Year End Ramblings

In this 11th hour of the year the night is gently pressing on ushering out another year. What am I to do? I think this is over and over until my stomach presses on me in hunger. It may seem small but the thoughts that lead from one corner to the next are in the driver seat.

Computer programming. I'm still in love with computer programming. I find myself programming everyday on various projects. It is too much fun. If you haven't learned a program -- I recommend squeak -- an open source smalltalk and all you need is a computer. There are hundreds of tutorials. Now I use C++, Perl, Java, and smalltalk. All of them are great languages to learn and one can even find a job using anyone of them. What I love about computer languages is that they are complex enough to challenge even the most dedicated foreigner who wants to be paid while being overseas. It leaves enough room for the rest of us to make a living as well.

Songwriting. It is a love affair I've had with guitar, piano, base, drums, and singing my whole life. I can't get enough of it. I have finally organized my next 6 albums -- none of which are recorded exactly like I want them, yet. But the continuing saga in my life to produce, perform, and publish music is growing hotter. Most of all -- I enjoy every moment of it.

Holistic Practice. The idea of threads of income while learning new skills took off some years ago as I finished acupuncture school and melded the skills of bone setting tui na with the new found skills of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I've had so much fun cupping, needling, using moxa, using herbs, and changing lives. I've held onto many of the principles I learned while studying in bio technology companies and kept building on the theme of looking for underlying causes. Today I am balancing the posture, the energy rivers of the body (meridians), and the body's neuro-transmitters. I feel like I have the x, y, z planes of some newtonian geometry which allows for the melding of three worlds which come together between body alignment, energy meridians, and the body's communication system. I love this stuff and especially have a tremendous awe for what this medicine does for my patients -- and for me.

Warrior. Here I am still doing kung fu. It is the awareness, the knowing without knowing, the simplicity, the letting go of the known to accomplish the unknown, the renewal within expressing its outward manifestation of inner peace, and moving away from the formative nature of endless forms -- formless reality driven from the body finally understanding. I haven't taught it hardly at all. My journey is still quite driven within. I hope some day to share it with more than a patient or two here or there.

Any writer knows the nature of creativity is not something that falls around like rain. Yet it comes and goes like anything in nature can but it sings, it rings, and plays like Peter Pan. I'm not sure if I can be any clearer than that ... that all my life has come to this. It doesn't matter if I sing, if I write, or if I play -- life is living what I most love living every day and in every way it is.

May 2011 be coming more and more becoming.

The Pearl of China

Reading this book by Anchee Min gave me the chills as I thought about years ago reading The Good Earth by Pearl Buck and being absorbed. The Pearl of China is a fictional story based on facts of Pearl's life in China. The names are changed to protect the people in her life. Even after reading The Soul of China I didn't feel the soul of China like The Good Earth. Here are some Pearls of wisdom that came from the life of this wonderful author.

It captures the propaganda war as the communists came to power.

"Your father must learn that we Communists are fighting for a real cause. China will one day be free of politics and religion. People will be their own gods."

Pearl responded that [my Father]

"is God's fighting angel. I don't understand him, but I love him." The quick response was "I could not love my father if he were my political enemy."

And Pearl smiled,

"There is no enemy for me."

Here I find the letting go and going with the flow.

It talked about Pearl's writing methods. Her trick was to think like a Chinese farmer.

"Before planting, the farmer already knew what, where, and how much to grow, the budget for seeds, fertilizer, animals, and field hands. In other words, I try to make the best use of my material."

Harmony with the land and the people blended in ancient China.

A classic line in the struggle for justice in communism,

"Mao doesn't own the party. Communism is about justice and democracy."

This topic is explored in detail as many fell into prison or were shot over differences in belief in the name of communism. The character would say later,

"I am riding the back of a tiger. I will die if I try to get off."

Many have died as The Peoples Republic has taken the lives of more than any other dictatorial regime in history.

Confucius said,

"thirty years in the river east, and then the next thirty years in the river west."

What does it mean?

"In the concept of feng shui, it means that there are equal opportunities in the circle of life."

Hope, in the end this book ends with hope. In a rough series of events this book needs hope at the end for China to survive into the next century.

Finally,

"... to be Chinese means one lives to eat ..."

represents many thoughts throughout this book which explore the Chinese way of life and how it come through a cultural revolution and began to sprout again the essence of Chinese life. If you haven't done it, visit any asian grocery store and get a sense of this bubbling well of life around food. Explore the purple potatoes and black chickens. Ask what is this? over and over until you feel the sense of exploratory hammock that surrounds food in the orient. It gently rocks and is quite amazing.

