Hair

We had a stake swim party this past week. There were three interesting hair-related thoughts I had, all related to different types of hair.

One was seeing a dude that was just covered in back and chest hair. We're talking a Sasquatch coat here. I've never been so thankful to have so little body hair than when I saw this man at the pool.

Second was a conversation I had with my bishop and several other ward members. I generally shave on Sundays for church and on days I go into the office. This past week I didn't go into the office, so hadn't shaved for close to a week. I didn't think much of it but had a decent beard going, which apparently threw a lot of people off.

Last was my daughter. The sun was going down and those intense, colorful last few rays shone through her red hair and made it glow like the dying embers of a late night campfire. It was truly stunning.

The Lesser Law of Correlation

While I've heard or read a few different people talking recently about how boring, unspiritual, or somewhat stifling our church meetings are sometimes, especially sacrament meetings, I rarely feel the same way.

I feel like I get out of church meetings what I put into it. The best way to get something out of temple attendance, sacrament meeting attendance, participating in sunday school classes, scripture reading, prayers, etc. is to go into it with a question in mind. Whatever the topic, start thinking and asking questions about it, and very quickly everything you see will be focused around that topic. It's pretty amazing to watch.

One of our local leaders recently gave a presentation regarding how many of the changes coming from church headquarters are actually moving away from the bureaucratic, centralized direction of the past in favor of more direction from local leaders. Examples of this are the new church handbook, recent changes to the Duty to God program, the ward council structure, etc.

If anything, they are putting the ball in our court to see what we will do with it without being commanded in all things. If we're not ready for the higher law, we're going to go back to correlation and centralization. I don't think that's good for anyone, but if we're only ready for the lesser law at this time, it's all we're going to get.

Family

You occasionally hear people talking about families, love at home, etc. and how it's sometimes family members that get treated the worst. We put on a respectful act for others, but at home we let the real us go. How is it that the people we love the most are the people we treat the poorest?

As I've thought about that train of thought a little, I think it's a little disingenuous. The thought is a nice one, that we should treat our family members better. However, there are two things about the above "poor treatment" of family members that may really show the love we have for each other.

The first may be a little bit of a stretch, but I still think it's important. We are ourselves around our family. We don't put on a show for them like we do for other people. Yes, sometimes you hide things from your mom that you don't want her to know you're doing, but for the most part, it's raw, not an act.

The second is the most important. Forgiveness. No matter how many times family members have arguments, disagreements, fights, provocations, etc., we come back together and immediately forgive. We still spend time together, have fun together, and love each other.

With other relationships, if a friend causes that many problems, they may eventually be cut loose but not with family. Family is forever. Of course, there are extreme counter examples to both, but my guess is that forgiveness is the rule in families more often than it is not.

Wood Badge Spirit

There truly is a spirit to Wood Badge. It has the power to change lives. The courses I have been involved with in the past have done so for me and for many others that I know. I was able to serve on another course recently, and it didn't disappoint.

I'll write more about some of my experiences and feelings soon, but for now I wanted to mention how true it is that for anything good, there is an evil force working against it.

If the people who are too scared/cool/busy/etc. to go, including members of several Bishoprics and Stake Presidencies that I know, not to mention people who consider themselves to be pretty dedicated Scouters, had any idea what awaited them at Wood Badge, they would run to it. I know some people who have seen enough others go through it that the reason they avoid it is because they don't want to commit to the increased dedication that results from it. Most people just have no idea.

I really liken recruiting for Wood Badge to the mission: visiting everyone you know, telling them about something that is special to you and that you know will make their lives better. Just like investigators on the mission will be scared off by family members, nosy neighbors, or an evil spirit, the same happens with Wood Badge. I've seen enough miracles to know that the right people will eventually make it to the right course.

How great it would be if we had ten times as many members of the church Wood Badge trained! Oh that I were an angel.

Changing or Cheating

Some ward members started a fitness challenge, and I'm joining in. I do much better at keeping myself in shape when I have someone other than myself that I'm accountable to. The chance at winning cash doesn't hurt either. I've done well at a few of these challenges done through work or with family.

