On the meaning of life -- and the road in between...
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.—Minnie Louise Haskins, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd ed. (1953), 239.
Today I learned that one of my life's heroes took his own life. Jim wasn't a relative -- just a close friend; the kind you would name a child for. Even though it happened way back in 1966 when I was living in Texas, it has stirred my emotions, and so I utter...
Many moons ago I enjoyed reading the life story of Ernest Hemingway. It was a long and detailed book. Hemingway died in the foyer of his home in Ketchum, just outside Sun Valley, Idaho. The last sentence in his life story reads "He slipped in two shells, lowered the gun butt carefully to the floor, leaned forward, pressed the twin barrels against his forehead just above the eyebrows, and tripped both triggers."
Hemingway represents one extreme. My father, who died in his 99th year, represents the other. Dad always said he wasn't afraid of dying but he didn't care much for the "how" part. By the time he died he knew no one. He had finally quit praying to Jesus to keep himself alive, and his poor earthly body was as vulnerable as tissue paper -- literally, no exaggeration. He couldn't eat by himself; couldn't digest his food -- he was really helpless. A few weeks before he died my Bishop came to our home one morning and said, "I am here to offer my services to release Owen from this life." I told him "No, I can't let him go." I was too selfish. Untill that time Dad would sit in his chair and if he thought he was alone he would continually pray to Jesus, "Jesus, please help me to live, please help me, please help me." One day I said to him, "you need to go join mother; if you keep praying all day long to Jesus He will keep you here forever." Dad never took my advice on anything. Nine months before he died he quit walking around the block. I told him, "if you quit walking you will be dead within a year." But this day he took my advice. He quit praying to stay alive and within a week or so he was gone -- back to my mother, back to the presence of Heavenly Father where he surely and most deservedly belonged.
After father died, I felt terribly guilty about telling him not to pray to keep living anymore, but I have since come to realize there is a real lesson here. It is that we see the world not as it is, but as we want it to be. People speak to us and we hear not what they say but mostly what we want to hear them say. And sometimes we pray, not for what we need but what our selfish minds think we need!
When Alene and I moved to Wyoming in 1986 we started a new life. We sold almost every earthly thing of value we had -- not much -- but almost everything. We never felt more free in our entire married lives. We existed for awhile on a spiritual plane that we had never experienced before or since. Because it didn't last. Within a few months we began collecting more stuff around us -- not any where near as much as before -- no horses, no barns, no house larger than our need. And we have lived very comfortably since. We learned a great lesson through it all. We now know that we can take the advice of that old sage Henry David Thoreau regarding the edifices of man and "the amount of hammered stone they leave." After all, as he said, "The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter." Thoreau found true freedom and joy in life itself. He wrote: "As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." Now we know that we can loose all of our material stuff and life will not only be swell, it will probably be a lot better. There are few things in life that truly rank higher than being free of the things that pull us down.
Suicide is really such a cheap cop out!
Composed in 2009
Note: In the 1951 photo of the fishing group in the page header, stand men who were uncles and distant cousins. The author is the youngest one in the group. Such memories sure can pull the heart strings!
Many moons ago I enjoyed reading the life story of Ernest Hemingway. It was a long and detailed book. Hemingway died in the foyer of his home in Ketchum, just outside Sun Valley, Idaho. The last sentence in his life story reads "He slipped in two shells, lowered the gun butt carefully to the floor, leaned forward, pressed the twin barrels against his forehead just above the eyebrows, and tripped both triggers."
Hemingway represents one extreme. My father, who died in his 99th year, represents the other. Dad always said he wasn't afraid of dying but he didn't care much for the "how" part. By the time he died he knew no one. He had finally quit praying to Jesus to keep himself alive, and his poor earthly body was as vulnerable as tissue paper -- literally, no exaggeration. He couldn't eat by himself; couldn't digest his food -- he was really helpless. A few weeks before he died my Bishop came to our home one morning and said, "I am here to offer my services to release Owen from this life." I told him "No, I can't let him go." I was too selfish. Untill that time Dad would sit in his chair and if he thought he was alone he would continually pray to Jesus, "Jesus, please help me to live, please help me, please help me." One day I said to him, "you need to go join mother; if you keep praying all day long to Jesus He will keep you here forever." Dad never took my advice on anything. Nine months before he died he quit walking around the block. I told him, "if you quit walking you will be dead within a year." But this day he took my advice. He quit praying to stay alive and within a week or so he was gone -- back to my mother, back to the presence of Heavenly Father where he surely and most deservedly belonged.
After father died, I felt terribly guilty about telling him not to pray to keep living anymore, but I have since come to realize there is a real lesson here. It is that we see the world not as it is, but as we want it to be. People speak to us and we hear not what they say but mostly what we want to hear them say. And sometimes we pray, not for what we need but what our selfish minds think we need!
When Alene and I moved to Wyoming in 1986 we started a new life. We sold almost every earthly thing of value we had -- not much -- but almost everything. We never felt more free in our entire married lives. We existed for awhile on a spiritual plane that we had never experienced before or since. Because it didn't last. Within a few months we began collecting more stuff around us -- not any where near as much as before -- no horses, no barns, no house larger than our need. And we have lived very comfortably since. We learned a great lesson through it all. We now know that we can take the advice of that old sage Henry David Thoreau regarding the edifices of man and "the amount of hammered stone they leave." After all, as he said, "The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter." Thoreau found true freedom and joy in life itself. He wrote: "As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." Now we know that we can loose all of our material stuff and life will not only be swell, it will probably be a lot better. There are few things in life that truly rank higher than being free of the things that pull us down.
Suicide is really such a cheap cop out!
Composed in 2009
Note: In the 1951 photo of the fishing group in the page header, stand men who were uncles and distant cousins. The author is the youngest one in the group. Such memories sure can pull the heart strings!