Knowing and Doing

There is a great of difference between knowing and doing. We may know what to do, but many times we do not act in accordance with that knowledge. 

There is a difference that President Spencer W. Kimball noted.  He told the composer of "I am a child of God" that she needed to change the words to the song. The lyrics originally were, "Teach me all that I must know". He said they should read, "Teach me all that I must do to live with Him some day."

You will find that there are many people that know right from wrong and good from bad, but their actions do not mirror their knowledge.

Of course their are some people who do not know.  This is because they are not taught or do not seek wisdom. Many are ignorant because the knowledge is simply not available to them, because, " they know not where to find it."

The vain traditions of the fathers preclude the proper acquisition of knowledge and therefore people do not have information on how to properly act and do.

Then there are those who think they do not need to constantly improve. They are satisfied with the status quo. They think that doing their small part of what they assume to be correct, that they will not be held accountable for the whole that is available. These are they who rationalize and excuse their behavior saying that if push comes to shove they will be beaten with a few stripes and eventually enter in to live with a living Heavenly Father, who would surely not deny them. They do not realize how uncomfortable they would be.  The scriptures describe this as nakedness.  No one would feel comfortable standing in the nude in front of Our Father who is clothed in resplendent robes of glory, knowing that we could have those same robes by doing things that we have neglected to do during our probationary state here in mortality.

Then there are the openly rebellious. They are so egocentric and self centered that they do not care what the rules or commandments are. Theirs is the typical 3-year-old's response. "Me do it my way".  These are they that, unless they repent, will follow Satan and will eventually be in his power.  Although most of these people will never get to the temple, they will not learn the lesson that is taught there and if they have been to the temple they did not pay attention.

People do not realize that this life is serious business.  A war was fought in heaven so that we might come down here and obtain a body and learn to discern between good and evil.  Eve risked everything to be able to obtain that knowledge and suffer sorrow as a result.  

Now it comes to us to act on that knowledge.  It is not good enough to know what is right and what is wrong.  We must act accordingly, because if we do not act prudently we will have to suffer the consequences.  I have posted about consequences previously at this link.  

I have always liked the song, “Do What Is Right”.  In it is the phrase, ‘let the consequence follow’.  The consequence of doing right is eternal life.  The wages of sin is death.  

Chose life by doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason.

Love,

Grandpa

Truth or Consequences

When I was growing up, radio was the chief form of home entertainment. We did not have television. They had a radio program called truth or consequences. You can read about it Here.

The laws of the universe are built on actions and reactions, in other words actions and consequences. Every thing we do has a built in consequence. If we are carrying a box and let go of it, it will drop. We call this the law of gravity. Some actions have consequences that are not so immediate. As an example your great grandfather Wright Clark smoked cigarettes almost all of his life. He died of lung cancer. So the consequence took a long time to manifest itself.

He did not realize when he started that there would be unwelcome consequences to his actions.

If you pay attention to most video games it doesn't take you long to realize that even the slightest mistake will cause undesirable consequences.

Yet we blithely go about life doing things without realizing that there will be consequences. Most of the results do not come immediately and often are masked by immediate rewards to our senses.  That is what is so difficult about this life. We always reap the consequences of our actions. To give you a homely saying about this scenario, " The wheels of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine”.

A quote from Shakespeare memorized from my high school days seems appropriate to quote at this time. It is often referred to as Polonius' advice to Laertes.

"This above all, to thine own self be true. And it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. "

We cannot always see down the road far enough to determine the outcome of what we do. There are, however, guides for us on the road of life. Our Father in Heaven knows the end from the beginning and has provided a road map for us to follow. It is called the gospel of Jesus Christ or the iron rod.

In addition there are people who have traveled the road of life and have, by their experience, been able to determine what will happen to some people who do stupid things. They may not know everything, but do not discount the wisdom of the aged.

Truth, wherever it is found, will always lead to a desirable outcome.

As the radio host would say at the end of the program, "May all your consequences be happy ones."

Love,



Grandpa

What I owe to my parents.

What I owe to my parents.

When you get to be my age some people become reflective.  We think about things in a different light and so I though it might be well to divulge my feelings about my parents.

