A Dream of Books

In the last few months I have been paying more attention to my dreams. I have also been recording them in my journal. The end result of all this is an astonishment at how much my sleeping self knows and has to offer.

Last week I had a dream that seemed to have absolutely no importance whatsoever. Nonetheless, I recorded it just because I had determined to record the dreams I remember. I was in an unremarkable store with a variety of merchandise. I didn’t pay much attention to most of the isles.

In the back of the store, however, I noticed a couple of shelves of books. As I looked more closely at their titles, I discovered to my delight that a few of them were old children’s books of significant value.

And that was it. The dream was very short and easily understood by me at the time as nothing more than the expected playing out of a wish fulfilment. Books, after all, are an important part of my life.

So I dutifully recorded the somnolent snippet and promptly forgot about it. A few days later, I found myself in the Central Valley of California driving through the sleepy town of Coalinga. I drive through Coalinga a few times every month as part of my regular route to the Salinas Valley. It is certainly not a place to go looking for books. The town is much too small for a bookstore – not even a used bookstore selling romance novels. The only place to find books is in the old thrift store a block east of the main drag.

I don’t normally stop here because the selection is not great and most of the inventory consists of popular (and usually damaged) titles that I’m not interested in. This time, however, I had a little bit of time and decided to go over the shelves once again.

I started browsing and within less than a minute noticed an early copy of Carol Ryrie Brink’s Caddie Woodlawn. It was in excellent condition (much better than the copy I had) and I decided to keep it.

Nice hunch, I said to myself – pleased that I had decided to stop. And then I noticed a couple of titles by Susan Cooper. Both of these books were also in good condition. I hoped that they were first editions and so checked the title page. Sadly, they weren’t. But happily they were both signed by the author.

Instinctively I checked my copy of Caddie Woodlawn and saw that it too was signed by the author. Then in a matter of just minutes I found signed books by Sid Fleischman, Isaac Singer, Ray Bradbury and others. By the time I was done, I had an armful of valuable children’s books.

A lady working at the store was kind enough to offer me a box to put them all in. She then told me that I could have them all at half price. In truth, the monetary offer was nice but I was so excited with my finds that I only gave her a half-hearted thanks.

In the end, I only paid three dollars for the lot – probably less than one percent of their overall value. It was the most remarkable find I have ever had in thirty years of looking for interesting books.

In all of the excitement, I had forgotten about my earlier dream. When I remembered it, my excitement turned into awe. Was this a sign from Heaven? Maybe it was just a nice gesture from my subconscious mind.

Whatever it was, I was left with much to think about. Several days later I am still thinking about it, and wondering just how much my spiritual self really knows. Have I been wrong all these years in deferring to my fallible mind? Should I be learning much more from my intuitive side?

I am reminded of Einstein’s statement (probably not quoted exactly) that, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

I am learning just how correct Einstein was. One thing I am learning more and more insistently as of late: I need to pay attention to my dreams.

Reference

See www.quoteinvestigator.com (September 18, 2013) for a discussion of the wording of Einstein’s thoughts on the intuitive mind.

The Mormon Legend of Bigfoot

Many years ago, during a break in our regular class schedule at Orem High School, I attended the movie/documentary Sasquatch, The Legend of Bigfoot. The large enigmatic ape was popular at that time in Utah and the school auditorium was nearly full. We watched as an expedition outfitted by Chuck Evans trekked for several weeks into the northern wilderness of Canada’s British Colombia in the area of the Peckatoe River.

The film contained impressive footage of wildlife: black bears, a cougar attack, otters sliding down snowfields for fun, a food-stealing badger, and two grizzlies fighting each other. The expedition did not see a Bigfoot, however, but it claimed to have seen their footprints (that it filmed and took casts of), smelled their foul odor and heard their legendary scream.

Most impressive to me were the scenes of many live conifers that had been snapped in two with the top piece being turned upside down and repositioned on top of the broken trunk. I realize now that the trees we actually saw in the film were probably staged. But at the time I was duly impressed – as I am now as I consider such a possibility. It made enough of an impression that I still remember it over 30 years later.

As I look back on the film, I am surprised at how popular it was in our community. I have travelled around a good deal since then and have enrolled by children in many school districts across the country (in six states). And I find it unusual that the public high school in a conservative Mormon community would make such a film available on its own campus.

But, in fact, there is a lingering interest among Mormons regarding these creatures. I don’t mean that every member of the Mormon Church buys into the stories. But in scout camps, on hunting trips and at summer barbeques throughout the Intermountain West, Bigfoot stories abound. And I believe that there are a couple of reasons why.

Sightings of large hairy men have been reported by a couple of credible Mormon leaders. These occurred some time ago, but the stories are well-enough documented that credibility still surrounds them.

The best known account comes from a well-read book written by former Mormon president Spencer W. Kimball entitled, The Miracle of Forgiveness. He cites the biography of former apostle David W. Patten (written by Lycurgus A. Wilson) wherein Patten confronts a being that he calls Cain:

“As I was riding along the road on my mule I suddenly noticed a very strange personage walking beside me … His head was about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing, but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark. I asked him where he dwelt and he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and travelled to and fro. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death during his sojourn upon the earth but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men. About the time he expressed himself thus, I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by virtue of the Holy Priesthood, and commanded him to go hence, and he immediately departed out of my sight…”

Another account, though much less known, is of the encounter that President E. Wesley Smith (then president of the Hawaiian Mission) had with a creature similar to that reported by Patten. Wesley Smith was the brother of Mormon president Joseph F. Smith and served in Hawaii in the early 20^th Century. My account of the incident is not dated but comes from a woman who served as Wesley Smith’s secretary in the mission home.