The funny thing is that I see the same behavior in some participating in this challenge as I've seen in previous ones. The behavior I'm referring to is nitpicking the rules of the challenge.

The point of a challenge like this is to spend a 2-3 months following more healthy practices with the hope that you'll stay in the habit after the challenge is over. So it's strange when a challenge barely starts and everyone starts immediately looking for ways to bend the rules.

The rules are things like eating fruits and vegetables, exercising, not eating late at night, drinking lots of water, and laying off the sweets. It's pretty simple.

One good brother justified his willingness to bend the rules and eat things he shouldn't, because he claims that cutting out certain foods simply isn't sustainable. I'll give him that. Making a change for a few months and then picking the habit back up after it's over is probably less than useful. On the other hand, going cold turkey and dropping something that you never thought you could forgo can actually show you it's possible and reduce your cravings for that particular food or drink.

I know, because I've done it myself, going a year without carbonated drinks just to see if I could. I drink them occasionally now, but not near as much as I used to. If you're so hooked on a food or drink that you don't think you could ever give it up, that's probably a signal that you do need to give it up.

I'm okay with him cheating, though, because it's less competition for me as I go for the big prize.

Yoga

I had a strange conversation with my boss about a month ago that made more sense today.

It was just the two of us in his office, and somehow the conversation turned to Yoga. I really don't remember how, and it doesn't matter. He mentioned he had started doing it at home. Fine. He had some DVDs he was using to learn it. Okay. You feel like you're standing or sitting there doing nothing, breathing deeply, and you end up way sore the next day; it's a great workout. Sounds interesting.

Then it gets weird. He starts saying something and then pauses for a second and says, "I know you're Mormon, and I really don't want you to take this the wrong way, but what I really like about Yoga is how it's all about the individual. It's about what you do to benefit yourself personally. You can introspect and modify things however best suits your needs."

Okay, so what does that have to do with being Mormon? I could kind of guess where he was going with it, that he obviously has some issue where he thinks the LDS Church is too controlling or something. It was just hard to say. Last I remember we teach about the importance of agency, self-reliance, and similar doctrines, but I understand the confusion caused by being cautioned against detrimental behaviors which often serve to remove agency.

So turn off the wayback machine, and we're at a conference that has some early morning Yoga for attendees. Not having ever done Yoga before, I'm interested and go. I knew he was interested, having told me previously he likes it, so I tell him he should come tomorrow. Then the connection is made. He says that he's not into organized religion or organized exercise.

So he apparently has this little schpiel he gives, and apparently the first time he only gave me the half about not liking organized exercise, forgetting to mention organized religion other than to ensure me he wasn't trying to demean my choice in subscribing to organized religion.

It makes me wonder if I sometimes tell a story so many times it becomes old and memorized to the point where I go on auto-pilot and don't pay attention to whether I told all the important parts. Maybe it's kind of like when you copy and paste a sentence, and it doesn't quite fit in its new location. So you delete a word or two and fix the capitalization and punctuation to make it fit without realizing that it still doesn't make sense.

I'm not totally sure how he knows I'm LDS, since we've never talked about it, although I have some guesses. I don't take offense to his choice to reject organized religion. I'm assuming his contempt is general to all organized religions. While I understand it better now, so it's less strange, it's still a bit off that two discussions on exercise have brought in at least a mention of religion. Granted, Yoga has religious roots, but the way it's practiced here in the states is pretty nonreligious in nature.

Now I'll demonstrate the wrong way

Among the many things Wood Badge teaches are diversity, teamwork, and listening.

I had an interesting experience where the staff of a Wood Badge course I'm serving on was going through some training. The goal in these trainings is to be prepared to teach but to also practice the very things we're teaching in order to become a high performing team just in time for the course.

We were in a little bit of a hurry, trying to wrap up in time for some things a few people had to get to, and it had been a long day.

I should also point out that there were several of the staff who had served on one or more courses together previously, and throughout the time we've met together, they are always talking about things that happened in other courses. Most of the time, the Course Director was very good to explain what they were talking about and point out that there shouldn't be any types of insider jokes and discussions. That's part of the diversity thing. If you have to have it explained to you, however, that still makes you feel like an outsider.

