A WORLD FULL OF ROSES

Last Monday as the morning clouds and winds were replaced by a wonderful, clear, breezy day I moved from hole to hole on the San Clemente Municipal golf course. I was continually distracted by the beautiful 'you can see forever' views spreading from the velvety green of the golf course and out across the endless blue sea. I was reminded that one of the blessings of living beyond the three score and ten mark in mortality is that you can take time to sit and smell the roses which were so often hastily passed by during the more hectic years of life. I sometimes regret that I was often times too busy while on the journey to appreciate at the time all the wonders around me. I am gratefully discovering in these less hectic years, that the roses I was quickly passing by, were nevertheless being imprinted on my mind and that I now have the ability to call them up at will.

While growing up in Southern Idaho, little did I realize that as the mysterious cold gloominess which shrouded the valleys was replaced by blooming colors as the temperatures allowed the shedding of layers of clothing, that I was gaining an appreciation of the renewal of life and the necessity of periods of bleakness in order to more fully be wowed by the brilliance which faithfully followed.

When my father found work in Southern California and we moved to that quiet paradise of years long ago which are now only memories, I was way too busy honing the mediocre skills of a perpetual amateur athlete to take time to be distracted from my objective of becoming a star by looking at the abundance and variety of the flora and fauna which I was running past on my way to the next sandlot or driveway game. Little did I know that my mind was being wrapped in an appreciation of all of the hues of the rainbow as I went about doing my frenetic movements through this year round revolving colors being splashed over this wondrous floral garden.

During the marvelous years when my wife and I were trying to 'raise' our children we found ourselves living in the high desert areas of Utah and Nevada I think I had at least started to see more clearly the beauties and marvels of this world, but I also know that the ensuing years have increased my appreciation for that with which I was surrounded. I was learning to look for the 'bent knee' tiny native plants which filled the so called barren floors long before men with nails in their boots began to trod upon them. I was also appreciating to some degree the massive efforts required to sustain the 'man planted' trees and crops which abound in these mountain valleys which required the moving and storing of the waters of the mountains so they could be used the whole dry summer long. I think it was during this time that I was introduced to the interpretations of the teachings of the Torah which lay upon mankind the task of completing the creative work which God started and deliberately left unfinished.

With a grateful heart I frequently call up the impressions which came as I spent those wonderful years in Mexico and Colombia. Because of the foundations gained in those years I have been able to understand, at least a little anyway, how it is that many times what we perceive to be a blessing can become a hardship, and what we look at as a hardship many times turns into a blessing. There is no doubt that those pioneers who irrigated the mountain valleys of Utah and Nevada were extremely blessed by their hardships and likewise there is little doubt that the people who live in the tropical areas of the world have been hampered somewhat in their development because of their living in a 'drop a seed anywhere and a plant will grow' environment. On the other hand, it didn't take me long to be struck with the understanding that these tropical dwellers had been blessed with the opportunity to spend time smelling the roses during the journey while the hardness and busyness of the lives of those living in harsher environs left them with lesser discretionary time to enjoy the surrounding beauty.

Lest I leave off sounding too 'Pollyarnie' I must confess that I still prefer cool breezes to cold winds. I still prefer the green hills of spring in California to the golden hills of summer or the brown hills of fall. I am grateful that I find beauty both in the planned orderliness of 'man planting' and the seeming randomness of nature's renewals of life. I am grateful that I can appreciate seeming barrenness along with the overwhelming greenery of the tropics. I am likewise grateful that I no longer have to shovel or drive in snow. And I am grateful I no longer have to putt on frozen greens and can golf in relative comfort 12 months a year.

I am grateful that all of this has been implanted in my memory bank, so that today and hopefully tomorrow I will be able to find joy and rejoicing in the beautiful world I am privileged to spend my probationary years upon. I pray that when I report to my Heavenly Father about my journey He will find it pleasing that one of the things I learned while I was here was to sit and smell the roses.