Kim's talk

My parents have just returned from a trip to Laos. Laos, as you probably know is a small country north of Thailand. It is a communist country and primarily agrarian. As a result of their isolation, their poverty, and of having a language that is unique to only 5.8 million people, education for children is pretty hit and miss. One of the big problems is finding books that can be used for children to learn to read. One group working on this problem is called Big Brother Mouse. They write and have printed children’s books in the native Laos language with an English translation. You can imagine that a little bit of English goes a long way to future prosperity – these books are then delivered to schools and children free of charge. Whenever my parents go somewhere exotic they bring me back children’s books – it’s always a hit. This time I got some books produced by Big Brother Mouse. They are very sweet and show the agricultural life the children lead. One of the books is a collection of proverbs. The Big Brother Mouse people asked a group of young people to ask a respected older person about their favourite proverb. Then the young people wrote a tiny paragraph about the application of that proverb. Some of these proverbs included “Create virtue while you are here. They will miss you when you are gone.” And ‘don’t blame the buffalo if your fence is not good, don’t blame the gnats if your shirt is open’ – the explanation for which was ‘If your fence is broken, don’t blame the buffalo for coming in and eating your garden. If you create a problem don’t blame others.

Another proverb said ‘Our father’s goodness is as big as the mountain; our mothers goodness is as wide as the sky.’ And the explanation is ‘our parents were generous and kind to us as children, and did their best to make us happy and healthy. We should respect them and take good care of them when they are old.’

The idea that we should care for, respect and honour our parents is, as far as I can tell, found in every religion and in every culture. The Koran (one of the holy books of Islam) says ‘Your Lord has decreed that you be kind to parents. Whether one or both of them attain old age in your life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honour. ”
One of the Buddhist teachers wrote that ‘The lamb kneels to nurse; The crow returns to feed its parents’.

In fact the Sikhs, the Shinto’s, Confucianism and many others all have as part of their fundamental beliefs the need to honour father and mother.

Of course, the most authoritative writing about honouring father and mother are found in the standard works. The earliest example being as part of the ten commandments where we are commanded to’ Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’

It’s an interesting promise – that as we honour our Father and our Mother our days will be long upon the land which our Lord gives us. Although we have often joked with our kids that your days won’t actually be longer – it will just feel that way – I am interested in why we would want to have our days lengthened and why or how honouring our parents causes this.
Paul expanded on the fifth commandment a little when he wrote to the Ephesians saying in chapter 6 verses 1- 3 - Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

Paul said that Children should obey their parents – in the Lord – or in other words – when the parents ask them to do things that the Lord would want them to do – but then he goes on to say honor thy Father and thy mother- so there is clearly more to honouring father and mother than simple obeying. It may even be that it is possible to honour father and mother while not obeying them – if they are not asking righteously.

A previous member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, Hugh Pinnock said that ‘ Honour is a simple word; it means to give special respect and to pay tribute. It means to respond to teachings that have been patiently and thoughtfully given’

Much of the fabric of our earthly family relationships is patterned after heavenly family relationships. Elder Dallin H Oaks – one of the apostles – has said that “the commandment to honour our parents has strands that run through the entire fabric of the gospel. It is inherent in our relationship to God our Father. It embraces the divine destiny of the children of God. This commandment relates to the government of the family, which is patterned after the government of heaven.”

So, honouring parents is not an isolated commandment –the ramifications of honouring parents are not limited to our relationship with our parents – all of our gospel experience can be affected by the way we honour our parents. Of course this is true of every other commandment that we choose to keep also. We honour our earthly parents – in part – because we honour our heavenly parents – we do things in our earthly families that reflect the way our heavenly family operates. Jesus Christ showed us how to honour Heavenly Father when he did his Fathers will, ascribed all glory to his father and loved and served both Mary and Joseph as well as Heavenly Father.
There are – so far as I can see – three main promises associated with honouring parents. The first – found in Exodus is that our days will be long upon the land. The next is when Paul adds ‘that it may be well with thee’ and finally Moroni gives us another type of promise when he quotes Malachi – with a couple of changes. Moroni said to Joseph Smith – very early in the restoration of the Gospel after talking about the return of the prophet Elijah – ‘and he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to the fathers. If it were not so the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming.’ I suppose it is safe to assume that this means that when the hearts of the children are turned to their fathers – by remembering the promises God has made to those fathers – then the whole earth won’t be utterly wasted.

So three promises – days shall be long upon the land, it may be well with us and the earth won’t be utterly wasted.

