Geology Field Notes

I guess one of the ideas behind blogging is for people to keep a journal. I don’t know if I like that idea, because ultimately, a blog is an open book in the sense anyone could read it if they find the website. A blog isn’t even really a book. It is a bunch of electrons arranged to form characters on a screen guided by software code. It is transitory, and could be gone just like that. And a journal is not typically an open book, nor it is not meant to be in so tenuous a medium that it could cease to exist by a random keystroke of power loss.

Among many other items of counsel and commandment, we as Latter-day Saints have been counseled to keep a journal for our own benefit and that of our posterity. As with all counsel and commandment given, we are promised blessings for heeding it. If we keep the counsel given to have a year’s supply of food and essential needs, we shall be blessed in times of need, or at the least, are promised that should an emergency or natural or man-made disaster befall us happen, we will not have need to fear. If we strive to hold regular family home evenings, we’re promised that there will be greater harmony and love in the family. If we magnify our callings, we in turn will be magnified. If we study the scriptures, we will gain knowledge and wisdom. If we seek out our kindred dead and live worthy of the temple, we can be the means of bringing salvation to them while keeping our covenants. If we pray, we are promised that we will receive answers to our prayers. If we repent and forgive, we will be forgiven.

I’ll openly admit in this open book of electrons called a blog, I am not good at journaling. In fact, I am horrendous at it. I have a vague concept of what the blessings of keeping a journal could be. In my pursuit to learn and understand who I am, reading from the journals of my late parents and other ancestors has indeed been a boon, as it brings memories of those individuals back to me. It provides a sort of framework that my personal tangential experience can be built upon. It gives a sense of familiarity to the days where life just seems so transitory.

That sense of familiarity is vital in a world where one has what sometimes feels like an exponentially increasing feeling of looking on from the sidelines. I think we all deep down probably recognize this feeling. We all react differently to it though. Some work at becoming the center of attention. Some work at making a name for themselves in their career or in art or in sports or in academia. Some delve into the mundane activities of day-to-day life. Some withdraw into themselves. Some get lost in the many and diverse distractions of our day. All of these are forms of dealing with something a former home teaching companion of mine once described to me.

This home teaching companion had only been a member of the church for a couple years, and hence was an adult convert to the Church as well as the whole concept of there really being a real purpose behind religion. I asked him one day “What is it like, to live day to day without the knowledge of The Gospel?” I indicated to him that I was really curious, because my having grown up in a family that had been members for 4 to 5 generations, I just couldn’t conceive of it. And to this day, I still can’t really. I even have an uncle who has admonished family members on more than one occasion in reference to our individual testimonies ‘How many millions of years have you known this?’

In describing where I was coming from to this man, I said I couldn’t fathom what meaningless it would put to life if everything that we know from having a knowledge of the Gospel was nothing more than just nice thoughts… For example what if there never really was a Jesus Christ… For example what if we weren’t really eternal beings and that this life is all there is. What a sense of hopelessness that would bring! Why would there be any reason for anyone to act in any sort of fashion than in their own self-interest, if all one had was to know that at any given moment they could be gone?

His reply was two words. ‘Silent desperation.’ How appropriate.

And here is the beauty in the simplicity of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ! It is true! We do not just cease to exist! There is a reason for us to behave in a fashion that is moral and ethical other than just to be a nice person! We aren’t just a blip on the universe’s radar screen, mutated products of selective evolution from a lightening strike in a pool of random amino acids and other organic compounds billions of years ago!

We are, metaphorically speaking, students taking a final exam.

I remember the final exam for one of my Geology classes as a Geology major undergrad at BYU many years ago. It had been a long two weeks out in the desert heat of Arizona and Utah. We had seen everything from volcanic cinder cones in central Utah to the remnants of lava dams in the Grand Canyon at a very remote location. We had been buzzed by Air Force jets northwest of The Great Salt Lake and had woken up one morning to a foot of fresh snow on our tents at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon. The professor had advised us long in advance that we would be having a field final. We stopped on the last day for lunch at a fast food location, and by then we knew for certain that the final was coming after we finished and all loaded back up in the vans. It seemed though we were heading back to Provo, when we pulled off the freeway at some little town named Kanarraville.

