Couched in Different Terms

First off, let me state that I hate almost everything about this health care bill (I think I've made that abundantly clear) But, yesterday, my wife and I were talking and I was reminded of an incident in our marriage that is somewhat applicable to the health care bill.

We had inherited a couch from my parents...I loved that couch. It was the perfect Sunday Afternoon nap couch. It's the only couch I've been able to awaken from after a Sunday snooze and not have a sore back or a stiff neck. Like a seasoned baseball glove, that couch had been perfectly broken in and formed to my body.

The only problem was that, when I wasn't in the couch, it was still perfectly broken in and formed to my body. My wife hated the couch and I loved it. The couch's fate and its place in our home was the subject of many discussions, arguments, reasonings, pleadings, cajolings, briberies, and some sotto voce threatenings for a few years in our home.

Then I came home one day and saw that my couch...my beloved couch, was sitting on the curb with piles of trash bags heaped upon it. Well, I was having none of THAT! If she could take it upon herself to unilaterally remove the couch from our home, I could certainly take it upon myself to put it back in its proper place. I pulled into the driveway, got out of my car, slammed the door and stormed over to the couch pulling bags of trash from it and reached down to grab it by the legs and haul it back into the house.

The first thing I noticed was that my wife had sawn the legs off of the couch....the second thing I noticed when I looked up was my wife standing in the doorway with a smug expression on her face (things would have probably gone a LOT smoother after that is it wasn't for that smug expression)

When Cortez reached the New World, he burned his boats. As a result, his men had no other option but to succeed. All during the ensuing argument over my wife's unilateral decision, she kept protesting that she was NOT forcing me to buy a new couch, she was merely, 'helping me make the right decision'.

Now...let me state again...I HATE the way this bill has come about. It has shown the ugly side of both parties and of The American People. I really can't think of a single newsworthy instance during this clash of ideas where anyone has acted in an adult and reasonable manner.

The very simple truth (as far as I can see) is that health care reform is very much a needed thing in this country. The other undeniable truth was that the republicans did not address this issue when they were in power.

I have outlined, I believe, very reasonable and very attainable common sense ideas that would go a long way to bringing down the cost of health care and insurance and many of my friends have done the same.

What all of these ideas have in common is the realization that health care costs didn't begin to spiral out of control until the government stepped in and started to meddle with it in the first place. Almost all of the ideas cost very litte if any tax dollars to the public and, more importantly, they allow people the freedom to make their own choices.

But the republicans didn't seriously begin to address any ideas on health care reform until the democrats had a super-majority and said, that they were going to cut the legs off the couch...THEN the republicans got on board with the idea...given the years of frustration that the democrats have had over trying to bring this to the front burner, I understand it when they said to the Johnny-Come-Lately republicans, "you know what Chuckles? Sit your butt in that back seat there and let us drive for a while" I don't condone that type of attitude...but I understand it.

What happened next was embarrassing to say the least. Democrats tried to over-reach and republicans tried to grab back the wheel...it was about as ugly a scene as I ever wanted to witness from my elected officials. Frankly, I''m disgusted with the entire lot. Vitriol, invectives, lies, innuendos, all accusing the other side of the most heinous and foul motives possible.

The polls clearly stated that most Americans thought that something ought to be done about health care. They also clearly stated that they absolutely hated this bill. They hated the pork, the bribes, the cowtowing to special interests and unions...and the majority of Americans wanted our elected officials to scrap this bill and start over again, but like adults this time.

The democrats will not remain in power for long...this abomination of a bill all but guarantees that. When the republicans come into power again...I can only hope that they repeal this thing and give us something that offers real solutions and real choices to the public. I hope that they just don't grab the old couch off of the trash heap and drag it back into the house and prop it up with some cinder blocks.

But until then, as begrudgingly as I have to say it...I'm kind of grateful to the democrats for sawing the legs off the old thing.

No Substitutions Allowed

I love Texas. To be certain, there are much prettier places to live (unless the bluebonnets are in season) and there are more hospitable places to live (climate-wise, anyway)...but I've never lived in a place with such a can-do attitude my entire life. The Texan attitude can be summed up in a joke I once heard.