Chloe Hodge was the first Mormon missionary to serve from North Carolina. I met Chloe when she was in her 90’s and confined to a rest home. She was part of our faith community and every Sunday after our block of meetings I would visit her with a couple of teenage boys. I got to know Chloe quite well over a period of 3 years and enjoyed our visits together a great deal.

Early on, I learned that she had started to write a personal history but had stopped when she lost the manuscript. I encouraged her to start again, and eventually she agreed to do so with my help. She would hand-write a page every week and I would pick it up on Sunday and type it up before our next visit. In this way she wrote nearly 150 paragraph/chapters of her life’s story. One Sunday she handed me the story of Wesley Smith’s encounter with the hairy man and I was quite surprised and interested. This was all new to me. I would only learn later that the story, in abbreviated form, was already available on the internet.

The story of Wesley Smith’s encounter comes on pages 83-84 as part of Chloe’s mission account. It is tucked away as an interesting story, but is in no way highlighted. Chloe recounted the story just like she recounted the many other stories of her long and eventful life. Her mind was clear and active right up to the time of her death. Her account of the incident seems to me a bit more valuable than other versions (which are often third-hand). Chloe heard the story directly from Wesley Smith with whom she worked closely. And her account is not my interpretation of what she said. It is copied directly (and exactly) from her written account.

           “On one trip out to the temple President Smith told us of an earlier event in his life when he was serving in Hawaii.  He had served there as a young missionary and now he was back in his late 30’s as a Mission President. 

            This was at the time when plans were going forward to erect the temple.  He had become aware of a sense of unrest and contention among the members at a time when there should be great joy and harmony at the promises of a temple coming soon.

            President Smith was sitting in the far corner of his living room pondering these conditions and came to an understanding that the spirit of discontent and discord among the members was the work of Satan trying to prevent the building of the temple.

            Just as this realization came to him, he heard a noise and looked up to see a huge black man about eight feet tall entering the door.  His body was very hairy and he had large protuberant eyes – and he was coming toward President Smith with his arms outstretched as though to seize him.  President Smith threw up his hand instinctively, and as he did so, a light about the size and shape of a small dagger appeared in his right hand.  A voice said to him, “this represents your priesthood.  Use it.”  Immediately he mustered up the courage to command the personage to depart in the name of Jesus Christ; whereupon, the person stopped, backed out of the door, and was gone.  President Smith jumped up and ran to the door and looked out.  There was no one to be seen.

            President Smith wrote to his brother, Joseph Fielding Smith, who was then Church Historian.  He wrote back and said that he had undoubtedly had a visitation from Cain and enclosed a pamphlet which told of Apostle David Patton of the First Quorum of the Twelve who was riding his horse one night, along a country road, when suddenly just such a person as President Smith had described appeared walking alongside him, so tall that his head was about level with Elder Patton’s head as he sat astride his horse.  After going a little way in silence and being very afraid, Brother Patton asked, “who are you?” and the person answered, “I am Cain, of all men most miserable.”  Then he disappeared.  Brother Patton was later murdered by a mob, becoming the first martyr of the church.”

I was duly impressed with the story and I have given much thought to it since then. Chloe made no reference to Bigfoot, or to the possibility that this creature might be an unknown ape. Her story and the story of David Patten are completely independent of Bigfoot legends. How they became connected is still not clear to me. I believe they became part of Mormon Bigfoot lore as a natural extension of the Bigfoot accounts that became more frequent later in the 20^th century.

David Daegling, in his account of the social significance of Bigfoot, identifies 1958 as a watershed year in the creature’s popularity. This was the year that a wire service picked up the story of large footprints around a road construction site in Northern California. Casts were taken of the prints and pictures of the casts were broadcast around the country.

After this exposure, accounts of Bigfoot sightings (and footprints) became much more common. Just a couple of years later, Ivan Sanderson’s popular book Abominable Snowman: Legend comes to Life was published which told stories of large ape-men from all around the world. By this time, Bigfoot was a well-known entity in America. My guess is that the conflation of the large hairy man of Mormon legend with Bigfoot happened around this time (although this is just speculation).

I don’t mean to imply that stories of Bigfoot started in 1958. This is hardly the case. In fact there seems to be a higher proportion of credible accounts before that time. And most of them are from the Pacific Northwest where the famous Patterson-Gimlin film was taken. Two stories that have been told several times include accounts by Teddy Roosevelt and Albert Ostman.

Teddy Roosevelt’s telling (second hand) of an encounter in the Bitterroot Mountains was narrated in his 1893 book Wilderness Hunter (vol.2). The incident involved two trappers (one ended up being killed) and probably took place in the late 19^th Century.

The less credible account (at least to me) of Albert Ostman tells of a presumed encounter that happened in 1924. Ostman had been camping and noticed that some of this things were being taken at night from his pack in a tidier manner than a bear, or other known mammal, would have managed. Then one night while sleeping, a large hairy beast carried him away while he was still in his sleeping bag. He was taken to a place where he was held captive by the creature and its presumed family. Ostman claimed to have escaped when the animal got sick from eating his chewing tobacco.  

Other accounts have been uncovered including one of a miner that shot a large ape-man near Mount Saint Helens (also in 1924). Another story told of a juvenile great ape being shot in British Columbia in 1884. It isn’t clear to me, however, that any of these stories ever made it to Utah, or were known to Mormons generally.

