Category Archives: Courage

The Last Lion’s Courage and Enthusiasm

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I’m in the middle of a great book on Winston Churchill, The Last Lion, by William Manchester. Churchill is one of my heroes. In fact, I named one of my boys Winston. This book is a thick one, well over a thousand pages. It’s a riveting read.

World War II couldn’t have started much worse for England. Beginning with Dunkirk and continuing through the fall of Singapore, U-boat supremacy in the Atlantic and a string of bad luck in North Africa and the Middle East. Things looked awfully glum in 1942 and the people of England were beginning to grumble about Churchill and his handling of the war. Germany looked poised to crush the Soviet Union and then the Germans would focus on invading England. The United States, stunned by the events of Pearl Harbor had not put much skin in the game. Churchill was worried that America would pursue a Japan-first war strategy that would imperil England’s viability as a country. Things looked very bleak.

Churchill was made of very sturdy stuff. Though distraught by the string of lost battles, massive shipping losses and the surrender of symbolic and beloved British Empire outposts like Singapore and Hong Kong, he hung tough. Churchill weathered the storms of defeat. His personal courage seemed boundless.

Not surprisingly, he had something very interesting to say about courage and the role of enthusiasm and failure in building courage.

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Churchill’s immense stockpile of enthusiasm waxed and waned as he bounced from one catastrophic failure to another. But, gratefully for all of us, he and the Allies ultimately triumphed over the Nazis.

I’ve always loved the word “enthusiasm.” The use of this word has changed over the years. Back in the day “enthusiasm” was almost always used in connection with being inspired by God or being “full” of God. Enthusiasm comes from the Greek word enthousiasmos or enthousiazein, which meant, “to be inspired by a god.” Nowadays you can be “enthusiastic” about fast food or even about the NFL playoff games; God or religion doesn’t have to necessarily come into play.

During a particularly difficult time of my life when I was much younger I ran across something that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about enthusiasm that had a powerful effect upon me and helped me understand the vital importance of enthusiasm in everyday life.

Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm.

This quote is powerfully simple and simply powerful.

Actually, let me share with you the entire quote:

When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm.

We all have great things to accomplish in life, But, we all live in times, challenging times, that demand courage and gumption. The Apostle Paul described our times in pretty bleak terms:

…in the last days shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, Traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasure more than of God… (2 Timothy 3:1-4)

We all need enthusiasm as we all bounce from challenge to challenge and from failure to failure in life.

Besides, there is another reason to be enthusiastic. It’s highly contagious.

Enthusiasm is contagious. Be a carrier.

Susan Rabin

Our friends and loved ones, our children and grandchildren and not to mention our long-suffering spouses could all stand to be injected with the positive virus of enthusiasm.

Pass it on.

 

 

Saddle Up Pardner!

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When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid for you to stand upon, or, you will be taught how to fly.

Patrick Overton

I have a good and quite unusual friend, Moshe. Moshe is a Russian emigrant. He is very bright and very intuitive. He is a spiritual man. He is also painfully honest. His communication filter is porous. You never know what he is going to say to you. Because of his intuitive gifts he seems to be able to discern what ails you, whether you know it ails you or not, and whether you want to know what ails you or not.

One day after a long and pleasant conversation with Moshe, he had a sudden flash of insight about me and he blurted out, “Steve, the trouble with you is that you don’t trust the Lord.” I was kind of flabbergasted. I then moved from flabbergasted to ticked. I was offended that he thought I did not trust the Lord. I trusted the Lord, didn’t I? Who did he think he was anyway? With my spiritual pride wounded I offered up one lame reason after another to Moshe why I trusted the Lord. The problem was that not only was Moshe spot on right, but there was a little voice in my head, barely perceptible, told me he was right. I was busted. There is an old proverb that goes:

“If one person calls you a donkey, ignore him.

If two or three people do, buy yourself a saddle.

Saddle up pardner.