Of course, they gave me life and a place to live and food and an education. They were kind to me and disciplined me when it became necessary. 

I never really thought much about it until just recently.  Here are a few of my thoughts of gratitude.  My dear grandchildren do not take your parents for granted.  Express thanks to them often.  You will not have the opportunity when they are gone.  As my grandmother Gee used to say, ”A rose to the living is worth sumptuous wreaths to the dead.”

What I owe my mother.
She let me cook.

When I was about five she helped me bake a cake. She let me help in the kitchen. I liked to make cinnamon toast and she would let me prepare it in the gas oven in our kitchen in Denver.

She taught me to iron and do the laundry.

 I would help sort the clothes and put them in the washing machine. I would run the clothes through the wringer and hang them on the clothesline. She taught me to iron the pillowcases and then to iron shirts and press pants and suit coats.
 
She taught me to scrub and wax floors.

I would scrub the kitchen floor every Saturday on my hands and knees. Then I would wax and polish the floors.

She taught me to wash and dry the dishes.

My brothers and I would take turns doing the dishes. We would alternate   setting and clearing the table, washing and drying the dishes. We never did have an automatic dishwasher.
 
She taught me to sew and darn socks.

I learned to sew on a sewing machine and to hand stitch. I sewed on buttons. I embroidered towels. I darned socks. I even learned to repair runs in nylon stockings.

She insisted that we make our beds in the morning.

Making beds has always been part of my life. We learned to make what we called square corners at the lower end of the bed. When our children were growing up we called it making the bed Snoopy perfect.

What I owe my father.
I have been thinking a lot about the things that I learned from my father.  I may not remember all or everything, because we learn many things that we are unaware of.

These are not necessarily in any particular order.
My father was a gardener.

Every place we lived he planted a garden and raised produce. I learned to love the land and to not waste space that could be cultivated.
My father was a worker.

I learned from him that work was important. He was always reliable. He went to work on a bicycle when we lived in Denver and did not have a car. I learned that one did what ever was necessary to honestly provide for the family.
My father loved me.

Although he could not always be with me, he cared and showed me that he did. I went to scout camp at Camp Tahosa. He could not go with me for the whole time, so he took a day off and took the streetcar to Boulder, Colorado and hiked the 30 miles to the camp and spent the night and then hiked back to Boulder and took the streetcar back to Denver.
He was interested in my education.

When I was having trouble with my arithmetic in grade school he would give me problems to do in my head. When I had spelling problems he would give me the words and correct my spelling. As a result I became a better speller than he.

He taught me frugality.
We never had an abundance of money. I rarely got an allowance, but I was encouraged to save my money and to not be lured into spending for things that I did not need. One of his sayings was; "Don't spend too much for your whistle."

He was totally dedicated to the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is never a time that we did not attend all our church meetings. When we lived in Lander we always drove to Casper for all the district meetings. When we decided to build a chapel in Lander, he gave all of his overtime pay to the building fund. He rented a rotary tiller and tilled gardens in the town and gave the proceeds to the building fund. He joined the ministerial association and took his turn giving the devotional on the radio.

He treated his wife with respect.

I never heard him speak disrespectfully of my mother. He was over protective and was quick to chastise any one who he thought might be critical of her.

He let me make my own decisions.

I always wanted to be a doctor. My father's brother (Vernon) was a doctor and most of the doctors that my parents were acquainted with were not active in the church. To my father's credit he never told me what to do or demanded that I become what he decided should be my profession. He supported my decisions even though it was not what he would have chosen.

He was an example of being friendly and inviting.
He would greet people at church; those that he knew and he always greeted strangers. He would find out about them and often invited them to dinner. New people in the ward often came to our house to dinner when we lived in Denver. We often had the missionaries to dinner at our home when we were in Lander.  I am naturally not as outgoing as he was, but I have tried to be as hospitable.

He maintained a good reputation among his associates.

There were people who did not agree with him and those who disliked him, but they respected him. One person said that if they saw Ivin Gee stumbling out of a bar at midnight, they would know that he was not drunk nor had he been drinking.