However it happened, these stories are now part of a larger Mormon conception of Bigfoot that includes the Biblical murderer Cain. As a result, Mormons often tell stories that are similar to other versions, but also unique. If Bigfoot is Cain, then it is only expected that a single being exists. If Bigfoot is, instead, the Sasquatch of Native American tradition, then it is to be expected that an entire population (perhaps several populations) exist as a valid un-described species. This distinction is usually not made. And the possibility that Bigfoot, as a species; and Cain, as a wondering hairy man, remain two independent phenomena also remains an infrequent supposition in Mormon culture.

Recently I decided to make a trip to Bigfoot country in order to experience the area and the culture for myself. My nephew Jon came with me. “Bigfoot country”, of course, is a pretty ambiguous term. Sightings have been made of the legendary creature all over North America. Nonetheless, the Pacific Northwest (ranging from northern California to Southern British Columbia) has long been recognized as the oldest and most likely place to hear about Bigfoot. As a biologist, I also find this region more satisfying as it can be fairly well defined and represents a particular kind of ecosystem. Many other creatures also live exclusively in this area. The Pacific Northwest is a moist forest ecosystem – a rainforest in essence. It is a place with such a profusion of plant life that an unknown creature might feasibly remain undetected within its dense canopies. It is one of only a couple of places in North America like this.

Jon and I wanted to see Bluff Creek where the Patterson-Gimlin film was taken and to visit the town of Willow Creek on the Bigfoot Highway where the Bigfoot museum is located (as it turned out, it was closed for the season). Before we got there, we passed through the town of Weaverville (west of Redding) and stopped at the Forest Service office there. I needed a couple of maps but I also wanted to talk to a ranger about Bigfoot sightings.

This first stop in the area proved to be quite enlightening. I had expected to find a good deal of cynicism among the locals – especially when talking with outsiders like us. Accordingly, I had decided to be coy about my Bigfoot interest and present myself as a naturalist looking for good camping and hiking sites – all of which was true. In short, I wanted to have a meaningful conversation and not be snickered at.

But when I asked about wildlife, the gentleman in the office assumed that we wanted to see Bigfoot. I hesitated at this presumption and said we just wanted to know if there were any interesting animals around. Eventually we were directed to a woman with more knowledge of the area. She was helpful but merely professional until I stated bluntly that we would like to know of any sightings by locals.

I was surprised at the change in the woman’s attitude. She became more solicitously helpful and told us that, in fact, a sighting had been made recently near the Swift Creek campground above Trinity Lake. She was very willing to tell us about Bigfoot as soon as she could tell that we were respectfully interested.

Over the next couple of days, Jon and I would talk with a couple more rangers, with people along the side of the road, with the owner of Bigfoot Books (a used bookstore just south of Willow Creek), and with a backpacker that was out looking for Bigfoot. In each case, we were treated with the same casual regard that you might expect if you were asking for directions to a gas station.

And in fact we were told about several Bigfoot encounters made by people in town through the years. But we were never given names. I was told by the ranger at the Willow Creek office that people were hesitant to divulge their identities because of a historic disrespect from enquiring writers and publicists. The people of Willow Creek were not out on a campaign to confirm the reality of Bigfoot. But the creatures’ existence was taken for granted and people were very willing to talk with someone they could trust.

  

As our conversations proceeded, it was surprising to us how many stories there were. Recently a Forest service employee on his way to work had seen a Bigfoot looking into a river. Our backpacker friend had been recently spooked by a Bigfoot in the area near Bluff Creek. I was particularly interested in the story of a child that had seen one at fairly close range for several moments and had pointed it out to her father who couldn’t make it out. Later, there were footprints located in the spot identified by the child.

I was particularly interested in this child’s story because of its numinous implications. The more I have thought on the Mormon Bigfoot legend, the more I see the similarities between them and the mystical elements surrounding many of the Bigfoot stories. Daegling’s seemingly fair yet skeptical study of Bigfoot culture comes to the conclusion that whether or not Bigfoot turns out to be real, it certainly has become part of American mythology in a real way.

The two Mormon accounts of the large hairy wildman (the only two that I know of) fall neatly into Daegling’s categorization. This categorization is comprised of two parts - it includes a belief in a real creature but is often alluded to in religious contexts or in some other form of transcendent experience. In both Mormon accounts the man identified as Cain is thwarted by priesthood power. Yet he is always considered a real being.

What light this sheds, if any, on the legend of Bigfoot is not clear to me. For sure it places the Mormon stories in line with the traditions of many cultures that tell of wildmen. I don’t think, however, that these stories generate more interest in the broader Mormon community than do Bigfoot stories in American culture in general.

At the beginning of the 21^st century, Mormons do not seem to be overly concerned about them. My experience is that these stories rarely come up in religious classes or formal worship services. And the growing Mormon Church is full of members that have never even heard of them. Nor does it appear that Utah, with its predominant Mormon population, has any more Bigfoot sightings than would be expected by its location.

You can find a listing of reported Bigfoot sightings by state at The Bigfoot Field Research Organization website. I have calculated the number of sightings by state population to determine which states have the most sightings per capita. Here are my rough calculations (rounded to the nearest 10, out of a standardized 100,000 persons) for the NW states (and a few other random states for comparison): Washington, 80; Oregon, 60; Wyoming, 50; Idaho, 40; Alaska, 30; Utah, 20; Colorado, 20; California, 10; Arizona, 10; Kansas, 10; Florida, 10; New York, 5; Nevada, 3; Connecticut, 2.