It is easy to say you trust in the Lord. It is infinitely harder to actually trust the Lord. Talk is cheap. It is especially difficult, at least for me, to truly trust God when I am in deep distress. In these times of deep distress I often have definite ideas of what should happen and when things should happen—so that I spend as little time as possible in deep distress. I don’t “do” deep distress very well. Who does? I have my own timeline and that timeline is always a short one. I get frustrated with God when “my plan” is not followed according to my scrip. Don’t I know better what I need than God himself?

Apparently not.

When things do not go according to my plan, which has been a frequent occurrence during these financial travails of ours, I become more than a little exasperated with God. Instead of humbly and meekly asking God what His plans are for me I blindly charge forward, like a bull in a china closet, with little success, bashing and breaking things left and right. Eventually I collapse into a spent heap in the middle of all the broken china, when it finally dawns on me that my plans are not going to work.

Saddle up pardner.

Strangely, I do not sense God becoming impatient with me, like I get impatient with Him. That feeling that He is not impatient with me comforts me. It has been my experience that He does not desert His children, even prideful recovering lawyers like myself, but that He certainly has a sense for the dramatic.

I believe He can sense when we are running out of steam, when there is nothing left in the tank and then He manifests His presence and His interest in wonderful and sundry ways in our lives. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that He will always stand by us, no matter what.

No matter how serious the trial, how deep the distress, how great the affliction, [God] will never desert us. He never has, and He never will. He cannot do it. It is not His character. He is an unchangeable being; the same yesterday, the same today, and He will be the same throughout the eternal ages to come. …He will stand by us. We may pass through the fiery furnace; we may pass through deep waters; but we shall not be consumed nor overwhelmed. We shall emerge from all these trials and difficulties the better and purer for them, if we only trust in our God and keep His commandments.

George Q. Cannon

I am tired of being called a donkey. As Forest Gump might say, “Donkey is, as donkey does.” Wanna buy a saddle?

Train Wrecks

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I love the English language. I find my mother tongue endlessly fascinating. I love how playful our language is. I especially enjoy the powerful, pithy and descriptive phrases or idioms of my mother tongue that seem to roll so nicely off my son of my mother tongue.

For instance, I love the phrase “train wreck.” I like the way it sounds. I have heard the phrase used in the following ways: “What a train wreck!” “Babs, your life is such a train wreck!” and perhaps my all-time favorite use of the phrase: “That is a train wreck waiting to happen.”

If you Google the phrase “train wrecks” you will quickly find websites with pictures of train wrecks from around the world and throughout history. The raw brute power of train wrecks, along with all the resulting mangled metal, twisted ties and human carnage both fascinates and repels us. Back in 1896 an enterprising promoter actually staged a train wreck in the aptly named town of Crush, Texas in front of 40,000 morbidly fascinated and wildly cheering people.  But I digress.

The phrase “train wreck” is defined as “a disaster or failure, especially one that is unstoppable or unavoidable; a disorganized, problematic, or chaotic person or thing.”  Some train wrecks are self-inflicted train wrecks. Some train wrecks are inflicted upon us by the acts of others. Many train wrecks we experience in our life are a combination of our foolishness and the foolishness of others. I know some people whose lives seem to be one train wreck after another—serial train wrecks. I know some people who think their life is a train wreck and it isn’t—faux train wrecks. Some people I know are convinced they are the only people that have train wrecks in their lives—solitary train wrecks. Some people I know are absolutely convinced that their train wrecks are much greater than yours and mine—competitive train wrecks.

Experiencing train wrecks is a painful but inevitable part of our mortal journey. To those of you who haven’t had the privilege of experiencing train wrecks up close and personal—just wait. To steal a great phrase, “We are all train wrecks waiting to happen.”

During the three years I volunteered at County Metro Jail I had massive vicarious weekly doses of multiple human train wrecks. County Metro Jail is a veritable super magnet for human train wrecks. All the inmates are train wrecks. All of them.

Some inmates like to share snippets of their personal train wrecks with me. Some of these human train wrecks are so jaw-droppingly horrific that I have had to hold my jaw up with my hand in order to keep my jaw from dislocating. I have had to bite my tongue hard to keep from saying such things as: “You have got to be kidding me…” or “You did what…?” Truth is often stranger than fiction. An aspiring country western songwriter just needs to hang out at County Metro Jail a time or two to get all the ideas they need for an album or two or five.