Brother Lindsay, who will be serving as the course Senior Patrol Leader was trying to help keep the agenda moving along so we could wrap up. I have to say that he is one of the most interesting, kind, funny people I've ever met and is obviously a wonderful leader. However, he totally blew off some of the core principles we had just barely gone over in his hurry to get through everything.

We were planning ideas for a campfire, and when we got to having some type of spiritual or touching story as the fire is dying down, he pointed at one of the other staff members who happens to be a Bishop and volunteered him to do that piece, and we moved on. Whoa, what just happened? I actually had a story in mind that I was thinking about. It's a dear experience to me, so I didn't want to go blabbing about it, but it would be very applicable in such a situation. I still have a chance to share it, as I'll just talk to the guy in charge of the campfire. I just have to go out of my way to do it now. If it wasn't important to me or if in some way I actually felt like I had been slighted, I'd just blow it off and stew about it.

For me, the incident wasn't a big deal (in spite of my blogging about it now), and doesn't change my opinion of him; it just helps to make me more aware of how hard it is to be on your game all the time. If a man as good as him fails at using the principles we've just barely been talking about, how much more do I need to try to make sure I'm not forgetting the same things? That is part of why we do so many meetings before the course, so we can build relationships with each other before the course starts. It's always a work in progress.

I can totally see where some of the problems arose in the old Wood Badge. There used to be these insider groups that ran all the courses, and there wasn't a good way to get on a staff. It was always just the same group. This led to some inbreeding and stagnation of sorts that put people off. Because of this, they put some rules in place with the current course where once you've been a Course Director, you can no longer serve on a Wood Badge staff, and a certain percentage of every staff has to be comprised of first time staffers. I think this is a good thing, but it doesn't prevent all problems.

Confusion at Christmas

I was looking for a chapter in the Book of Mormon that talked about Mary, Christ's birth, his baptism, and his life. It's something I shared fairly often on my mission. I wanted to find it, as it's Christmas time, but for whatever reason I couldn't remember where it was. I googled it, and surprisingly had a really hard time getting it to come up. Eventually I found it by looking through the chapter headings of the first and second books of Nephi. It was in the second half of 1 Nephi 11. Through some footnotes, I was also able to find Alma 7, which teaches a similar lesson.

What I did find when I was googling the topic kind of took me off guard. I suppose it shouldn't have, since I've read other similar anti stuff before, but I didn't realize how much debate there was out there on the particular topic of the virgin birth.

I don't like wasting a ton of time on this kind of stuff, as I'm aware of how it sucks away the spirit. It ends up being kind of a vicious cycle, where the more anti stuff you read, the less the spirit is present, and the more confused you become. That, of course, is a specific sign that something is wrong, but if enough confusion is present, you can actually be so confused that you interpret everything backwards. That is, you may incorrectly interpret that your confusion means the church is wrong, rather than that the anti literature is wrong.

I'm not going to give them any link love, but they're easy enough to find if you really want. In several sites I glanced through, however, it became apparent that they were all parroting the same basic argument. So one person put together this little logic chain, and everyone has copied that person. One guy even talked about how much research he'd put into his writeup, although it became quite clear that he was relying completely on secondary and tertiary sources. What I mean by that is that his research was just copying and pasting anti literature from other people's websites.

This particular guy that claimed he did so much research did have a relatively comprehensive review of the anti literature on the topic. Among his claims are that we believe that Mary was not a virgin and that she committed incest (sex with both her father and brother). The way their logic chain works is that they quote Ezra Taft Benson, Brigham Young, and others pointing out that the words of a modern prophet trump the written words of past prophets (i.e., the scriptures). Then they quote, out of context, some early church leaders saying that Jesus was conceived the same way we were, physically, not by a spirit. Since the modern prophet disagreed with what it says in the Book of Mormon and Bible, we therefore believe something different than is written in the scriptures. We don't actually teach that, but then they claim that we have changed our teachings to be more in line with the real Christian world, so we don't even realize that we believe something totally different. What? Do you feel the confusion yet? If you do, it's because this is completely false and wrong.

It's practically ridiculous and a waste of time to even talk about, and yet here I am.