These numbers are certainly not exact. They only represent the number of sightings officially reported. I know of several sighting from Utah from a couple of decades ago that are not on the list – they just weren’t reported. That said, the rough numbers do show that there is a real concentration in the Pacific Northwest with numbers diminishing with distance from this area. The number for California might seem low. This is, after all, the state from which the famous Patterson-Gimlin film was taken. If you look on the map, though, you discover quickly that Bluff Creek (in Humboldt County where the footage was taken) in not far from Oregon. In fact the habitat of the area is much more like that of Oregon and Washington than it is of the rest of the state of California. California’s high population comes from the San Francisco and Los Angeles urban centers which are a long way from Bluff Creek.

Utah doesn’t stand out as any more remarkable than any other nearby state. In this sense a predisposed credulity doesn’t seem to be at issue here. That said, however, Mormon interest in the large hairy wildman continues at multiple levels. It is perceived as a curiosity, as a legend, and also as a scriptural apology. It brings the ancient stories of the Old Testament to our times and gives them a contemporary relevance. And in a community with sacred traditions extending back to Adam and Eve, Bigfoot seems to have found a guarded acceptance.     

References

The Bigfoot Field Research Organization website is www.bfro.net/. The reference in The Miracle of Forgiveness comes from Chapter 9 (Point of No Return, pages 127-128 in my 1969 edition from Bookcraft). The autobiography of Chloe Hodge was privately published in 2008 as A Whale of a Tale, My Life Story by Chloe Belle Hodge. Daegling’s The Social History of Bigfoot is Chapter 3 in his Bigfoot Exposed (published in 2004 by Altamira Press). See also Chapter 11, the Phenomenon.

What is Love?

Several years ago my aging father made a shocking announcement. He said that when he was dating my mother, and for several years after they were married, he did not love her.  I was so upset by this that I was unable to respond, and my brother and sisters were likewise very uncomfortably surprised. Dad had always been devoted to Mom. Yes, they had challenges in their marriage but it was obvious that they loved each other a great deal. And this love has continued and endures.

How, then, could my father admit to such a thing? I wondered about it a lot. It bothered me for quite some time. Obviously he was physically attracted to Mom from the start. He also enjoyed the love letters he got from her while they were dating – the ones signed Love, Elsa. I was certain that he loved her all those years ago. Was Dad losing his mind?

He did admit that he felt a great sense of duty to take care of Mom. And he asked me years later if this duty might not be a form of love. We both came to suspect that the current fashion of emotional romanticism was a bit provincial – not a bad thing, but not a historically complete one either.

If you look in the dictionary under love, you soon notice that there are a handful of definitions for this very common word. It can refer to an affectionate concern for another person or to God, it can be an enthusiasm for something, it can also be a sexual attraction – or the act itself. Love is a zero score in tennis, a material worn in mourning and a game of chance.

A love apple is a tomato, a love handle is a layer of fat, a lovelock is a bit of hair, a lovebird is a kind of parrot, a love bush is a kind of dodder, a love potion is a kind of charm. And so it goes. Clearly, love is a lot of different things.

Here, then, was a possible way out of my confusion. Dad, who has always been more given to cerebration than to sentimentality, may not have recognized a keen emotional response to Mom at first. But love her he certainly did. My oldest sister is proof of that.

But Dad’s admission implied something more. Something happened after living with Mom, starting a family, and struggling together as a couple with the challenges of life. He learned of Mom’s astonishing compassion for everyone. He learned of her devotion to him, and of her enduring faith that would become tested almost beyond belief. Dad learned that Mom was truly amazing.

I have come to realize that for many people the deep connection that binds us to others is not manifestly emotional. In fact, most of the time we create connections with others that we may not even be aware of. Of course, our experience with romantic love can be emotionally profound. But there are many very important connections that simply don’t fit the category.

Little children, for example, rarely feel emotionally attached to their family the same way that adults do. They still have to learn what their developing emotions mean. But this should not imply that they do not form bonds with their family or that they do not love their family. To a child its connection to its mother is the most profound experience of its life.

In fact, I believe that the connection between an unborn child and its mother – direct from the womb, through the placenta and into the lifeblood of the infant – continues throughout life. Yes the physical tissue is sundered shortly after birth, but there remains an unseen umbilicus that no amount of circumstance can render.

I saw this firsthand a number of years ago while serving in a small church group to help a young man overcome some of his challenges. He had become estranged from his mother emotionally and in a number of other ways. She was very traditional and could not tolerate much of his behavior – some of which was quite improper. For his part, he could not tolerate the guilty feelings that she seemed to always impose on him.

And yet in spite of this very real impasse, the young man could not be helped until he was able to overcome the breached relationship with his mother. Through the years of estrangement, the unseen umbilicus was still there.

In my own life, I have recently come to recognize that this connection doesn’t even go away when a mother passes away. Truly it is a universal umbilicus. It is a bond that never dies. And if I might expand somewhat on the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s famous essay – it is a most significant proof that “love abides”.

The Apostle Paul understood very well that love is not always a primrose path or a romantic fantasy. In his unsurpassed description of love (found in the 13^th chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians) he compares our experience with love as seeing “through a glass, darkly.”

And recently, Pope Francis has emphasized that love is more importantly tied to truth than to passing emotional experiences.

“Love,” he wrote, “cannot be reduced to an ephemeral emotion. True, it engages our affectivity, but in order to open it to the beloved and thus to blaze a trail leading away from self-centeredness and toward another person, in order to build a lasting relationship, love aims at union with the beloved. Here we begin to see how love requires truth. Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey. If love is not tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle emotions and cannot stand the test of time. True love, on the other hand, unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life. Without truth, love is incapable of establishing a firm bond; it cannot liberate our isolated ego or redeem it from the fleeting moment in order to create life and bear fruit.”

I believe that love is the value and importance we place on the very significant connections in our life. These connections can be quite different depending on the persons, the cultures and the circumstances involved. In our time, the emotional part of love has taken center stage. This may be fine, as far as it goes. But there is also a danger in this.