A good old boy from Texas died and went to Heaven. Being from Texas, he was immediately admitted and St. Peter took him all around the place, showing him the glory and majesty of his new celestial home.

They passed by the garden and St. Peter said, "have you ever seen flowers so beautiful or smelled such a fragrant perfume?"

"Well, yes", said the Texan, "As a matter of fact they are almost as beautiful as the hillsides in Texas when they are covered in bluebonnets and indian paintbrushes and they smell almost as wonderful as the gardenias and honeysuckle back home in Texas"

Somewhat vexed, St. Peter then showed the Texan his heavenly mansion. "I'll bet you've never stayed anyplace like this before"

The Texan looked around and said, "I guess it will do, it's almost as nice as my huntin' cabin back in Texas and I've always been real comfortable there"

Getting even more annoyed, St. Peter took the Texan over to the edge of Heaven and asked him to look down into the fiery pits of Hell. "I don't suppose that you have anything like THAT in Texas, do you?" asked St. Peter

The Texan looked into the pits of Hell for a while and then quietly spoke, "No...I don't believe that we do" then the Texan brightened up a bit, "but I know this ol' boy down in Houston that could put it out for you!"

But the Texas spirit notwithstanding, the thing I miss most about Texas is the cuisine. Things that are taken for granted in Texas are precious commodities outside the Lone Star State. When you find a fellow expat and proudly tell them that you have a stash of Blue Bell in your freezer, they start to lobby for an invitation to dinner.

But, even though there are some things Texan that you can get outside of Texas, you still have to make due.

For instance, you can get Fritoes, and you can get onions, and you can get cheese...so you're three-fourths of the way to making Frito Pie...sadly, however, the fourth ingrediant is scarcely found outside of Texas; I'm speaking of course, about Wolf Brand Chili.

You can get other chili. Hormel makes chili and its even made in a town called Austin...it's just made in Austin Minnesota....it just doesn't cut it.

At least that was my stand for many years...a lot of people said I was being too stodgy and rigid...that I could make a perfectly wonderful Frito Pie without Wolf Brand Chili.
Then the other night I was watching "King of The Hill" and I watched Hank exuberantly proclaim that "Tonight is Frito Pie night with Wolf Brand Chili!!"

And I wondered if the King of The Hill people had been peeking in my window.

3:16

I have the alarm set on my cell phone to go off at 3:00 in the morning. It's the time I need to get up to shave, shower, and dress and get out of the door by 4:00 so I can be at work in Salt Lake City by 5:15 (after dropping my mother-in-law off at Beehive Clothing).

I don't mind getting up early and I've been an early riser since I was a kid...but 3:00 am is pushing it a bit. Plus, the older I get the more I think of all those naps I refused to take when I was a kid and I kick myself (figuratively because, at my age, those kinds of shenanigans can cause you to break your hip...and I've already had one of those)

Anyway, today I happened to look at my cell phone to check the time and it was 3:16. It immediately reminded my of all those signs I see festooning football end zones. Zealot born-again Christians place them there to give us all a little shot of religion while we're watching 22 guys trying to pummel the life from each other....it really is, I believe, an inappropriate venue.

To tell you the truth, for the reason I cited above, John 3:16 has never been a scripture I much liked. To be certain, it is a beautiful piece of prose:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life

It should be one of my favorite scriptures, but it isn't. Mainly because the people who spend so much energy trying to display that scripture at football games can usually be counted upon to display an equal or greater amount of energy declaring that I am not a Christian.

It's been happening since High School when a fellow member of the football team came over to my house to tell me why I was not going to be admitted to The Fellowship of Christian Athletes and why I was going to hell. I can't tell you how much I appreciated that visit. I took to calling them "Church of the Good Ol' Boy" (along with a few other names). Then a couple of them squared off with me after school. The conversation went something like this:

"Hey, Boyce, we don't appreciate what you've been saying about us...and you better knock it off"

"How about you just forgive me?"

