Life’s Journeys
It has been said that life is a journey and is not
necessarily a comfortable nor an easy one. The fifteenth president and prophet
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gordon B. Hinckley once
made the following analogy:
Anyone
who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time
running around shouting that he's been robbed. The fact is that most putts
don't drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just people, most
successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are
more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail
journey - delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts,
interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of
speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride. (Gordon B.
Hinckley, CES Address, 12 June 1973)
All journeys have a beginning place and an ending place. Some
are more significant than others but all serve to teach lessons that can be
learned in no other way. Each journey provides its own tests, trials,
challenges and a measure of joy and fulfillment. Life is not arbitrary; all
things have their purpose, reward and instructive properties.
This journey we are all a part of upon this microscopic piece
of cosmic dust known as earth, began in a different place than where we now
reside. It began in a pre-mortal sphere where our spirits lived and awaited a
time to begin this all-important journey through mortality.
The words of William Wordsworth speak of this and ring with a
familiarity of their truth:
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Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
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The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
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Hath had elsewhere its setting,
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And cometh from afar:
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Not in entire forgetfulness,
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And not in utter nakedness,
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But trailing clouds of glory do we come
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From God, who is our home:
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Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
(excerpt ODE: Intimations of Immortality)
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In mortality we find ourselves engaged in many different
kinds of journeys that are a part of this formative but necessary experience
here on earth. In my own life there was one such experience. After graduating
from high school at the age of seventeen, I found myself in Marine Corps boot
camp at MCRD in San Diego, California. That training lasted eight weeks. It was
the harshest experience I had ever encountered in my short life but I did learn
that I was capable enduring much more pain, stress and opposition than I had ever
imagined. There were times when we would run for three miles through loose sand
with full pack and rifle and my quadriceps would be in such pain that all I
could do was concentrate on one step at a time. Thinking beyond that was
inconceivable. After what seemed an eternity the run ended and I had endured,
somehow, without giving up or giving in, fear may have been a factor but
regardless of the reason I had done something I had never conceived possible.
From there I went to Camp Pendleton, California for further
infantry training for three weeks. There were long days and long nights with
little sleep. Exhausting forced marches on long dusty roads that went on for
more miles than I could count. Again my mind and body were subjected to
circumstances and experience that were foreign to anything I had ever known and
yet my survival, for me, was a testament of just how much one human body could
endure and survive.
After as short leave I was flown Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
for six weeks of training in Supply Administration School. What was learned
here was nothing like the previous experiences. I learned how I learned.
Telling me something taught me nothing but by being involved in practical
applications I learned quickly and indelibly. This seemingly insignificant
experience would have a life long effect on me, as a student and later as a
teacher. When that training was finished I was informed I would be sent to
Vietnam.
The leave I had prior to my departure allowed a brief visit
home with my parents in Cheyenne, Wyoming. When it came time for me to depart
for Vietnam I remember vividly, as I drove south leaving Cheyenne heading to
Denver, looking in the review mirror of my father’s car and seeing the city
behind me wondering if I would ever see it or my parents again. The experience
was at once sobering and haunting.
After finishing Vietnamese language school and a short stay
in pre-Vietnam staging battalion, I boarded a plane to Okinawa. Two days later,
I was flown to the 15th Aerial Port outside of Danang, Vietnam. It
was May 26, 1967. Looking out the window there was red dirt everywhere. Men were
sitting on bunkers wearing heavy soundproof headphones, flack jackets without
shirts, and M-16 rifles on their laps. Upon disembarking the airplane, I was
overwhelmed by the oppressive heat and humidity, the pervasive smell of rice
paddies and pollutants in the air, and the distant rumble of artillery. It was
completely surreal.
In Vietnam there was always the presence of war even though I
was never in heavy combat. There were occasions, like R&R, which were a
pleasant respite from the conflict and turmoil that were so much a part of the
war. There were also beautiful sunrises over the South China Sea giving hope
for a new day. The occasional quiet calm of a star-filled night. However, there
was a pervasive consciousness of death when driving by a barracks full of soldiers
destroyed by a rocket attack during the night, in seeing black body bags lined
up at the airport awaiting their return home, seeing severely wounded soldiers
covered with blood and in feeling the concussion of rockets hitting jets filled
with napalm turning the horizon bright orange in the middle of the night. During
the long days and sleepless nights of patrols and other necessities throughout
the Vietcong TET offensive of 1968.
I felt the loss of good friends whose families would never
see them again in this life. Dealing with the challenge of survivor’s remorse, feeling
guilt for still being alive and unharmed. Not the least of the experience was
seeing a gentle and sweet people subjected to a war not of their choosing.
