Come and See

On September, 2012October, 2012 By Peter WatkinsIn 20121 Comment

Dear Will:

When I was in college I had to read The Brothers Karamazov—all 913 pages worth. Because I was taking a full load of classes at the time, I ended up reading the book in daily, 20-page chunks over the course of nine or ten weeks. By the time I got to the end, I could hardly remember how the thing began.

So you can imagine how little I remember today. In fact, the only thing I recall even vaguely is a single chapter—a self-contained short story embedded within the larger narrative—a well-known piece entitled “The Grand Inquisitor.” It’s been 30-some years since I read it (so don’t hold me to this), but as I remember it, the essence of the story is this: Jesus returns to earth during the Inquisition, and in response to his many miracles the religious leaders—get this—sentence him to death. (I know: We’ve heard this before). They don’t really need Jesus anymore, the Inquisitor tells Him. They pretty much prefer life without Him.

Compare that reaction to the one found in the first chapter of the Gospel According to John, wherein we read of how Jesus came to know some of the men who would later become his closest friends and disciples. The passage describes a day on which John the Baptist was talking to a couple of his disciples. As the Lord passed by, the Baptist declared (in reference to Jesus): “Behold the Lamb of God!,” at which point the two disciples left John and went to follow Jesus instead:

Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see. . . . One of the two . . . was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. (John 1:35-41)

I don’t know about you, but I would hate to be that Inquisitor dude—someone so caught up in life-as-I-know-it that I fail to recognize the best thing that has ever crossed my path. How much better to be Andrew, a man who knows a good thing when he sees it, one who is quick to follow good advice, eager to do what’s right, willing to tell others when he has found something worth sharing. Who wouldn’t rather be like that?

Even so, I find myself wondering: When was the last time I dropped everything to follow good counsel? How often have I overlooked or ignored or flat-out rejected an invitation to “come and see”? And when was the last time I made a point to share something truly meaningful and important with a friend?

Well, today I’d like to try to remedy that. Today I want to get in touch with my Inner Andrew and share with a friend something truly meaningful and important: This coming weekend (October 6 and 7) is the LDS Church’s semi-annual General Conference. During that Conference, you can hear from a living prophet of God and 12 real live apostles. They will speak truth and inspiration, the sorts of words that will help lead you to eternal happiness. You can watch them from your favorite lounge chair, either on the BYU Channel or via a live online stream.

I can’t think of any better way to spend a few hours on a weekend. Come and see.

My Star Dust Melody

On August, 2012August, 2012 By Peter WatkinsIn 20121 Comment

Dear Will:

It just might be that we were the worst tourists in the history of New York City. And if not the worst, then for sure we were somewhere in the Bottom Ten.

We were the ones riding the S51 bus on almost a full loop because we boarded it on the wrong side of the street. We were the ones at 2 a.m. who wandered ourselves into a dead-end and had to escape over a chain-link fence somewhere in a Naval compound on Staten Island. The ones who showed up on Saturday to see Joshua Bell at the Lincoln Center, only to discover that the tickets were for the previous night? That was us too.

The most appropriate symbol of our week in New York would probably include an image of the four of us, standing on a street corner staring dumbly at my cellphone, trying to figure out if we were pointing uptown or down, heading someplace we couldn’t get to without making a connection somewhere else. Our feet ached all the time. We were edgy and cranky, usually disoriented and most always sweaty. When you go to a place like New York, you don’t ever want to be “those people.” Well, we were those people.

Which is why the afternoon we spent on the High Line stands out as a miraculous bit of Divine Intervention, a merciful gift from God to the undeserving. If you’re not familiar with the place, the High Line is a park built on what used to be an elevated train line. It’s mostly a stylized walkway—or maybe a strollway, to be more accurate. And it has a completely different vibe than the city below. It’s calm—calming. For us it offered a soothing break in the action after several days of trying somewhat futilely to get from wherever we were to somewhere else.

And that was even before we heard it, wafting through the air along the platform like a future memory. We had just finished a modest picnic of sandwiches from the Chelsea Market when we heard something beautiful, unmistakable, alluring—familiar and comforting in a way that only a favorite melody in an unexpected place can be. I grabbed my daughter’s arm. “Bryn,” I whispered, “do you hear that?” It was a single soprano saxophone, gently riffing on “Star Dust,” the old Hoagy Carmichael tune that Reader’s Digest once called (with good reason) “the best loved song of the 20^th Century.”