(sadly, Church of the Good Ol' Boy's lack any sense of irony)

If I had a nickle for every time I've been told I'm not a Christian by one of the Good Ol' Boys, I'd put all the nickles in a sock and beat the next one that told me that senseless (There's that irony again)

About 15 years or ago, it got real bad in Katy. You could literally drive down the street and see every marquee in front of every Good Ol' Boy church advertising how they were going to tell you all about what was wrong with the Mormons. It was quite unpleasant for quite some time and a lot of people in our church lost friends for no good reason other than they were LDS.

None of us could figure out what the impetus was for all of this sudden vitriol and persecution directed at us. And then, one day, they announced that our church was going to build a temple in Houston.....if you listened closely enough, you could hear a collective "aHA!" erupt from all the LDS people in Katy.

It seemed that there was one church in Katy that was at the nexus of all of this. They showed weekly anti-mormon films and had regular ex-mormons visit and speak to their youth. I was, at the time, Elders Quorum President and, during one of our welfare meetings, our bishop said that he'd had enough of this foolishness. He assigned me to call the pastor of the church and volunteer to have the missionaries come over and speak to them if they were so interested in our church. (I still don't know what I did to make that bishop dislike me so much)...but I took the assignment.

I didn't get hold of the pastor. I got hold of their "Cult" minister (oh joys!). I introduced myself and told him why I was calling. We got into the standard "You're not a Christian-Yes we are-No you're not-We believe in Christ-Not the same Christ we believe in" discussion that anyone whose run into a Good Ol Boy has had.

Finally, the pastor said, "I don't want you to get the wrong impression Mister Boyce. We don't hate you. We love you....we love you because Christ says we have to love you"

For a moment I was stunned...I didn't even know why I was stunned and then it hit me, and I said.

"You're right, Pastor. I don't think we do believe in the same Jesus"

"Oh?"

"No. You see, the Christ we believe in fills us with love for our fellow man. As a matter of fact, love for our fellow man is an automatic result of the simple process of believing in Him and worshiping Him and knowing and truly understanding that we are, each every one of us, petitioners for His forgiveness and mercy...so if you love your fellow man because you feel compelled to, perhaps we don't worship the same Christ after all."

We weren't invited to speak that his church.

So that's it....that's why John 3:16 has never been one of my favorite scriptures. And then, today I happened to glance at my cell phone and it was 3:16 and the scripture came to mind. It came to me unpoluted by the noise and glare of a football game...it came to me in a still small voice. And it immediately became one of my favorites.

I think that I'll set my cell phone alarm for 3:16 from now on....at the very least, I could use the extra sleep

Lead, Kindly Light - One Mormon's View on the Issue of Gay Marriage

People outside the LDS faith have little idea how pervasive our culture is in our lives. They know about Jews and Catholics because there have been umpteen million movies centered around a jewish person or catholic person trying to rectify their belief in their religion and the culture that comes with that religion with the difficulties of living in a secular world...and many mormons identify closely with these characters because our lives are similarly enmeshed and entangled with the culture that comes with our religion.

For the record, there is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as preached by my church and there is the culture of mormonism. Any intersection between the two is purely coincidental and as likely to happen as an asteroid the size of Texas hitting the earth...we know it's happened before because we can see the geological evidence and we know it can happen again at any time.
People are rarely indifferent to mormons. They either hate us or they love us. If they hate us, it is a safe bet that they've had a past interaction with someone of our faith who focuses less on The Gospel and more on the culture.

I guess that's why I wanted to write about this particular subject; because, although I am steeped in the culture of my religion, I am constantly holding it up to the filter of The Gospel and, like Tevye, I frequently find myself saying, "on the other hand"

All during the Proposition 8 campaign in California, I was saddened by the accusations of hatred hurled at my religion. When it passed, I watched in tears as people who demand tolerance spray painted grafitti all over our most sacred structures. I was moved to tears again by pictures of people who were not members of my religion trying to scrub the offending spray paint from our temple walls.

The issue of marriage rights for homosexuals is something I've struggled with for many years and, to be honest, I'm still struggling with it. The evidence shows that blacks and hispanics overwhelmingly voted for Proposition 8 and yet, it seems that only my religion was vilified for its passing. It would be too prosaic to claim that the members of my faith were singled out for displays of hatred because of religious intolerance. The simple fact is that we were singled out because we were easy targets. Like homosexuals, there are many false assumptions made by people outside our religion about us. Like homosexuals, the lack of understanding, coupled with a fear of the unknown, sometimes leads to violence.

