Flashlight?

I called Randy today and turned down his generous offer of a job. I'm still scratching my head about it. Randy and I've been friends since High School. We've laughed and cried together. We've served in the Kingdom together. We've hiked Grand Canyon together. We've helped each other through crises. We've celebrated one another's triumphs. We've wondered at one another's trials.

Most of those years our circles have not overlapped and we've spent months without much contact. I've long prayed that God would allow our paths to merge more. And now here is the answer to that prayer and I have to decline. I'd explain it to you if I understood it myself.

I guess if you needed a short answer I'd have to reply with, "Stupor of thought." I've lived long enough to know I should go with my feelings and working with Randy, though appealing beyond description, doesn't feel right. Apparently, Heavenly Father has something else in mind for me.

Randy asked if another of my prospects had come through. That would have been nice. No, I have applications for employment out there, but have had no response from any of them. Of course that makes my decision to decline Randy's offer seem even more irresponsible and foolish. Still, I must go with my feelings. Interestingly, Randy seemed like my decision confirmed feelings of his own. Being Pals both of us would have loved working together, yet both of us sense that God has something else in mind for each of us. There is no point speculating why or what this should be. Perhaps, the answer will one day be revealed, maybe we'll never know.

And so, for now, I sail blindly into the darkness of my future, trusting God to be at the helm. While a flashlight would be nice, if God is my Captain I need not fear. I'm certain that out there, in the darkness, God has a blessing for me. I have no inkling how that blessing will present itself. It could be buried treasure on some island of comfort. It could be smooth sailing on a bright tranquil sea. I could be a disastrous wreck on the rocks of some unfamiliar shore. And it could be a heart wrenching storm of monstrous proportions. Whatever it is, it will be life. And life is what I signed up for.

I have only one hope and that is to tarry. I want to serve. I want to reflect the light of Christ into the life of someone in the darkness of despair. I want to love. I want to pour the love of Christ into the wounds of those I meet. I want to care. I want to show to those I encounter that they matter not only to me but to God. I want to teach. I want to share what I've been given all my days. I want to live!

Wayne A. Jenkins - December 1961 to August 2009

I didn't know Wayne A. Jenkins. I knew his parents. I knew of their concern when he first got sick. I knew of the roller coaster ride of fear and elation, doubt and confidence, miracle and disappointment that thrilled and chilled their hearts for the past two years. I knew of their deep abiding faith and trust in God. It was all evident yesterday morning as I sat in their living room and grieved his passing with them.

Jim and Jackie told me of tender moments of faith and testimony during Wayne's ordeal. They told me of faithful friends, devoted siblings, earnest children, loving in-laws, a constantly devoted wife and a caring, loving and enduring, though dieing, father. They were touching stories of love, sorrow and faith. There was no panic in their voices, no anguish in their demeanor. Only, faith and love and loneliness. It will likely be a long time before they see Wayne again - long in the dog days of mortality. But in my two sweet friends glows an inner confidence that, distant or close, that day of joyful reunion will come and it will be accompanied by the majestic music of gratitude and love.

As is so often the case, I go to comfort and return comforted. What a blessing it is to know and be known by faithful, faith-filled Latter-day Saints. Like everyone else, they suffer tribulation in life. Like most they face it with resolute determination. Like some, they also face it with assurance, confidence, courage and above all perspective. What a gift it is to know and understand God's Plan of Happiness, Redemption, Salvation, The Great Plan of the Eternal God. A plan which He has revealed to us, so that we can see life in its entire beauty, majesty, and perfection. A gift we so gratefully appreciate because while embracing our sorrow, through the tears we can look over it's shoulder at the bright broad glory of eternity.

Growing Up In Himni, Utah - Episodes 1 & 2

Note: My alter-ego A. Jenkins Parker has written a series of stories about a fictitious town in Utah called Himni. I'll be making it a regular Tuesday practice of sharing some of those stories with you. Jinx as he his known to his friends, doesn't approve of this, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him. Enjoy!

My How The Place Has Changed, by A. Jenkins Parker

I wasn’t born in Himni. It had plenty of history, by the time I got here. I’ve learned some of the past, but mostly, I’m just going to tell you about the stuff I’ve seen in this little town since my family arrived. Even so, you ought to know a little about Himni for reference purposes.

Situated in a lonely valley in Eastern Utah, Himni has always been a bit out of the way. When Brigham Young was sending folks into the far reaches of the Intermountain West, this must have been one of the last places he thought of. Himni was hard to reach, dry and pretty much inhospitable. We’ve always wondered if the first pioneers who came here weren’t chased rather than directed to come to such a place. The old folks somehow scratched out a living, but by the looks of things when I arrived, just barely. Then the gentiles started showing up. They were chasing minerals and oil and didn’t care much for cows and sheep. They prospered and the rest of the community began looking in their direction.

There never has been much of a quarrel between the Mormons and the gentiles out here, but the mixture has been interesting to see. That’s about all you need to know.