The music pulled us down the path toward a lone musician. There was no audience, not so much as a small group of listeners. And yet it was so lovely! Now I’m not ordinarily the sort to do such things, but when we arrived at the place I couldn’t help myself. I reached for Bryn and we started to dance. I’m such a horrible lead and we were in such a public place that I soon lost my nerve, but the impulse was irresistible because the music was so beguiling. We swayed and let the music work its magic as Mitchell Parish’s lyrics slipped easily into mind: “Tho’ I dream in vain, in my heart it will remain: My Star Dust melody, the memory of love’s refrain.”

When the song ended I threw some money in the musician’s hat and thanked him. “That was wonderful,” I told him. “I love that song. Thank you.” He thanked me himself—get this—for blessing his day. Imagine. Remembering it now makes me want to go there again—right now—and simply sit and listen. As I think about it, I definitely should have left more money in that hat.

That experience reminds me of the pledge, learned first as a child but not fully embraced until I became an adult: “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” That man and his music were all of those things. Which is as good a reason as I can think of to spend a little time strolling—and listening—and maybe even dancing—seeking something lovely on a Sunday afternoon.

Moving Rocks

On July, 2012August, 2012 By Peter WatkinsIn 2012Leave a comment

Dear Will:

I’m sitting on the deck of a cabin next to Bear Lake, near the border of Utah and Idaho on Highway 89. It’s not a bad way to pass a Sunday morning: the air is cool, the sky is blue and painted with lazy, drifting clouds. Inside the cabin, my sister-in-law is making her signature blueberry pancakes, enough to feed three generations worth of descendants who have gathered to celebrate my in-laws’ 50^th wedding anniversary.

My letter-writing proceeds in disjointed bursts. I am easily distracted by various children, the sons and daughters of my nieces and nephews, mostly—the great grandchildren here at this celebration of posterity. The door from the cabin swings open and (sometimes) shut, over and over, as the kids chase each other to and from and around and through the jungle gym here in the yard. I’m amazed that there is hardly any sign of the contention you might expect to see in a schoolyard—the fun is effortless; the laughter comes easily.

It’s remarkable to observe that these kids are such good friends, to see how they play for hours and hours as if they are Pals For Life. Of course, many of them are— first cousins who know each other well. Others, however, are new acquaintances, but still they demonstrate that mysterious blood-bond that somehow connects relatives who may see each other only briefly every few years or so. Put strangers together and it will take a while for children to tentatively set themselves to play. But bring together cousins for the first time and comfortable familiarity prevails almost immediately.

Susie arrives and I put down the computer. She holds in her tiny fist a wooden car. As she climbs up into my lap, it occurs to me that I only learned her name yesterday. I believe she is my nephew Randall’s daughter, but I am not certain. Her age? One, maybe? On Friday night my buddy was Ethan, a precocious two-year-old (is there any other kind?) who took me by the hand to show me around. He and I spent a happy half hour moving rocks from that pile over there to this pile over here. Ethan belongs to Rob, a nephew whom I haven’t seen since his wedding seven (or so) years ago.

Ethan and Susie and I are tied together by a seemingly flimsy thread: One is the grandchild of my wife’s sister, the other of her brother. And yet the tug of love and connection I feel for them is undeniable. How can that be? What is it about family ties that generates that sort of spontaneous closeness? Why is it that we can see some people at work or in the neighborhood almost every day and hardly know them, but when we see an uncle or a cousin, even for the first time, we become intimate almost instantaneously?

I think the prophet Malachi has part of the explanation. You’ll recall, perhaps, that Malachi talked of multi-generational bonds as being an essential component of God’s eternal plan. He said that one of the vital roles of Elijah the Prophet was to “turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6). Malachi was making reference to an ineffable pull that stirs within us, causing us to look back over generations and feel a bond with those who came before us and a yearning for our children and their children and their children, for generations to come.

After all, God wants it that way. The First Presidency has said that “the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children” and that “the divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave.” When we gather as family—at a cabin in the mountains or simply over a pot roast on a Sunday afternoon, we are doing the will of God. And when we put down the computer to play with a wooden car or move rocks from one pile to another, we are answering a call that comes from afar and resonates throughout the eternities.