Love,

Grandpa

Polygamy

Polygamy

 [I wrote this in November of last year. Since we are celebrating pioneers this month, I decided to post this on my blog.  There are a number of people who try to destroy testimonies by using this against the church, claiming deception on our part.  We do not practice polygamy now.  We should leave it in the past where it belongs.] 

The church has recently posted some articles on their website on this topic.  I have included links below.  There has been a lot of hullabaloo about this in the lay press.  They intimate that this has been a secret kept by the church.  Any church member who has studied church history or read the Encyclopedia of Mormonism knows all about this, but sadly many members of the church do not take the time or have the inclination to inform themselves and are thus led to and fro by every wind of doctrine and let their faith be challenged by speculation and innuendo.

I thought it might be interesting to explore the influence of polygamy in my ancestors.

Marriner Wood Merrill (second great grandfather) had eight wives and 46 children. There are two of his descendants living in our ward, one from the same wife that I descend from. One of my classmates in medical school was married to one of his descendants. A missionary in Lander when I was growing up was a descendant. I worked in the temple with his brother. My brother Glendon's mission president was one of his descendants.
He died in 1906 and lived with all of his wives at that time. Two of his wives never bore him any children. They were the sixth and seventh wives.
I am not aware that he was ever imprisoned for unlawful cohabitation.

John Telford (third great grandfather) had two wives. His first wife was his first cousin. They fell in love and because their parents were opposed to their marriage, they went to Scotland from their home in Ireland and were married. They later moved to Canada, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and then to Utah.  He married as his second wife Elizabeth Robinson. She was a survivor of the Martin Handcart Company.  He had seven children by the first wife and nine children by the second.

He died in 1896, six years after the manifesto. As far as I can determine he was never incarcerated for unlawful cohabitation.

Joseph Sharp Rawlins (third great grandfather) married Mary Ellen Frost prior to the exodus to the valley in about 1840. He then married Hannah Stringfellow in 1865.  She was the widow of George Stringfellow, who died in 1860 leaving her with three small children.

Joseph died in 1900 being the father of five children by Mary Ellen and seven children by Hannah.
As far as I can determine he never went to prison for unlawful cohabitation.

John Ulrich Stucki (great grandfather) was a young man who left Switzerland to immigrate to Utah. On board the ship Emerald Isle in 1859 was another Swiss family who had a daughter, Margaretha Huber. The Huber family had more than they could handle and prevailed upon John to marry their daughter to take care of her and so it was done on the ship. They settled in Providence, Utah where they adopted a boy who subsequently died at the age of eight.  Margaretha never did have any children of her own.
Jane Butler was a convert from Wales and immigrated to America and traveled by train to Ogden, Utah in 1869. Later that year she accompanied the Lowe family to Providence, Utah where she was employed by John and his wife. She and John were married in February 1870 and in July of that year John and his two wives moved to Paris, Idaho.

Jane and John were blessed with nine children.
John served two missions as mission president in Switzerland leaving his wives and children to manage the homes and farm in his absence.

During the second mission in 1888 he met Jacob Spori and his sister Anna Clara Spori in Switzerland. He became friends with Jacob and promised him that he would marry his sister Anna when he got back to Paris, Idaho after his term as mission president. Jacob came to America and went to Rexburg, Idaho where he was instrumental in founding what later became Ricks College and subsequently BYU-Idaho.
Anna and John were married in the Logan temple September 21, 1891 in one of the few polygamous marriages performed with sanction after the manifesto. They had two children.

On the way to his second term as mission president in Switzerland in 1888 he was marked to be arrested as he boarded the train from Ogden to Salt Lake. He disguised himself as a vagrant and had a corncob pipe in his mouth. The federal marshals did not recognize him and he eluded captivity and was able to go to Switzerland.

There is no record of his arrest or conviction for unlawful cohabitation, although he was in prison in Switzerland for preaching the gospel as a young convert before he came to America.

My uncle Wendell Stucki once asked his grandmother Jane Butler Stucki how she felt about polygamy.  She responded that she knew it was an inspired principle and a great blessing to her life.

