Times of Transition

Filming for the Interpreter Foundation’s new “Six Days in August” movie project has been underway in Canada since Monday morning.  That’s both exciting and, well, worrying.  If you feel any inclination to include our film crew and our actors in your prayers, I won’t oppose you in that.

So far, I’m told, things are going well.

Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  Conference Talks: “Where I Will Meet You”: The Convergence of Sacred Time and Sacred Space as the Etiological Function of the Tent of Meeting.  This talk was presented by Matthew Bowen on Saturday, 5 November 2016, at the Interpreter Foundation’s 2016 Temple on Mount Zion Conference.

He is not as committed to free-market libertarian-inclined economics as I am, nor as conservative as I am on many other issues, but — now that he’s announced that he’ll be bowing out of elective politics — I can openly say that I’ve been proud to have Mitt Romney as one of my senators.  (I’ll pass over in silence the fact that, prior to entering the Senate, he wrote a brief Easter message for Interpreter.)  He is an intelligent, principled man, and he has represented my faith and my adopted home state well, both politically and beyond politics.  I’m one of an apparently unpopular breed of conservatives who believe that conservatism includes but transcends issues of public policy, and that personal character is of fundamental importance in our public leaders — not only in the days of Bill Clinton but today, as well.

I began to hear really positive things about Senator Romney long before he sought political office or stepped forward to save the 2002 Winter Olympics.  I heard remarkable things about him — often quite specific things — from people who knew who him well and personally and who spoke of him with what struck me almost as awe and reverence.

• I was struck when a young father, newly arrived for graduate studies in Boston, told me of coming out to the parking lot with his kids after sacrament meeting, only to find that his worn-out old grad student car had a flat tire.  Not to worry, Governor Romney and Harvard Business School dean (and future General Authority) Kim Clark told him.  “Tend to your kids and we’ll change the tire.”  An ardent Democrat on the extreme edge of that party’s left wing, this young man said, on the basis of that and other experiences, that he would vote for Mitt Romney for any political office.
• I recall meeting with a prominent businessman, a leader of the Sephardic Jewish community in New York City, who, unbidden, described Mitt Romney as one of the finest men he had ever known.
• I remember the words of another man — I won’t identify him further, as his name would be familiar to many Latter-day Saints and to many beyond the Church — who choked up while recounting what Mitt Romney had done, and the very great lengths to which he had gone, to help out during an agonizing family emergency.  “I would do anything for that man,” he told me.
• I recall yet another person telling of Mitt Romney showing up during a rare moment of campaign downtime to join a “Mormon Helping Hands” crew of volunteers pulling up a large tree stump following a natural disaster.  No camera crews or news media were present, and the man telling about the event could scarcely believe what he was seeing: that it was really the Republican presidential candidate down there in that hole with the stump, wielding a chain saw.  “I haven’t been getting enough physical exercise,” Governor Romney explained.

I’m not quite the villainous buffoon that my most fervent critics love to depict, but there are a few people like Mitt Romney who remind me forcefully that I’m also not the good man that I wish I were.

I’m grateful for Mitt Romney’s service, for his sheer decency, for all the good that he has done in the public and the private sectors and in and for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I honor him, and I wish him well for his final year and a half in the Senate of the United States and well beyond.

Genuinely good people fill me with awe and reverence.

Two interesting articles and a really interesting article:

• From the Deseret News:  “Mitt Romney talks about his decision to not seek reelection — and what’s ahead for him: In an interview with the Deseret News, Romney says he won’t run for president and that it’s time for ‘the next generation to step forward’”
• From the Deseret News:  “Trump, Ryan, McConnell, others respond to Romney’s retirement news: Romney received bipartisan praise for his service”  (Is anybody even slightly surprised by the gracelessness of one of the responses?)
• From The Atlantic:  “What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate: In an exclusive excerpt from my forthcoming biography of the senator, Romney: A Reckoning, he reveals what drove him to retire.”

With friends, we spent a significant part of today in Arches National Park, and most particularly in and near the Fiery Furnace, Devil’s Garden, and the Garden of Eden, followed by a look at the iconic Delicate Arch.  This is an astonishing place.  Also somewhat surprising:  We saw at least motorcyclists with Danish flags on their mounts.  Every time I’m in this area, I run into lots and lots of Europeans.  And it’s true:  Europe has some truly astonishing landscapes.  I love the Alps, for example, more than I can possibly express.  And the fjords of Norway.  But there’s nothing remotely like Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce, Zion, Capitol Reef, and the Grand Canyon.

Posted from Moab, Utah