Category: 2013

A Fitting Symbol

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2013Leave a comment

Dear Will:

It’s Easter morning and I awaken to a quiet house. The scene is very different from the one I encountered as a boy, when my siblings and I would arise on Easter morning to find a basket set out for each of us, baskets filled with that stringy, green cellophane stuff (what do you call that?), jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and other candy. Then my brothers and sisters and I would scatter about the house and yard looking for the Easter eggs we had colored the night before. Although I don’t remember ever visiting the Easter Bunny at the mall the way kids do these days, I do recall that one year we received an actual bunny on Easter morning. That was pretty cool.

Easter was fun. It was exciting. And the candy was delicious. But this quiet house now feels much more like Easter to me.

That change in perspective has been gradual, to be sure. At some point—at an age I do not now recall—I remember asking what bunnies and eggs and whatnot had to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus. I remember that the answer—some convoluted bit having to do with symbols of birth or life or whatever—seemed contrived and completely unsatisfying. It didn’t really make sense.

The problem, of course, is that bunnies and eggs (and bunny eggs, for that matter) have nothing whatsoever to do with the resurrection of Christ. I’m pretty sure these oddments were adapted from some pagan rites of centuries long ago, but no matter. They might have easily been cooked up by the writers of Seinfeld for all they tell us about the event we celebrate at this time every year. And in that sense they are harmless enough, I suppose. Harmless, that is, if they do not prevent us from seeing and feeling and understanding the larger Truth this Christian holiday (holy-day) commemorates.

The essential, truth-telling symbols of Easter are these: an otherwise nondescript patch of ground in a grove of olive trees, stained with drops of sweat and blood; a cross on a hill on the outskirts of town; linen clothes lying in an otherwise empty tomb, the head-wrap neatly folded, separate from the rest; two hands and two feet made perfect by the scars that now remain as a reminder of who He is and what He did for all of us.

When Mary, Joanna, and others arrived at the sepulcher on that historic Sunday morning, they were met by two men in shining robes who said to them: “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen” (Luke 24:5-6). Later that day, Jesus—the Christ—appeared to Mary, Peter, Luke, Cleopas, and many others of his disciples. The “good news” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was then taken to the world by these eyewitnesses, and it has spread across the globe since that glorious day.

The Apostle Paul, who himself witnessed the Living Christ one day on the road to Damascus, put it this way: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22). In simpler terms, Elder David A. Bednar summarized the message of Easter morning this way: “Jesus died; He is not dead.”

That is good news—fitting for an annual commemoration. And while I treasure memories of my own children dashing about the yard, plucking up fluorescent, plastic eggs, those are not what I would consider Easter memories. If asked to choose, the decision for me would be an easy one: To honor the death and resurrection of my Savior, I will always prefer a quiet house at the dawning of a perfect Sabbath day.

PW

The Wind Is Blowing

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2013Leave a comment

Dear Will:

I was awakened this morning by the wind. It was rushing through the hills buffeting everything in its path. When I got up, I went to the window to see for myself: The trees were shaking and swaying. Many leaves were scattered about while their more-stalwart brethren clung to the writhing branches for dear life. In the distance you could hear our wind chimes going nuts, as if there was some kid in the bell tower signaling to the townspeople that the war had ended.

Because we live in Southern California, I immediately thought: Santa Anas—the dry winds that blow down from the Great Basin  and Upper Mojave and take every ounce of humidity with them. I’m not smart enough to really understand the phenomenon—if Wikipedia has it right it has something to do with adiabatic heating and orographic lift and whatnot. All I know is that when these winds blow, usually the temperature rises and we start to worry about wildfires. I have witnessed that cause-and-effect enough to know about the correlation even if I don’t know the first thing about meteorology.

In such circumstances you can see why the wind has always been the go-to metaphor for God: You may not be able to see it, exactly, but you can see its power and impact on everything around it. For a believer like me, it’s an analogy that is easy to understand. I suppose you could lump me in with Alma, who famously said: “[All] things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator” (Alma 30:44).