If you let yourself dwell upon the parallels here, the dichotomy of a group long persecuted and hated visiting violence upon another group long persecuted and hated is mind-boggling.

And yet, I understand. The simple truth is, were I not LDS and were I gay, I would probably react the very same way. I would be incensed beyond reason at my not being able to participate. I understand the reasons behind he actions against my religion because I've taken the time to try and understand the issue from the other viewpoint.

Sadly, I don't think that the people standing outside our temple with cans of spray paint have spent the same effort I have. It is too easy to assign a motive of hatred to people who do not agree with us. It requires no intellectual effort on our part. It is also, the very epitome of hypocrisy. Because, when you think about it, we assign the motive of hatred to a group of people who do not think like us so that we can then more easily justify our own hatred and violence towards them. So I would like to lay it out, from my perspective, as to why two groups of people with similar experiences of being the victims of bigotry and persecution could find themselves at this crossroad.

For the longest time, I was a proponent for gay marriage. My reasoning was that I saw no special lines in my tax forms that said if you're gay, you don't need to pay as much tax as the rest of us. When I got my jury summons, I never saw a provision that excused me from serving if I was homosexual...and, although I've looked, I have yet to see any speed limit signs that allowed people who had same-sex attractions to drive faster than the rest of us. If gay people are expected to shoulder thier fair share of being a citizen, I saw no reason why they should not enjoy all of the rights and priviledges of citizenship that I have. I still don't

And yet, my religion has taken a stand on this issue. My religion that goes out of its way to not take a stand on anything political, that every election time sends us a letter to be read from the pulpit in essence stating that political discussions are not to take place from our pulpits and that we are to prayerfully consider and vote for the candidate that we believe will serve us best, they have come out and said that the position of the church is to not support gay marriage rights.

And so, I had to make a choice...do I trust my own wisdom or do I trust the wisdom of men I believe are prophets of God?

Let me take a moment and explain faith as I understand it. Faith is an experiment very much like a scientific experiment...only you can only prove it to yourself. You can never prove it to another. I think that's the way it's always supposed to have been.

I never much understood Paul's explanation of what constitutes faith and I think too many people bandy about the word when what they really mean is that they believe. But faith is different from a belief because faith is a belief that you put your trust into.

A trapeze artist climbs to the top of the tent and swings out on that trapeze because he believes that when he lets go, the other trapeze artist on the recieving end will be there at the precise moment and place to catch him...he does all of that because he believes...but he doesn't have faith until he actually lets go of his trapeze.

The thing about faith in God is that the more you put your trust into it, the more it proves you right. I never have been able to understand why paying a tenth of my income to God assures me that I will somehow manage better but it does. I don't know why reading my scriptures with my family every day seems to cause all of the pettiness and bickering to end and for us to have greater calm in our lives...but it does. I don't know by what means people are healed when hands are placed upon their heads and they are blessed...but I've seen miracles time and time again. It seems that every time I place my trust in my beliefs and act as the men I sustain as prophets say I should act, the scattered pieces of my life oddly seem to align themselves.

And yet, on this one issue of gay marriage, I held to my own wisdom for the longest time because, it just didn't seem right. And then one day, in church, we sang a hymn that we'd sung countless times before and, for some reason, its meaning slammed into me with such a force that I knew I had to abandon my own wisdom and trust in what has never failed me before.

Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom;
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene—one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now,
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years.

So long thy pow’r hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone.
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

To my friends who are gay and to their friends who have taken the opposite side of this issue, I can only say I hope that you understand that I had to make a decision and again, like Tevye, say to myself, "there is no other hand...if I bend that far, I'll break"

I do not come to my stand on this issue lightly, nor is my stand on this issue motivated by fear or hatred. I am simply choosing to place my trust in my beliefs. They have never failed me before and though I know that many will read these words with bitterness, I truly hope that the day will come when we can disagree without being disagreeable.