Generally when promises are made by God it is a sign that the thing promised is good. And so it is. But sometimes – when our days feel quite long enough already – we might question the value of having our days long upon the land.

Lehi told his son Jacob – in 2 Ne 2:21 – that ‘the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh, wherefore their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened, according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of men.’ And I suppose we would all be glad to have our days prolonged that we may repent.

Some other benefits of having our days upon the land lengthened would perhaps include having more time to forge relationships, more time especially to learn to commune with our Father in Heaven, more time to master our bodies, more time to serve those we love and those placed in our way, more time to gain knowledge of earthly things, more time to notice the signs of the times, more time to warn our neighbour, more time to learn the things of the spirit that will carry us through the eternity, and more time to turn our hearts to our fathers, and our children’s hearts to us.

Of course how we use our days is a function of our agency and our understanding. But it is clear that – at least in part – the blessing of having our days long in the land is predicated on honouring our father and mother.

Paul added that ‘it may be well with us’ when we honour our father and mother. There is no further explanation given but I suppose that there is a promise of some level of prosperity when things are well with us, some level of health, some level of comfort and peace in our lives. I think that for most of us there is no peace greater than the peace that comes with having our families close to each other and close to us. Perhaps in honouring our own parents we teach our children to honour us and it is well. Paul goes on to tell Fathers to not provoke children to wrath. Clearly, responsibilities to honour cut both ways.

Moroni promised that as we remember the promises made to our fathers and turn the childrens hearts to the fathers, the earth will not be utterly wasted in the last day. Not all fathers have had specific promises made individually to them by the Lord – but as members of the church we are also the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and it is those promises that we need to remember when we turn the hearts of the children to the fathers. President Hinckley once remarked that he didn’t know that the earth was any less wicked than Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps it is the turning of the hearts of the children to the fathers that will literally keep the whole earth from being utterly wasted when the Saviour comes again.
In D&C 98:16 we are admonished to ‘renounce war and proclaim peace, and seek diligently to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children;’. There is an implied promise of peace here as we turn our hearts to our fathers – and of course by implication to our mothers.

These are great blessings. The difficulty of course is that parents do not always act honourably. It would be safe to say that no parent has done everything right – but I think it is relatively easy for us to see our way clear to honour a parent who has made occasional mistakes- or even fairly regular mistakes – but whose love we are sure of and whose best efforts were made.
Some children are born and grow with parents who, either as a result of their own poor experiences, or through neglect or occasionally something more insidious, do not parent honourably. But I can find nowhere in scripture or in the words of the prophets any pedalling back on the need to honour parents.

Russel M Nelson said that ‘to honor father and mother means to honor fatherhood and motherhood and the divine provision for procreation and all that pertains to it.’ So we honour parents – regardless of their competency as parents – when we honor fatherhood and motherhood.

Elder Pinnock also said that we need to forgive – and reminded us of the Saviour telling Peter that we should forgive till 70 times 7. This can unquestionably be difficult – and I am grateful to have been born to honourable parents and consequently to not have that particular burden – but I am sure that with that burden would come added blessings to the person who is so humble and meek as to be able to forgive and honour a parent who is not easily honoured.

And We sometimes discover that what we thought was indifferent parenting, was something else entirely. My mother remembers being in terrible trouble for some unknown offence, and not discovering until she was an adult that what had actually happened was that she had taken my grandmothers one good dress and used it to make a nest for a family of rats she had found under the house. Because it really was Grandma’s one good dress, grandma didn’t discover it missing till some time later when she had need of her good dress. You can imagine the impact on a less than wealthy, large family, in the late 1940’s. It would have been devastating. But my mother only remembered being in terrible strife for no good reason. Sometimes we can forgive more readily when we know more fully the circumstances.

We honour our parents when we do what is right - Abraham for example was lead by the hand of the Lord away from his father’s house because of the iniquity there, but has brought honour to his father’s name by his own actions and by his fidelity to the Lord.
Noah, who I suppose to be a good and honourable parent none the less was found drunk and naked in his tent. Ham, his son ‘told his brethren’ Shem and Japeth. Shem and Japeth carefully took a garment, laid it on their shoulders and went backwards in to Noah and covered him. Shem and Japeth were respectful of their father even though he was clearly compromised. Ham on the other hand was – at the very least – indiscreet – and as a result Ham’s son Canaan was cursed.

There are of course many different ways of honouring our parents. And the way we honour our parents changes as grow.

