Pro Opere et Gloria Dei

I just wanted to share my thoughts, including some of those from the memorial service: It seems like a futile endeavor, sharing thoughts that still race too quickly to capture with words. I feel more deeply with each passing day the loss of Yvonne from my life, and I've started to get very sentimental about all the odds-and-ends that still fill the room. It's apparent that not all of them can stay. The clothes she had hanging in the closet are being donated to charity, but the act of removing them is an emotional struggle. I stare at the increasingly empty space those clothes left behind, and fight back tears. None of these things mattered much when Yvonne was living, but now it's proving difficult to say good-bye. I walk through the house, being reminded of the things that I meant to get done but never quite got to. Now those little chores, which took a back seat to other, more important things, haunt me like missed opportunities, chances I had to show Yvonne I cared. I...

I sat through Fast and Testimony meeting Sunday , enjoying the words of others as they expressed gratitude for the blessings of 2010. As I listened I reflected on the past year and its meaning to me personally. The automatic tendency was to dismiss the year as one of those that left me glad it was over. First, there was the trial of Benjy's life-threatening illness, followed by my dad's passing in September. It seems the brightest spot in an otherwise murky year had been Jay's 40th birthday celebration. 2010 had been weighed in the balance, and found wanting. But as I listened further, I came to feel 2010 really wasn't really so bad. Benjy survived his illness, and I was grateful. I thought of how proud I was of all my children, and I was grateful for their examples of strength, patience, and love. Even my father's death had proven to be less difficult for me than I had expected. Now, with Mindy facing another serious medical procedure, I was again thankful for the ...

September 26, 2010 was the day my father passed away. In the time since that event, I have been unexpectedly serene. Though I long feared facing the loss of a parent, something that is an almost universal rite of passage, the experience has proven to be a source of reassurance and comfort. My father wasn't one to show his pain, and the cancer that eventually took his life progressed undetected as he stoically endured the initial discomfort. When I learned of his terminal condition, I knew immediately that it wouldn't be long before he passed on. As it turned out, we had two months in which to say goodbye. It was a tender mercy, as it turned out, allowing me to reach a place spiritually where I could be comfortable when God actually called Dad home. During those first few days after his passing, I recalled a lifetime of memories as I composed his eulogy. The following words are from that tribute, which I gave at the funeral October 1. Ronald Allen was to those who knew him a tr...

I'm at work. It's 5:30 a.m., not too early for me to be here, but when I have no pressing assignments, it's pretty strange to find myself sitting at a desk that's clear of work, pondering the universe. So I decided to journalize my thoughts, trite though they may be. This has been, as Spencer W. Kimball once described it, a "silent, sleepless night." I have been up since precisely 12:00 midnight, enjoying some rare mental and spiritual space, knowing somehow I would not get to sleep, but not getting upset or worried about the day ahead. I feel, in a strange way, more energized than usual. My mind feels free, confident, and relaxed. My attitude is one of illogical optimism. And I know why. I used to struggle with my sense of disempowerment, frustrated that I hadn't yet solved many of the major issues that have plagued me for what seems to be my entire life. I'm not talking about world hunger or peaceful coexistence. Scratch that - maybe I have been wor...

Okay, so my references to geometric logic and strawberries was a bit oblique. Here’s a clue. If you still don’t get it, I highly recommend the movie (or the book).

Some of the people I talk to say I engage in “magical thinking.” They maintain that I sometimes ascribe illogical outcomes to actions I take, or on the other hand I tend to attribute the cause of some experiences and developments to strange, mystical factors. It is decidedly untrue, and I can prove it using geometric logic, a branch of reasoning I learned from Humphrey Bogart. Just because I think there are causes for certain things that are not immediately apparent, and just because I don’t always trust my subjective impression of reality, and just because others may think I am illogical, there is no reason to assume I am necessarily wrong in my thinking. You see, I am convinced that we are all affected very much in our lives by the thoughts of others. Wait, before you line up to sign my commitment papers, let me explain. We all have prejudices, ways of categorizing what we experience. It's not malicious. It's a means of survival in a complex, confusing and sometimes downright...

