believing

I used to have a teacher at school who had a favorite phrase: “We all need to be heading north.”

That’s a loaded statement. Loaded with important words.

First: We all . . .

I got to the point (post mission) when I asked this question: “Is Jesus Christ really the Son of God? And if so, am I on board?”

Now, personally, I believe that every one in the human family must, at some time in eternity sincerely ask this question. The answer to that questions is essential to happiness.

When we realize that we are sons and daughters of God, our hearts change and because we “stand all amazed at the love Jesus profers” us, the natural inclination of this change of heart is a desire to serve his children. We serve not for popularity purposes, not for recognition, not out of convenience, and not for social reasons. We serve because our hearts have become like Christ’s, and we genuinely desire to help one another and bear one another’s burdens. We begin to realize that salvation is a group affair. WE ALL are enlisted to help the living and the dead come unto Christ and be perfected in him. “When [we are] converted, [we seek to] strengthen [our] brethren.” (Luke 22:32)

Next: need . . .

In Doctrine and Covenants 89 we read that if we “walk in obedience to the commandments” that we “shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures.”

Okay, so here is the question: What is the greatest hidden treasure? What nugget of knowledge do we NEED the most? Answer: We need to realize that Jesus is the Christ.

Neal Maxwell said, “We are going to have to do a better job in helping the young to see that there is a connection between the Gospel and the problems of the real world, and that the Gospel does contain the solutions to human problems.”

Next: to be . . .

The gospel is something we do, not simply something we talk about. Remember the words of Christ: “therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.” (3 Nephi 27:27)

Finally: heading north.

When Nephi is in anguish, he prays for something very unique. He asks God to help him that he “may be strict in the plain road.” (2 Nephi 4: 32).

Beautiful.

Nephi, like all of us, could do whatever he wanted, but he was tired of trials. Tired of making poor decisions. Tired of being angry because of his enemies. Tired of being sad. He realized that he needed to HEAD NORTH. Strictly. When there were 5,000 other things he could do, he was going to be strict in the bare, unadorned, simple, basic road. As a result of that decision he said that he “lived after the manner of happiness.” (2 Ne. 5:27).

I believe Christ suffered for each of us, and that he loves me. Yes, life is unfair, and evil and sad and pathetic, and yes, I am all of those things, too. However, God is good and he is mercifully willing to forgive my idiosyncrasies when I come to him with my best self. Not my selfish, me, me, me self, but rather with my "I know not, save the Lord commanded me" self.

THEN

I am . . . happy.

Genuinely. Completely.

The kids

Eliza and Buzzy are sitting next to me.

"That's quite boring," laughs Eliza in a very "jr. high" laugh.

"Dad! Stop! Buzz laughs like jr. high," she laughs, again, like jr. high.

"Dad! [giggle, giggle, giggle, giggle]" insists Eliza.

Buzz gets up from his chair, "Just keep on laughing," whispers Buzz into Eliza's pierced ears (diamond rectangles)

[more giggles from both]

"Goll, are you writing story?" asks Eliza. {more giggle} "Seriously, are you writing a story?"

"Yes, indeed," I say.

"Yes indeeeeeed," says Eliza in a chipmunk/munchkin/mocking jr. high voice. "Dad! Stop! that offends my soul!"

"He-he-he," laughs Buzz, "chipmunk."

"Hey, I didn't say chipmunk," insists Buzz.

Claire walks into the room with a raspy voice and a wet cloth over her brow to cool off her 100+ fever. "There's a boring game on the t.v." she says.

Buzz sits on my leg and is "itching" his nose.

"Are you picking? I'm going to write that," I say.

"No, dad!" (he says in a mature 4th grade voice) "I wasn't picking, I was doing this." [finger to nose]

Phone rings.

Eliza answers:

"Hello? I can't hear you at all. You're going to what? What about it? I can't! (jr. high voice) I don't know how. Okay. Bye." (sad).

"Dad, stop saying that I have a jr. high voice, it really bugs me. Mom says I have to make a cake."

"You okay Claire?" I ask.

She nods.

Today is Jack's birthday. He's five and . . .

(interrupt) "What kind of cake should I make for Jackson, Dad . . . chocolate?"

Claire coughs (doesn't cover her mouth).

I do love my family.

E N D

p.s. Eliza was sincerely offended that I had said the phrase "jr. high voice" throughout this blog. I do love her, but . . . it's staying.

Reading.

Every day in class we take time to read. I really don't care what my students read, as long as their eyes are silently going left to right for twenty minutes a day.

I picked up a book that I typically don't read, but I'm engaged. Frankenstein. "Frantenstein?" you ask. "Ah, Mary Shelley's classic," you slur with slightly closed eyes, slowly nursing a Dr. Pepper in your left hand.

"No," I say. "Dean, . . . cough. . .Koontz."

You lean forward. I hear the ice in the drink hit the walls of the glass. "Koontz?"

"Yep."

"You ever read the original?"

"No!" I say over confidently, as if my choice of a contemporary author is much more important than any one-time phenom.

"Hm."

"What, just because he's . . . popular?"

"He's a sell-out"

"Do you know what a sell out is?"

"Dean Koontz."

"No," I say. "Dean Koontz is not a sell out. You are a sell out."