When we confuse love with positive emotions only, we can make the mistake (as many people often do) of thinking that we no longer love someone who has let us down. “I don’t love you anymore,” are heart-wrenching words that, sadly, are spoken much too often. And then, paradoxically, after the words are spoken, the confession is followed by the aching of the soul. Clearly the connection was not lost.

The truth of these tragic situations is that emotions between estranged lovers can become predominantly negative, even though connections remain. And it is because the connections remain that estrangements like separation and divorce are always so painful, despite the fact that this so-called emotional love has long since dissolved.

It is this modern confusion that makes Kierkegaard’s insistence that love abides so counterintuitive.  After all, people fall into and out of love all the time – or so we believe. If, however, we were to ask ourselves if connections between people were to commonly disappear, we might be less certain.

There is only one way for the true connections of love to be broken, and that is through selfishness. In fact selfishness, in this sense, is the refusal to form or to recognize the importance of connections at all. To be this selfish is to live in a cloistered sensual existence.

Many years ago, I fell in love with Kathy Vernon. We had dated off-and-on for many months before she agreed to accept my second proposal and marry me. We made our formal vows in the Salt Lake (Mormon) Temple in the spring, when the Utah foothills are covered with fresh grass, when new oak leaves are still glossy green, and when sego lilies are young and unblemished.

We knew so little about life and had to learn many basics of human relationships. We inevitably used each other as Guinea pigs as we struggled together, in the laboratory of life, to learn how to make a marriage work. We had to figure out money matters, marital roles and how to stay strong for each other when our first child lingered for months on the brink of death. Sometimes we managed OK. At other times we didn’t.

We learned that Kathy was used to a staid and practical masculinity. She had to adapt to a new husband who was neither of these. We learned that I was used to open and sentimental femininity. And I had to adapt to a new wife that kept things to herself and wasn’t comfortable looking into the deep emotional lives of others.

Often she felt overwhelmed and I felt misunderstood. But through all of the challenges we discovered something early on. We discovered that we needed each other very much. And we discovered this during those times when the connection between us was strained. Sometimes it was strained because of misunderstandings. Sometimes it was strained because school and work took me away from home for a while. In either case, the estrangement hurt each of us a lot. I came to realize – for the second time in my life – that these connections are very real.

The first time I realized this was while Kathy and I were dating at BYU. On one particular day we had been together for much of the afternoon (doing something that I no longer remember). I do remember, however, saying goodbye to her at the outer door of her apartment complex.

I said goodbye to Kathy and proceeded to the parking lot. I no sooner had opened the door of my car when I realized that Kathy was inside the complex standing by her front door locked-out of her apartment. How, exactly, I knew this is beyond me. I could neither see her nor hear her. But somehow I knew anyway.

I decided to act on this unusual insight and proceeded back into the complex. And, just as I expected, Kathy was standing outside her door – locked-out – wondering what to do next. She was surprised to see me. I decided not to go into details right then. I was still trying to figure out what my little mystical experience meant.

I have since come to understand what was unclear to me then: my connection to Kathy goes far beyond the visible and audible. It is a deeper thread that is forever unbreakable.

You may find this admission a bit over-stated.  After all, no one can be sure that love will last forever? Please notice, however, what I actually said. I said that the connection between us would never break. I do believe with all my heart that I will always value this connection greatly – in other words, that I will always love Kathy.

But even if the unthinkable happened and we were separated, for any number of reasons, the connection we have with each other would still exist. We have shared too much of our lives and our hearts. Dissolving this bond is no longer possible.

I do not think that every connection we have with others implies a loving relationship. But I do believe that everyone we love involves a connection. And we would do well to remember that the straining of these connections only ends up hurting everybody, ourselves included.

Which brings me to my final point; which is, that the loving connections of our lives are gifts from God. And as such, they are not ours to create or destroy on our own account.

“God is love,” declares the Apostle John (1 John 4:8). And as the Prophet Mormon indicated, this special kind of love – the love called charity that is defined as God’s love – is a gift that must be bestowed on us from above (Moroni 7:48).

We have not been entrusted with the disposition of loving connections. This is a privilege retained by a greater power than our own. And this should be obvious to anyone paying much attention to the world we live in. We are not just animals that interact with others of our own species purely by instinct, and then proceed on our merry way. Neither are our interactions with others the mere unconscious calculations so favored by evolutionary psychologists.

We interact with others, and in so doing, we form lasting bonds. And if we follow the direction of Heaven and lose ourselves in the service of others, we cannot help but form a vast network of relationships that will bind us to others forever. And like a grove of giant redwoods that withstand the storms of centuries because of their interlocking roots, we can bind each other together in divine ligands that were made for the eternities.

Maybe you feel that you cannot love or be loved. Perhaps you have convinced yourself that you were born unattractive or are not the romantic type. If you have ever thought this way, you had best think again. Whether or not you love or are capable of being loved is not your decision.

The Hollywood and dime novel version of love is not the whole story – or even the most important one. Most love is very different. A good neighbor loves. So does a thoughtful employer, or neighbor, or friend. A parent loves and so does a teacher. You are loved in more ways than you know. And surprisingly, you love more people than you realize.

It no longer bothers me that Dad didn’t have deep romantic feelings for Mom. He spent most of his life devoted to her. For many years, when Mom was often sick and confined to her bed, he cared for her and never complained. Dad and Mom have been profoundly connected from the start. And they always will be. God has promised that they will. He has promised that Love Abides. 