Even in the contextless quotes I read on these sites, not having been back to read the primary sources yet myself, I see nothing in any of them that is out of line with what we believe nor with what the scriptures teach. There are several general authorities who say Jesus was conceived the same way we are. Okay, so conception, as defined by Princeton's WordNet, is "the act of becoming pregnant; fertilization of an ovum by a spermatozoon". Just like when the rest of us were conceived, an egg was fertilized.

The Holy Ghost does not have a body, so of course would not have sperm. The Father does. I don't pretend to know exactly how this process happened, but I do know that artificial insemination is a fairly common process nowadays. While the joke is likely often told about the doctor impregnating thousands of women, no one really thinks of the doctor who facilitates the pregnancy as the father. The sperm donor is the physical father. Is it a stretch that the Holy Ghost delivered the Father's sperm through an act other than intercourse?

The obvious anti answer to this will generally include the term 'cognitive dissonance' or 'belief disconfirmation' or some such other description of the psychological process by which one changes or ignores certain components of their beliefs that are discongruent. Then, of course, if you ask the person you're talking to how they think Jesus was conceived, if they'll even give you a straight answer, they'll say that there is no father or that Jesus is his own father or the Holy Ghost is the father or they'll get into the whole Trinity thing about how they're 3 yet 1 at the same time, etc. In all that, they won't be able to explain the process by which conception took place. To me, their statements make less sense and are filled with just as much cognitive dissonance or belief disconfirmation, if not more than what we believe, especially given that while others disagree with what we teach, they also disagree greatly with each other.

I do not believe it is blasphemy that we can become as God, seeing that many scriptures teach that we may inherit God's glory. I believe it is a great blessing that we have such a potential. Isn't it wonderful, as Nephi and Alma taught in the verses I linked to in the first paragraph above, that Jesus condescended to be with us and suffer the things we suffer so that he might have direct knowledge with which to bless us and help us? That is the story of Christmas. It is not confusion and debate as to the nature of God but rather an understanding that God knows what we go through and loves us.

Predisposition

I was just talking to a friend of mine about her efforts to transform into a morning person. It's something I've struggled with myself. I always worry on campouts that I'll be outed as a terrible leader, because everyone but me is awake, ready to pack up and head out. I haven't had that actually happen, since I usually do wake up earlier on campouts due to discomfort, but I'm not generally the first one up and at 'em. I was 20 minutes late to the gym this morning, because I had a hard time getting up after being up late watching a movie.

I've wondered sometimes if it really matters. Like this blogger says, maybe we're just born different. Why should we let ourselves be discriminated against? Why not push our employers to let us change to a 10-6 or 11-7 work schedule? Maybe we'd be better off moving to the East Coast and then working remotely for a company located on the West Coast. Perhaps there's an outsourcing market for that. Companies that don't want to completely offshore their work could hire slews of night people that live in a planned community in the middle of West Virginia where the curfew would be 4-9 a.m.

Then I remember Ben Franklin's refrain, which is mirrored in the Doctrine and Covenants, about going to bed early and waking up early. An important piece of context that really only softens the blow slightly is the part of the verse that says not to sleep longer than is necessary. I think we can understand that the point is, at least in part, that we shouldn't just sleep our lives away. Focusing just on that part, it would be easy to justify that sleeping in until 10 is okay if you went to bed at 3 a.m., since 7 hours of sleep would not be considered too much. The problem is that it's hard to misinterpret the Lord's point about going to bed and arising early. Of course this doesn't account for night shifts and other strange work schedules, and I'm not going to address that here.

Jumping back a little to verse 121 may provide a little more context. Light-mindedness and lust are more likely to be present at night than in the wee morning hours. Larry Lawrence explained in this last General Conference, "I have always believed that nothing really good happens late at night". It's probably true.

So even though us night people may be more productive at night, it ends up being a problem, since that's also when temptation and weakness are most prevalent. Of course, not everyone is going to just start giving into temptation simply because they are up late.

Looking to the Word of Wisdom, where it is explained that this counsel is adapted to the weakest of the Saints, it helps to understand the all or nothing nature of many of the commandments. There are people who could drink a glass of wine with dinner a couple nights a week and be fine, but for the benefit of those who are predisposed alcoholics, it is completely forbidden for all. That said, it took 100 years for the Word of Wisdom to be phased in as a requirement for all, though even now there remains some debate on the subject.

