Twenty Years

The Grandkids with Nana and Papa, Bountiful, Utah, 1986

Perhaps you all will forgive a very brief post today.  This is shaping up to be a very busy week.  In addition to having 55 midterms to grade, I agreed to substitute for seminary on Wednesday and Friday and the following Monday.  So I am planning on spending the day doing my reading for Seminary and trying to plan out my lesson for Wednesday on Helaman 1-2.  To be honest, even though it will be busy, it is wonderful to be able to be of service in the Church.  I'm sure that I have often overlooked the great blessing that it is to serve in the Kingdom of God, but I am convinced that the blessings are far greater to those who serve than to those they are privileged to serve.

Nana and Papa Haycock with Elder and Sister Hinckley and a very tall man, circa 1957

This week is a special anniversary for me.  Twenty years ago this Tuesday, I heard my dad showering extra early in the morning.  When I woke up an hour and a half later, I found that my dad had left home to rush to Salt Lake to be with my Mom at the LDS Hospital where my Papa Haycock had passed away at the age of 77.  I don't envy my sisters Stephanie and Jeni, who had the difficult assignment of informing their three younger siblings that our Papa had died.  But despite the difficulty of the assignment, they performed it.

I write about my Papa a lot and I'm sure that this is bizarre for at least a few readers of this blog.  But as his namesake (my middle name is David, which was his first name), I've always felt a special kinship to him.  He was as kind and gentle a man as I have ever known.  He was a natural story teller and could keep a room's rapt attention for hours while he spoke.  Aside from the somewhat dubious stories of trudging for miles through large drifts of snow to get to school, the most common subjects of his stories were the Prophets and Apostles that he served with, each story intended to deepen the faith of those who heard it.

It's been twenty years since I was able to sit in a room and listen to him tell stories and it will likely be a great while yet before I am so privileged again, but I anxiously await the time when I'll again be able to sit on the floor and listen to him speak.  Perhaps he didn't know how much those stories and those testimonies influenced his young grandson, but I've never been the same since.  Like him, I enjoy telling a good story; and my favorite subject is the Prophets I've come to know through my research and study.  Perhaps, in this small way, I've followed in some of the biggest footsteps ever left by a man who was only 5'6".  I miss him.

Brett

Context

Image of the Martin Handcart Company

This past week I spent some time doing some research in pioneer journals for the upcoming trek that my stake is having.  This research is also doubling for a paper that I am presenting at the Mormon History Association's Annual Conference in San Antonio this June.  For my paper I had decided to speak about the ways that American missionaries and British converts felt and wrote about the different environments that the gospel exposed them to.  When the missionaries arrived in England, many of them were shocked to see the admittedly dreary conditions of the industrializing nation.  These missionaries were, for the most part, farmers who although not wealthy, were used to people owning land and animals.  In England's cities they found industrial pollution, housing tenements, and very little private property.  They often wrote home in shock about these conditions, convinced that their own native environments were better (and in some ways making a good case).

But the second part of my paper looks at the way that the British converts of those missionaries experienced America.  We all know about the way that the environment affected the Martin and Willy Companies, but the things that I learned this week gave context to the handcart experience and reshaped my thinking on this pioneer episode.

Not living in the 1850s, we often don't think about the challenges that these converts faced beyond the exhaustion of a long trek with blazing temperatures in the Summer, and freezing temperatures and snow in the early Fall.  We don't ask questions like, "What was it like for people who had never owned oxen to learn how to drive a wagon across the prairies?"  "How did they learn how to care for those animals?"  So often we conceptualize the pioneers as "rugged frontiersmen" and forget that many of them were city dwellers not entirely unlike ourselves.  And these city dwellers had to learn how to drive wagons pulled by large, often unbroken, oxen.

One pioneer, Watkin Rees, recalled, "Driving Oxen was a new business to most of us Emigrants, many of us having never seen a pair of Oxen yoked together before we came to America."  To illustrate his point, he then recalled that "One lady, looking at a bunch of Oxen that had been brought together to be yoked up, asked how they milked them cows" as "they looked different to the cow she had seen milked [once before]" (Reminiscences of Watkin Rees, Church History Library).  A more experienced boy, Charles Bailey, noted that "Green [or inexperienced] Cattle and green drivers made it amusing" (Autobiography of Charles Ramsden Bailey, Church History Library).  Simply put, crossing the plains was not just a matter of hitching up a wagon and pulling the reins.  And inexperienced wagon drivers were not just amusing, they could be dangerous.