However, correctional facilities are not the only places you’ll find train wrecks. We live in a world chock full of human train wrecks. Just look around. You don’t have to look very hard. There are all kinds of different human train wrecks. The straightforward, and utterly devastating train wrecks of serious sin. The unmitigated disaster train wrecks of spousal betrayal. The powerful and prodigious train wrecks of pride. The heart stomping, I-don’t-know-if-I’ll-ever-stop-worrying-and-crying train wrecks of errant children and grandchildren. The gut wrenching and humiliating train wreck of financial ruin. The one-day–I-was-healthy-and-now-I’m-deathly-ill, health train wrecks. The list goes on and on.

And then it hit me—we are all train wrecks or train wrecks waiting to happen. (Comforting thought, is it not?) Sometimes we enjoy peaceful periods of clickety-clack humdrum as we chug down the track of life—and then it happens to us, self inflicted or other inflicted, our own personalized train wreck. Mangled metal and twisted track. An unholy mess. The engine car and all the boxcars of our carefully orchestrated lives have flown off the tracks and are strewn willy-nilly over the terrain of our lives.

County Metro Jail is an absolute goldmine for train wrecks.

However, I’d like to submit to all of you that we have much more in common with my incarcerated friends at County Metro Jail, and all their train wrecks, than we would ever care to admit.

They are train wrecks. We are train wrecks.

But here is the great news; the Savior is particularly adept, marvelously adroit, at fixing all of our train wrecks if only we give Him half a chance! The prophet Ezekiel tells us that:

I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God. I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick. (Ezekiel 34:15-16)

Despite all my ramblings about train wrecks this post is at its very core all about hope.  Hope in Christ. Hope that Christ’s atonement can help fix the train wrecks of our lives and the train wrecks of our loved ones. I stand as a witness to you that there is hope for even the most gnarly, horrific train wrecks on the planet, like the ones out at County Metro Jail, and that there is boatloads of hope for your own not-so-nearly-gnarly train wrecks. The hope in Christ found in rich abundance out at County Metro Jail means there is hope aplenty for you and for your loved ones no matter how dark and mangled your own train wreck is looking.

Jesus will lovingly and skillfully pound out the mangled metal and straighten the twisted tracks of our lives. He will bind up that which was broken…

All aboard!

 

Keeping Hope in Plentiful Supply

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[Author’s Note: I don’t know how you are, but my personal supply of hope often ebbs and flows. Stupid, insignificant things sometimes drain the old hope tank. One day the level of the tank is sitting pretty, and the next day all off a sudden the stupid and insignificant things of life have darned near drained the tank. A few years ago a wonderful friend of mine sent me a book on the British Arctic explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, for my birthday that lit up my curiosity about Shackelton. Shackleton became one of my personal heroes and I read everything I could on Shackleton. Almost exactly a year ago I wrote the following post about Shackleton and hope.]

Antarctica is the least hospitable place on earth. It is the coldest place on earth. The coldest natural temperature ever recorded on earth, -128 degrees F, was recorded in Antarctica. It is the highest, driest, windiest and coldest place on Planet Earth.

Antarctica is essentially a frozen desert. It receives less than 4 inches of precipitation each year.

The bleak and extreme climate of Antarctica presented a cornucopia of problems for explorers. Wind chills that freeze exposed flesh in a handful of seconds, blizzards for days on end, months of darkness and vast expanses of featureless snow and ice, were just a few of the challenges that faced Antarctic explorers. The Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, finally reached the South Pole in 1911. Before Amundsen’s successful expedition, many others tried to reach the South Pole without success and often with tragic results.

One of the unsuccessful explorers to reach the South Pole was the British explorer, Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton led the Nimrod Expedition to Antarctica (1907-1909) and made it to within 100 miles of the South Pole, a record that stood until Amundsen reached the South Pole. Shackleton became famous for coming within 100 miles of the South Pole.

