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

Solving for X

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2012Leave a comment

Dear Will:

We’re doing geometry. Or I should say, Seth is doing geometry. His old man, meanwhile, is staring at a page full of triangles and barely familiar symbols (AB||CD, anybody?) and thinking to himself: “Did I really know this stuff once?”

Probably not. I do remember enough about the ninth grade at Goddard Junior High School to recall my teacher’s name, and I may even have received a reasonably good grade. But I also remember that even before I left high school it was clear to me that I hadn’t really managed to catch the geometry wave. So it is with no small amount of trepidation that I respond to Seth’s desperate request for help with his homework.

I stare dumbly at the page. Nothing clicks. I resort to the standard parent fallback ploy of reading through the textbook in a vain attempt to relearn what once I must have known, but I’m missing the foundation necessary to make the examples comprehensible. So I take to asking Seth questions of my own, and suddenly it is as if Seth were helping me with my homework. His patience wanes.

Then, a breakthrough: I review Question 22 and it occurs to me that it can be solved using algebra. Algebra! I remember algebra! I think I can even DO a little algebra! Clearly more excited than Seth, I set to work, cross-multiplying happily and even deploying something I think we used to call the FOIL method. I proceed a little awkwardly, with uneven jabs and starts, but before long it’s clear that I have calculated my way to the right answer. And I can prove it! Alas, Seth has long since given up on me and headed off to get ready for bed. I consider high-fiving myself but think better of it.

Still, I’m amazed. I learned my algebra from Mr. Burgess almost 40 years ago. Nevertheless, there was the FOIL method (or whatever it was called), tucked somewhere in the folds of my brain, waiting to be teased out of hiding during an hour of father-son bonding over homework. And the rules that applied when I was learning algebra in 1973 or 1974 still apply today. If I had been given that same problem by Mr. Burgess, x would have equaled 14.5, just as it does tonight.

That’s the singular beauty of math—or, at any rate, the kind of math that an English major like me can understand. There is always a right answer. In just about every other discipline there is an element of subjectivity, so that personal preference or judgment or opinion play an important role in determining what’s right or what’s true. And that truth might change as new theories are tested and new facts established. But with math, 2+2 will always equal 4, today and tomorrow and for generations to come.

There are other absolute truths much more important than those that govern algebra, of course. The existence of God, for instance, and our divine relationship to Him. The eternal purpose of life and the Plan that governs all human existence. The divine Sonship of Jesus Christ. These things are absolute, unchanging and unaffected by one’s personal opinion or belief. And just as the laws of mathematics can be proven, so can the eternal truths I’ve mentioned.

Years ago, Spencer W. Kimball gave a discourse (highly recommended) in which he said the following:

We learn about these absolute truths by being taught by the Spirit. These truths are “independent” in their spiritual sphere and are to be discovered spiritually, though they may be confirmed by experience and intellect (see D&C 93:30). The great prophet Jacob said that “the Spirit speaketh the truth. . . . Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be” (Jacob 4:13).

The prophet Moroni put it even more simply: “And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:5). All things. Absolutely.

Except for maybe geometry. I’m still not so sure about that stuff.

PW