"Me?" you query.

"Yes, you," I say.

"Why me?" you say, draining the rest of the Dr. Pepper.

"Oh, I don't know. You just are," I smile.

We high five. Get up. Gets some fritos, then watch T.V.

Don't you love easy reads?

Dr. Seuss

If I were put into a grand vice, a humongous grip that squeezed me to a pulpish mass, how could I describe it?

Vices. Cracking.
Elbows. Buckling.
Muscles. Swelling.
Suffocating.
Dented, concave, blotched with cramp
Enamel of my teeth turn black.
Back to front and yellowed fat
Sweating through this cough attack.

Squeek, burst, kink, stare, ring, gurgle . . . h h h h. K.

ew. Never again.

Steeeeeerike three.

Wow. Heavy night.

1. Eliza just got the pins taken out of her pinky finger. The doctor put her under, then much like breaking a baby carrot with his hands, he used his thumbs to bend her little piggy to the point of causing the pins to break out of the skin. Understand? No? Grab a pen with both hands, and use your two thumbs to bend it in two. If there were three little perpendicular pins at the elbow of that bend, they'd poke through. Yeah, Ugh.

2. Jack got cracked in the chops by Buzzy and an aluminum bat. Missed the ball, connected with Jack's mouth. Lost one tooth, loosened six and fattened up that bottom lip (it looks like a wad of six pieces of chewed up, grape Hubba-Bubba). He got $5 from the tooth fairy last night.

3. Andy cried all night. For some reason he decided to expel a non-pungent deposit in his diaper right before night-night. When we discovered the reason for his crying, he was well-rashed. Nothing a little rash cream and soy milk didn't fix.

Sarah rocks. She got VERY little sleep, and, hmmm, I slept through a lot of the tooth fairy/diaper change/dried blood night.

I'm off to UVSC to teach Grammar Punk.

Thank you, Robert Frost

Okay, you know the absolutely awesome poem by Robert Frost:

FIRE AND ICE
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I've always been taken by that dang thing, and being a meter/rhyme freak, I had to break it down. I realized that the meter/rhyme scheme is thus, line by line:

syllables rhyme scheme
8 A
4 B
8 A
8 A
8 B
8 C
8 B
4 C
4 B

So I decided to try it. I asked my sophomore class to give me a topic. "Music!" squeeks Jordan Boyd.

"Okay, music," I say walking to the board. More or less, I write the following poem (see below) then the bell rings and I revise. As I finish, my good friend and true mentor and poet, Lee Snell comes into my room. He's looking for a copy of Animal Farm. I don't have one . . . but I DO have something to show him. I tell him of my discovery. I say, "I've been zapped by the form." I love it, and Lee, too, instantly falls in love with it. Here it is.

FYI: The words "my repertoire and" used to be "my shelves until I" (line 3). My mentor, Lee Snell, is right. How it stands now is better.


A BALLAD OF THE SOFTER KIND
If music feeds the suff'ring mind
And heals the heart
I'll search my repertoire and find
A ballad of the softer kind.
But if I listen to my heart
And meditate upon the choice
I'll find a song that marries art
With vivid voice
And happy heart.

Yes! Thank you, R. Frost.

What might have been . . .

I'm eight years old and my dad has acquired a massive wooden spool, the kind they wind industrial electrical wire on, and it's in the back yard. We picnic on it, we smash things with it, we turn it on its side and, walking backwards on it's middle, cruise up the street.

I'm at the bottom of the driveway (not yet rotted and gravelly) and I'm standing on the grand spool. My feet are clammy, and if I really put some umph into it, I can go UP the driveway, through the carport, and s - q - u - eeze through the brick and wood between the house and the carport storage.

My feet are fleet and brown, I smell like eight and boy, my lips are pursed and foreshadowing future focused activities like drumming and breakdancing (both to be done on the future gravelly driveway). I'm past the back steps when I realize that I'm going too fast. My up-hill thrust has carried me toward the slivering, brick cube which I'd hoped to gleam--just not so quickly. I reach the portal at the same time I reach down to glasp each side of the giant spool, and, just like my drumming, my timing is perfect: four fingers from both hands get tightly thrust and wedged between spool and brick on the right, and spool and wood on the left.

blah, blah, scream, blood, skin, blah, yank, wash, cry, blah, story, blah, blah, blood, blah . . .

Two weeks later the dirt that had so comfortably inhabited my body prior to my lesson at spool school, started to infiltrate the wounds. I had eight infected fingers and Dad wasn't going to take me to the doctor. He got a good, stiff-bristled, white scrubbing brush (I think he had boiled it first--thanks, dad) and took me in the girls' bathroom. He ran my hands under the cold water and buffed those yellow, bloody digits. The cold helped. More than the white of the wounds, I remember dad's grip on my wrists. Great fleshy vice grips that had played 6-hour gigs in Navy/Italy were now holding my resistent boney wrists (not much thicker than Vic Firth 5C's) -- and like an anxious fisherman de-hooking his fish, he was trying to get it done quick.

I recovered. I don't have hair on those fingers like dad does. I bet Dad wishes he could have taken all of his kids when he saw (sees) them in their infection, and run a good stiff brush across them under cold water--turn them white.