The Truth!

Wow, what a long six days it has been. I got back home a couple of hours ago and am exhausted. I was stoked about being home so that I could go to the gym, but once I got through the door I pulled one of those,” I’ll do it tomorrow” that has led to my high blood pressure (I finally had it taken and was startled. I am not going to suddenly drop dead, but it is high enough that I want to do something about it.)

Visiting family was mostly what you would have expected it to be. It was a lot of fun and it was good to spend time with them. It is easier to visit some of our extended family then it is others. My mom’s sisters are the most pleasant. One is a member while the other members of her family are not. Her other sister does not care either way about the church, in fact, she pretty much is not thrilled at all with any religion.

Her Three brothers are where it gets interesting. The relationship she has with each of hem is somewhat distanced compared to what she has with her two sisters. Her brothers were all baptized at one point, but two of them completely fell away shortly after being ordained to the Aaronic priesthood. The third, and youngest of the family stayed active for years, received the melchizidek priesthood and was even endowed, but since the death of his mother, my Grandmother, has left as well.

One of her brothers absolutely hates the church. He resents the fact that his mother found religion and basically made a 180-degree turn in her life and then began to exhort him to do the same. In his mind there is nothing good that can come out of the Church, and he often has negative things to say about. Fortunately he does not say anything at family gatherings.

The highlight of the trip was going to the New York Metropolitan Museum of art. If you ever get the chance this is a place that you have to go to. It is unlike any museum on the planet. Their collection of Egyptian artifacts is superior to anything you will find in Antiquities museum in Cairo. My mother has been to both and she has said that there is more in New York then in any of the museums she visited while in Egypt.

I felt like Hugh Nibley in way, because I could look at Hypocephalous, and other Hieroglyphics and get an idea of what was going on and what they were about. It was cool to look a mummies and sarcophagi from various dynasties. Take your wife and leave the kid with the grandparents and spend a weekend at the Met Museum of art. I am planning on returning and seeing the whole thing over a couple of days.

By far the most impressive was their exhibit devoted arms and armaments from medieval times. Knights were very small people; in fact people were smaller five and six hundred years ago. I would have been a terror on the field of battle. And who knows, maybe because of my height and girth, the Duke or Baron that I served under would have wanted me to mate frequently produce a race of super knights. One can only dream.

All in all, the entire trip was great. The only thing that I did not like was the hotel’s work out facilities. I don’t like exercise bikes.

I was over at my friend Phillip’s house just before stake conference two weeks ago. His father and I were talking about, of all things, Sunstone and whether or not we should contribute an article to this publication. The article that we would like to see would be about ideals in Mormon life, and what happens, or what we should do, when things do not meet our preconceived expectations.

I think that both of us are qualified to write such an article considering that we have experienced times in our lives when the ideal and reality have conflicted and even contradicted each other. Both of us had to come to the conclusions that have allowed us to cope with the shattering of our ideal, and how we have moved forward with our lives.

It should be interesting to see what we come up with.