In the Four States, Summer is Just Coming in.

The Joplin Writers Guild is hosting a poetry contest.  Entries must be set in the Four States area and must focus on one of the seasons.  Here is my entry:

In the Four States: Summer is Just Coming in.

by Glynn Bennion

Summer in Love

Summer in Hate

Summer in some other state

Between birth’s first breath

And the last gasp of death.

I love the shade of Maples my father cultivated

Here on Turtle line.

I love the new garden growth,

The last harvest of sweet peas,

The first ripe tomato picked at its prime

And fresh from the vine,

White headed green onions,

Collards both green and red

In the raised beds I spread for them.

I love White Oaks and Black Walnut Trees

That volunteer from nuts and acorns

Overlooked or lost--scattered--by that distracted squirrel

And her mate.

The various grasses grow whether I will or no

And want some herbivore or mowing boy

To keep them and the honeysuckle vines

From thinking that they own the place.

I don’t own the place.

What right have they?

The hummocky ground where pigs have rooted

Or moles have moiled

Or men have toiled

Or trucks have ground their tread into uneven earth

Make of mowing a hatred--a chore to be avoided--abhorred.   

So the grasses and the honeysuckle vines survive.

I hate the welts and itchy sores--the bites of tiny carnivores:

Chiggers and ticks.

And helicopter mosquitoes

Whose musicless hum prevents my sleep

And makes me slap my already offended ear.

I am the death of flies

That invade my living space

Buzz into my beard

Fondle my food.

I kill them All

with swatters, poisons, sticky strips,

and even with my bear, clapped hands.

They cannot escape me.

But I am not so naive as to believe

That I can escape their patient and enduring vengeance.  

The irony is not lost on me.

The other states that I live in make no matter.

I prefer, while I have life, to live in Love.

And though the Garden now has weeds

Noxious insect pests

Mice, moles, and other vermin

I love to walk in the cool of Adam’s evening

In Eve’s Paradise.

Finding pleasure in the gifts the Father gives from Heaven

And Good things from the Earth my Mother

Both to gladden the heart

And to nourish the soul.

To heal all wounds

To make me whole.

How to make Borscht

You will need:

at least three medium to large beets
two large sweet onions
a clean stalk of celery
several fat carrots
a medium head of cabbage
a couple of beef steaks (sirloin or New York strip)

balsamic vinegar
sugar
Better than Bullion, Beef Base
salt]
fresh ground pepper


Trim fat and sinew from the steaks and then slice them into thin strips about 1-2 inches long.
Marinate in Worcestershire Sauce.

Chop the onion (large pieces) and sauté in butter.
Peel the carrots and slice into rounds.  Sauté with the onions.
Clean the celery.  Cut off the top and discard.  Chop the celery, leaves and all, into 8th inch slices and add to the sautéing vegetables.
Clean the cabbage.  Toss out the outside leaves and the core.  Chop the rest and add that to the sauté.
Peel the beets and shred them.  Corse shred.  Do not add to the other veggies yet.

Saute the beef in olive oil until brown.  Use a large soup pot.
Add the sauted veggies add about two quarts of water, and then the shredded beets.
Cook until the beets are tender.
Add more water according to your desire--depending on how thin you want to soup to be.

Add vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and beef soup base to taste.
     about 1/2 cup vinegar
     about 1/3 cup sugar
     about 1/2 teaspoon salt ??? See note below.*
     about 1/4 teaspoon pepper
     about 2 Tablespoons beef base (Add more soup base depending on the amount of water you added above.)

You can add mushrooms if you like.
Serve with rye or Russian black bread, buttered
Serve with sour cream is desired

Don't add the beets too soon, or cooking will bleach the color out of them.
Adjust the amount of vinegar and sugar to your own taste, but this soup was intended to be sweet and sour.
*The beef soup base may add all of the salt that you want.  Taste.  The right amount of salt will make the flavor stand up and sing to you.  Too much salt is nasty.

You can use apple juice instead of water to thin the soup.  If you do, you won't need as much beef soup base.

P.S.  This stuff is really healthy--especially after a hard day's work.

What are you most thankful for?

I don't know how to answer this question.

I am thankful for the Atonement of Christ that makes all other things in mortality possible.  We needed to come and experience evil and good and be able to escape the evil.  There was no other way.

I am grateful to have been born of goodly parents.

I am grateful for siblings who have been my life companions, friends, and sharers in my joys and sorrows.

