My Most Recent Talk

[Outshined]

I gave this one in Sacrament recently; I had a hard time getting through it, as it wasn't as light-hearted as my usual fare.

Good afternoon; a good friend of mine once warned me that if you feel impressed to write a talk on your own you are going to be asked to give a talk. I drive quite a bit for work, and my mind often wanders. Lately I started thinking about a subject and something kept saying wouldn’t that make a good sacrament talk? I kept going through it and decided I should write some of it down, and bam, I am assigned a talk. Hewas right.

The subject that kept coming back was one of being positive, avoiding murmuring and negativity. The same phrase kept coming back; bloom where you’re planted.

The concept of blooming where we are planted has been around a long time, and I was first made aware of it by a friend of mine long ago. While I was going over all this in my head, someone actually used that phrase in Sunday school, which sort of made me think I was supposed to be writing it down. I’m not a huge believer in coincidence in those kinds of situations. While reading through this I have considered that I may have trouble with parts of this because some of it is really personal, but I’ll try to get through without getting overly emotional; I hate it when I do that up here. It makes me hard to understand.

Being negative has always come naturally to me, and I have to struggle to keep it in check. I was first made aware of this in 11th grade English class; a teacher from a neighboring class stuck her head in to ask a question and asked who I was. My teacher replied, “That’s the class cynic.” Until then I was unaware of my tendency to be negative, and I have struggled with it since.

Not only does it help us when we keep an optimistic outlook, but we are certainly more of a positive influence on those around us when we are making an effort to be part of the solution. Many of you have seen the shirt I wear that says, “I’m part of the problem,” but I try not to be. We should look for the good in life wherever we are and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves; that is not easy to do, but it is worth the effort. I find it is usually much easier to complain and scowl, but that affects those around us, and a positive attitude does the same in a much better way. We can show our love for others by being positive and tempering our desire to complain.

I first heard the phrase “bloom where you are planted” from a friend of mine long ago when I was stationed in Germany. What would my talks be without stories from my younger days? I had an unmarried friend who lived in the barracks but liked to visit our home to hang out with my wife and me and our other friends. His name was Ken Hobson, a bit younger than we were, but a nice guy. He was always smiling and laughing, and liked to have fun. He liked to roll around in the floor with our daughter, who was a baby then, and watch movies with us. He talked my wife into baking him some particularly disgusting brownies once, with marshmallow and caramel in them. Seemed gross to me, but he was so happy when she made them. Anyway, Ken and I had several experiences together that stuck with me; lessons we learned about staying positive.

The first was a field exercise we were on in winter, and we were complaining about the cold and wet and mud, as soldiers do. It has been said that a complaining soldier is a happy soldier, and we were no different. On this exercise we had a lieutenant from the French army, and he heard us going on and on. He stepped over and said, “You know, there is a French proverb about this.” And he said it in French, and then translated: “No matter how bad things are, you are very lucky; it could be raining cow manure and flat stones to splash it on you.” We were quiet a moment, and Ken turned to me and said, “I guess it’s not so bad, is it?” Now I’m aware that there are more reverent ways to say it, but it’s a quote, and the point is that the whole thing was only a minute or two of my life more than two decades ago, on a cold, muddy, slushy January day far away, but it has stuck with me since, and I hear those same words in my head whenever I feel the need to complain.

Had I known then who Laman and Lemuel were, I could have related the situation to them. They were miserable and complained at every turn, and made everyone else miserable, but Nephi obeyed, he did what he was told to do, and those around him were blessed by that attitude. We were talking about the Israelites a couple of weeks ago in class, and how they murmured against Moses. I was thinking about it, and if I was there I hope I wouldn’t be one of those guys in the back going, “At least I had a bed in Egypt”, or “I had to walk all the way across the Red Sea, and my feet are killing me,” but you never know. You can feel Moses’ exasperation in some of that scripture; he was doing such a great thing for them, and with them, risking his life, but they kept complaining.

When I was young and we were doing some hard task, we would gripe about it, and my grandmother would say, “Well, if complaining helps, you’ll sure make it!” And we did, but the complaining just made us that much unhappier. In His parable of the vineyard workers, Christ noted how those who worked from the first hour, having “borne the burden and heat of the day,” murmured because they received the same wages as those who worked only the last hour. Instead of being grateful for receiving the pay they had agreed to for the work they did, they chose to be angry because they felt someone else had not had to work as much for their pay.

