My 500 Words

My daughter participated in an annual New Beginnings program that welcomes girls into our church’s Young Women group. During the event all the participants who know the organization’s theme are invited to stand and recite it. The theme includes the enumeration of eight key values that are a focus of their personal progress during the six years they spend in the group. Those values are: faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, integrity and virtue. The Young Women leaders had asked the girls to talk about these traits as they related to the year’s theme of “embark in the service of God.” My daughter spoke on the relationship between choice and accountability and service. She highlighted the lesson that Joshua tried to teach the Israelites. He taught them of the need to leave behind false gods that had corrupted their worship and confused their belief. He invited them to choose whom they would serve and left no doubt about his position...

Jeff always did things first. At times I considered his advantage something that was obviously unfair. He went to school, drove a car, flew in a plane, met our favorite band, served a mission, graduated college and received a graduate degree, all before I did. And this was just because he happened to be born before I was. With less than two years separating us, it seemed there should be some chances for me to do something before he got the chance. Now that Jeff turns 50, I’m happy to let him lead the way. As they say, “First is the worst.” While there are many areas where Jeff gave me a great example, the value of a quality education certainly stands out. Jeff was a persistent and determined student and always strove to do his best, even when he had already satisfied what the teacher or professor might have expected. He always did what he could to do his best and he benefitted by earning an education that allows him to meet his needs and bless others all the time. Jeff’s pursui...

The massive structure stands as a solemn witness of deep reverence. The sacred structure has been built and rebuilt over the centuries. It serves as a central point that connects the present to the past and promises a hopeful future. Its majesty lures millions to cross the threshold and partake of prayerful communion. Many who come, arrive dirty and tired after a long journey filled with quiet contemplation and purposeful abnegation. While those who travel long bring a spirit of sacrifice, all who enter can feel the power of faith, as long as they are willing. I have entered the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela many times and I have never been disappointed, even though my expectations are extraordinarily high. I have walked in as a tourist who was fascinated by the architecture, textiles, sculptures, and paintings that adorn the holy place. I was intrigued to witness the botafumeiro (thurible) as it wafts the incense through the chapel. And there is no better day than July...

It was late and and I was tired. The lecture had droned on and I had missed several key points. I wasn’t going to be much help to my assigned search and rescue team. I wasn’t excited about signing up for the CERT training but since I had been assigned to oversee the recruitment and I had the responsibility to open up the building and secure it when the training was done, I decided that it made as much sense to participate in the training and be in a better position to help in the event of a real emergency. My workday had been busy with intense cases almost all day long. I had dealt with enough emotional tragedy during the day that the thought of working through staged responses to a natural disaster was more than I wanted, so I simply zoned out. After the lecture we finally divided into teams and were instructed to conduct a complete search of one section of the building where they had set it up like an earthquake disaster. We entered the first room as a team and began our searc...

Because I make goals throughout the year I am not a fan of new year resolutions. My experience suggests that I require a confluence of circumstances to create an atmosphere where I find sufficient motivation to make a real change in my behavior. I have yet to experience such a phenomenon of intense inspiration for improvement from the turning of a calendar page; especially in the middle of winter. Something about the cold temperatures and the shortened days leaves me much less desirous of doing anything new. But recent events have encouraged me to simply be more kind. But such a general goal can be impossible to measure so I have divided it into a few categories. How is my heart? Am I more prideful or humble? I know the answer to that question and need to do better. I pledge that from this day forward I will find one moment in every day when I am consciously aware of wanting to do something for myself and instead I will strive to help another. While I know this is a simple step, I ...

Centuries ago some distant relative of mine traveled over land and sea for the chance to fight in the name of Christianity. As he embarked on that quest his heart pounded with pride and his spirit swelled with hope that his battles would deal a mortal blow all enemies of God. Battles defined by the very essence of a fight between all that was good and all that was evil. He would have fought under the emblem of the Jerusalem cross. Could there be anything more sacred, anything more worthwhile, than defending his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He would have been told of severe, brutal and barbaric persecutions of his brothers in the gospel, his fellow Christian by savage Turks. He would believe that those who had been labeled infidels had usurped holy land that had been divinely granted to those of the faith of Christ. He would have been taught that the call to do battle was obedience to the very command of Christ himself. Throughout time, acts of individual brutality, national op...

