OCTOBER GENERAL CONFERENCE 2010

This past week I've been looking over my notes from General Conference and have thought a lot about what I learned and changes I want to make in my life. I'm so grateful to have a living prophet today to guide and direct us. All the church leaders are such intelligent, humble, and inspiring people that help me learn more about Jesus Christ and how I can find more joy through living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A friend reminded me that not only are the speakers inspired to share things that will help us in our lives, but we too are prepared to receive what they will share with us. It's always crazy how many things that are touched on always apply directly to me and things I have been pondering. Each conference is also always an uplifting reminder to me of what is most important in life and a reminder of how real the gospel is. It helps me refocus my priorities and what matters most. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's church restored again on the earth with all the authority and keys of God. I'm grateful God calls prophets to lead us and give us direction today in this crazy world!

These are some of the things that stood out the most to me this conference:

• A testimony of the gospel comes in private powerful manifestations. 
• It is sometimes easier to believe dead prophets than living prophets. 
• The attitude of a teacher is not taught but caught. 
• A consecrated life is full or work. 
• When we experience tough times in life, we need to slow down and focus on what is most important. 
• The key relationships in life are with God, our families, our fellowmen, and ourselves. 
• Wrong choices diminish our ability to act in the future. 
• There is no safer way to approach life, than by following the prophet. 
• In temple mirrors we should see ourselves at children of our ancestors and parents of our posterity; we are to see ourselves home with Heavenly Father. 
• Faith changes simple acts to great acts. 
• The Book of Mormon is truly a prepared tool to gather scattered Israel home. 
• Complete healing is found only at the Savior's feet. 
• The Anti-Nephi-Lehi's not only laid down weapons that were to be used against their enemies, but also weapons against their God. 
• Pride violates the two great commandments. 
• It is impossible to be prideful if you are filled with charity. 
• Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but less about yourself. 
• Pondering the scriptures means taking the time to think, pray, and invite revelation, after reading.
• We magnify our callings in the priesthood by letting the light of Christ shine through us and having the Spirit with us. 
• More important than the words we speak, is having the Holy Ghost with you as you minister to others. 
• Don't take detours because you may never find your way back to the right path. 
• Christ is for us, Satan against us, so it is our vote that counts. 
• Nowhere is mercy more manifest than in repentance. 
• Lehi and Joseph Smith's histories parallel each other. 
• We need both personal and priesthood lines of communication. 
• Being grateful unlocks the doors of heaven so we can feel Heavenly Father's love more fully.
• Receiving the Holy Ghost is not passive but a call to act. 
• Having an honorable name is better than riches.
• Satan is the ultimate counterfeit fisher of men. 
• We should ever be found doing the work of the Lord.

http://new.lds.org/general-conference/sessions/2010/10?lang=eng

ODE TO AUTUMN - JOHN KEATS

Steven Walker told me once that John Keats will be the Poet Laurette of the Celestial Kingdom.

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

-John Keats 1795-1821

THE WASTE LAND - T.S. ELIOT

T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" is argued by some to be the greatest work of all modernist literature and is also one of my favorite poems. Despite the work's rigorous obscurity, allusions, and use of juxtaposition and satire, to me the poem's true strength is found in that of illustrating the struggle in finding meaning in a dramatically changed and unstable modern world, and Eliot's hinting that depending on the arts and great literature of the past presents some stability as the world continually ventures into an unforeseen future. Packed with allusions to many famous literary pieces and authors that I have grown to love (Shakespeare's The Tempest and Hamlet; Dante's Inferno; Virgil's The Aneid; Keats; Marvell; Dickens; Thomas Middleton; and St. Augustine) "The Waste Land" has also come to symbolize to me a representation of the creative force of imagination, history, and language, understood by some, and appreciated by few. Some of the symbols in the poem that stand out to me are rivers, the human psyche, regeneration of life, music, death, gender roles, great cities, myths/legends, and war. I too believe beauty is found in chaos, instability, and an underlying power, sometimes hard to see, and greater than ourselves. Time allows for the healing of great devastation. Despite the ever changing failures of modern society, peace is found in the words, symbols, and rhetoric of the past fabricating a lattice of hope for the imaginative power of the future - however grim or gloomy things may appear to be. A "peace which passeth understanding" is to be found in this feeble world, creating art in the face of madness.

