Books

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Dear Paul, Melanie, Rob, Roice, and Ben,

cc: file, Diane Cluff, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.

Welcome to "Thoughtlets." This is a weekly review of an idea, belief, thought, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you, my children, with an electronic copy to on-line extended family members. Any of you can ask me not to clutter your mail box at any time.

"As I was finishing the thoughtlet last night the sun computer decided to reboot. The Mail Tool I use does not have a save option like Eudora, nor does it have a spell check. Since it was midnight, I just went to sleep. Didn't even take time to read from any of the books I have started.

I have got in the habit of getting up early on Sunday mornings and ironing my shirts. Normally I just use the time to think about my week and other important stuff. Yesterday, however, I turned on the television and flipped through the channels until I got to channel 23, which is AMC here. There was Spencer Tracy sitting in a boat with a large shark next to the boat. I instantly recognized the movie as `The Old Man and The Sea.' I left the TV on and started ironing shirts. Yes, I am the same guy who never wanted you kids to watch television on the Sabbath. There was probably less than a third of the movie left at 7:00 Sunday morning.

As I ironed shirts and the movie finished up my mind went back to fifth grade and Mr. Holeman's book reports. I probably have time and space mixed up, because I remember the old Junior High Building down across from what is now Southern Utah University and not the South Elementry, closer to the new High School where Mr. Holeman's class was. I remember getting extra credit for drawing pictures of something from the book. I remember Melissa Thorley getting very upset at me because I read all 23 of the Tarzen books and drawn pictures for extra credit. And in my mind I tied the movie to 5th grade. The movie was released in 1958, about the same time I was in 5th grade. With no firm details in my mind, it seems like Ernest Hemingway's book `The Old Man and the Sea,' which was written in 1952, was the first book I read from which I actually thought I felt someone else's emotions. As I ironed the white shirts, I stop long enough to make note of phrases in the movie which resonated:

`I just went out too far!' `A man can be destroyed but not defeated!' `What if they came in the night? I'll fight!' `He fought a useless fight.' A Cuban tourist looking down at the remains going out to sea: `I didn't know sharks had such beautiful shaped tails.' To the young boy he mentored: `My hands will be ok in a couple of days. I know how to take care of them.'

As the camera zoomed in on the rope burns on the old man's knarred hands, my mind jumped to my Dad's hands and to my Grandpa Hafen's hands. Then I looked at my lily whites, ironing a white shirt, and I longed for a different place in time and space. Over the last few years I have discovered more tears than I ever thought existed, outside of the stories written in books.

There is something magical about a good book. Something which triggers our imagination and allows us to be transported across the ages and through the universe. Quoting from `Mapping the Next Millennium' by Stephen S. Hall (.../9817.html):

`The brain shrinks territory like a map, but astronomer Alan Dressler would argue that maps also stretch the brain. In creating or looking at a map, scale is not brought down to human dimensions, but rather human thought inflates or shrinks in order to inhabit the size of the newly accessible geographic domain - cosmologists think big and molecular biologists think small, because those are the dimensions of the domains they think about all the time. The process demands not only intellect, but creativity and imagination. Dressler describes it this way: `My approach is to try to get people to drop human scale completely. And when they think of something, they go into that scale. If you're going to think galaxies, you've got be galaxy-like. You've got to be God-like. You better be able to move, you better be able to think, "I can travel from this galaxy to the next and hold one in my hands." And that you can do. But if you don't expand yourself to that scale, I think it's hopeless.' Dressler seems to suggest that humans project themselves into the worlds around them by some mysterious process of geographic (or spatial) imagination; the map is the launching pad for that act of imagination.'

Just as maps launch those of us with some spatial intelligence, books launch any who have an imagination. Maybe this is why I am so enamored with those who are able to write clearly and concisely and in a way which stirs my soul. My ongoing struggle with words came out last night as Melanie, Rob, and I played Boggle. The score was respectively: 32:18:10. There are those I know to whom words seem to come so naturally.

Your Mom for instance. However, this week she called me for the first time in months, and she was so upset she was at a complete loss for words. After learning she had gone to a family reunion last weekend, I assumed it was the Sharp family, and had called her Aunt Martha Sharrock to ask if she felt your Mom would change her mind about me. She told me no, at least not in the near term. Your Mom said she was upset because I was `checking up on her,' and what she does is none of my business. Maybe she knows me better than I know myself. Maybe there is some unconscious truth to her accusation. From the overreaction, I drew the conclusion there is some kind of a relationship, however slight, between your Mom's fear of death, Martha's husband's suicide, and how your Mom feels about me. Death can be very scary, even in context, and even in books.

Remember Rick Hawthorne? Remember when we got news his son Roice was killed in a freak car accident? Roice probably knows Rick better than I do now, as he has visited him (and his daughter Tracie) in Florida, and went to a wedding with them in California recently. Repeating myself, for those who don't know, I had the opportunity to teach Rick and Pat when I was a missionary, and the opportunity to confirm Rick and give him the gift of the Holy Ghost. He is now a published author (see http://www.rfhawthorne.com), and every once in a while he writes me a note which touches me to my core (see .../9728.html). This week I received the following e-mail from Rick (paragraph breaks removed):