Having these problems in mind, as well as the high costs of wagons, Church leaders decided to experiment with handcarts.  Other than the assembly of the carts, there was no training required.  And with the exception of the Martin and Willy Companies, handcarts worked splendidly.  In fact, the handcarts generally arrived in the Valley more quickly than wagon companies.

All too often, we find ourselves making judgments about circumstances and situations without really understanding the context.  People have criticized the handcart experiment because of the heavy losses of the Martin and Willy companies, which, yes, did leave too late in the season.  But it is always easy to point at the places where things went wrong while ignoring the places where they went right.  It is easy to say the Martin and Willy companies should have remained in Nebraska for the winter without feeling any need to then answer the question of where they were to stay, what they were to eat, what shelter they were to enjoy.  It is easy to forget that the highest death totals in the pioneer experience came between 1846 and 1850, when Saints who were not ready to journey to the Valley stayed in makeshift homes at Winter Quarters.

When we look at mistakes and other problems in our lives, we must remember that there is always a context, and often a context which we do not fully understand.  But gratefully, our Heavenly Father and His Divine Son perfectly understand every context of our lives.  The Savior suffered not only for our sins, but also for the circumstances that frequently are the impetus for those sins and mistakes.  Accordingly, what he offers us is not just a theological bandaid to cover up the scrapes, but a genuine cure that addresses the roots of our spiritual wounds.  He grasps the contexts of our imperfections and He heals the whole soul.  And when He comes to us to speak of the areas where we need to improve, it is not with rash judgments or unfeeling edicts.  Rather, He comes to us with compassion and love, a compassion and love that is borne out His perfect understanding and empathy for us.

Brett

We Owe Them Something!

As with everything I write, I am never quite sure what to write as an introduction.  This week is no exception.  Honestly all of the weeks here seem to blend together without a whole lot to distinguish them.  It's probably a good thing this isn't really a blog about what I do with my life.  Anyone who is hoping for updates on that, I sincerely apologize.  I'm not that exciting to write about, so I don't write much about myself.

I got a call this morning about an hour and a half before Church.  It was the guy that I teach with.  He had come down with the flu and wasn't going to be able to teach, so I got to teach today.  And then the teacher of the 16-17 year olds was sick, so they came into my class also, meaning that I got to teach the 14-17 year olds.  It was a lot of fun, at least it was for me.

The lesson was on how learning is a part of God's plan for us.  I'm afraid that the opportunity to teach on a subject that I devoted several years of my life and my Master's Thesis to was too tempting of an opportunity for me to avoid giving a prolonged lecture to the kids.  When I was preparing the lesson, I was reminded of one of my absolute favorite talks by Elder Holland, "Who We Are and What God Expects Us To Do" (video also available here).  Elder Holland derived his message from Tevye's famous song "Tradition," in which he reminds us that "because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do."  Elder Holland then went on to relate that we too have a tradition, a tradition of faith, sacrifice, and learning.  He told of Saints holding schools in wagons or around campfires in a wickiup, sharing books around the class so that each might have an equal privilege.  He reminded the students of the long and expensive struggles to build a single school building, let alone a campus full of them.  Finally, Elder Holland stated, "We owe them something.  We who are the beneficiaries of their sacrifice and their faith--we owe them the best effort we can put forward in obtaining a truly edifying and liberating and spirit-soaring education."

I've thought a lot about that phrase, "We owe them something" and what it means for me.

I've thought about my Grandpa Dowdle, who would get up at four in the morning to hitch a ride from Springville into Provo where he worked as a janitor at BYU, and who would then go to classes and then go off to another job where he worked until late at night, again hitching a ride back to Springville where he would study and then get into be around one in the morning, to repeat the process again the next day.  I've thought about my Grandma Dowdle who helped me learn how to read "Dick and Jane" when I was a small boy, knowing that it was a skill I would need throughout my life.  I've thought about my Papa Haycock who never had the opportunity for a college education, but who was among the most profoundly learned men I have ever known, filling his house with books and a thirst for knowledge.  I've thought about my Nana Haycock who beamed with each accomplishment that her grandchildren reached.  I've thought about the many who came before them, each in their own way adding faith and learning to my heritage and struggling to make it possible for me to enjoy what I have today.  I've thought about my parents who have sacrificed comfort and means and probably more than a few dreams for each one of their children to achieve our own dreams.  And with all these thoughts, I can only conclude with Elder Holland, "I owe them something."