It is human nature to complain, but the truth is that it never helps us; it doesn’t improve our mood, and certainly does not improve the circumstances. Murmuring can also be noisy enough that it drowns out the various spiritual signals to us, signals which tell us in some cases to stop soaking ourselves in self-pity. Murmuring over the weight of our crosses not only takes energy otherwise needed to carry them but may even cause another to put down his cross altogether. Grumbling can be contagious. Besides, brothers and sisters, if we were not carrying so much else, our crosses would be much lighter. We can never underestimate the power of a cheerful outlook to brighten the circumstances.

The second example experience with Ken was in the Gulf War. We were in Iraq, and the company executive officer needed to go to a meeting at brigade headquarters in the middle of the night. He woke me and told me to drive him in his Hummer; Ken woke up and asked if he could go along, and they said yes. In those days GPS was in its infancy; each vehicle had been equipped with an antenna and a small LCD screen that displayed latitude and longitude. When you wanted to go somewhere, you input their latitude and longitude, and the unit would display an arrow and how far you needed to go in that direction. No maps, no pictures; just an arrow and distance. It was strange; in a foreign desert in the middle of the night, pitch black, no lights or landmarks to guide by, just following an arrow and trusting it would get us where we needed to go. Even the stars were absent, as the fires from Kuwait had blacked out the sky. We talked as we went along; Ken was curious about what it was like to be married. He very much wanted a wife and children of his own, and thought we were very lucky to have that.

We had seen a fair number of explosives in our time there; it was a combat engineer unit and we had seen every type of landmine, artillery shell, and bomb imaginable. We were very aware of cluster bombs, which are large bombs that spring open just before they hit the ground, spilling a cargo of smaller bombs across the ground, from small antipersonnel bombs to antitank mines. We came to a large dune and drove up and over it; as our headlights came down to level they came to rest on a large cluster bomb about 50 feet in front of our vehicle, stuck in the ground with the sides sprung open. I stopped, and we all sat there realizing that we had effectively just driven into a minefield.

After a brief discussion we decided our safest course of action would be to back up in our own tracks to be sure we didn’t run over anything. Ken lay down across the back seat and hung his head and shoulders out with a flashlight, and would guide me left or right to stay on course. After just a few feet he started giggling, and I did too, and had to stop. Soon we were all laughing like loons, and had to stop periodically until we got under control again. The pressure of the situation had been immense, nearly unbearable, but Ken’s laughter had released that tension in all of us, and we managed to get out safely and choose a course around the hazard. It would have been easy to wail and gnash teeth about how unfair it was and our terrible luck, maybe cry out “we’re gonna die,” but a little laughter changed the entire mood. Bad things are like that; if you can find a reason to smile or laugh, suddenly everything is lighter, the burden is easier to bear.

At this time of year it’s appropriate to discuss being thankful for what we have. Not just in a material sense, but in everything. We live in a time and place where we are free to worship as we want, to say what we want. I have been in places where that was not the case, where entire families were killed for one member expressing an opinion critical of their government, where the only religion allowed was the one approved by the government. It’s easy to forget how much we have, and how hard those who came before us had to work to allow us to have so much.

I was at a Thanksgiving party a few years ago and we went around the table taking turns expressing what we were thankful for. When it came around to one relative, she hesitated. She had a disability that made it difficult for her to walk, yet she had a loving husband and son there beside her, was sitting in an electric scooter that had been given to her, and had arrived in a vehicle that someone had donated to her family so she could travel more easily. She looked around and said, “I can’t think of a thing I’m thankful for.” I thought at the time, and still do, that it was sad to have that mindset; to have so much and still not be able to see beyond the end of your own nose. We should not let misfortune blind us to the treasures in our lives, like those who love us for example.

I should take a moment to finish Ken’s story. When I left Germany, I got off active duty and began my civilian life, which eventually led me here. Ken chose another path; he stayed in and discovered that he had a gift for language. He attended the Defense Language Institute in California and became fluent in Arabic. He met and married a young lady and they soon started a family. This was before the current wars, so he was assigned to diplomatic duty as an interpreter at various embassies. This is how he found himself at the US embassy in Kenya in August of 1998, when a car bomb was detonated outside the building. Twelve Americans were killed, including SGT Kenneth Hobson. His wife Debbie was rushed from the country with their daughter, and suddenly found herself planning his funeral in the US. While driving, she heard an interview on the radio with a folk singer they both had loved; she called in and got on the air to talk with him. She told him how much his music had meant to them and of Ken’s philosophy of ‘bloom where you’re planted.’ He was moved by this, and agreed to sing at Ken’s funeral, and that night wrote a song, titled “Bloom,” which he sang for the first time at the funeral. The lyrics say in part, “In the story grandma tells, when other men were angry and withered in the sand, my daddy never raved and never ranted, he just bloomed where he was planted.” It was a fitting description of Ken. And his story goes on; the day before the funeral, Debbie had an appointment with her doctor, where she found out she was expecting their second daughter.