References

For a good overview of how love has been understood in the great books, see Chapter 50: Love, in Mortimer J. Adler and William Gorman (eds.) The Great Ideas, A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World. My copy of Love Abides is in Jaroslav Pelikan’s (ed.) The World Treasury of Modern Religious Thought. Published by Little, Brown and Company, 1990. The paragraph written by Pope Francis is found on page 48 of The Light of Faith, Lumen Fidei, published this year (2013) by Ignatius Press.

Wheat and The Word of Wisdom

Earlier this year I got over a digestive problem that had bothered me for more than a decade. The solution was quite simple: I stopped eating wheat flour. Soon after changing my diet, the cramps, indigestion, and other unsavory problems disappeared. There have been other benefits as well. I can now do a good deal of physical work without waking up sore and achy. I am losing weight, eating bigger meals (but without wheat products) without stomach complaints, and hardly get discouraged like I used to. I feel a lot better.

For some time, I refused to imagine that my complaints might have been caused by Celiac disease. Of course, they seemed to fit the symptoms. But I resisted this possibility because of a single verse in The Word of Wisdom (in The Doctrine and Covenants) that states quite clearly that we are supposed to eat wheat: “Nevertheless, wheat for man…”

Then by chance (and my good fortune) I happened on a study showing the significant changes that wheat has gone through since the time the Word of Wisdom was given. It was this realization that motivated me to try living without modern wheat.

The story of how we got modern wheat involves a long history of genetic twists and turns. By the beginning of the 19^th Century, wheat had already been hybridized and manipulated for millennia. It would be quite misleading to claim that the wheat of Joseph Smith’s time was a pure and unadulterated grass. It wasn’t.

It was, however, a very different thing than what we eat today. And when I say “it” I really mean “they” because there are a handful of “wheat” species and a boat load of “wheat” varieties that find their way into the mills of people around the world.

The food that we eat today is primarily a product of the green revolution that has magically transformed the world’s diets within the last century. The plants that had fed us for so long were crossed with varieties that would have been confusing and counter-intuitive to earlier generations. Many of these crosses have produced very useful crops. We depend on them to survive. Others, however, can cause us a good amount of grief. Sadly we haven’t paid close enough attention to the potential harm of genetic manipulation. This negligence is coming back to haunt many of us today.   

Glutens (and related gliadins) are often large proteins found in the endosperm of wheat grains that do not dissolve easily in our bodies after being consumed. Our modern wheat varieties have many times more of these proteins than did earlier forms. This gluten accumulation was not really intentional. The proteins were compounded primarily when the chromosome number of wheat varieties doubled and then tripled in the course of hybridization events spanning decades.

Through this process, the leavening of bread was improved. The gluten proteins helped make the bread flour sticky, enabling it to keep air bubbles (created in the process of fermenting yeast) from escaping – allowing for the bread dough to rise. Glutens essentially allowed us to move beyond unleavened bread.

The oldest form of wheat (and presumably the first wheat eaten by our ancestors) is einkorn wheat. It has the typical compliment of genes found in living things (a pair of each chromosome – referred to as a diploid condition). It has a fairly hard grain and doesn’t produce enough seeds per plant to make it economically appealing. It is believed to have been used in soups and stews. It is a rarely used today.

Another group includes wheat species that have come about by hybridizing varieties so that a doubling of the chromosomes occurs (tetraploid wheats). Durum wheat and emmer wheat are tetraploid examples. They still have fairly hard grains but have more gluten proteins – not enough, however, to allow for the fine flours that modern bakeries generally demand.

Then there are softer wheat grains found among the species with a tripling of the typical genetic content (hexaploids). As expected, these have quite a bit more glutens. These softer wheat varieties comprise the bulk of the wheat used today. And it is the flour of these varieties that are particularly troublesome to people like me.

Earlier this year I decided to try baking a loaf of einkorn wheat bread. I wanted to know if eating a diploid wheat (with fewer glutens) would upset my stomach. I found a source online, ordered a small bag, and made a loaf after it arrived. The loaf was a bit dense but savory and, when eaten warm, was a real treat. I made a peanut butter and jam sandwich that tasted wonderful.

Then I waited for the grief that I have come to expect after eating wheat products. But nothing happened. I ate another piece of bread and still felt fine. Then I decided I needed to try a tetraploid wheat – the kind that would have been used by our ancestors of previous generations.

Some of these species include emmer and durum wheat. They are a bit easier to find than einkorn wheat but are still specialty products and are quite a bit more expensive than your typical wheat. That said, I found a source of emmer wheat grains and ground the kernels myself in our small hand mill.

My loaf of emmer wheat bread came out of our bread-maker smelling very nice and grainy. I ate a piece and again waited for the trouble to begin. It didn’t. I was again pleased to know that I could eat this older wheat without difficulty. I was also pleased to know that I could enjoy the wheat known to the world at the time the Word of Wisdom was given.

I’m not sure if I will continue baking emmer wheat bread or try using a less-expensive gluten-free alternative. Time will tell. In the meantime, I have learned a lesson: dietary wisdom needs to be a dynamic pursuit. We should know this already. Christians enjoy eating ham even though – as religious descendants of Judaism – it might have been forbidden.

As Latter-day Saints we eat a good deal more meat than one might expect we would – considering passages found in the Word of Wisdom. Is this because we have better ways to preserve meat today? I’m not sure. Maybe we should eat less meat.

And so it is, I’ve discovered, with wheat. I have no doubt that wheat was, for most of our human history, the proper mainstay of our diet. I’m also convinced that it should no longer be the case. I think our uninformed scientific recklessness has ruined it – at least for many of us.

