The Best Way to Learn

I think I have formed another band.

I don't know this for sure because no one has really said "Hey, we're a band!" and because, if it is a band, it's not a very good one. Of the three consistent regulars who show up between 5:30 and 6:00 PM on Wednesday afternoons, I am the only one who has ever really played in an official band where we were paid money, from time to time, to play for people who really wanted to listen. The other two have played their guitars in their living rooms and occasionally with other people who have not played in real bands. There is one man who shows up from time to time, who has played professionally before. When the four of us play and the other two screw up the changes, we look at each other and share the same thoughts as we smile and start over.

We have been asked to play at the upcoming ward campout on the Friday evening of Labor Day weekend. There is no way we will be ready enough for anyone to sincerely say "You guys are great!" This is particularly problematic because one of the guys agreed to an hour's worth of music when we might have been able to pull of two songs... maybe. An hour is a set and a set contains at least 15 songs unless they are all the long versions of "Light My Fire", "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and "El Paso". Then you only need 4. No one but me knows "Light My Fire" or "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", the other former pro knows "El Paso" but the key change between stanza and chorus kills the other two.

Still, in three weeks, we will play for an hour and people will pretend to like it.

During the last rehearsal, the request was made that I not just give them lyrics and a chord progression like this:

/ C Em Am C / F Am Dm F / G G7 Em G7 / C Em Am C /

We skipped the light fandango

Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor

I was feeling kind of seasick

But the crowd called out for more

But rather something like this:

C Em Am C

We skipped the light fandango

F Am Dm F

Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor...

etc. through every one of the five verses and the chorus of this song.

Then I have to show them, often, how to play the minor and 7th chords. Heaven forbid we have a song with major 7ths or 9ths!

I asked them why they needed this and they both explained that they couldn't remember the words and the chords if the chords were not directly above the lyrics. I said that is why we practice at home and during rehearsal... but it really came down to making it easy for them to learn and for them, theirs was the best way.

Later that same Wednesday evening, I had the occasion to sit with a friend who serves with me in the High Priest Group leadership in our ward. For a number of weeks know, he has been carrying a heavy, secret burden that, a week earlier, he had confided to me and for which I gave him a priesthood blessing last Monday morning.

During this conversation he asked me what I thought was the best way to learn, explaining that he had lost all confidence in learning through experience. This because he had known one thing to be true for 35+ years and only learned when he was 50, that he was wrong about it.

As we talked it because clear that he had not really gathered this misinformation through experience, but through supposition that was based on fallacy. I suggested to him that rather that trust our assumptions, especially when they make no logical sense, we should test our assumptions on others. In this particular case, he believed he had been sinning for those 35 years but after reading a book by Elder Packer, he learned that he had not. He was 50 when he read the book. I asked him if he had ever consulted a bishop to repent of what he thought was a sin over that time period and he had not. I made the case then, another value of confessing to one's bishop. It just might be that there is nothing really to confess!

That conversation, as all do, wandered off into strange and diverse paths until I kicked him out of my truck sometime after 10:00 PM.

Since then, however, I have been considering what might be the best way to learn. I have determined that it depends very much on what we are trying to learn.

One cannot learn history by experience unless one has access to a time machine or panoramic, prophetic vision. I have neither so I have to read history books or listen to historians who, presumably, have read history books or the sources for them.

I cannot, however, learn how to cook by reading a cookbook. That comes with the application of the information found in the cookbook.

Paul taught us that the Savior: "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered..." (Hebrews 5:8)

The Lord, in the 105th section of the Doctrine and Covenants teaches that we are probably supposed to learn obedience the same way:

"And my people must needs be chastened until they learn obedience, if it must needs be, by the things which they suffer." (V. 6)

This verse may give us an "out" with the "if it must needs be" caveat; but I don't think so.

As I pondered those passages, I thought of others, including the entire 93rd section of the Doctrine and Covenants wherein we learn that the glory of God is His intelligence which is light and truth, which light and truth forsake the evil one...

The 26th through the 28th verses are quite enlightening as far as this topic is concerned:

"The Spirit of truth is of God. I am the Spirit of truth, and John bore record of me, saying: He received a fulness of truth, yea, even of all truth; and no man receiveth a fulness unless he keepeth his commandments. He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things."

