See John write

Don’t ask how it started, but we had a conversation today at work about Chicken Cock Fighting. One of my co-workers suggested that they should have an Amateur night for those birds that aren’t quite ready to go pro.

I don’t know why the image of untrained chickens harmlessly strutting around a ring with greasy men watching with filthy dollar bills in their hands made me laugh.

And it got me thinking, what other things ought to  have an Amateur Night?

How ’bout local news broadcasts? Can’t you see it. “Hi, um, this is Kiley Spritzer. Tonight on the, um, eye witnesses news you’ll be hearing about the latest in the Iraq. Oh, yeah, and we’ll show you the highlights—not my highlights, but don’t they look great—thanks Jackie, you’re the best. Where was I? Oh, yes, highlights. We’ve got high school baseball (Go Bengals! he he) and I think the Jazz played tonight. Boy, when does that season end? Huh? Seems like they’ve been playing forever. Sheesh.”
Or youth soccer referees? (Maybe we already have that

Or political debating? (That would have to be more entertaining and probably more informative.)

Or police stake outs?

What are your ideas?

Did you see this news story about the blind, autistic, 11-year-old musical savant?

Perhaps, it’s because I have a special needs child. Perhaps it is because in small moments I can see brilliance buried somewhere behind all the confused nerves and muscles in my little boy. This story inspires, confounds, and deeply moves me.

This story is about a boy who can hardly carry on a conversation. Who barely reads. Who struggles with daily tasks. Yet music pours out of him as naturally as breath. And not awkward halting music like his speech. Beautiful, perfectly metered, flowing music from any genre. Music he’s heard one time can be reproduced like it was recorded. Whole symphonies, whole music scores, lyrics included.

A miracle. A boy who struggles to express himself in any other way can achieve heights of success beyond comprehension.

It speaks to me on a very deep level. Is there any doubt that we have barely scratched the surface of the potential God has placed in every one of us? Is there any doubt that this marvelous mind of ours is capable of knowing and understanding and expressing and creating in a degree far beyond our current imaginations?

And why music? What is it about music? Why do we think of choirs in heaven? Why is it that when we want to express the deepest feelings of our souls we most often turn to music? Is music the language of heaven? Are melody and harmony the way spirit speaks to spirit?

These are my thoughts on a Friday morning. I think I’ll put in my iPod now and enjoy the music of my day.

So Friday evening, I loaded up Josh, Nate, and Matt in the van. We threw in the tent and sleeping bags and headed up to Cache Valley for the Fathers and Sons outing. When we were in North Ogden, my cell phone rang. I answered it and my friend from the ward asked if we were heading up to Logan. I said that we were and he told me not to go through Sardine canyon. There had been a terrible accident and the canyon was closed.

On our way home the next day, Janet called and told us more about the accident. A terrible tragedy. A couple with their newborn baby in the back had hit a bicyclist, then lost control. The bicyclist, the mom, and the baby all died.

Then on Monday, I got an e-mail from my High School 20-Year Reunion Committee announcing the death of one of our classmates. Her name was Trudy Hansen. I didn’t know her well, but as I read her obituary it was clear that she was the mom who lost her life in Sardine canyon.

At 38, she had just had her first child. Twelve days earlier.

She had served a mission to Finland.

She had spent time in China and Russia teaching English.

Vibrant, happy, and full of life.

I wondered about those last moments.

Perhaps they were talking about the baby’s room. Perhaps they were lamenting the price of diapers and gasoline. Or they could have been talking about how the long wait for a child was so painful but so worth it. Maybe he had just asked her the Finnish word for baby.

And then it was over.

I guess because we shared a connection it seems to have stuck in my mind. Life is so fragile. We just don’t know how many chances we’ll have to say what we ought to say, to do what we ought to do, to love and serve and connect.

In January, I wrote here that my mantra for the year would be “To succeed at what is easy is a small victory.” To live without regret—that must be the greatest victory of all.

On Sunday, I spoke in Sacrament meeting. As I was preparing my talk, I was reminded of this C.S. Lewis quote about the difference between kindness and love:

“There is kindness in love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness (in the sense given above) is separated from the other elements of Love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object — we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. As Scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are punished [Hebrews 12:8]. It is for people whom we care nothing about that we demand happiness on any terms: with our friends, our lovers, our children, we are exacting and would rather see them suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though he has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it? But you probably didn’t come here for some heavy thought. So here’s something a little lighter:

If I lived back in the wild west days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I’d carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like “Hey, look. He’s carrying a soldering iron!” and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, “That’s right, it’s a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice.” Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink.
–Jack Handy

When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmm, boy. –Jack Handy

I am currently reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It is so fascinating. The author explores the power of our unconscious mind to help us make snap judgements. It also explores how the fact that we are rational beings pushes us to come up with explanations for our behavior rather than admit that often we’re just trusting our gut instincts.

One of the pieces of research that the author relates is a study being conducted by Harvard University. It measures your biases. The one I took measured whether or not I have an automatic preference for young people versus old people. Before you begin your test, you get to make a self-evaluation. Then at the end, the test results reveal whether or not you were accurate in your self evaluation. (I was not accurate. But the funny thing is, I had a gut feeling about what the results of the test would be.)

Here’s a link to take one of the Harvard tests: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.jsp

So many other things I’ve read about how the mind works and how our unconscious influences our decision making have seemed ridiculously false to me. But this book rings true to me. Even when a test like the Harvard test tells me that my conscious mind articulates things that aren’t quite accurate in my unconscious mind, I sit back and say, “Yeah, that’s probably right.”

I highly recommend it—and I’m not even finished reading it yet.

So what are you reading right now?

Mom forwarded the text of a talk given by Anne Perry. In that talk was a line that I think I will make my mantra for 2007.

“To succeed at what is easy is a small victory.”

Indeed. May this be a year of meaningful victories.

A favorite football coach of mine spent the first part of this past season repeating a line about his football team “finding their identity.” At first, I have to admit it seemed like one of those obscure phrases people use when they really don’t want you to understand what they’re talking about. But as the football season progressed, it was clear that his players really did find their identity—they “knew” themselves. They understood both their strengths and their weaknesses. And that knowledge allowed them to succeed.

For some reason, watching that scenario unfold has caused me to think about this idea of identity. How many of us have a truly clear picture of ourselves? How do those closest to me see me? What are my true strengths and my weaknesses? And when the “game” is on the line, what can I deliver?

In many ways, it is the simplest of questions. Who am I? Yet one of the hardest to fully answer.

And with that thought-provoking introduction, have a happy Monday.

Gerald Ford and James Brown.

Do you ever wonder if those who have been celebrities or have held powerful worldly positions are surprised when they enter the next life?

“Hello, doesn’t anybody know I’m here?”

It certainly can’t be healthy for anyone’s mental or spiritual health to have “an entourage” accompanying every move they make in this life. The paparazzi—as irritating as they must be—must create a false sense of absolute importance.

Can you imagine former worldly celebrities alone, wandering aimlessly around heaven, waiting for anyone to come up and say, “Hey, aren’t you …?”

Just something to think about on a Wednesday morning.