I am reminded that I spent 19 years of my life studying classic Chinese Arts and practicing Chinese Medicine on my friends with Qi Qong and passive bone manipulation (tui na) before I ever went to acupuncture school. It was a way of life that the masters explored which gave new perspective to healing. My children gained insight into a Chinese world they or I have never seen or explored. It often saved their lives and propelled them to greater heights.

Things are not as they seem

How I love that poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- "A Psalm of Life". The grave is not our goal and our souls do live on. It is not the end to have enjoyment or sorrow -- he calls upon us to act and leave our footprints in the sand. Let us be up and doing says he -- the lives of all great men remind us.

It is our choice to be happy or sad. It is our choice to remain where we are or move on. It is our choice to be a victim of circumstances or be in the hum of life doing and becoming. It is our choice to have a relationship or to let it go. And those choices, however hard are freeing to our soul for we are placed here for such choice. I rejoice in the choices we have before us.

Right or wrong choices bring us experience and are for our good. I rejoice on both sides of the coin. It is our time to be alive.

There is so much silence in my journal over February, March, April, and now May. Yet I feel so much movement afoot in my life. It feels so good to work so hard. Many of my patients have gotten better. I've continued to write songs, programs, and poems. I've so enjoyed the life of recording weekly as I work on albums on some of the best instruments in our town. I finally got a set of drums up today next to a great piano that I'm doing the recording on. It gives me a chance to work out percussion, bass, and other ancillary parts.

I've read more than the last 2 years combined. It is so fun reading a book for fun. It is so fun reading books by topic and summarizing them for patients. It is quite a kick to read a book and attempt to glean what I need from it for my life, right now, right here. I've loved trying out grand pianos in various locations. I've played them until I'm exhausted. I've played guitar until I have blisters on my fingers. I feel an urgency to life and it makes life easier for me.

Oriental medicine has become like poetry in motion to me. It is like a second wind of understanding. I'm sure it will continue to grow and blossom in a world that so desperately needs choices in healing. Reality to some people is nonsense to others. Everything is as it should be -- how boring life would be if we all felt the same, talked the same, and agreed on everything.

Falling Off the Bus on a Chilean Mission

It was late in the evening and we had returned from a missionary meeting in Santiago. For some reason the last bus out to Mellipilla was packed. I remember letting everyone go ahead of me -- including my companion. When it came to time to grab the bus

I had only one hand on a bar and one foot on the platform.

The bus barreled down the road happily on its way and I found myself facing the back of the bus. After a time my hand and foot went numb and I was unsure if I could make it. By that time we were out into the country with no houses around us and I didn't seem to be able to think clearly anymore.

I remember saying a prayer and asking my Heavenly Father to help me

but my strength did not increase.

I finally said a final prayer and left my fate into His hands and let go. As I did I became aware of this whistle sound. A policemen appeared in the middle of nowhere and had blown a whistle to stop the bus. At the time I let go, the bus was slowing down to stop and I wasn't even hurt. He made everyone pack on the bus tighter and I then had both hands and both feet secure.

I'm sure this story is not unique to my mission and that every missionary has a point in their mission where they had to

let go and trust the Lord.

I think life is that way. Letting go often opens the doors we need to go forward. I wonder to this day how that policeman appeared in the middle of a country road with no buildings in sight. I am grateful to a true and living God who hears and answers our prayers.

Remembering Who We are on a Chilean Mission

I had come home after a long day of missionary work. We seemed to have a rhythm of work and people to see. We had made it back a bit later than usual in Puente Alto. As my companion went into the room ahead of me, I had barely made it into the door when I heard someone running behind me. So I pulled back out of the door and heard someone slip. The son of the family we lived with had slipped on the rug and came down hard on the door. I caught my head between the door jam and the door. Pulling out I reached up and pulled my hand over my head and come down with blood. I passed out.

The next day I remember waking to a little girl pressing a small cotton ball on my upper lip and smiling.

I couldn't remember who I was or who she was.

It took me a month to remember again who I was. I forgot all the discussions. I got up slowly, groggy and read the journal that I had worked on early in my mission. It was an abbreviated story of my life from when I was about 5 to the present. Hmm, I was a missionary.

