Hope

The following are some thoughts that I've been having in association with the talk that I was asked to give in church tomorrow. I was asked to discuss one of the talks from the recent General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I felt drawn to study and talk about "The Infinite Power of Hope" by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf.

While studying about hope, I have sort of organized my thoughts in answer to a set of questions. I give each question, with a brief response.

1. What is hope?
As taught by President Uchtdorf, hope is a powerful force. For example, he told the story about when he and his mother and siblings were fleeing from Czechoslovakia to Germany during World War II. At a certain train station, his mother left the train to get food for them, and when she returned the train was gone. With the possibility that she might never see her children again, his mother searched through the train station, "hoping against hope", and finally found the train after it had been moved.

Hope is a part of the great triad of faith, hope, and charity. Faith leads to hope, and hope leads to faith.

Hope in particular drives us to salvation. Our great hope is in Jesus Christ, that through his death and resurrection, we can be saved and enjoy eternal life. This hope can keep us going through difficult times and sad circumstances of life.

2. How can we have greater hope?
I studied a number of references that talked about how to feed our hope, but one idea that I noticed in particular is that we can gain hope by study of the scriptures. (I encourage you to read the references included with President Uchtdorf's talk to see this idea come up repeatedly in the scriptures themselves, as well as some other ways to increase hope.) How can the scriptures give us hope? Scripture is the word of God, and in the scriptures it's taught that Jesus Christ is the Savior, and that through His great Atonement we can resurrected and receive eternal life. As we read the holy word of God, the Holy Ghost confirms that these ideas are true. So reading the scriptures increases our knowledge of the great plan of our Father in Heaven, and also invites the Holy Ghost to be a bolstering force in our lives.

3. How can we help others to have hope?
I have spent a lot of time thinking about the topic of hope lately, and analyzing events around me in light of the topic. I have recently learned that a friend of mine, a smart, good person, and someone I like very much, has decided to pursue a gay lifestyle. While I never claim to say what causes some people to be attracted to those of the same sex, I believe that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, and that it is not appropriate to engage in sexual relations under any other circumstances but between a husband and wife. For those who cannot envision themselves becoming involved in a serious relationship with someone of the opposite sex, like my friend, the future can seem long and lonely in light of that truth. It is easy to see how some people like my friend can be tempted to give up their principles in the face of that kind of loneliness.

It's not as if those who are attracted to people of the same sex are the only ones who struggle. There are people everywhere who deal with loneliness, despair, unemployment, divorce, frustration, abuse, poverty, and all of life's other negative feelings and situations. But unfortunately sometimes we add to others' problems by judging them, not understanding them, and treating them like they are bad people. This is not the Christian thing to do; it is well-known that our Savior spent time during His mortal ministry with "publicans and sinners" and that He continually ministers to people who are shunned by society. We should follow His example. People would never consider criticizing someone who had cancer or diabetes, for example. But what about people who struggle with less-fashionable circumstances, such as same-sex attraction, addiction, divorce, or a host of other things that people look down on? It seems to me that it certainly doesn't help people who are struggling for others to judge them and run away from them. Therefore, I urge us all (myself included) to encourage hope in others by treating them in more Christlike ways, by overlooking their circumstances and loving them.

I believe that the love of others helps us to have hope and security in a world that is otherwise often depressing and insecure. I can attest to the palpable feeling of security and confidence that I have in the love of my good friends. And the love of good people hopefully serves as a guide to the love and salvation that we can find in Christ. Our capacities for loving are inadequate in comparison to His, to be sure, but maybe we will learn to be more like Him as we continue to practice this love. Our hope in Christ will encourage others to hope in Him as well. And He is able and mighty to save and be the Fulfillment of our hope.

And so the message I would like to send is two-fold: (1) to those who struggle, there is hope in Christ, the powerful Redeemer of the world, and (2) to those who know them, we should love people and treat them well regardless of their circumstances. And it seems to me that basically everyone in the congregation is part of both groups.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

If you have any comments on these thoughts, or even stories that I could incorporate into this talk, I would be happy to learn them.

Thoughts on Perry Mason

Raymond Burr is quite heavyset in some episodes, but he is still cast as the heroic leading man. It just goes to show how different standards about body image were back in the days that Perry Mason was made.

It seems that nobody on the show remembers their fifth-amendment rights. The murder almost always confesses on the stand, except when they confess when they're not on the stand. (Actually, while I was writing this, an episode showed where the accomplice ratted out the murderer... but this is the exception to the rule.)

Berger is like the worst district attorney ever -- he never wins a case, and never accuses the right person. Not to mention the detective, Lieutenant Tragg; his theories of the case are always wrong too.

Umbrellas in Japan

I enjoyed reading this essay:
http://www.hackwriters.com/umbrellas.htm

Today for the first time I used the umbrella/parasol that was sent to me by my sister-in-law's grandmother in Japan.  It is very compact and worked great!

"No abrir el puerta. Tienes una alarme gracias."*

Just got a link to this article about a bad translation on a road sign:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7702913.stm

This story is entertaining and I can totally see how that happened, although honestly they should have checked on things when the e-mail came back all in Welsh. But it reminds me of something I see around where I live all the time: bad translations into Spanish.