Robert Marion Kerr (second great grandfather) born in Tennessee came from California by way of Australia and went to work for his bishop, Joseph Sharp Rawlins. He became enamored with the sixteen-year-old daughter, Nancy Jane Rawlins. They were married and then they moved up to Cache Valley where Robert married Nancy's cousin Margaret Elzirah Rawlins two years later. Margaret had twins that did not survive their first year of life. She had another child, but she did not survive and died five days after the birth. This son, James Harvey Kerr was killed in an accident at the age of twenty-eight having never married. There is no record of Robert’s arrest or conviction for unlawful cohabitation.

Lysander Gee (second great grandfather) married his first wife Amanda Sagers in Missouri. They had one son, Orlando Lysander. They were driven from Missouri after the extermination order by governor Lilburn Boggs. They moved to Quincy, Illinois and then to Nauvoo. Lysander then married his second wife, Theresa Bowley in Nauvoo. The four were then expelled from Nauvoo and found themselves in St. Louis, Missouri. We do not know how Amanda died there. There was a Cholera epidemic at that time that killed a number of saints. The papers of Lysander are silent on the circumstances. Lysander and his wife Theresa and her daughter Rozelia along with Orlando came across the plains to Salt Lake City in 1849 and settled on a lot at the corner of fourth south and third west next to Hiram Gates and his two wives, Sarah Maria and her children (they had six children, but probably only four were left at home and Maryette and her two daughters.

Hiram left for California with Emily Amanda Rockwell leaving his two wives to fend for themselves. Lysander married the abandoned Maryette and the family moved to Tooele.  Maryette died from complications of childbirth with her eleventh child. Maryette had two children with Hiram Gates and nine with Lysander.

As far as I can determine he never went to prison for unlawful cohabitation, although he was sentenced to jail for allowing people to vote from a party that was disenfranchised. I have not been able to determine if he ever served time in jail.

Erasmus Lysander Gee (great grand uncle) was Lysander's first son by Maryette and the older brother of Erastus Rowe Gee.

He apparently was married to three different wives, but there is some question that he was not married or at not least living with the first two at the same time, although he was accused of such. He was arrested and spent time in prison for unlawful cohabitation while protesting his innocence. He was under the impression that his first wife divorced him before he married the second. There is not much information about him. He essentially disappears after his release from prison.  One child that died early is documented.

William Jasper Kerr (great grand uncle) was my great grandfather's oldest brother. He was nineteen years older than Marion Joseph. William’s father had two wives. William also had two wives, the first wife was Leonora Deseret Hamilton. They were married in 1885. They had six children.  Two years later in 1887 he married Lois Cordelia Morehead. They had two children.

In 1890 the manifesto was issued. All those marriages were still valid.  The pressure that was exerted on those families by the federal government and those who were not members of the church was very heavy. Evidently the pressure on William Jasper was great enough that he divorced Lois and renounced his affiliation to the church. He became quite prominent in the field of education, serving as the president of Brigham Young College in Logan, Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University) and Oregon State College (now Oregon State University).

Although some of his children were baptized as members of the church, none remained active enough to receive their temple ordinances in this life either from the first or second marriage.

George Washington Gee (first cousin three times removed) was Lysander's older brother. He had a son by the name of George Washington II. He fell in love with a young lady, Sophina Alcesta Fuller. When she was almost fourteen years of age she was to marry a man (James Bird) who was 46 years of age and already had a wife. She did not want to get married and ran off and hid in a cornfield after the marriage and did not return until she was assured that the marriage would not be consummated. She married George at the age of nineteen and produced ten children. One of her daughters was the mother of the patriarch of the church Eldred Gee Smith.

George Brown Bailey (second great grand uncle) was born in Bath England and married Elizabeth Young in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England in 1853. They then immigrated to Utah. They had twelve children.  In 1868 George married Elsie Marie Anderson in the Endowment House.  They had nine children.

He was arrested and confined to prison for unlawful cohabitation. There are documents of his letters to his wives while he was in prison.

There are six of my direct ancestors who practiced polygamy and four uncle and cousin relations that were also involved.

This was not an easy principle to accept for both the man and the woman involved.  There were, as you can see, good and bad outcomes to the practice.  
 If you want to read more about Polygamy here are some links.