Sometimes

it is not easy to remember who we are even when we know who we are.

I did re-memorize the discussions. Eventually, I remembered I was the senior companion and turned in a report on the incident. My Mother told me this Christmas of 2006 that the President of the mission called her saying I would probably be sent home. Hmm, I think my slow recovery and slowness to action but still my slow stick-to-it-ness kept me on the mission. I don't think I ever saw so many people join the church. I think when they saw my pain and struggle that they took the time to find the truth -- what, after all motivated me to keep waking up like a dead man white as a sheet and face each day preaching the gospel?

I saw many missionaries face illnesses, deaths of those around them, set backs, and failures; and

each time they overcame them they were stronger.

I didn't realize it at the time. I think if we all wrote these faith promoting stories down they would fill volumes.

A Smokey City on a Chilean Mission

I was in Mellipilla as the second city on my mission probably in early 1973. I remember arriving in Mellipilla in the only taxi that would take me because of the smoke, nails on the road, and general chaos. Tires were burning on many corners of the local streets and this

black soot was thick in the air.

Many cars were off the road because people were bending nails and placing them on the roads so that cars would get flats. Somehow we made it fine that night.

My new companion told me that I was the counselor in the branch. I had the assignment to teach priesthood meeting but not to worry about it because

no one ever came to priesthood meeting.

He was right. No one arrived for priesthood meeting and there was a big hole in the church wall. Only one family arrived for sacrament meeting. The branch president without his family.

So I remember thinking that I had the lesson so I would at least teach someone. I took the rolls of the church and visited all the boys that were priesthood age. I asked everyone to be ready next Sunday as we would be by to bring them to church. Now that seemed funny because we walked everywhere! So

we formed this line of boys early in the morning

and one by one had them all at the church.

I remember the branch president arriving that morning and asking me as he came into the room, what are you doing? I replied, "I'm teaching the priesthood lesson." He sat down and said to me that

he would never be late to priesthood again.

And he was never late again. Other missionaries would call me as each of the boys that came to that class went on missions. And the craziest thing happened. When the boys came to church, suddenly

as if by magic all the girls came too.

It was fun seeing the church too full to handle all the members in the sacrament hall.

And we mixed mud and straw and patched that church wall ourselves. The members helped us wax the floors, white wash the newly repaired wall, and re-commit to a wonderful branch of Mellipilla. Some of my best memories are back there still, my heart is still with them.

Gems of Royden Glade from Chilean Mission

1972. It was a cold, rainy night when I took the bus down to Los Angeles, Chile. For a summer in Chile was equal to the winter in the United States. By the time I arrived I was chilled to the bone. After two weeks of solid rain the sun let up and I discovered a volcano right out our window. It would be another two weeks before we would see the sun again. Rain came down in this 45 degree angle. We tracted every day and came back at noon to change clothes. Fungus infected our shoes. At times people would let us in, because of the rain they felt sorry for us. As soon as we would tell our story we were escorted right back to the rain. By the end of the summer I contracted a bronchial disorder and was down for about two months.

President Royden Glade made a surprise visit nearly at the end of my illness. What a big guy -- tall, strong, and quite caring. He sent me to warmer climates when he heard about my history of bronchitis as a child. He later told me he played basketball on his mission.

He encouraged me to make my mission "my mission."

He said it might not be the way he would serve a mission.

It would be a few years after my mission before I began reading management books on empowerment. It required giving back the freedom to the workers to take on the responsibility of the tasks at hand.

In Melipilla I had organized a team of youth from our local branch to compete with the Catholic basketball teams. We had played a few times on their courts and they invited us to play as a team. The priests asked us to see if we could get other missionaries to come play their best team in the tournament. President Royden Glade let me get some of our better missionary players. I think it was a great opportunity to see if we would have good sports on both sides. Everyone seemed to love it.

I remember President Royden Glade teaching that

we should never talk against someone's faith

because we might be successful and there might not be something to replace it. Simply declare the gospel to them and let them embrace it.

In Melipilla after a day of tracting in one of the central park areas, a member of the church sat down beside us on a park bench. She said she was struggling with joining our church so she went to her Catholic priest. He turned to her and said he knew our church was the true church of Jesus Christ because he had read The Book of Mormon. Only he couldn't join because the Catholic church was his livelihood and his only source of income. I wonder if that was one of the priests who invited us to have the missionaries come and play basketball.

John 10:4 "And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice."