Tree Carvings

            I think for most of us that have grown up in the Intermountain West have a special relationship with nature.  We all have a place in our past that was special to us.  A place that we loved visiting.  A place that we can still see vividly in our mind’s eye today.

 

            Stop and think for a minute.

 

            Can you see it?

 

            Maybe your eyes just closed for a minute, or, if you’re like me, your eyes relax and you focus straight through the computer screen. 

 

            But I know you see your place.

 

            Perhaps your place was somewhere close growing up like your backyard, or a field in your neighborhood where you went exploring.

 

            Maybe it was a little farther like a relative’s farm, a favorite park, or a lake where you could skip stones.

 

            My place was somewhere I visited for exactly four days each summer as a boy.  It is a place where I was safe.  Somewhere that I could be myself and be rid of my fear.  To be surrounded by people and alone with God.

 

            My place is Twin Peaks Bible Camp nestled outside of the tiny town of Collbran in Western Colorado.  The camp was run by my Great Aunt and Uncle whom I knew loved me and watched out for me.  I spent six summers in a row as a camper.

 

            Throughout the other 361 days of the year, camp was something I literally dreamt about.  In my dreams I could taste the spring water coming out of the four copper pipes that served as our ever flowing fountain.  I could feel myself wiping off the fine dirt of the tetherball court after tripping on the exposed aspen roots.  I could hear the songs being sung and the prayers being said in the chapel.  And I could smell the wonderful food that was being prepared for all our hungry mouths, three-times a day.

 

            I don’t often think about camp as an adult, or realize what an influence it had on my life.  I can see camp in my mind just as clearly today as when I would leap from my Dad’s truck and go bounding off to reunite with family and friends I hadn’t seen in a year.

 

            While most of the names and faces have now faded from memory, the place, the setting is still there. 

 

            Over by the firewood pile, just up from the chapel, three aspens grow.  On the trunk of the tree closest to the pile, are my initials, carved by an 11 year-old boy. 

           

            And 19 years later, that boy, deep inside, can revisit those trees with a smile on his face and a fond memory of a place that he so loved.

Resistance Is Futile

In the quietest and most remote, secret places in my mind, I often wondered if what I was doing on my mission for the LDS Church was ethical. An excommunication and a decade later, I still am timid about bringing this topic up for fear of terrifically offending people. If I do, forgive me, but try and follow my logic and set aside your pathos for the subject matter.

Where is the line between faith and ethics? Is having a prescribed set of beliefs enough to try and convince other people that they are wrong in the way they are living their lives? Is it ethical to try and change centuries of local culture, language, religion and beliefs on one’s own belief that you hold The truth?

Christianity’s history is rife with horrible atrocities committed in the name of God. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the forced conversion of the Native North and South Americans are all classic examples of people that most likely believed they were called of the Christian God to do His will. Looking back can we say that what they did was ethical? Probably not.

Think of the story of Robin Hood (either the Disney version or the one with Kevin Costner and his striking English accent). At the end of both, King Richard returns to his throne and blesses the marriage of Robin and Marian. But where did the King return from? He was off fighting the crusades, capturing the holy city of Jerusalem and slaughtering every Muslim in his way to do so. Because Western Civilization is so firmly rooted in Christianity we don’t even blink at the thought that King Richard’s war was not an ethical one.

Now, am I comparing to what I did while I was on my mission to the Crusades? Of course not. No one was put to death if they slammed the door in my face. In fact, the only people I ever thought about threatening with their lives were my companions (and only then for making me wake up to study Russian). No, LDS missionaries have moved beyond war tactics and instead are trained in sales tactics. Many of them are very good at it. While I believed that I was called of God to be in the Baltics and Belarus to preach the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, the ethical line for me came in co-opting entire lives. There was no such thing as the Lithuanian LDS Church or the Estonian LDS Church. It was and is all one church and that church is dominated by a quirky little place called Utah.

If you’ve ever traveled to the bordering states of Utah, you know that the Utah culture pretty much ends at the state line (SE Idaho excepted). Try translating that culture of religion into a foreign country and you are met with little success.

My biggest problem was watching these countries that I loved so much, struggle back on their feet after 70 years of Soviet occupation. When I got there they had 10 years under their belts of independence. One decade is not enough to revive a language, or a culture. But there we were all the same, trying to convince them that their ENTIRE existence was futile. That in the end, it meant nothing if they didn’t listen to us.

I sat on a bench with a Russian professor in downtown Vilnius and he wisely pointed out to me that the Russians could not accept another failure. They had just lost their lands, their political ideology, their leaders, in fact their entire way of life for three generations. It would simply have been too much for them to accept that their religion had failed them too.

To which I asked him if he had ever heard of the Borg . . .

Bug Bites

Apparently bugs only bite me when I don’t have insurance.  The past 48 hours I have been hobbling around the house and campus with a swollen, red leg caused by a spider bite.  The venom of the bite made my leg tremendously tender to the touch, but worse in my estimation, gave me a fever of over 100.  All of my family and good friends have urged me to go to the doctor to get it checked out.  Normally I would, but I haven’t had health insurance since I left my job last April.

I’m reflecting on this for the first time because I assumed that nothing would happen.  I find great irony in the fact that I am legally required to insure my vehicle in order to operate it on the roads here in Utah.  Along with my car insurance, I have renter’s insurance to cover my “things” where I live.  I have no problem buying traveler’s insurance to cover any changes that may occur on a trip.  But, when I look at the cost of insuring myself, I’ve decided to pass.

I suppose I should know better.  The last time I didn’t have health insurance was when I was on a mission for the LDS Church.  I’m not sure what the critter was, but I was bitten in the forests of Latvia and ended up with viral Meningitis.  That had me laid up for three weeks.  (If you ever want a real thrill, try getting a spinal tap in an old Soviet hospital).  I saw the bill on that hospital stay and I could have purchased a few new Skoda’s or Peugeot’s with the amount that was charged.

Why is it that I have to purchase insurance for my car and I’m not required to purchase for my body?  It seems to me that our priorities in this state and in this nation are askew.  Tacking on $1600 a year for insurance sounds reasonable to most, but for a poor college student, that is not an insignificant amount.  At my previous employer, the total for the year was only $650 for a single person.

It seems to create the have’s and have not’s.  I’m a single person so $1600 is the lowest dollar amount available to students.  Thank God I don’t have a family or I wouldn’t even be able to think about purchasing insurance.

In the end I’ll probably just ride this spider bite out.  If it get’s worse then I’ll think about getting it checked out and passing on the costs to those of you that can afford to have health insurance.