I think this was the canyon.

We pulled up to the head of a canyon outside of town, and the professor told us we had something like an hour or an hour and a half, and the final consisted of one task. We were to individually draw a geologic cross section describing what was occurring here. We could use all our field resources and notes we had taken over the past two weeks, but that we were on our own individually. We could go back into the canyon as far as the trail would take us until climbing was necessary.

Well, as time went by, more and more of us students were getting frustrated. We had gone the length of the canyon and easily recognized the formations and strata as part of the upper levels of the formations that make up much of the Grand Staircase. But they weren’t right. They were all mixed up. As time got closer, most of us were on the verge of panic… except a couple who hadn’t gone so far back in the canyon. They didn’t seem so concerned and were taking a leisurely stroll instead of continually crashing through the creek. As I passed them, I asked in frustration if they had figured it out. They grinned and said to go ask the graduate assistants for a hint. They were still up at the canyon’s mouth. There was only about 15 minutes left. I made my way back and expressed my frustration to them, as did several other students. They said, we can’t tell you, but since we gave a hint to those guys, well… and they nodded briefly in a direction not to far from the vans and said “Go look over there.” I did so, and suddenly it all made sense. I ended up being able to draw a cross section that essentially had most of the geology correct.

When time expired, the professor told our group to not worry too much if we hadn’t gotten it. He had brought graduate students from Kansas to this same canyon in years past, and after a week, they still had not gotten it. So, he hadn’t expected any of us undergrads to get it in less than 2 hours. And if we had, well we could pat ourselves on the back. As it turned out, this exam was not what we had feared… a pass fail evaluation for the course, but to see how well we could put things together in a complex system, to see how observant we were of micro things in a macro setting that didn’t seem to fit our preconceived model.

Our purpose is to figure out what is going on in the canyon of life. We each have a limited amount of time before we have to turn in our cross-section for grading. We’re on our own, so to speak, but we are free to and encouraged to use all the resources available to us. We have notes and some inherent wisdom we can utilize in the scriptures and in the Light of Christ. And we have grad students who won’t just nod in the general direction we need to look. The Lord’s prophets and apostles happily and openly point out the clues we need. One big difference is that at the end of this test, we will be ever so sorely sorry if we are not in a position to pat ourselves on the back.

And, for those of us who have received the clues, it is imperative that we pass the clues on to the others who haven’t yet. In this respect, we are able to make some part of this test a group effort, unlike the geology class test in the canyon. We won’t always get it right in the process of taking our test, or in the process of learning and understanding who we are. For that reason, I am grateful that our professor in the Gospel, Jesus Christ, not only allows but also commands us to change, to repent, and to improve our efforts. And this is why I am working on improving my journaling, even if just by blogging right now.

I’ll find some other medium for saving my writings for those who come after me, that they will never have to fear the lack of direction by missing clues I could have given… that not a one of them will be able to accuse me of saying they had to operate in silent desperation. So, maybe a blog being an open book of sorts is not such a bad thing. Many pick and choose what they record in their journals, even to the point of not recording at all. They feel their thoughts and feelings are just for themselves. They are so afraid of their own imperfections and failings, they can’t stand the embarrassment of others knowing anything different about them than the façade they put up. Or, they feel they have nothing of worth to pass on. I firmly hold that The Lord somehow records each individual’s deeds, acts, thoughts, and desires. At some point, everything that has not been reconciled with and through Him and His Atonement will become public domain. So it is in our best interest to live as best we can to follow His Gospel so that we as individuals are as open and true as He is… that we truly reflect the things we have ‘known for how many millions of years.’

We can’t just play Jonah and assume we can ignore the test.