After Amundsen reached the South Pole, Shackleton was convinced that the last great adventure left in the Antarctic, since Amundsen had already reached the South Pole, was an 1800-mile sea-to-sea foot crossing of the Antarctic.

The official name of this sea-to-sea land expedition was the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, but it became better known as the Endurance Expedition. Shackleton, once again, failed to meet the goals and objectives of the expedition. The expedition was arguably a spectacular failure.

The Endurance, the expedition’s ship, was named after the Shackleton family motto, Fortitudine Vincimus, “By Endurance We Conquer,” set sail from England in August of 1914, at the dawn of World War I.

After brief stops in Buenos Aires and the South Georgia Island, the Endurance crashed through a thousand miles of ice-encrusted Antarctic waters. Tragically, just one day’s sail from their destination on the coast of Antarctica they got stuck, “like an almond in a chocolate bar,” in the turbulent icy waters and polar ice of the Weddell Sea.

From 1914 to 1916, Ernest Shackleton and his men survived the wreck of their ship, Endurance, in the crushing Antarctic ice, stranded twelve hundred miles from civilization with no means of communication and no hope for rescue. The temperatures were so low the men could hear water freeze. They subsisted on a diet of penguins, dogs and seals. And when the ice began to break up, Shackleton set out to save them all on his heroic eight-hundred-mile trip across the frigid South Atlantic—in little more than a row boat. Unlike most other polar expedition, every man survived—not only in good health, but also in good spirits—all due to the leadership of Shackleton. (Shackleton’s Way, Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell, inside front flap of book)

The Endurance Expedition did not reach any of its stated goals. Finally, after two long years he led himself and all the members of his crew back home. During this epic two-year Antarctic survival adventure both he and all 27 men of his crew survived and thrived. Survived and thrived.

First, let’s back up. Let’s be very clear about the hopeless situation Shackleton and his crew found themselves in.

The men were stranded on an ice floe more than twelve hundred miles from the farthest outposts of civilization. Whenever it seemed the situation couldn’t possible get worse, it did. The pack ice precariously dragged the ship north for ten months. Then, the Endurance was crushed and the men were forced to camp on the ice. They watched in horror one month later as their vessel sank to the bottom of the sea. No one knew anything had happened to them. All they had to rely on were the three rickety lifeboats salvaged from the ship. (Shackleton’s Way, Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell, p. 2-3)

How in blazes did Shackleton pull it off? How did Shackleton and his crew manage to both survive and thrive? Inquiring minds wanna know.

Shackleton was a great leader. Perhaps one of the greatest leadership gifts that Shackleton possessed was the ability to deliver hope to his crew in an utterly hopeless situation.

Shackleton knew how to keep hope in plentiful supply… (Ibid)

Shackleton immersed his crew in the powerful marinade of hope, especially in moments when any one with half a brain would be terminally frozen with fear.

When it was preposterous to think they could get out alive, he convinced his men that only a fool would say they wouldn’t. (Ibid)

Shackleton was not just a cockeyed optimist, a blower of hot happy air. Winston Churchill once said:

Nourish your hopes but do not overlook realities.

Shackleton’s hope and optimism was grounded in actuality, not in wishful thinking.

Shackleton never wasted time or energy lamenting things that had passed or that he couldn’t change. “A man must shape himself to a new mark directly after the old one goes to ground,” he said. (Ibid)

A student of Shackleton’s leadership style said:

The thing I particularly admire him for is his ability to refocus unerringly on actuality. He was brilliant at turning people around and making them see the new situation. (Ibid)

But even more importantly a crew member wrote of Shackleton:

As always with him, what had happened had happened. It was in the past and he looked to the future. (Ibid)

We have been in a very cold financial place in the last few years. While encamped on the ice floes of our financial woes I have taken great courage from Shackleton. I have tried mightily to “keep hope in plentiful supply” with my “crew,” at the same time focusing on what is and looking forward to the future.

Hope tempered and shaped by actuality.

“By Endurance We Conquer.”

Why Not?

