Celebrating the harvest \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0(Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I published this column in the Deseret News<\/em> on Thanksgiving Day 2012:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
William Ernest Henley\u2019s famous Victorian-era poem \u201cInvictus\u201d provided the title and the theme for Clint Eastwood\u2019s inspiring 2009 film about Nelson Mandela.\u00a0 It also provided the memorable claim \u201cI am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s a stirring assertion, and, in a very real sense, true.\u00a0 A great proportion of what we are and do rests upon our own decisions.<\/span><\/p>\nBut not everything, and perhaps not the most important things. \u00a0Henley\u2019s claim is also false and misleading.<\/span><\/p>\nAs I write, a friend and neighbor is recuperating from a catastrophic fall that lacerated his face, took out most of his teeth, broke major bones everywhere in his body, and very nearly killed him.\u00a0 As he plunged groundwards, he certainly wasn\u2019t the master of his fate, and he\u2019s scarcely more so as he lies in a hospital bed.\u00a0 Those who\u2019ve surveyed the spot where he landed, closely bordered by objects that could instantly have ended his life, regard his survival as a miracle, and he himself, speaking with difficulty, testifies to it.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI thank whatever gods may be,\u201d says Henley, \u201cfor my unconquerable soul.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThirty years ago, my wife and I traveled with our infant son from southern California to her parents\u2019 house in Denver, Colorado, where the whole extended family were gathering for a Christmas trip to Florida.\u00a0 We participated in a \u201cMessiah\u201d sing-along and then went home to prepare for our flight to Orlando the next morning.<\/span><\/p>\nBut then came what\u2019s been called \u201cthe Christmas Eve blizzard of 1982.\u201d\u00a0 Stapleton International Airport closed at 9:30 AM on 24 December, remained closed for fully thirty-three hours, and then, for several days thereafter, was open only for severely limited operations.\u00a0 Ten-foot-high snowdrifts were left throughout greater Denver, highways into and out of the city were shut down, power outages darkened large portions of the metropolitan area, roofs collapsed, supermarkets closed because their employees couldn\u2019t get to work, hospitals were reduced to minimal staff on emergency power, and snowmobiles dominated suburban streets.<\/span><\/p>\nIt was astounding to me, and revealing, to realize how easily simple snowfall could shut down a major modern city quite accustomed to seeing it.<\/span><\/p>\nWe\u2019re plainly not entirely the masters of our fates, the captains of our souls.\u00a0 Rather, as Elder Orson F. Whitney (d. 1931) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles put it in \u201cThe Soul\u2019s Captain,\u201d his response to \u201cInvictus,\u201d \u201cMen are as bubbles on the wave, as leaves upon the tree.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWe\u2019re fragile creatures.\u00a0 A few days without food, even fewer without water, a few minutes without oxygen, and we\u2019re gone.\u00a0 If our hearts miss just a few beats, none of our plans, ambitions, schemes, or careful investments will mean a thing.\u00a0 And, in the end, no matter how we fight it, we\u2019ll die.<\/span><\/p>\nOur comfort and survival in the meantime depend upon cycles of evaporation and precipitation that few of us really understand, and we rely upon complex networks of exchange and transportation that very few of us could begin to explain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe ground on which most of us live and where our food is grown was cleared of rocks, trees, and stumps by millions of hardworking people whose names we\u2019ve forgotten.\u00a0 Our cities\u2014big and small\u2014feature large buildings erected by generations of construction workers to whom we\u2019ve probably never given the slightest thought.<\/span><\/p>\nWe owe a debt of gratitude that we can never repay.\u00a0 \u201cFor behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon . . . God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind?\u201d (Mosiah 4:19).\u00a0 The Book of Mormon\u2019s Amulek wisely counsels us that we should \u201chumble ourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place we may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that we live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon us\u201d (paraphrased slightly from Alma 34:38).<\/span><\/p>\nIn the United States of America, where many of us are gathering together as families and friends for the Thanksgiving holiday, this is an exceptionally appropriate day for us to remember the debt that we owe to those who\u2019ve preceded us and to God, \u201cin whom we live, and move, and have our being\u201d (Acts 17:28).<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I published this column in the Deseret News on Thanksgiving Day 2012: \u00a0 William Ernest Henley\u2019s famous Victorian-era poem \u201cInvictus\u201d provided the title and the theme for Clint Eastwood\u2019s inspiring 2009 film about Nelson Mandela.\u00a0 It also provided the memorable claim \u201cI am the master of my fate: I am the captain of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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