I have been in about five or six accidents in my life. Two of them were my fault. Fortunately, in both of those the significant property damage occurred to my car. In the first accident, the car did not belong to me, but in the second accident it did. I also remember that both drivers were so kind and forgave me on the spot. I was worried, however, that I’d see a big jump in the premium of my auto insurance but it never came. Perhaps the total repair cost was small enough that it didn’t put me in the more at risk population of insured drivers. Since I don’t know their algorithms I can only guess about why the insurance company didn’t raise my rates. I will admit to being very pleasantly surprised when my new premium came and it was within a dollar of the cost before the accident. I can attest that I am a fan of insurance and the peace of mind it brings by knowing that if a collission occurs, there is a source of funding to compensate for the expenses that are sure to follow. W...

It seems like we have been together for centuries. When we met, I felt like the emotions we were to discover were as endless as the universe. The connections that we formed surpassed the greatest powers of all the earth. I traveled across the ocean just to find a place that was so rich and so full of promise that I believed that our union could never end. But somewhere along the line, we went wrong. The relationship became all about you. You said you loved me but you never did anything just for me. You loved me because of everything that I could give to you. But is it not true that God Himself has declared that we are equal?  One is not to be below the other nor the forced servant of a master, no matter how noble that master may be. We are both endowed by God with certain rights, to live and to be free as we seek for happiness. I traveled far but my heart remained loyal to you. I served you and I have given all that I can give. Yet if I were to give any more I feel that not onl...

I’m really not sure what I should do because I feel like I’m being followed. Just yesterday somebody asked me about the symphony concert I had been to just two nights earlier. They weren’t even at the concert, but somehow they were able to know where I had been, who I was with and what I had been listening to. If this was an isolated incident I wouldn’t worry, but this stuff seems to be happening all the time. In the last couple of years I had taken a whole bunch of pictures at two different family reunions and some trips that we had been on as a family. I had been busy so I hadn’t moved the photos to my external drives. But before they were lost I took some time at the end of last week and over the weekend to update the photos and move them into some electronic albums. Suddenly, people I didn’t even know were talking about these pictures that I had taken. Pictures that portrayed me, my family and the places we had traveled. You can imagine my surprise that by simply putting t...

Some of these children really know how to sing. It had been a couple of years since I had the chance to fill in for the Primary children’s music director. I think the music leader would ask me to lead because my wife was playing the piano at the time. It must have seemed logical to let the husband and wife team work together whenever she was away. For me, it was always fun to substitute when my wife was playing because I knew how well she could adapt; right on the spot. I also didn't even have to remember the song list because, as the pianist, she knew all of the songs, their page numbers and she would always help me get ready. Now that a few years have gone by, my wife no longer plays the piano for the children, she leads them in the music. Since I don’t play the piano, the chance to fill in never came along, because whenever the music leader was out of town, so was I. On the Sunday before Christmas, my wife decided she wanted to attend a different congregation to hear a sp...

Magic Johnson recently said: "I hope the Lakers lose every game. Because if you’re going to lose, lose. And I’m serious. If you’re going to lose, you’ve got to lose, because you can’t be in the middle of the pack. You either have to be great, or you’ve got to be bad to get a good pick.” The current NBA draft philosophy places the bottom fourteen teams who don't make the playoffs in a lottery contest. They weight the odds so that the worst performing team has the highest percentage chance of getting the first pick. They use a random selection process for the first three picks and then the rest of the selections are allocated in order of worst win/loss performance the year before. They claim this promotes parity in the league by allowing poor teams to draft the best players to make them more competitive for years to come. Wrong. These lottery picks can be traded so sometimes the awful team doesn't even enjoy the favorable pick that their losses provide. In the NBA it ...

A toddler shot his mother at a national retailer and we now have a tidal wave of name calling and finger pointing. Social media pages are exploding with voluminous narrow-minded comments, likes and retweets of simplistic arguments and defenses surrounding the second amendment and the right to bear arms. Like most emotionally charged arguments the connection between causation and correlation is lost as little nuance permeates the bombastic chatter. Does it matter that this mother was a gun advocate except to state the truism that those who advocate an individual right for guns are surely more likely to have them in their possession? Or is there any real basis to claim that this mother made no error and that this event was simply an accident? The clear lens of hindsight, as well as reasonable foresight, gives us the chance to imagine numerous steps that would have prevented this mother’s death. Perhaps we forget that our primary laws do discuss the question of firearms and they al...