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I am a huge fan of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah are loved and revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians. Is there anyone who doesn’t love and revere them? Besides, what’s not to love? They were the perfect married couple. They were unfailingly kind to strangers. They loved and served people constantly. They loved and served God with a sweet intensity.

In spite of the fact that Abraham and Sarah were genuinely spectacular people, they both under went unbelievably brutal trials. What gives? For instance, despite repeated divine promises of innumerable seed, God doesn’t get around to actually blessing Abraham and Sarah with a son until Sarah’s extreme old age. Then, once they are blessed with this long awaited son, God really whacks them over the head by demanding that Abraham sacrifice Isaac. The story of Abraham following the command of God to sacrifice Isaac rips my heart out every time I read it. Has anyone short of Jesus had to go through a tougher trial?

Don’t constant good works, constant faith and constant love of God by Abraham count for anything? Why, in heaven’s name did Abraham and Sarah have to go through all the stuff they went through? Shouldn’t these two stalwart and faithful people have caught a break or two?

Why? Why? Why?

One astute scholar of Abraham, E. Douglas Clark, has beautifully written:

Why, one begins to wonder, did this supremely valiant couple meet with such painful trials, so many burdens and heartaches? Were Abraham and Sarah not absolutely deserving of the Lord’s protection? Were not their prayers fervent and their acts of service unending? How was it that God did not shield them from such terrible adversity?

The standard answer—which is true as far as it goes—is that God was refining each of them. “Great though Abraham was he became greater with each triumphant surmounting of a new trial” —as happened also with Sarah. Later the Lord, speaking through Isaiah, would tell their descendants, “Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction” (Isa. 48:10)—a passage that, according to Jewish tradition, refers to Abraham.

But God’s furnace of affliction did more than forge the sterling character of Abraham and Sarah as individuals. It also welded them together with an unbreakable bond of love and love and loyalty as together they faced their afflictions, bore each other’s burdens, exercised faith and prayed mightily…

Echoes of Eden, p.141

Abraham and Sarah’s stellar faith-filled lives can teach us so many different things. But, perhaps one of the finest lessons that they teach us is how to stay faithful and grateful to God when life comes to a roiling boil. I can’t think of a single instance in either of their lives when they whined or in a fit of self-pity asked God or themselves the plaintive question of “Why us?” If anybody had a right to ask that question they would. Why did God seem to deal so harshly with them?

It seems kind of obvious to me. God was refining them. God refines His children. He is refining me through our financial difficulties. Maybe God is refining you right now.

It seems to me that both Abraham and Sarah actually learned to embrace the challenges that God sent their way. I think Abraham didn’t whine and demand an answer to the questions of “Why me?” or “Why us?” because he and Sarah had this complete and utter faith in both the goodness of God and in God’s timing.

It almost goes without saying that I am not in Abraham and Sarah’s league. Our economic woes, especially the demise of a project I had worked on for six long years, have caused me to—I am rather ashamed to admit—keep asking God the simple, impatient and insistent question of “Why?”

Although I think I am getting closer, I am not quite ready to embrace all of my trials like Abraham and Sarah. But, I am working on it. When I bombard God with a steady stream of whys, I am revealing, among other things, my lack of trust in God and His plans for me.

Certain mortal “whys” are not really questions at all but are expressions of resentment. Other “whys” imply that the trial might be all right later on but not now, as if faith in the Lord excluded faith in His timing. Some “why me” questions, asked amid stress, would be much better as “what” questions, such as, “What is required of me now?”… (Neal A. Maxwell, “Apply the Atoning Blood of Christ,” Ensign, Nov. 1997, 22)

I will admit that a lot of the whys I have flung up at God are expressions of resentment and impatience on my part. I have resented finding myself in the financial abyss. I am frustrated that my timing is not His timing. How silly of me.

The better use of the word why in my life should be as follows: “Why can’t I better follow the example of Abraham and Sarah? My wise father sometimes tells me I should replace the question of “Why?” with “Why not?”

Indeed, why not?  You know, I could certainly stand some additional refinement. Maybe you could stand some additional refinement too.

Lead on Father Abraham.