When I was around 10 or 11 years old my mother and grandmother told me that they were making me a special shirt. My grandparents lived on a cattle property in central Queensland and my grandmother’s room was a caravan that was separate to the main living areas, and my mother and grandmother would disappear into the caravan for what seemed like hours at a time working on this present. Eventually they gave me the shirt. It was a yellow bonds tshirt – on which they had hobbeytexed a heart of daisies (hobbytex was all the rage then) and inside the daisies they had written ‘the opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of her parents.’ The problem was that I had been up to visit our neighbours and accused them of stealing our cattle. So I had to wear the tshirt up to the neighbours house and hope they read it and ignored everything I said from then on. (There may have been a few times when Roger wished that I had a shirt a bit like that now). Now I don’t really think that by accusing the neighbours of stealing our cattle I was failing to honour my parents – maybe if I had refused to wear the shirt. But if I had done the same thing at 16 or 17 then maybe that would not be honouring my parents because I would then have understood more about the potential consequences of my actions.

Honouring parents is not a simple matter of following a formula and will depend on our age, our parents age, and even on our culture.

A small child usually honours their parents when they are obedient, show respect and even emulate their parents. An older child usually honours a parent when they confide in their parent, when they express confidence in their parents, when they seek counsel from their parents, or express appreciation to their parents. These actions presume that the parent is acting honourably..

An adult honours a parent differently. By this stage of course the adult child will have the ability to discern what is right and wrong, but regardless of the parents actions a parent is honoured when grandchildren are born and honourably raised, when family histories are prepared and temple work performed for ancestors.

We honour older parents when we care for them in their old age – and when we respect their opinions and agency.

When parents have died we can continue to honour them possibly through family reunions and through continuing their worthy works on earth.

All of these ways of honouring our earthly parents help us to honour our Heavenly Father and to do his work here on earth. For example – we obviously should be obedient and respectful of our Heavenly Father and seek to emulate him. We should confide in him, show by word and deed that our trust and our faith is in our God, we should seek His counsel that will come to us through the scriptures, through the prophets and directly through the Holy Ghost. We should express appreciation for all that our Father in Heaven has done for us.

Recently in the Worldwide Leadership Training Elder Jeffrey R Holland of the 12 Apostles said that we bear children with the idea that we will save them, and of course in so doing we honour our Father in Heaven just as we honour our earthly parents.

Family history and temple work honour both earthly and heavenly parents. And when we care for aged parents, we remember the Saviour saying that when we have done it unto one of the least of these we have done it unto him and we remember King Benjamin telling us that when we are in the service of our fellow beings we are only in the service of our God.
President Gordon B Hinckley said “Is it likely that we will live longer if we honor father and mother? I am convinced that Jehovah knew whereof He wrote when His finger traced those words, with that remarkable promise. I am not here to say that in every case life will be lengthened and its quality improved simply by the process of honoring one's parents. But I do say, and without hesitation, that there is safety, there is protection, there is reward, there is happiness and satisfaction that come of respect for the counsels of one's parents who wish the very best for every son and daughter.

There is a sweet Poem called Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden – and even though I don’t do poetry justice when I read it aloud – I’m going to read it now.
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the coldand polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

And with that we are reminded that too often we fail to notice ‘love’s austere and lonely offices’ – we fail to notice, perhaps in the midst of the business of life, or perhaps in the midst of so much heartache, the many things done for us by our parents simply because they love us. Our Heavenly Father, who loves us perfectly, also performs for us many of love’s austere and lonely offices – not the least of which being that he gives to us parents, and the opportunity to honour those parents so that it may be well with us, that our days may be long in the land, that the earth will not be utterly wasted at the Saviours coming and that we will have peace. And so that we can learn to honour Him.

Kim's Talk - Roger's consists of a few notes so can't be posted.

Our 9 year old daughter Louisa has a best school friend LilyRhadika. They have been best friends since the moment they met when they were five. LilyRhadika was adopted by her family from Fiji – she is Fijian Indian and she looks like an Indian princess, she has particularly dark skin, very thick curly hair and is quite tall for her age. Our Louisa is small for her age with straightish brown hair – and obviously is white. Louisa and Lily seem to be able to communicate without words. They seem to think they were separated at birth. Last year I heard them in Louisa’s bedroom getting ready for school after Lily had slept over,– they don’t wear uniforms to school and they had dressed in the same clothes and they were saying ‘I bet Patty and Caryl (their teachers) will mix us up all day.’

At the beginning of this year Lily’s mum started work again. This meant that she couldn’t drive Lily to our school anymore and Lily had to change schools. Louisa’s teachers and I spent a long time talking about how to handle this separation and what to do to support Louisa through this. Of course Louisa was devastated. That was at the beginning of the year.