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding   
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing   
Memory and desire, stirring   
Dull roots with spring rain.   
Winter kept us warm, covering           
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding   
A little life with dried tubers....

...There is shadow under this red rock,   
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),   
And I will show you something different from either   
Your shadow at morning striding behind you   
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;   
I will show you fear in a handful of dust...     

...Unreal City,   
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,   
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,   
I had not thought death had undone so many.   
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,   
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet...
                   
...THE river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf   
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind   
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.   
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.   
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,   
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends   
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.   
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;   
Departed, have left no addresses...

     ...The river sweats   
      Oil and tar   
      The barges drift   
      With the turning tide   
      Red sails   
      Wide   
      To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.   
      The barges wash   
      Drifting logs   
      Down Greenwich reach   
      Past the Isle of Dogs.   
            Weialala leia   
            Wallala leialal...

...O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,   
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you...                  

  ...And no rock   
  If there were rock   
  And also water   
  And water   
  A spring   
  A pool among the rock   
  If there were the sound of water only   
  Not the cicada   
  And dry grass singing   
  But sound of water over a rock   
  Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees   
  Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop   
  But there is no water...

...Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves   
Waited for rain, while the black clouds   
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.   
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.   
Then spoke the thunder   
D A   
Datta: what have we given?   
My friend, blood shaking my heart   
The awful daring of a moment's surrender   
Which an age of prudence can never retract   
By this, and this only, we have existed   
Which is not to be found in our obituaries   
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider   
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor   
In our empty rooms   
D A   
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key   
Turn in the door once and turn once only   
We think of the key, each in his prison   
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison   
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours   
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus   
D A   
Damyata: The boat responded   
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar   
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded   
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient   
To controlling hands   

                      I sat upon the shore   
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me   
Shall I at least set my lands in order?   

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down   

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina   
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow   
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie   
These fragments I have shored against my ruins   
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.   
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.   

            Shantih shantih shantih

THE INNER LIFE OF THE CELL

The human body is amazing. I am fascinated by all the details, principles, and laws of science that are followed that make life possible. There are so many tiny pathways and processes that all work exactly and are kept in perfect balance. Its amazing what we have discovered and have been able to learn in science about our own bodies. In my physiology class we have started back at the beginning with the basic unit of life, the cell.

            http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/6850.html

GREAT QUOTE - THEODORE ROOSEVELT

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actuallly strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least [he] fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

-Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizen in a Republic” (address delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, Apr. 23, 1910), Presidential Addresses and State Papers and European Addresses, December 8, 1908, to June 7, 1910, vol. 8 of Presidential Addresses and State Papers, Homeward Bound ed. (1910), 2191.

FUTURE DENTAL CLINIC SITE

Someday I am going to build a dental clinic here. People will trade me coconuts, fresh mangoes, and roasted pig for fillings, crowns, and extractions. Afternoons you'll find me at the beach adding to my shell collection, snorkeling with my children that speak Tongan and climb coconut trees. Nights reading next to a smoking umu drinking fresh otai. Saturdays at Teufaiva Stadium, watching rugby, and eating peanuts. Long weekends I will visit Ha'apai and Vava'u with my beautiful wife. And on Sundays I'll rest and grow wise.

SAVING SOUTHERN CROSSES

Looking up at a foreign sky between palm leaves,
I find a closeness I didn't imagine here.
My world has not moved, but I have literally turned myself upside down.
And not see the stars on the opposite side.
I hear the flatness of an island surrounded by coral.
I taste the smoke of an umu and
fall in love with a lazy Tongan Sunday afternoon. 
I smell green everywhere and a constant mist of the blowholes.
The repetition of the waves will continue when I'm gone.
I hear church choirs sing in harmonies not written in the book.
I learn food lasts today only and people are worth more than things.
A mother pig walks across the road
as I'm dodging potholes, learning to drive on the other side.
My fears of the future are smashed between two rugby players and
drowned with loud laughter.
I find new freedom and direction
hitch-hiking in the back of old trucks,
feeling the wind and real life.
Staring at a perfect sunset I find my humanity:
hoping to keep a moment forever - I know won't last outside my head much longer.
I've climbed higher than a coconut tree
and seen the depths of the blue ocean.