I arrived in 1962 and entered the seventh grade at Omner Valley Jr. High. That was about the time of Himni’s transition and I thought I might like to share some of those days with you. It was a different time. One today’s youngsters may even find hard to believe. I had just turned 12 and was pretty confused about life and living. I had lived in Salt Lake and Provo during my formative years. Not exactly big cities, but really something compared to Duchesne where I’d spent the past two. Now we had uprooted once again and moved to Himni, at least four times the size of Duchesne. The streets were paved. The library didn’t have wheels. They had a swimming pool.

Once when my kids were little they wondered how come I knew so much about the 50’s when I would have been too small to remember much. It was simple. The 50’s didn’t get to Himni ’til the 60’s. In many ways, thank goodness, the 60’s never did get here. There was that couple of weeks the Hippies were passing through town…which makes a great jumping off spot for a first story.

Of Hippies, Produce and Making a Living, by A. Jenkins Parker

One summer in the mid-sixties the Hippies had a rendezvous in Boulder, Colorado. Most of them hitchhiked through Himni on their way from California. There wasn’t a male in town who had hair over his ears so to us they were quite a sight. Most folks just gawked, a few mothers kept their kids indoors, but life didn’t change all that much.

Butch Farley and his buddies rolled a few of them, or so we heard. They claimed to have even taken a load of Hippies into the back of Butch’s pickup truck ostensibly to convey them on towards Colorado. Instead they took them up on Pine Top and impolitely dropped them off in the middle of nowhere. Butch loved the reputation, but I don’t really know if he ever did half the stuff his minions bragged about. I was working at the local IGA that summer. My first town job. We had the usual crew; a few sweet old ladies in the bakery, a trio of young mothers running the check stands, a bunch of high school kids bagging groceries and stocking shelves. We had an ambitious out-of-towner for a manager who’s name was Lester Moore. A smooth ladies man in the meat department called Tuff. And we had a scrawney little manager wannabe running the produce department. His name was Mark Wilson. Mark was also from out of town.

Mark was always having problems. I think his ambition far outstripped his brains, but he was a nice kid and we all liked him. One day, for example, we called him to the front to help check groceries. He never came. We called again with the same results. When the rush was over; Les sent me over to the Pine Top Cafe’ to see if he was sitting in the coffee shop. Nope. We made a cursory search of the store with no results. We even called his house to see if he’d gone home for some reason. No luck, but his wife Leslie, hurried down to help with the search. They’d been married just a few months. Leslie was gorgeous and I had a secret crush on her.

I personally had checked the produce cooler a couple of times. The light switch was on the outside of the door. Both times the light was off. On my third trip around I looked in the cooler again, nothing. Just as the door was closing, though, I heard something and opened the door and turned on the light. A wall of lettuce boxes had collapsed and fallen on top of poor Mark. He’d been there under the pile in that cooler for over three hours. He was shivering uncontrollably and Leslie took him home for the rest of the day.

Another time we had a late night stocking project. Us kids went home at midnight and Les and Mark stayed behind. When we got to the store in the morning it was locked up. We rattled the door and Nellie from the bakery, who had been inside for hours making bread and doughnuts and stuff, let us in. It was dark up in the office so Sue Connor, the head checker made me go up with her. There we found Les and Mark passed out after polishing off a bottle of Jack Daniels. As in the rest of Utah, a bottle Jack Daniels isn’t available in a grocery store and I had never even seen one. Mark had fallen asleep with his neck propped between two coke bottles in a 24 bottle crate. We let them sleep. When they finally came down about eleven, Mark couldn’t hold his head up and he stayed that way for about a week. One Friday morning we got this huge shipment of cantaloupes. Les was livid. We’d never sell that many in a million years. Desperate to prove him wrong before the cants spoiled, Mark put on his thinking cap. Where he got his stroke of genius we’ll never know.

Rarely, had the hippies actually stopped in the store, but on this particular day they were swarming the place. Oh, they bought the usual stuff and tried to look casual but it soon became apparent that it was cantaloupes they were after. Every sale included several! By Saturday night they were almost gone! We had nearly sold the entire stock in two days!

Now, in those days the most common advertising method in the grocery business was the painted sign. Poster paint on butcher paper was the medium. These were usually stapled on a wooden “A” frame out on the sidewalk for the passing traffic to see. For a couple of days none of us employees had noticed what Mark had done. There on an ordinary “A” frame was this message. “NOTICE – IT HAS COME TO OUR ATTENTION THAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DRYING THE RINDS OF OUR CANTALOUPES AND SMOKING THEM – WE ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO SELL OUR MELONS FOR ANY OTHER THAN THEIR INTENDED PURPOSE!”

Sometimes we get so desperate to find happiness, we’ll try anything.

Hedging My Bets?