Then yesterday I was talking to one of her teachers. Our children go to an unusual school and so we have perhaps unusual relationships with their teachers. Caryl, one of her teachers was saying how Louisa had really blossomed this year and I said ‘isn’t it strange that Lily leaving has really benefited Louisa.’ Caryl said ‘we really should just have more faith – God always sends a blessing in the end.’ We talked about how much we wish we could develop the kind of faith that allows to trust in the blessing at the end while we are still at the beginning. And we talked about the parable of the talents and how the Master gave each of servant varying numbers of talents, and how the talents really represent opportunities. We talked about the servant with one talent or opportunity and how he did nothing with it. Maybe we said this could be because he didn’t recognise it as being a valuable gift, just like we didn’t recognise Lily leaving as a valuable gift– maybe he thought – if I just hang on that will do – after all it is a paltry amount. After Lily left we worked very hard to make it a valuable gift for Louisa – but I wouldn’t say that we recognised it as such at first. Incidentally Louisa is visiting Lily now and they are still best friends.

Maybe the servant with one talent looked at his fellow servants and thought – see how many they have (or see what wonderful opportunities they have) and I have but one. I will just struggle through this time while the Master is away and since I have so little it will suffice for me to give it back in tact. Remember when the Master returned the servant said: “Lord I knew thee that thou art an hard man, …. And I was afraid and went and hid thy talent in the earth, lo, there, thou hast that is thine.”

Our Master is Jesus Christ, and he does the will of our Father in Heaven, and to each of us he has given opportunities. The essence of the parable is that we need to be like the servants who enlarged their opportunities rather than like the servant who simply held on to it. Then comes the really tricky part – recognising opportunities as opportunities rather than imagining them to be obstacles.

When children argue, this can be an obstacle to family harmony, or an opportunity to teach kindness and meekness and gentleness of speech.

When a loved one is making eternally dangerous choices this can be an obstacle or an opportunity to practice forgiveness, meekness and patience.

When illness strikes this can be an obstacle or an opportunity to bind the family and draw nearer to God, and learn Gods law of health.

When we have little financial means this can be an obstacle or an opportunity to understand what really matters and to feel pride in our work. We had some experience with this when I decided that we should paint the inside of the house and od up the bathroom without spending any money. This translated to doing all the work ourselves , which in turn translated to Peet, our 11 year old tiling the bathroom wall - he did pretty well too. But the next day he changed his MSN sign on name to "I feel very accomplished - I helped tile our bathroom today.' That was a feeling and an experience that money could not buy.

All of this is about having faith sufficient to trust that all that God does or allows can be worked to our good if we rely upon Him.

Of course there are much more exacting trials than a friend moving when you are 9. Many of us are in midst of those trials now. And if we’re not we can be assured that our time will come – or maybe has already been. Richard G Scott said “Don’t look for a life virtually free from discomfort, pain, pressure, challenge or grief for those are the tools a loving Father uses to stimulate our personal growth and understanding.” In times of “discomfort, pain, pressure, challenge or grief” we can slip into the mode of the unwise servant and say to ourselves – this is all I have – this a paltry gift when compared to those around me I will just hold on – I will just endure.

But Neal A Maxwell, who learnt a lot about enduring in his own struggles with cancer, instructed us that “Patient endurance is to be distinguished from merely being ‘acted upon’. Endurance is more than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance; it is not only acceptance of the things allotted to us but also the determination to ‘act for ourselves’ by magnifying what is allotted to us.’

So rather than just holding on while the opportunity passes we are to do something with it. Certainly while we are in the midst of trials it is hard to see the opportunity waiting for us. These types of opportunities can only be seen with spiritual eyes – so we need to do all we can to keep those spiritual eyes active and alert. We keep our spiritual eyes healthy through things like prayer, study and service. There is a lot that is great in an LDS lifestyle for keeping spiritual eyes healthy. Things like family prayer and Family scripture study, personal prayer and personal study, family home evening, attending church, attending ward activities, taking children to faith in god activities, working through Duty to God and Personal Progress programs, gathering food storage, visiting and home teaching, searching out our ancestors and attending the temple, Home Family and personal enrichment meetings and activities, minding babies and delivering meals, preparing for and serving missions and on and on.

These things are tremendous blessings – the enduring part comes in recognising them as blessings, and in not being distracted by the things of the world. For almost every opportunity being a member of the church affords us, the world offers a counterfeit. Our aim of course, is to not be distracted by these counterfeits and instead to endure with good cheer the many opportunities we have. We need to endure, or never stop, in recognising blessings just as much as we need to endure through trials.