`Roice, Having just read your 16 and 24 May 98 Thoughtlets, once again, I was spiritually moved upon by your writing, and now must respond in some way. ... I want to tell you that I know the Lord blesses the faithful. Sometimes simultaneously through heart-breaking challenges. It's as if He had to hand-pick a trial, specifically tailored for you to master. One that would epitimize the most difficult thing you could face -- perhaps even more difficult than death -- a divorce. Not that He planned it, necessarily, but knew ahead of time, that you would face such a challenge. ... Losing money wouldn't be a challenge for you. You are intelligent enough to make it back. No, that wouldn't break you -- spiritually or temporally. Kids going through the growing pains of exercising free-agency. Now, this is tough on you, as it is me. But we both know, that all of your children and all of mine are choice spirits, born under the covenant and are all good, honest people with caring hearts. That won't break you either. We both know, through all our concerns for them, that they will be alright in the end. ... The challenge you are now facing, to me, is the most difficult hurdle that Roice Nelson could ever face. Circumstances which seemingly, destroy the very fabric of everything we hold sacred and important. A kind of rejection, a kind of eternal cancer that is very difficult to see any kind of mending opportunity. With death, as we experienced, there is an automatic mending tool. The fact is we die. The Plan of Salvation allows for those temporary separations. We know, through our faith, that reunions will occur all over the earth, with living families being reunited with our ressurrected dead, the morning of the First Ressurrection. With divorce, I know for you, there doesn't appear to be an acceptable solution. Herein lies your greatest challenge. A challenge which is going to make you an exalted God. ... To some, even in the church, your circumstances may seem too easy, maybe even a blessing. Each of us, faces challenges, that when kept in perspective of each one's abilities, experiences, and short comings, are just as difficult for them, as other peoples challenges are for them. None of them are easy. The trick is exercising enough faith, to place the problem in the Lord's hands, and allow him to guide us through it. I believe, deep down in my heart, with every fiber of my being that somehow, in ways that we know not of, that the challenges you face will be successfully overcome. The key is faith. ... Be patient with the Lord and with yourself. ... And have faith in knowing that the Lord is blessing our lives. Even now as you read this, in the present. I know the Lord is in control of His plan, and we are key players, in these last days in that plan. I thank-you for exercising the faith needed, to give me the confidence to petition the Lord and find these truths out for myself. And I pray that the Lord will strengthen you to rely on him, as you keep these circumstances in perspective. Don't sell yourself short, or be too critical with blame as to why things are, right now, the way they are. ... I know you don't have time, and maybe no interest in this book project of mine, but as an analogy permit me just to explain what happens ... it celebrates the strength of the human spirit. She's motivated to continue to live. It has a happy ending. ... Paraphrased ... "Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, will, mind and strength, and lean not unto thine own understanding, and all things will work together for our good." It's going to work out! God bless, Rick'

Remember reading the `Hobbit' and `The Lord of The Rings' together in our family devotional? It always worked out for Frodo, even when things looked the absolute blackest. Saturday Rob and I went to the airport to pick up Roice, who flew in for Ben and Sarah's wedding this next weekend. Roice, it was nice how you volunteered an explanation as to why you didn't send an e-mail to me last week. It was disconcerting when you said you didn't send an e-mail the previous three weeks because you are depressed. Don't go down that road. It's much more healthy to pick out some good books and read. I hope you will all remember Rick's words: `It's going to work out!' Whatever problem any of us face, it's going to work out. Not necessarily like we planned, and yet it's going to work out. So we need to enjoy each moment, each day, and each week (Thoughtlet).

My example was my Dad, and I hope I'm somewhat of an example for each of you. Dad faced a lot of challenges. Certianly the shutting down of Nelson Meat Packing Plant was one of his most personal challenges (.../9721.html). And yet it worked out. He worked. He read Tony Hillerman and Louis L'Amour books. He had written out the following and posted it on the bulletin board by the phone:

'There are only 2 things to worry about - either you are sick or you are well. If you are well there is nothing to worry about. If you are sick there are 2 things to worry about - either you get well or you will die. If you get well there is nothing to worry about. If you die there are only 2 things to worry about: either you will go to heaven or to hell. If you go to heaven there is nothing to worry about. But if you go to hell you will be so busy shaking hands with friends you won't have time to worry.'

I know it is possible to worry about the inconsequential, even when momentarily distracted by memories of books from long ago while ironing shirts. Things like whether there needs to be more water put in the iron. It was funny that after `The Old Man and The Sea' finished, the next movie was Johnny Westmiller staring in `Jungle Jim and The Valley of The Headhunters.' The older, civilized version of Tarzan reminded me again of the importance to me of books. I really got a kick out of the bad guy named `Arco' (at least that's what it sounded like to me), the plot being tied to the discovery of oil in a map area quickly brushed across with a wave of the hand which we know today as Nigeria, and the good-guy/bad-guy or cowboy/indian themes (see ../9819.htlm). Maybe what helps keep our perspective about the consequential is tied to what we read in books.

I just got a new book called `The Mind's Past' by Michael S. Gazzaniga. On pages 1 and 2 it says:

`After the brain computes an event, the illusory "we" (that is, the mind) becomes aware of it. The brain, particularly the left hemisphere, is built to interpret data the brain has already processed. Yes, there is a special device in the left brain, which I call the interpreter, that carries out one more activity upon completion of zillions of automatic brain processes. The interpreter, the last device in the information chain in our brain, reconstructs the brain events and in doing so makes telling errors of perception, memory, and judgment. The clue to how we are built is buried not just in our marvelously robust capacity for these functions, but also in the errors that are frequently made during reconstruction. Biography is fiction. Autobiography is hopelessly inventive.'

So what are these thoughtlets? As hard as I try for accuracy and fairness, truth and integrity, relevance and humor, I guess I have to admit they are just hopelessly inventive little autobiographical books."

I'm interested in sharing weekly a "thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me) with you because I know how important the written word can be. I am concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life. If you ever want to download any of these thoughtlets, they are posted at http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets or you can e-mail me at rnelson@walden3d.com.

With all my love,
Dad
(H. Roice Nelson, Jr.)

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Copyright © 1998 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.