Apparently Alma and I are not alone—at least in a general sense. A 2012 study published by the University of Chicago reported that even in our increasingly secular society, over two-thirds of people in the United States still believe in a personal God. Nevertheless, if you look across the world (in Europe, in particular) you find that percentage drops rather sharply. More troubling, in most countries only a minority of people are prepared to say that they know God exists and they have no doubts about it.

Those numbers are not altogether surprising, but I wonder how people can see the same things I see and come to the opposite conclusion. It’s as if they were saying, The wind is not blowing. No doubt they make well-reasoned arguments, perhaps with charts and graphs and a fair amount of science—what has sometimes been referred to as “the philosophies of men.” Even so, I can’t help but think of a favorite story from the New Testament:

A forty-something man, crippled since birth, was carried each day to the gates of the temple where he asked alms. One day Peter and James came to the temple. “Silver and gold have I none,” said Peter, “but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). We’re told the man leapt to his feet and walked, to the astonishment of people throughout Jerusalem.

The miracle filled the local authorities with consternation, for they couldn’t deny what had been done in the name of Jesus, whom they had crucified. So they called Peter and John to them, threatened them and ordered them “not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18). To which Peter gave this classic response: “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

I guess I sort of feel the same way. I do not pretend to understand the philosophies of men which enable others to talk themselves out of the existence of God. I can only speak to what I see and hear. And if you ask me, the wind is definitely blowing.

PW

Her Name Was Faye

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20132 Comments

Dear Will:

Recently my work has required me to attend meetings held inside of one of the local hospitals. We sit around a typical conference table in a conference room that would otherwise be typical were it not for the fact that it is contained within a building that also holds gurneys and monitors and people in surgical scrubs.

Sure—once in the room, you would never know; but to get to that room you go past a reception desk, down a hall, around and past doctors and nurses and an occasional patient. You pretty much can’t miss the fact that you’re in a hospital. Which is no big deal except that (as you may recall) I spent so much time in hospital beds a couple of years ago.

I won’t rehash it all here, but in the Fall of 2010 I was hospitalized four times in three months—in three different hospitals for three separate conditions. I’m fine now, but I surely wasn’t then. I felt pain like never before while suffering a full range of personal indignities and traumas. Words like awful and horrific don’t begin to capture the nature of my physical plight. Not only would I never wish to relive those three months, I wouldn’t want to even pay them a brief visit.

In other words, I’m not the sort of person who could ever again look upon a hospital dispassionately.

So imagine my surprise last month when the sliding doors parted and I made my way past the receptionist and headed down that antiseptic hallway toward the conference room: Rather than feeling uneasy or nervous or sick to my stomach (rational alternatives, for sure) I felt oddly instead as if I were coming home. Even as it was happening, I was thinking, “OK, this is really weird.”

It has given me pause, as we say. Looooooong pause. Even as I write you this letter, I think back on my 90-day ordeal with bemusement as I recognize that I can laugh and joke about the pain and the scars and the multi-syllabic diagnoses while feeling tender emotions about everything else. I’ve said before that God shows His hand in the midst of our trials, but I think there’s something more at play here. And I think it has something to do with moments like this:

There was a day during my second hospitalization—this one an emergency, 10-day stay in a remote community hospital. I spent most of that stay with a tube up my nose and an IV (dinner!) in my arm. As the days (and pounds) slipped away, I became increasingly aware of an unpleasant stench that I couldn’t escape. On this particular day, an older nurse’s aide entered my room—a Polynesian woman who gently, wordlessly lifted one arm, then the next, as with warm soap and water she bathed my rancid body. With tenderness she scrubbed my shoulders and crusty face, changed my gown and sheets. The kindness embodied by that gentle act renewed my spirits and moved me to tears.

I was cared for by dozens of wonderful, angelic nurses and aides during the Fall of 2010, blessed women and men who did so much for me that I couldn’t do for myself. They changed my socks and emptied my bedpans and checked my vitals and brought me medications. They were among the kindest, sweetest people I have known. Although I can still recall many of their faces, today I can remember only one by name: a matronly Polynesian woman who without being asked and without a word washed me clean. Because of her and those like her, a hospital now feels to me like holy ground.

Her name was Faye. God bless her and all she represents.

PW

Photo by Eduard Militaru on Unsplash