From the church website

https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints?lang=eng&query=polygamy

https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-and-families-in-early-utah?lang=eng

https://www.lds.org/topics/the-manifesto-and-the-end-of-plural-marriage?lang=eng

From The Encyclopedia of Mormonism

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Antipolygamy_Legislation

http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Plural_Marriage

From a Blog

http://www.sixteensmallstones.org/some-thoughts-for-lds-members-who-are-surprised-and-upset-about-joseph-smiths-polygamy/

Self-reliance

One of the things that I have noticed in comparing my life and the environment that I grew up in with the present society is the lack of self-reliance in a number of the people today.

Parents seem to be more involved in the lives of their children. (I think to the detriment of the child.)
Let me give a few examples of things that I have observed. I answer the phone in the missionary department. Many of the calls are about immunizations. The majority of these calls are from parents (mostly mothers) rather than the young missionary. I also screen missionary applications. It is easy to determine when the mother fills out the application for the prospective missionary.

The parent in an attempt to be helpful takes away the independence of the child and makes them dependent upon the parent. Most of the children allow this, because they are not strongly independent.

We have a number of missionary applicants that indicate that they suffer from separation anxiety or homesickness. They have not been allowed to exercise their independence and experience self-reliance. Too many of these young people get to the MTC and find out that they cannot stand to be away from a home environment and go home without completing the MTC training. This number is not large, but the number indicates to me a lack of preparation for life. We would hope that these dependent individuals would eventually gain some measure of self-reliance.

In our affluence we try to do everything we can to provide the best for our children. There is a tendency to want to keep our children from failure, so we make them either emotionally or economically dependent upon us. We have a term for this hovering in these days. We call it helicopter parenting.

When some untoward or catastrophic event takes place, I often hear that the school or organization will have grief counselors available. I believe this is an indictment of failure to prepare the youth for the vicissitudes of life.

Parenting is a difficult job at best. But parenting is not keeping the trials of life away from our children. Parenting should be only involved in the lives of the children to teach and not to solve their problems for them. (This is a difficult thing to do, because we want the best for our children.)

The greatest neglect of teaching and mentoring occurs because of our affluence. Wealth produces a feeling of arrogance and superiority and neglect of self-reliance. This brings the feeling that one can have anything in this world for money. If we throw enough money at a problem it will disappear.
The shift from a rural society to an urban life has contributed to this attitude as well. Now in order to protect child abuse in the work place we have child labor laws. As a result the urban children are often not taught to work. They then do not learn to work alongside the parents and learn from them as is found in the rural setting.

The absence of the mother in the home because she is working is another factor. Our society does not give good credence to the importance of the statement, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”. The world would have one believe that a woman is not 'fulfilled' unless she is an executive in the corporate world.

Thus parenting, the most important assignment in the world is relegated to a minor role. Then children are not given priority attention and training. Of course your mother and I (grandmother and I) did not train our children as well as we were capable of because of lack of knowledge and understanding and the vain traditions of our parents. (That may strike a note from D&C 93.)

When one gets to be our age we see things from a different perspective and as I learned in medical school the retrospectroscope is a great diagnostic instrument and almost always right.

Try and be self-reliant.

Love,

Grandpa

What we can learn from Malaria.

Or all you wanted to know about malaria, but were afraid to ask.

The disease of malaria was named because it was thought that one got it from breathing bad air. For many years it was not known that this was a parasitic disease that was transmitted to humans through the bite of a certain species of mosquito.

We still see many cases of malaria in the world today. About 3.2 billion people – almost half of the world's population – are at risk of malaria. In 2013, there were about 198 million malaria cases (with an uncertainty range of 124 million to 283 million) and an estimated 584 000 malaria deaths (with an uncertainty range of 367 000 to 755 000). Increased prevention and control measures have led to a reduction in malaria mortality rates by 47% globally since 2000 and by 54% in the WHO African Region. Source WHO

Since we probably will not get malaria, why am I talking about it? In a recent meeting I learned about one of our missionaries who died of malaria. It was sad and completely unnecessary.

We now know the cause of malaria and we know how to prevent it. Then why did the missionary die of the disease?  He refused to take the medication to keep him from getting the disease. He would not use mosquito repellant or sleep under the netting provided to keep him from getting bitten.  He either believed he was invincible or he thought that it really did not matter.