In his conference talk last April Elder Holland said that “We should honour the Saviours declaration to be of good cheer.” He said “indeed it seems to me we may be more guilty of breaking that commandment than almost any other.”

To obey the Saviours command that we be of good cheer, we first need faith in Christ. The command to be of good cheer is found more than once in the scriptures, but in John 16:33 the Saviour says: “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” It is our faith in Jesus Christ having overcome the world that will allow us to be of good cheer.”

Neal A Maxwell wrote that “There are important gradations as between types of blessings. One type-very real and much appreciated-is tied to temporal and passing conditions. We might call these operational revelations-how to build an ark, or how to illuminate barges, for example. These are remarkable blessings which respond to urgent needs, but they cannot compare to the illuminating revelations from Jesus concerning what we must do to be more like Him. That type of blessing is tied to the eternal conditions. Both types are needed. Both are to be remembered.” Then in referring to the praises that we offer to Heavenly Father when sought for blessings are received he went on to say “Transcending all such praise should be our everlasting praise to God for His plan of happiness – for making us the very centre of his work and purposes.”

When we have faith in Jesus Christ we are able to recognise blessings that otherwise might go unnoticed. And we can ignore the noise of the world that tells us to check first what our neighbour has, before deciding on the value of our own blessings.

We need to endure in being grateful, for the beauty of the earth, for the gospel, for our families, for the plan of salvation, for personal revelation and on and on it goes. When we endure in gratitude, our faith in Jesus Christ will increase and we will be of good cheer.

Faith in Jesus Christ helps us to appreciate more his workmanship here on the earth.

My extended family lived for a hundred years or so on cattle properties in central Queensland. One of my little cousins was about 3 and a half when she first saw the beach. I remember watching her with my mum and my aunt – it was the cutest thing – she was thrilled and delighted by the beach then headed up the sand to get a cup so she could drink the clear water. Now we probably all go the beach fairly often – and it is no less beautiful than when my cousin saw it for the first time – but we don’t always get the same joy from the beach.

Maybe the hardest part of enduring is making sure that we continue to get delight or joy from the many blessings that we sometimes call simple.

Ezra Taft Benson, a former prophet, wrote that ‘who does Gods work will get Gods pay.’

As always the world provides a counterfeit. The world would have us believe that we can tell the beloved of God by their pleasant, prosperous and easy lifestyles. As Latterday saints we know better. More often Gods pay comes in the form of healthier spiritual eyes, or of more of the things that we sing about ‘more holiness give me, more gratitude give me, more purity give me.’

Healthier spiritual eyes will show us more clearly the blessings of the gospel and we will remember them just as we did when we first discovered them – and look for more. We will remember our spouses and our children with the same depth of gratitude and wonder that we had when we first met.

Sometimes the blessings of the gospel become a little like air. We need it, but we don’t really notice it. If we are immersed in an LDS lifestyle we may fail to recognise all the good it is doing for us. My friend Bettina is not a member of our church. She is a social worker who works with teenage parents. We were discussing the importance of community. She said ‘you have always had a strong community and it shows in your family and your marriage and your children.’ Bettina saw that our ongoing involvement in the church had benefited our family in many ways. And she is right –we are a better family than we would have been without the gospel – Bettina knows our family fairly well – so she is well aware that we mess lots of stuff up, but she could see the benefits of the gospel. If we do not also endure in seeing the good that comes of living the gospel we may too easily put it aside. It is not only tribulation that we must endure – we must also endure the blessings of the gospel, and we must endure in gratitude not because these are hard or unpleasant things to do, but because they really do bring us closer to God and lead to our sanctification, and to joy while we live on the earth.

The unwise servant in the parable of the talents hid his one talent or opportunity and failed to magnify it. The master rebuked him but to the other wise servants he said “Well done good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things, enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

By recognising the opportunities given to them and magnifying them, they were able to be given many more opportunities and significantly they were able to feel the joy that the master felt.

When we do all we can with the opportunities we have been given, and one of the most significant of these is surely our membership in the Kingdom of God on earth, we will be given more opportunities and we will feel the joy that the Saviour feels.

In Psalms 72:17 we read “His name shall endure forever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed.” This is my testimony that Jesus Christ lives and that his name will continue forever, that I have been blessed in him, and I pray that I will be able to continue to endure gratefully both the blessings and the trials that may come my way so that I may have more of the joy that He has.