The Real World

When we go to our Sunday meetings, when we go to the temple, when we attend stake or regional conferences, we often feel that we are in another place, a place removed from the cares and problems of daily life: A place of temporary respite from the pressures and demands of earning a living, commuting to work, from overbearing and sometimes unreasonable managers and rude co-workers, from impossible deadlines, discourtesy, crudity, immorality, and depravity.

Thirty-Five Cents

Some years ago, our family went to California to see "Phantom of the Opera" in San Francisco. We stayed with my brother, Harold, in Antioch and rode the Bay area Rapid Transit (BART) train to San Francisco. It stopped just a couple of blocks from our destination. The production was sublime, and we were all in a happy mood walking back to the BART stop when an obviously homeless man said to me: “I need thirty-five cents to have enough for a hamburger at Burger King.” I brushed him off, to my eternal regret, because he made the same request of my daughter, Marie, who was right behind me. She gave him what he asked, and he walked straight across the street and into Burger King.

Random Acts of Kindness

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went to Target to get something. I stayed in the car because of my recent back surgery. While waiting, I listened to the radio. When Kathy came back, she tried to start the car, but all she got was the irritating and frightening clicking noise the starter solenoid makes when the battery is almost dead.

Incremental Progress

We have been instructed in the scriptures and through our prophets that we need to perfect ourselves, just as the Savior and our Father are perfect. In 3 Nephi 12:48, we read:

Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.

Tastebuds of the Soul

Often, when we encounter something we really like, we say something like: “suweeet” or “yum-my.” In a gospel sense, we often equate taste with goodness. In Psalms 119: 97 and 103, David proclaims:

O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Field of Dreams

The other day, I drove by a large lawn that was white with dandelions gone to seed. My first reaction was: “Oh Boy! I bet the neighbors HATE that. But then I remembered my daughter, Marie, at 7 years of age, and the pleasure she found blowing the seeds off a dandelion and making a wish. I realized anew that there are many ways of looking any situation, ranging from great joy to total dejection and despair.

The Race: Come, Follow Me

While I was stationed at Beale AFB, the home of the SR-71 strategic reconnaissance aircraft, I was required to spend 6 to 8 weeks a year at the SR-71 detachment on Kadena AFB, Okinawa.