When we do not take our spiritual medicine we may suffer spiritual death as well. Just like the missionary who died of malaria, disregarding sound principles leads to spiritual illness and death (which is separation from God).  We then become the walking dead, as it were, oblivious to true joy, and experience the sorrowing of the damned.

In this state of blissful ignorance we wander on forbidden paths as described in Lehi's vision of the tree of life. We fail to hold on to the iron rod and fail to partake of the fruit of the tree, which was designed to make one happy.

Taking prophylactic medication to prevent malaria is important to keep us free from the ravages of the disease and possible death. Reading the scriptures, prayer and partaking of the sacrament on a weekly basis and incorporating the principles of the gospel in our life is the prophylactic spiritual medicine to keep us from getting spiritual malaria.

What do we do if we do get malaria? We treat it vigorously. We do not neglect it, thinking it will go away. Poor decision! We neglect it at the peril of our mortal lives. The same holds true of spiritual malaria. If we do not treat this vigorously, we do it at the peril of our spiritual lives and eternal destiny.

Just as malaria is introduced into the human body from an outside source, spiritual malaria does not come from within us; it is introduced through our exposure to the toxic ways of the world and our adopting them into our lives. The interesting thing about malaria is that it infects the red blood cells and replicates itself and destroys the substance that gives energy and life to our bodies. Spiritual malaria infects our spiritual life sustaining blood and slowly destroys it a little at a time until we are past feeling.

“In your life there have to be challenges… they will either bring you closer to God and therefore make you stronger, or, they can destroy you. But you make the decision of which road you take.”
-Elder F. Enzio Busche

Pay attention to your spiritual prophylaxis.  I do not want to see any of you die.

Love,

Grandpa

Cracked eggs

The other morning I was boiling some eggs for breakfast. The eggs looked perfectly good as I carefully put them in the water  I set the timer for eight minutes. Before I heard the timer go off I heard the water boiling over. Since I only put in an inch of water this signaled that one of the eggs had cracked and was spilling egg white into the boiling water causing the water to overflow.

I thought that this might be a good subject for my blog.

When I was in high school I worked for a creamery. We got eggs from the local farmers and prepared them for sale.  We were hired to candle the eggs. This process was to hold the eggs up to a very bright light. By so doing we could see if there was any blood in the egg. Although this would not cause any problem, the housewife who would use this egg would not find that very appetizing. We would also check to see if there were any embryo chicks in the egg. In some cultures this would be considered a delicacy , but in our culture this is extremely unappetizing.  We also checked for cracks in the shell. A cracked shell could allow pathogenic bacteria to enter the sterile white of the egg and cause disease to the person who consumed the egg in its raw state and make the egg rotten. The  most common bacteria to cause disease from eggs is Salmonella.

We would crack open the eggs with the cracked shells and drop them in a metal container and those eggs would be sold to the local bakery for cakes and other baked goods.

Each of us has a protective shell. Much like the egg, it protects us against the intrusion of the outside world and from it's contaminating influences.  We have to keep our shells intact. We do this by simple procedures.

When I was growing up we raised chickens. We knew that thin shells were easier to crack. In order to get thicker shells on the eggs we would feed oyster shell bits to the chickens. The oyster shells contain Calcium, which is metabolized by the hens and provides material for the production of the shell.

What we feed our spirit will strengthen our protective shell. The formula for this food for our production of protection is really as simple as small bits of oyster shell. I have written about it in previous blogs; daily prayer, daily scripture reading, weekly family home evening and partaking of the sacrament.

If we have small unseen cracks in our spiritual shell, just like the eggs, they will be made apparent by heat. The heat does not come from inside the egg and it does not come from within us. The boiling water manifests the crack in the egg shell. The pressures from peer groups and secular influences in our life will bring out the cracks in our spiritual shells.

There is no spiritual super glue. It is a maxim that prevention is better than treatment after the fact. If you find a crack in your spiritual shell, go back to eating the spiritual oyster shell calcium and this will strengthen the shell and prevent intrusion of unwanted things.

We all need constant protection in our lives.