I am beyond grateful for my sweet Jodi.  I cannot imagine a better person to complete me.

I am grateful that my children have chosen to walk in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I know that I guarded that path and did all I could to keep my children on it, but I also tried to allow agency.  That is scary business.

I am grateful for my growing number of grandchildren.  I am beyond grateful for their love and affection.  I cannot imagine old age without such sweetness to counter the effects of age and life.  I have discovered that, though we cannot reenter Eden ourselves, we can create it for our children and thus enjoy it again, and perhaps enjoy it more fully than we were able to enjoy it as children.  I rest in the assurance that I will have posterity who will be powerful in the gospel of Jesus Christ and in his priesthood.

I am grateful for the vision of the peace of the Saints in Zion that gives me hope in a world carelessly heading for disaster.  Pandora's box has been reopened by we who have sworn "Never again!"  How careless and foolish we are.

I am grateful that Christ comes as a meek and lowly lamb and not as a conqueror with sword brandished.  We will have come to a more perfect understanding when  this is the Christ that we desire, and not the Thundering God of Mount Olympus.

I am grateful for the good things that come from the earth, both to gladden the heart and delight the senses.  There are so many good things to see, smell, hear, taste, and touch.  I am grateful for a God who gave us all of these good things to make our encounter with evil survivable.

I am grateful to work in a profession that I love.  Recently a student of mine posted a video she had taken of my playing a guitar for my students.  In response students from Wheaton, Monett, Western Plains, and Scott City thanked me for what I did as a teacher.  None of them suggested that they were more competent at English (except one who said she had gone on the publish as an author); instead they said that I had treated them with kindness as if they were my own children.  I am so grateful to have these blessings heaped on my old head instead of the hot coals of rebuke, regret, and shame.

I am grateful that my life has been a bit of heaven: beginning, middle, and end.

What message would you like to share with your family?

I want to ask my children and posterity to remain true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it is taught in the Book of Mormon and in the Bible.  God is not an angry god.  He is a kind and loving father.  I have spoken with him and know.  When his Spirit fills my heart the feeling I have is a deep feeling of His love.  It is natural for us to run and hide when we think we have done something wrong.  Let that feeling work in you to repent and return to God.  He died for us.  Don't you think he knows that we are going to need the Atonement?  If your testimony of the Gospel is ever weak, or if you ever feel that you are not sure about the Gospel, rely on my testimony.  I have lived enough to have sinned and felt worthless before God.  I have lived long enough to have seen pain and suffering, both my own and those close to me, and those throughout history and throughout the world.  But I have also seen the great goodness of God.  I have seen his tender mercy.  I know his tender kindness.  You must pass through a time in the history of the world when faith will falter for many, even among the very elect.  You will pass through times of great sorrow, pain, and suffering.  Do not be troubled, neither be afraid.  When I was a boy I used to fear death because I thought that it would be terribly painful.  I have suffered enough pain to know that death is nothing to fear.  We will experience pain in this life.  No one is exempt.  You will see terrible things happen in the world: mostly cruelty of human against human whether it be in wars, or in crimes, or in the growing greed that feeds off of the suffering of the lowest of humanity.  Do not let these things weigh you down to dispare.  God knew that his children of this Earth would be capable of such things, and so he sent his Son to take it upon himself. Let him take your cares.  Do not take your eyes off of him in the midst of the storm.  But if you do, turn to him again and cry out, "Lord, save me!"  He will lift you up.  Remember the story of Alma the Younger.  Remember, in your darkest moment, these words taught by your father and grandfather.
   Finally, because you have been obedient to the Gospel and to your parents, you have been blessed and will be blessed.  Because you have been for the most part righteous, you will have a tendency to pride, a tendency to think that you earned the blessings that have been given to you.  You may be led to think that those who suffer without the blessings of the gospel have brought upon themselves their own misery and that you are justified in ignoring them.  No.  To think so is damnation.  Had the Savior thought such a thing, we all would be lost.  If we think it, we might be lost after all.  There is only one response to the foolishness and the waywardness of the world--love.  Only love.  In this we become as the Savior.  This does not mean that we will be able to save all by our love anymore than the Savior will save all by his love.  But, it does mean that we cannot be saved without this charity which is the pure love of God.  Without it we are nothing.  Pray, therefor, with all the energy of your hearts that this love might be found in you, that when the Savior shall appear you might see that you are like him.  Go to the temple often with your sweethearts.  Make covenants there with God.  Be faithful to those covenants.  There is nothing else to say.  Nothing else matters.  Remember that no matter what, I will always love you.