Section 130 teaches the same principle really, that intelligence, knowledge, light, etc. are the results of obedience to the commandments of God. That's how God got His intelligence and, according to the 88th section , God knows all things (see verse 41).

I conclude, then, that the foundation to all learning is obedience and that the method means little to nothing unless that method hinders obedience. So my friends are perfectly fine in their method of learning how to play and sing songs but my other friend, because of his disobedience to the council that we confess our sins for complete repentance (D&C 19:20) did not learn that what he thought was a sin, was not.

The next time I see him, I will tell him what I learned...

Smashing Snails and a Bloated Body

Yeah, I know I already blogged today.

As the blog is titled however, during the typing of the first, I was reminded of a story. The story itself is a non sequitor to the previous post this morning and the reader of both will never understand what it was that helped me regurgitate this memory because I can't and it's my memory.

In my life I have seen a number of corpses. The first of my memory was that of my Grandfather Yarberry. I was 9 when he died and he was 63; pretty young by today's standards. He had led a libertine life, however, where wine played a much larger role than did women or song although they both occupied full stanzas in his raucous ballad of life.

I believe it was 4 years later, when I was 13, that I saw my second dead body. It was not nearly as pretty as Grandpa after the Lampasas mortician had prettied him up.

It was the summer of my 15th year of life. We were living at that time in Copperas Cove, Texas, in a tract ranch on the outskirts of town in a subdivision with other houses that looked almost the same. Behind my house there was nothing but central Texas prairie full of all the things boys of my age in Texas find fascinating. I killed a number of rattlesnakes there, including one that had invaded our backyard after my pet guinea pig which was housed at my mother's mandate in a shaded cage near the back entrance to the garage. In retrospect, I should have let the rattler have his way with the little fellow as, just a few days later, he died a horrible death because I had forgotten to fill his water dish and move his cage into the garage and out of the sun. I killed a pet rat in a similar way a couple of years earlier while we were living in Hawaii. After the guinea pig, I gave up rodentia as pets.

There were lizards of many variaties with the famed Horned Toad as this boy's favorite. We called them "Horny Toads" however, innocent of the sexual implications of that particular nickname.A little over a mile from the back of our chain-link fence was a farm pond chock full of Blue Gills and Bullheads. Almost everyday during the summer, I would take my fishing rod and my dog Chris, a canteen and a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich and make the hike to catch a stringer of gills for my mother to either cook for dinner that evening or freeze for future fish fries. There was no bait store nearby nor was there money for worms; and with the ground too dry anywhere near the surface to support life for a worm, I found an alternative bait what was both abundant and free... snails.I would gather dozens of them during the hike from the stems of weeds and off the ground as they traveled toward whereever it is that snails go when the sun gets too hot. Pond-side, I would smash their shells with a rock and attach their fleshing bodies to the hook. The Blue Gills loved them.

This nearly daily ritual was more than just a fishing trip for me. It gave me an opportunity to excape my mother's "episodes" with mental illness and, from time to time, chores what were not part of my assigned list but represented my mother's queenly control over her children.Years later, after I had grown and gone, my mother was diagnosed as manic-depressive. I think they call it bi-polar now. That summer, however, she was just great one week and demonically evil the next. The only way I could cope with the inconsistency of it was to escape whenever I could.

On one particularly hot Monday morning, after not fishing on either Saturday because of family stuff and Sunday because of God's stuff, I opened the back gate of the fence and, with Chris, headed to the pond, capturing snails along the way.A few yards, maybe 50, from the pond, I began to smell something awful.

The aroma of dead things was not unusual in the summer in a Texas prairie. Things were always dying... but little things. Little things that had fallen victim to coyotes or foxes which, after eating their fill, left the carcasses for the turkey buzzards and the red ants. The smell that morning, however, was worse.

A few steps further I found the source of the stench. It was a dead man, bloated by the heat and surrounded by pecking vultures.I don't remember many details nor did I ever hear the story of who, what, when, why and where. I do remember his skin being almost black but not because he was an African American, but because of the sun in Texas in the heart of the summer.