Now, I'm not a native speaker of Spanish, but honestly it seems to me that when you are going to translate something into Spanish you should at least put enough effort into it to, let's say, check it out with a native speaker of Spanish. I mean, it's not like there aren't any native Spanish speakers around. For example, the title of this post is a paraphrase of a sign that hangs on one of the doors in the building where I work, easily visible from the main second-floor hallway. I happen to personally know at least three native speakers of Spanish who actually work in the building who could have easily said, "Um, nope, this is what you want to say." Not to mention that there are plenty of proficient non-native speakers around who wouldn't make such obvious errors in gender and subject-verb agreement, not to mention using the word "alarme", which doesn't even exist. (They should have gone with alarma.) In my more socially activated moments, I find it a little disrespectful to the Spanish-speaking community in the area that people won't even bother to do a good job with their Spanish translations of signs around in the area. It's kind of like saying, "We recognize that we should provide something in Spanish for you because there are enough Spanish speakers around, but we don't respect you or your language enough to actually do a half-decent job."

English speakers find it comical when obvious mistranslations have been done by non-native speakers who obviously don't know English well enough to know how badly they are doing. Two websites that are dedicated to the phenomenon are engrish.com and engrishfunny.com. But you will also often hear people complaining about incomprehensible owner's manuals which came with foreign products they have purchased and beefing about, "Why can't you just learn to speak English?" To people with this attitude I say, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Seriously though, through my study of sociolinguistics I have learned that people often use linguistic discrimination as a way to cover up honest-to-goodness prejudice against another group of people. It might not be acceptable to make fun of a group of people, but people will often find it acceptable if you make fun of the way they talk. That's why one linguist has called linguistic discrimination the last acceptable form of discrimination. (*shudder*)

Note to people who are posting signs in Spanish in my building: I am not a native speaker, but I could certainly do a better job than whoever is doing your translation now. And I work cheap.

*"Don't open the door. You have an alarm thank you."

The saga of the sink, continued...

Remember my bathroom sink?  The one that leaked when it wasn't clogged and stopped leaking when it clogged up a little?  So a couple of weeks ago when it started getting slow again, I was reluctant to do anything to it right away, because I knew that if I put some drain opener down it it would unclog the sink, but following the pattern, it would start leaking again.  So I just continued to use it and let it drain slowly as long as I could stand it.  But when it became clogged completely, I knew I had to do something about it.  (Otherwise I'm brushing my teeth in the tub every night!)  So I went down to the Lowe's by the freeway and bought a new P-trap and another couple of parts and at a moment when I was really bored with what was on TV I decided to attack the sink.

First, I had to clean out the area under the sink, which was kind of involved but I won't go there on my blog.  After that I had to find a container to put underneath it.  I borrowed a plastic pan that my mom brought home from the hospital and started taking off the old P-trap.  What clogged up the sink can only be described as black sludge (I'm guessing a mixture of mildew and soap scum?).  There was a surprising lack of hair clogs or anything like that, just a few stray hairs in there.

Anyway, since the new P-trap is on, the sink drains a lot better, mainly because the new pipes that I put on don't have a coating of black goo in them yet.  Unfortunately, I can't reach all the stuff that's blocking up the piping all the way from my sink to the sewer so I will still have to put some drain opener down to get it running well.  But -- here's the best part -- it doesn't leak!  My brother actually went to the garage and found a roll of plumber's tape for me.  A little bit of that on the threads and the pipes keep all the water in like a champ.

So I am no longer afraid of unclogging my sink for fear that it will start leaking again.  And I satisfied myself that I do have enough plumbing skills to do some simple home repairs.

If anyone needs a P-trap installed, I will work for chocolate cake...

Ha!

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hwFew2vQ69x6-RFPFXQPyPFCceGgD93RQIM81

If only...

Have you ever had the experience where you were calling someone and hoping that you wouldn't actually talk to them but just get the voice mail?  I definitely feel this way sometimes... maybe it's because you have a little bit of bad news, you are turning down an invitation to do something and you don't want to get talked out of it, or you don't have a lot of time to talk and just want to deliver the message without a full conversation.  I think it would be so great if somehow you could call someone but then press a button that allowed you to go straight to voice mail instead of actually ringing their phone.

So why do we make calls when we don't actually want to talk to someone?  I guess it's sort of a tug-of-war between our desire to deliver some message (out of a sense of duty?  something we need to get done even though we don't want to?) and our desire to not talk to someone (because we want more freedom with our time?  because we want to save face while delivering bad news?).

Now, it is true that through my voice mail system I can send voice messages to others... but it only works if that person happens to be on the same voice mail system as me, meaning we have the same phone company.  Otherwise I get a message that the voice mail could not be delivered.

What would be some messages that we would rather deliver by voice mail only?  Here are some possibilities:
"After putting some thought into it, I've decided not to accept your proposal of marriage."
"Remember the car?  I mean, the car we used to have?"
"Just to let you know, the cops are on the way to your house..."