These days we rather despise the hedging of bets. The practice of betting on both sides in an effort to protect ourselves from losses has become pervasive, even institutionalized in the stock market. We get all upset about the devastation the practice has had on the economy, but hedging in our own personal lives is more common and even worse.

Let me give you a few examples of how we hedge our spiritual bets. When I was serving a mission in the Philippines we were instructed to live on $100.00 a month. Our parents were told the same. Before I arrived, missionaries had discovered that if we cashed our checks on the Black Market we could get 600 pesos for $100.00 as opposed to 350 pesos if we exchanged our dollars at the bank. We used the Black Market. For a while we went each month to see the China Man in Quiapo in his dark hole in a shady part of town. It seemed so adventuresome to sneak through the dark alleys and up secret stairs to conduct our clandestine errands. Later, for our safety, the China Man began coming to the Mission Home on P-Day. He was doing so when Elder Ezra Taft Benson came for a visit. Clearly, that gentle Apostle was not pleased.

Elder Benson admonished us to have faith. He counseled us to refrain from this illegal activity and promised that if we went to the bank and trusted in God we would manage just fine. We did so. In other words, we quit hedging our bets. The next month the Philippines floated their peso on the international money market and thereafter, and for the remainder of my mission, the bank yielded 650 or so pesos in exchange for $100.00!

A friend once told me that she would pray each morning for the strength to quit smoking and then (just in case God was too busy) she would slap a nicotine patch on her shoulder. She was hedging her bet. When she realized what she was doing, she repented, put her trust in God, quit hedging and, exercising her faith, quit smoking too!

I am aware that Brigham Young admonished us to pray as if everything depended on God and then to work as if everything depended on us. There is merit and blessing in this counsel. But too often we use such counsel as an excuse for our own lack of faith. Exercising faith in God is not the same as gambling. Laboring in the vineyard is not the same as hedging.

If we are short on funds enough to pay the bills, keeping back our tithing is hedging, even if we promise to make it up next month.

If we truly accept Joseph Smith's declaration that, "I teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves," we won't teach correct principles to our children and then hedge by controlling their lives. Joseph wasn't a control freak and neither is God.

Today, I have been offered a job, that, in my heart, I know I should not accept. Still, I am tempted to accept the offer because I have no other present prospects. In other words, I am tempted to hedge my bet. The thing is, it is not a bet. I know what God expects of me and I must trust that He has something else in mind for me. While I am not privileged to know what lies in the future, I am clearly assured that this job is not for me. I am grateful for what knowledge God has granted me and that must be good enough. If it is not, what does it say of my faith and trust in God. If not, it says I don't truly trust Him and that I feel I must rely on the arm of the flesh to ensure my survival.

Trusting in the arm of the flesh is always a case of hedging our bets. It means that we have yet to come to trust God sufficiently that we are confident that he is true and faithful. It means that we feel we must have contingency plans in place in the event that God doesn't come through for us. Trusting in the arm of the flesh does not mean we should not prepare. It is an expression of our faith in Him when we follow the Prophet and store a year's supply of food, for example.

When the saints were leaving Nauvoo, Brigham Young gave very explicit instructions as to what each family should prepare and take with them. Many were unwilling or unable to fully adhere to those instructions. Brother George A. Smith was one who followed Brother Brigham's instructions to the letter. Weeks later President Young encountered Brother Smith while crossing Iowa. George A.'s wagon was bogged down in mud up to its axles. He anxiously asked Brother Brigham what should be done, whereupon the prophet told him his load was too heavy and that he ought to lighten it by giving much of his supply to the poor. George A. Smith, didn't flinch, didn't hedge his bet, he simply, humbly, trustingly complied.

Today, I want to be like George A. Smith.

Movie Review - The Kid

This great little Disney movie has an outstanding message. When an adult Russ Duritz discovers an eight year old version of himself standing on his front porch, he doesn't recognize his boyhood personage. He has grown to become a markedly successful loser, a markedly successful liar.

He and his younger self embark on a journey of discovery in which Russ digs out unpleasant memories from his past, examines them from an adult perspective and files them away understood and resolved.

It is a painful, humorous, emancipating process told with a delight and whimsy that is sure to make the movie a classic. When I first watched it, I found it enjoyable, heart warming. As I've watched and imagined it since, it has become cathartic and catalyzing. I too, have baggage I've carried from childhood that I've not examined from a more mature perspective. I too, have given up on core dreams and values that might have fulfilled me and brought me joy. I too, have struggled with relationships that have been harmed by lack of perspective and unfair judgments. I too, have fears and prejudices that keep me from taking the plunge into full and purposeful living.

My childhood dreams were not the same as Russ Duritz's but they were just as real and just as vital to my present happiness as his were to him. There is great comfort in the message of The Kid; which is that it is never too late to reconnect with those dreams. In a very poignant way, I think this is part of what Jesus meant when He admonished us to "become as a little child."

Watch this movie, if you already have, watch it again. See if it doesn't stimulate a heart deep longing for what you always knew really matters.