What do I owe?  At the very least I owe them my faith and continued diligence in the gospel cause.  I owe them my best studies, my best writing, my best work.  But more than that, I owe them a continued heritage of faith and righteousness and learning, passed onto succeeding generations with the same level of devotion with which it was passed on to me.

Tradition? Tradition!  It is in understanding and appreciating these traditions that each of us keeps our balance in this world and prepares a world of meaning for the rising generation.  It is in knowing and understanding these traditions that we truly come to see that we are a small part of something much grander, a family and a plan devised by God Himself, in a word, a "tradition."

Brett

Unfair Judgments and Labels

Maybe it is just me, but after Christmas and New Year's, I am done with the cold and I am ready for the spring.  Before Christmas and New Years, the snow and wintery weather remind me that it is time to be with family and to celebrate the holidays.  After those holidays, however, I want it to be warm again.  I feel this way now more than ever, perhaps because warm weather means a return home and a chance to be close to loved ones again.  Forgive my complaining, but February in Texas is supposed to be like late March in Utah, and this past week it has been bitter cold instead of warm, moving toward spring.  Oh well, things could be much worse.  :)

Anti-Catholic and Anti-Mormon Political Cartoon, Circa 1880

As I've been working on my dissertation, I've been struck by the language and judgments that we often make about others who are different than ourselves.  As I've been working on my dissertation, I've come across a number of letters and newspaper articles that made such claims about Mormons during the 1800s.

In 1848, as many of the Saints were starving at Winter Quarters, Colonel Thomas L. Kane a friendly non-Mormon took it upon himself to raise awareness of their plight in the East, hoping to secure funds to ease their suffering.  Kane held a meeting in New York City in early March for just such a purpose.  Reporting this meeting, the editor of the New York Herald wrote, "These Mormons have cut a great figure during the last few years; but their present destitute condition has sprung from their ignorance and fanaticism.  By the practice of common sense, and common decency, they might have continued to live in the Western United States [remember this is 1848] up to the day of judgment.  They were, however, led astray by vanity and fanaticism" ("The Mormon Meeting," New York Herald, 4 March 1848).  In Brigham Young's correspondence for 1850, I came across a letter from an anonymous citizen of California who wrote that he "did not think the civilized part of the world could produce such a mass of base, disreputable, ignorant, ill-looking, and licentious people" as the Saints.  In the political cartoon above, the cartoonist depicted Roman Catholicism and Mormonism as "foreign reptiles" that posed a grave threat to American liberty.

Consider the assumptions and meanness that these kind of statements required.  To have blamed the plight of the pioneers at Winter Quarters on themselves is hardly a fair assessment of the circumstances.    I'm a historian, and I fully acknowledge the fact that Latter-day Saints have not always been and are not always perfect.  Sometimes unwise people made bad situations worse by saying or doing things that ought not to have been said or done.  Sometimes we used labels and words that made judgments as unfair about non-Mormons as the ones they made about us.  But regardless of this, people were starving and dying at Winter Quarters.  Was that really the time to make such a statement?

For the man from California, who clearly had not enjoyed his short time traveling through Utah to California's gold fields, were those words really necessary?  Surely whatever may have been said or done did not merit the judgments he cast upon the body of the Saints.  And finally for the cartoonist who saw Catholics and Mormons as less than human, as reptiles, could he not see that these people were his brothers and sisters?

Perhaps we don't write such editorials or letters, or publish such cartoons.  But how often do we make statements about others that are utterly unfair and ungenerous toward them?  How often do we let our hatred or anger or political opinions or whatever else get in the way of our ability to see those who are different from us as our brothers and sisters?  I'm afraid that I am guilty of such thoughts far too often.  In my arrogance, I forget that other people may be going through great difficulties and may be having experiences that are beyond their control.  The things I blame them for may not be entirely their fault.  And even if I am right about the wrongness of their behavior or whatever, my being right never entitles me to make the kind of judgments that call into question their divine nature and their humanity.  Rather, I have a continued responsibility to love and serve them and to refrain from making unkind and unfair judgments about those who are different.

May we all strive to be a little kinder, a little more patient, a little more loving.  For surely, in our own struggles, we wish for others to grant us those same allowances and mercies.

Brett