I'm going to go a direction here that I almost decided not to go, but I think it's an important point of comparison that has helped me. I want to first say that I have friends who I love and respect that are gay, and I'm involved in a local group that seeks to tear down the walls of hatred and misunderstanding related to sexual identity. Hopefully this doesn't serve to cause more contention in the matter, as we know there has been plenty of it to go around already.

If you haven't read that first link I posted, go read it now and then come back. The call to end discrimination by morning people against night people mirrors in some small way the fight against discrimination related to sexual identity. Please remember, I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't marginalize sexual identity issues but rather reframes to some extent the morning/night person issue.

Of course we shouldn't discriminate against anyone for any reason. I've been treated poorly for being LDS. I feel most of society couldn't care less about the plight of us colorblind (or color deficient as the more commonly accurate term). I have gay friends who have been treated unfairly. It's not right. The movie Chocolat is a good example of the senseless hatred that can arise from treating someone poorly because of perceived differences and self-righteousness.

That said, taking a predisposition for certain weaknesses as a challenge to work on and overcome is an important part of our sojourn on earth. We shouldn't discriminate against others for the issues they have to deal with but rather focus on our own problems and be available to provide support for others in their quests as they need it. Likewise, to embrace our predispositions and flaunt them as natural and impossible to deal with is disingenuous.

It is very hard to balance all these issues without being branded insensitive or worse. My point is that as I work on my own predisposition as a night person, it helps me to know that others have struggled with and overcome predispositions for much more difficult things and helps me to understand, even if just to a limited extent, what they go through.

Something that has helped me as I try to arise earlier (maybe not at 4 a.m. like my dad and father-in-law) is to schedule an early time before work at the gym with other people. Getting my exercise in has helped me get in shape, and knowing there are others expecting me to be there has helped keep me motivated when it's so easy to slip back to sleep (yes, it's happened on more than one occasion). Get up at 6 a.m. enough days in a row, and you'll find your body will wake itself up at that time even without the alarm clock, and it's a lot easier to go to bed by 10 p.m., since you'll be so wiped out from being up so early. As controversial as President Packer's last talk in General Conference was, the advice he gives us is important in overcoming whatever we happen to be working on. Decide to exercise your God-given agency and don't look back. Even as inviting as those warm blankets are.

A Tale of Two Unit Commissioners

I'm serving on a Wood Badge staff within the next year, so I've started reaching out to various people I know, from family to friends to fellow scouters and members of current and past wards and stakes to see who is interested in moving to the next level.

It's always interesting to see the various reactions of people. It runs the whole range from apathy to being excited about learning to being burned out from too much training to being worried about gaining a testimony of Scouting.

I talked to a member of our stake YM presidency. Just in case you didn't know, that makes him a Unit Commissioner in Scouting parlance, and no, he didn't know that's what he was. He basically said that he thinks Scouting is outdated and not interesting to the boys. He did leave it open that he could possibly be convinced to go. This is the guy I really need to get to WB.

Then I talked to a colleague I have both professional and church connections to. He's also in the stake YM presidency (of a neighboring stake). He knows very well that he's a Unit Commissioner, knows what he's supposed to do, and even does it. That blew me away. It will be great for him to go, but if I could only choose one of the two to attend the course, I'd choose the first, because he obviously needs it more.

Just to touch on my comment above about being afraid to gain a testimony of Scouting, I've heard similar comments from a few different people. One was a SM friend who was worried that going to WB would turn him into a super-nerdy-scouter along the lines of a mutual acquaintance. I told him that the fact that he was aware of such a thing as super-nerdy-scoutiness was sufficient to ensure he wouldn't become that. Then last week, Sister Smyth and I were out to dinner with some friends. One of the guys had been to WB also, and the other was thinking about it. For the one thinking about it, his worry was literally that he had seen the increased dedication and what change had come upon the two of us who had been, and he wasn't sure if he was ready to be hit with something like that. I confirmed with him that if he wasn't ready to gain a testimony of the scouting program, he shouldn't come to WB. But I hope he does.