None of us will escape tragedy and suffering. Each of us will likely react differently. However, if we can recall the Lord’s promise, “for I the Lord am with you,” we will be able to face our problems with courage and dignity. We will find the strength to be of good cheer instead of becoming resentful, critical, or defeated. We will be able to meet life’s unpleasant happenings with clear vision, strength, and power.

The news is constantly filled with stories meant to shock and frighten the public; we are given grim headlines that proclaim the impending doom of the planet, of wars and pestilence. Each political party tells us that if we vote for the other party, we are dooming our country and our children. In times like these we should be prepared and remember the words of the Savior: “Fear not, believe only.” In fact, the message of “fear not” appears in the Bible over 350 times. We should not dwell in fear, but prepare ourselves and keep a bright countenance, knowing that those who follow the Gospel are not lost. We, as followers of Christ, should be of good cheer always and willing to help bear the burdens of our neighbor.

On my last deployment to Iraq I was tasked with the supply of all food and water to the Anbar province, which was about 45,000 people. It was a very busy job, which is why I volunteered for it; I knew it would make time pass. The social climate was very tense; there were problems with leadership, and I eventually ended up giving testimony at the court martial of my first sergeant. So besides busy and being in a war zone, things were very hard all around. I finally posted on the wall beside my desk a portion of Doctrine and Covenants 121, which says in part “My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment.” This helped me keep perspective that though stressful and difficult, this was just a small part of my life, and it would eventually be past.

That mindset became more important in early 2008. I had several refrigerated containers used for transporting perishable goods. They were essentially 20-foot long shipping containers, insulated and with refrigeration units mounted on one end to keep the contents cold. I got a phone call that one of my units in the field had an issue. A young Marine had been killed in an explosion, and his remains were put in the reefer unit to transport him back to our base. This presented me with two major problems. First, once it has been used for that purpose, the unit can never be used to transport food again under any circumstances, so I would have to find a new home for it. I did, with a mortuary affairs unit so they could use it for that purpose.

Second and most pressing, they told me that because of the remains it was very messy inside and would have to be cleaned as soon as we got it back. I had ten people working for me, three on that shift, and I was going to have to ask one of them to do that. I considered all of them friends, and I couldn’t figure out how to task one with something that could affect them for the rest of their lives. I agonized over it, and I knew that with every passing minute the truck was getting closer to us. I finally made the only decision I felt I would be able to live with; I cleaned it myself. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, but I could not in good conscience ask someone else to do it while I stayed safe inside.

I suppose the point of that story is that it was “but a small moment,” and I was able to press on and return home to where things were better. I guess I could have chosen to let that define the rest of my life and withdraw into self-pity and anger, but we are told “Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you.” We have to look beyond ourselves and know that there is a greater purpose for all we do. That sometimes the right way is the hard way.

If we look for the bad in life we will find it; but just as surely we will find the good if we but look for that as well. I once heard a story about Will Rogers visiting a friend in New York. They were walking down the street and Will stopped and cocked his head. His friend asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I just heard a cricket chirping.” His friend laughed and asked if he really thought he could hear a cricket above all the noise of the city. In reply Will took a dime from his pocket and dropped it to the ground; as it clinked to the pavement heads all around them turned in his direction. He turned to his friend and said, “It’s all a matter of what you’re listening for.”

We have to remember that there is opposition in all things, and that we can’t enjoy the good without knowing that the bad is there. A song I have always liked says: “Sometimes a shadow dark and cold lays like a mist across the road. But be encouraged by the sight; where there’s a shadow, there’s a light.”

The gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to bring blessings to our Heavenly Father’s children. You are planted in your country, in your community, and in your family to facilitate these blessings. I pray that we will all have the sight to see the good around us and that we will find the strength to truly bloom where we are planted.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.