Here are a few sentences from a group of wheat scientists describing the situation in straightforward (and unemotional) prose:

“During the last decades, a significant increase has been observed in the prevalence of CD [Celiac disease]. This may partly be attributed to an increase in awareness and to improved diagnostic techniques, but increased wheat and gluten consumption is also considered a major cause. Over 100 years ago, breeders started to systematically cross and select bread wheat for higher yields, adaption to climate changes, better bread-making characteristics, and improved disease resistance. Little information is available about the breeding history of landraces on these aspects”. (See the reference from Van den Broeck et al.)

So there it is. We have taken a food that once enjoyed the approval of Heaven and tried to improve it. And not only have we tried to improve it, we have done so without even worrying about the consequences. This should certainly be a cautionary tale. No wonder the Lord’s dispenses dietary advice as a “word of wisdom”. It is something we need to keep working on and thinking about with a good deal more humility than is our wont.

References

The reference to wheat in The Doctrine and Covenants is found in the Word of Wisdom (Section 89:17). Wheat Belly by William Davis was published in 2011 by Rodale. Jerold A. Bietz provides a useful hint on gluten accumulation in: Genetic and Biochemical Studies of Nonenzymatic Endosperm Proteins; in, Wheat and Wheat Improvement, Second Edition, Madison, Wisconsin, 1987. On the variability of wheat gluten genetics see Mapping of Gluten T-Cell Epitopes in the Bread Wheat Ancestors: Implications for Celiac Disease by Oyvind Molberg et al. Gastroeneterology 128 (2005): 393-401. Michael Pollen’s recently published book Cooked contains an interesting discussion on leavening. The significant article by Hetty C. Van den Broeck et al. (Presence of celiac disease epitopes in modern and old hexaploid wheat varieties: wheat breeding may have contributed to increased prevalence of celiac disease) was published in Theoretical and Applied Genetics (November, 2010), Volume 121 (8): 1527-1539.

A Life Surrounded by Books

My earliest memories used to go back to when I was 5 or 6 years old. They include incidents from kindergarten and from playful moments in my backyard on 6^th East in Salt Lake City. I say that these have been my earliest memories, but this has recently changed. A few months ago I discovered that I have a memory that precedes all others by perhaps as much as two years.

This memory came back unsolicited – as memories often do – while I was going through some of mother’s old books. One book in particular, The Story Book of Nick and Dick, was tucked away in a book cabinet in a place that only mother visited. It was behind a glass door and covered-up with various knickknacks. I had not seen the book in over 4 decades.

As I slowly turned the pages, it seemed to me that I had seen the pictures before. Then as I began looking through the chapter about The Thirteenth Pig I remembered having read these stories with my mother on our living room couch. I must have been 3 or 4 years old at the time.

Then I began reminiscing about other memories I have of books. I began to wonder if I didn’t have some sort of predilection for bookish remembering. I have often joked with Kathy about her remarkable memory of meals (and my laughable inability to even remember what I ate yesterday for diner). Now I was beginning to wonder if I might have her ability - but for books and stories.  

Soon I was flooded with thoughts from all decades of my life. These were all pleasant memories and I began to realize that they form a very significant part of who I am. Books have been my companions and friends all my life. At times I begin to second-guess myself and the thousands of books that fill our home. Do I really need so many books? Maybe I should get rid of them, I wonder.

But soon I realize what a mistake this would be. I could not deny my love of (and need of) books without creating a very large hole in the person I am.  Books and I are (and always have been) together for keeps.

My Sister Else taught me to read in what was the basement garage (that had been converted into a living space) of our house. I must have been around five years old. I still remember how proud I was marching upstairs to read a page or two to my parents.

I remember reading through the storybook Madeline and a collection of children’s stories that we kept in the living room on the shelves above the stairs. And then there is a gap in my book memories right at the time of our move from Salt Lake City to Orem. This was a hard time for my mother. She became less settled and her epilepsy was often aggravated by the many changes in our new life.

I fit in fairly well at school but for some reason the schools I attended didn’t do much reading (during the 70’s and 80’s). I remember a reading program in 4^th grade that involved reading paragraphs from large cards, but our teachers didn’t read to us very much. I remember only a few books such as Where the Red Fern Grows and Little House on the Prairie. Now, in my 50’s, I find myself reading children’s literature with Kathy as a way to recapture this lost opportunity from so many years ago. Kathy is a good reading partner. She has read so much more of this literature than I have.

I remember distinctly a walk I took, as a teenager, down our long driveway in Orem. I was frustrated that I wasn’t reading more – that I couldn’t keep interested long enough in a real book (I meant by this a long storybook) to read it all the way through. I wanted to love to read. I wanted to read all kinds of very hard books, but my reading record was not very good.

I decided then and there with stern resolve to read some book all the way through. With this goal I took the few dollars of my allowance (that I hadn’t already spent on candy) and managed to find a ride to Deseret Book in the University Mall. I walked up and down the aisles looking at all kinds of titles. They all seemed so difficult. Finally at the back of the store I found a shelf with several books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Many of them were from his series Tarzan of the Apes. Here, I knew, I had found what I needed. I bought the first book and hurried home.

I had trouble getting through Chapter one. It was about the perilous voyage of Tarzan’s parents and of their shipwreck along the coast of Africa. I wondered if the book was too hard for me to read, but I remembered my goal and started Chapter Two. From then on, there was no turning back. The story captured my imagination and before the year was over I had read all 24 books in the series. In later years I would read most of the rest of Burroughs’s books.

My time as a Mormon Missionary is Spain was a very significant and formative period in my life. But it wasn’t a time ideal for reading. We were encouraged to read from the scriptures (which I did each day) and then there were only a few other books that we were permitted to read (such as James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ and LeGrand Richard’s A Marvelous Work and a Wonder).