Long before we had PC's we had typewriters. Not electric, self-correcting models, but mechanical boxes with levers and rollers. I hear there are still a few of them around (in museums). This snappy model (pictured with me at the "keyboard") wasn't too bad. At least I thought so. It didn't really have a keyboard. Instead, it had a round dial with the alphanumeric characters on the edge. Pressing the "space bar" pushed the top-most character against a ribbon, resulting in real words, accurately spelled without exception by a seven-year old author. That was how I "wrote" in the fifties, laying the foundation for a brilliant blogging future. Now I still write in the fifties - my fifties, that is. It's almost as fun now as it was then. I only hope my spelling has improved - just a little.

December is the cruelest month. I know that's not how the actual saying goes, but I think that December - at least the first three weeks - can definitely be the most demanding, exasperating, and just plain difficult time of the entire year. I know - it sounds like Scrooge all over again, and I'm sorry, but from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, my life is a sleep-deprived blur. I work in Finance, and like millions of others, I find year-end to be filled with the most hectic and challenging of work schedules. The fact that get a week off between Christmas and New Year's only means that the "year-end" occurs on December 24th rather than on the 31st. Okay, I should be grateful for the annual vacation, but it comes with a price... three weeks of absolute craziness trying to close the books on another year. Add to all this the Holiday activities, shopping and decorating and everything else, and it only compounds the frustration. Really, who has time for a...

I keep a personal journal. On the shelf, that is. I know the importance of maintaining an ongoing narrative of one's life experiences, both as an important step toward improved self-awareness and as a gift to future generations who might find it interesting to know how people like me managed to get through this whole business of mortality in one piece. A journal well-kept is a personal treasure. My journal covers over twenty years. All in only twelve pages. Months and even years pass between entries, and most of those are a single paragraph. I even have one entry that reads something like "I had the most interesting experience today." Then nothing. I have no idea what it was that was so interesting, and it obviously will be a mystery forever. The real mystery is how, on such an important subject, I have neglected to follow the rules. I cannot count how many times I have been asked if I remember something that happened years ago, only to find out half my life has faded awa...

Luc and I made the trip to Palmdale, California to attend the 20th anniversary celebration for the B-2 bomber. After standing in line for 45 minutes with 7,000 other people, we decided to take off and wander around aimlessly in the Mojave Desert. Luc wanted to hunt for lizards, and I had hopes of taking some exciting pictures. (Sorry, I can't take credit for the top photo). Luc was very persistent, looking under every rock and tumbleweed he could see. We spotted a couple of Jackrabbits but nothing else. I, however, had some exciting results. I found a living room in the desert, complete with TV: And there was this elegant sofa! Needless to say, you just can't expect to find a lot of scenic wonders when you're wandering aimlessly in the desert hunting for lizards. Actually, we did manage to get a few good shots coming to and from the desert, like the shot below of the California Aqueduct (kind of pretty at sunrise). In the mountains above San Bernardino, after years of drivi...

The vast universe of cable TV has a rich assortment of exciting documentary programs with which one may expand his or her awareness of things unexplained. I refer mostly to the sudden explosion of material dealing with paranormal phenomena: hour upon hour dedicated to the proposition that all spirits are created equal - or are they? Some show up as full-fledged apparitions, while others just cause a needle to move on a little meter. Meanwhile, there's the invasion of the extraterrestrials, who now reside chiefly at Area 51. I've watched the amazing autopsy films from Roswell, and marveled at the magic metal that once formed a real flying saucer. And who hasn't been persuaded by all that eyewitness evidence of Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and all the other creatures lurking in the wilderness? Well, in our home there is at least one true believer. I'm learning new and exciting things about the nature of life and the origins of the universe. Finally, it all makes sens...

There are few experiences more fulfilling to parents than watching their children immersed in the joy of life: playing, exploring, learning and inevitably growing up. My oldest daughter, Mindy, has always been possessed of that rare and wonderful spirit that not only inspires by example but also fills the world around her with love. It is that undeniable spirit that is occasionally beset with the kind of earthly trials that are meant to help us grow as children of our Heavenly Father. It is one of life's ironies that these times of testing seem to come more frequently to those who are strongest, those who have long since been proven in adversity, those who are loved for what they have already given to a world so in need of their special gift. When for a very long time I was not able to be with Mindy and her sister Fiauna, I often recalled not only their times of joy but their times of pain and fear, when as a consoling father I held them and loved them that much more. In their abse...