Such events and feelings symbolically mirror our journey
through this life. Sometimes there are those things that happen that seem
unfair, there are people who are defenseless, some are fortunate but not
without some trial during their stay on earth. As for my experience I was
fortunate enough to have survived, I was unwounded physically but there were
emotional wounds that would take some time to fully heal.
After serving a tour of duty all came home; some reluctantly
some gladly, some wounded physically some wounded emotionally, some gratefully
some angrily, some scarred and some unscathed and some left the war there and
some brought it home with them. Having finished the tour of duty no one came
home the same person they were before the left to go to war. When I returned to
my home I was not the same eighteen year-old boy that drove the family car out
of Cheyenne nearly eighteen months before. It would take time to understand and
deal with that experience. That transition began in June of 1968.
After some very long flights I finally landed in the small
airport in Cheyenne, Wyoming at about 10 P.M. on a warm June night. I got a cab
and had him drive me to the corner of the block several houses from my boyhood
home. I paid the fair and put a duffle bag on each shoulder and walked the half
block to my home. It was with mixed feelings I made that walk; it was peaceful
to be home but the effects of the war remained embedded in my mind and heart.
It was almost unreal that in what was about seventy-six hours I was transported
from a war zone to my home.
When I reached my home the porch light was not on; there was
no moon. The front door was open and I could see my father sitting in his easy
chair intently watching TV. He didn’t see me. I supposed mother was lying on
the couch watching TV as well even though I could not see her. It was a picture
that is indelibly etched into my memory. Well over a year before I was
wondering if I would ever see this place again and here I was, returned to my
home, to my father and to my mother!
Slowly I approached the front steps leading to the front door
being careful to make no noise to interrupt this moment that was like no other experience
I had ever known in my life. I put down my bags quietly and rang the doorbell. My
father was slightly startled as he said, “I wonder who that could be?” Because
the porch light was not on he could not see who was standing on the front porch.
When he opened the door and saw who it was he fell upon my
shoulders with a bear hug that nearly took my breath away. With tears streaming
down his face, he said with great emotion while holding me tightly, “Welcome
home, sonny boy!” That was his pet name for me. I could not respond but in my
heart I felt a peace that can only come after passing through and surviving a great
crisis.
Mother came over, she was a woman not given to tears, but her
joy and relief were apparent as we embraced in a way that only a loving mother
and a grateful son could. Her love was as powerful as any as I had known to
that point in my life. It radiated security where there was fear, doubt or
uncertainty. That was, to that point in my life, the sweetest experience I had
ever known. I was home! I was safe! I was loved and gave love in return!
That is a very small example of how I see our return from
this mortal journey to our heavenly home and our Heavenly Parents who are as
real as those we have here in this life. The experience of Vietnam taught me things
I could have learned in no other way. In retrospect I saw the hand of God in
conflict, I learned much about the frailty of mortality, I learned it was
possible to survive emotionally as well as physically in very intense
situations.
I don’t know what we knew about this life before we came here
but we were anxious to come knowing, then, that it would be our path back to our
eternal home. We understood the necessity of coming to mortality and learning
all that could only be learned here. The joy we will feel when we complete our
time here, having done all we were sent here to do, will be beyond any joy we
can even begin to understand in this life. The words of a beautiful hymn called
“O, My Father” come to mind.
For a
wise and glorious purpose
Thou hast placed me here on earth
And
withheld the recollection
Of my former friends and birth;
Yet
ofttimes a secret something
Whispered, "You're a stranger here,"
And I felt that I had wandered
From a
more exalted sphere.
I had
learned to call thee Father,
Thru thy Spirit from on high,
But,
until the key of knowledge
Was restored, I knew not why.
In the
heav'ns are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason; truth eternal
Tells me
I've a mother there.
When I
leave this frail existence,
When I lay
this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet you
In your
royal courts on high?
Then,
at length, when I've completed
All you sent me forth to do,
With
your mutual approbation
Let me come and dwell with you.
(Eliza R. Snow, O My Father, bold added)
Because we are eternal beings in a temporal world we have
forgotten our place of origin. Wordsworth’s words are applicable as we come to
understand this small journey that is part of a much larger one. It is not “in
entire forgetfulness” that we ponder either from whence we came or to whence we
will return from this time in mortality. And truly our soul is our “life star”
and will rise with us after this journey is through and our mortal body is laid
to rest. But that separation, like the one from our eternal parents, will be
temporary. For as our Lord and Savior had the power to raise himself from the
dead in resurrection so by that same power will our body and that “life star”
be reunited and then we will begin another journey that will be eternal.