What are the five most positive moments of my life Part V

I'm going to pass on this one for now.  In line for number five are too many things, and I believe that the best is yet to come.  The moment that I look forward to is that moment when all five of my children meet with Mother and me in the temple, probably for a wedding.  Next to that, I look forward to being welcomed home by my father and mother.  I will be there to welcome the rest of you when the time comes.

What are the five most positive moments of my life Part IV

I think I have already discussed at length the birth of each of my children, but those moments would be collectively among the most positive of my life.  The moment in the Timpanogos Temple when Mother told me that the Spirit had told her that we were to have a fifth child was a wonderful moment.  Adam's birth, being the first, affected me most.  Being a parent for the first time is amazing and wonderful and frightening all at the same time.  Here was this little boy, and I wanted him to be like me.  I was afraid that he might be like me.  When fathers and sons are too much alike, they butt heads and don't get along well.  We did alright.
    We live at a time when bearing and rearing children is not so valued.  Pondering and studying has taught me that the world is growing darker.  Hope is less.  Faith is mocked.  Charity is dead.  But the birth of each new child brings a fresh supply of faith, hope, and charity to the earth--a new batch of innocence.  When a society quits bearing children, cynicism rises.  That God still sends his precious little ones is evidence that He still has faith and trust in us.
   Jacob, of course, has been a great source of happiness to a couple who should have been done with childbearing.  I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: "The best cure for teenagers who think you are a jerk is to have a little one who thinks that you are all the world."  You can quote me on that.
   Each of your births has been the most positive moment in my life.

What were five of the most positive moments of your life? Part III

Marrying your mother.  I have told most of this story already, so I'll just tell you about that day.  I had driven up to Soda Springs, Idaho the day before.  Grandpa drove us from there to Idaho Falls in his camper.  I think there had been some car trouble with the vehicle that he had planned to take.  Mom and I sat in the back trying hard to remember that we were not married yet.
   The following morning we went to the Idaho Falls temple.  The wedding was delayed because the Temple had a power outage--on a perfectly clear day.  Mother was worried that the car trouble and the power outage all amounted to signs that we weren't supposed to get married.  I wasn't having any of that foolish talk, but prayed silently that the Lord would get the power back so that we could proceed.
   The Idaho Falls Temple has a very large sealing room that is used when large families come for weddings.  We were married in that room, up what seemed to me to be several flights of stairs.  Years later, Emily and Andrew would be married in the exact same room.
   Aunt Katherine told me later that as the sealer prepared to begin the ceremony she felt a powerful presence enter the room.  The Spirit told her that it was our brother (your uncle) Matthew.  She had been visited by Matthew previously at times when she needed help/comfort.
   My father was asked to say an opening prayer.  In the prayer he promised that the Holy Spirit of Promise would Seal our marriage.  A temple sealing is not complete until the Holy Ghost performs this function.
   I know there was a family meal in Idaho Falls, but I have no memory of that.  The reception in Soda Springs was the most lavish affair I have ever seen--carried out under a basketball standard.  The room was beautifully decorated in red and white.  Mother's wedding dress was wonderful, and she was the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on.  Some kind of strawberry dessert was being served.
   Everyone who knew Grandpa and/or Grandma Brown came.  Every man in town shook my hand and warned me what he would do if I ever....  Jodi was the town sweetheart.  I think that had a lot to do with her train accident.  The whole town had fasted and prayed for her recovery.  So, I was bound be the strongest threats the town could concoct.
   David B Height of the Quorum of the Twelve was at the Stake Center for some business or other and was invited to come to the reception, which he did.  I couldn't begin to remember who all was there.  I remember that your Uncle Sam was my best man.
   At the end of the reception, which seemed to last forever, we were shoed on our way.  I didn't feel comfortable leaving with so much that needed to be cleaned up.  But we started off on our honeymoon, driving as far as Preston, Idaho, that night.
   As lavish as the reception was, the most positive moment came in the temple when the words and promises of the wedding ceremony were pronounced upon us.  It is painful for me to kneel these days, but I love to participate in temple sealings and hear the promises spoken again.
   Following Emily's temple wedding, the sealer invited us to stand together and look into the mirrors of that room.  I told Emily that if she would look carefully, she would see Mom and I just a row or two of reflexions back.