After reading through all of the permitted books twice, I decided to ask my Mission President if I might read something else. He was impressed with my study habits and agreed to let me read Boyd K. Packer’s The House of the Lord and John A. Widtsoe’s Teachings of Brigham Young. I quickly asked my Dad to send these to me and enjoyed them immensely when they came in the mail.

Even with these additional titles, however, I soon found myself reading from the Bible Dictionary as we spent time travelling to and from appointments. When I returned home from Spain, I was sad to see that part of my life come to an end. I had grown a great deal through my experiences teaching the gospel and made many of my mission habits part of my continuing life.

One thing certainly did change, however, upon being released. I began getting up early to study – not just missionary-approved literature, but many other books as well. I remember plodding through my college biology text. I would also spend hours walking through the stacks of books in the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU looking for interesting things to read.

It was while wandering through the religious books one day that I came across Hugh Nibley’s Lehi in the Desert. I was completely captivated and unable to put the book down. At this same time Deseret Book (and FARMS) were reprinting Nibley’s collected works. I spent what little book money I could gather on this series.

In the spring of 1984, I met Kathy Vernon in a music class. We were married a year later and moved in to our first home – an old converted garage south of BYU campus. Our first bookcase was an inherited homemade collection of shelves that we used as a room divider. We affixed wallpaper to the back to add color to the small kitchen.

Those shelves held all of our books (with the exception of a few insect texts that I kept at the Bean Museum where I had a desk). There may have been 100 total, maybe a few more - nothing that would hint of my future love of acquiring great books. Little did I then know that I would be building many more bookshelves in coming years as my research adventures led me from one book deal to another.

My goal was not to acquire a lot of books. In fact I remember being turned off by a book collector once while attending a book sale in Salt Lake City with my brother-in-law Will Quist. This man approached us wanting to show us his collection so we obliged him and walked a few blocks to his house. All his rooms were lined with bookshelves – floor to ceiling – with mostly cheap paperback books. Upon asking him what he preferred reading (or if he was studying anything particular) he avoided the question and began commenting on Utah culture.

I think the reason I wasn’t impressed with his collection is that my own book hunts were motivated to find books on subjects I was actively learning about. As the years have come and gone, however, I have discovered that I have accumulated several nice collections anyway. Now, in addition to looking for interesting reads, I also keep my eye open for collectible items, or for authors I respect.

In fact just last week while driving through a dusty town in California’s Salinas Valley, I found a couple of collectible books in the local thrift store. I have learned that when a town is too small (or disinclined to read books) for a used bookstore, the thrift store (or the occasional library book sale) is the only real option for finding books at inexpensive prices.

(I should point out tangentially that my own library is worth a good bit more than what I have actually spent on it because I am constantly on the lookout for book sales. The most memorable sale I visited was a library sale in Loveland, Colorado that I attended with my sons Spencer and Erik and our friend Aaron. A few minutes after the doors had opened and the long line of people waiting outside had been ushered in, a fight broke out between two women over a particular romance novel. For some unexplainable reason, we all thought the scene quite comical – a paperback romance novel worth fighting over! Who would have guessed?)

In the Salinas Valley thrift store I visited, I worked my way through the costume aisle and discovered the single bookshelf in a back corner. (For some reason, thrift store books are always located in the back of the store). I was perhaps twenty feet away when I noticed two volumes from the Franklin Mystery series. I have recently started collecting these (who wouldn’t) whenever I find them like this because they are quite valuable. Franklin Press is no longer in business but their books were leather-bound classics. And they keep (or increase) their value.

I quickly grabbed the two books and discovered, to my great pleasure, that both were books I didn’t have. They were priced at three dollars each, bound in full leather with embossed spines and gilded page margins. I don’t always get so lucky, but such moments of triumph keep me constantly on the lookout. (When I returned home and checked the internet for typical asking prices, I discovered that they are going for $30 to $100 each.)

I can’t help it. I love to learn and I love to read books. The outcome of this duality is a house that could easily double as a library. So be it. Like most habits we love, they come with both good and bad elements. On the good side, my children also love to learn. And this love ranges in psychological demeanor from balanced enjoyment of books to book-mania like their father. But they have also done very well in school (all three boys receiving college scholarships and graduation at the top of their class). Then again, one of my sons recently told Kathy that he had a hard time sleeping unless he was in a room surrounded by books. I laughed. I think Kathy cried.

I used to dream of being a great scholar and helping the world. Now I realize that people usually don’t care much for the things I write about. My few publications (including my one very abstruse book on insects) might fill a couple of resume pages, but they interest very few people. Now I keep reading (and writing) because that is what I do.

Thomas S. Monson once encouraged us to build a home with a library of learning. I can certify with a clear conscience that this is one principle I have no difficulty living. (Although I hope no one ever asks him for a number clarifying how many volumes such a library would involve. What would vacation be like if there wasn’t always the hope of finding last year’s Pulitzer prize-winning titles for only a few quarters?)

So here I sit – in my library surrounded by books. I have lived half a century and there is no chance of finishing all the volumes that surround me. Some people think I must be crazy. I probably am. In extremes, people like me are accused of bibliomania (defined unofficially as the hoarding of books with no use or intrinsic value to the collector). But as long as I am motivated to pull myself out of bed an hour before I need to each morning – just to read a few more chapters – I guess I retain a semblance of clinical normality. But then again, with book-lovers you can never be quite sure!    

References

The Story Book of Nick and Dick by Arthur I. Baker and Franklin T. Baker was published by The Macmillan Company in 1937.