I ran home fishless and told my mother who called my father who told her to call the police. I thought for sure I would be called upon to lead the posse to the body but all they asked me to do was point. And it wasn't a real posse; just two local cops. From the security of my back yard I watched a pick-up truck owned by one of the departments; fire or police, I never knew which, drive toward the pond.

I know there was no way they could miss the body. It stunk too much and the buzzards too loud and numerous.

While I never learned any details, I made a story that aged well as I recounted them to my friends. It is likely the poor fellow was some drunk who lost his way and then his life but in my tale he was a the target of a mob henchman who had crossed the Big Boss and paid dearly for his disloyalty; the mob, of course, having and huge contingency in Copperas Cove, Texas.

My pals pretended to believe me.

The call of the pond overwhelmed my fear after a week or so and I returned to my sacraments of smashing snails and hooking Blue Gills and avoiding, wheneve possible, the dark side of the mom.

My celebrity didn't last longer than the summer and by the time school started in September, only John Kinman and me ever talked about it; and he was just being polite.

Within a few weeks of starting school my father received orders for Vietnam and we packed up and moved to Michigan to wait for him. This was 1965, long before the Tet Offensive but not before American soldiers were sacrificing their lives for a cause that would eventually be lost. 60,000 Americans died in that "crazy Asian war" with another million-plus in total deaths. My father saw a portion of those and it changed him and not for the better. The next dead bodies I saw were on my mission in Guatemala and El Salvador where death was common and often public. After my mission it was probably my Nana's. I was older and married when she died and more prepared for a viewing.

While there were likely a few others between whose names I don't remember, the next one of importance was that of my father who, like my grandpa, died at 63. Shortly before he died, he was grizzled by a long illness and hard-eyed from the anger he lived with. He was mean to his family during the last weeks, hoping, I think - I hope - to make his eventual passing easier on us. He was long-bearded and bible-clutching to the end. The morticians in Kalamazoo gave the pre-Vietnam dad back to us.

In the casket he looked at peace, finally.

I Am a Lazy Blogger

I can't believe it's been seven months since I last posted an entry to my blog. But the blog doesn't lie.

Today I received an e-mail from dear friends who are serving as missionaries in India - their second mission there, by the way - wherein they gave me the link to their mission blog and a promise to update it monthly. It was when I placed that link on this site that I noted how long it has been since I posted anything.

Assuredly, it's not because I have nothing to say. My wife would attest that I always have something to say. Neither can I blame it on being too busy, although I am busy enough.

Since I last blogged I have been called as the High Priest group leader in my ward. This is an assignment that can be demanding from time to time, but not all that time-consuming. I am in the middle of budget crunching for '09 at work, but I still have time to goof off a little. I started playing in a little porch band again, but we only play together for an hour or so, a week. In fact, calling it a band is a stretch.

I try to catch "Survivor" on Thursday evenings when it's on, but that's only an hour... I spend a few hours on Saturday with my wife running errands and taking in a movie or something and on Sundays I am committed to 6 or 7 hours of Sabbath keeping if I go visiting; 5 or less if I don't.

Assumming I am awake for 112 hours a week and that I can only account for 80 of those hours (if I am generous with myself), that leaves 32 hours without any activity I can remember.

The point of this rambling is that I can't find an excuse for neglecting the blog.

I have had thoughts, however, about the vanity of such an endeavor as a blog, at least for me.

What do I have to say that is so important that I publish it for the world to see?

That question alone highlights my vanity. Though the world has access to the blog, there is nothing to suggest that more than a few people who are friends and family would have the slightest inkling to read it.

It's not as though I or the things that I do are interesting. I don't have the talent to transform the everyday events of my life into interesting for provocative commentary as does my friend Barney (his blog is linked with "People Who Write". My daughter Erin (her link is there too) writes beautifully and poignantly and often with great humor. Both theses people also also diligent bloggers.

The title of this blog implies that I have a lot of stories. This is true enough, but who doesn't have a lot of stories?

Someone close to me said they wished I would be more diligent with this blog because it was a kind of legacy wherein they could get to know me better. Well, that ought to be enough motivation.

So, I repent and promise to try harder... Whatever that means.