“The Son of Man Hath Descended Below Them All, Art Thou Greater Than He?”

My first area in the California San Jose Mission was in Palo Alto, and included at least part of the campus of Stanford University.  We often went onto campus on our P-days to visit such places as the Rodin Sculpture Garden and the Memorial Church (which we called the "great and spacious building").  The Stanford Memorial Church is an impressive structure that has been called "the University's architectural crown jewel."  Among the many architectural features of the church there are inscribed on the interior walls many inspirational quotes.  On one particular P-day I noticed the following quote, and was so inspired that I wrote in down:

"There are but few on earth free from cares, none but carry burdens of sorrow, and if all were asked to make a package of their troubles, and throw this package on a common pile, and then were asked to go and choose a package which they were willing to bear, all would select their own package again.  Your heartaches may be great, burdens heavy, but look about you, and with whom would you change?"

I have written before that the first four months of my mission were difficult, that it appeared that the Lord had something else on the agenda besides teaching and baptizing.  At the time my mother wrote me several letters that were helpful.  Among the thoughts she wrote were these:

“Know that the Lord will not permit you to have more problems than you can deal with.  Be confident because of your faith in him. . . . Lean on the Lord. Trials can help you come closer to him.”

“I will have to inform you that trials (or ‘opposition in all things’) continue for life, so be prepared. Your attitude will get you through.”

“People are always moving around and doing new things. The Lord knows you and what’s in your heart and will do right by you.”

She also quoted Dr. Scott Peck from The Road Less Traveled: “Once we truly understand that life is difficult – once we truly understand it and accept it then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is so difficult no longer matters. Life is a series of problems.”

The Prophet Joseph Smith once said that “The things of God are of deep import and time and experience and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out.”  He knew whereof he spoke because he had spent time and gained experience in Liberty Jail.  There he received a revelation in which the Lord listed many awful things that could happen to him and that these things would give him experience and be for his good.  Then He said, “The son of man hath descended below them all, art thou greater than he?”

Adversity is a fact of life, it is how we learn and grow so that we can become like our Heavenly Father if we submit ourselves to Him.  Sometimes we face intense challenges that are of a relatively short duration, such as what happened on Omaha Beach on D-Day, the Sixth of June 1944.  Other times we may face less intense challenges, but of a longer duration, such as the fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy after D-Day.  Sometimes, with little rest we may go from our Omaha Beach and into the hedgerows.

Some trials may affect us our entire lives.  On July 24, 1985, my mother collapsed at home due to a brain tumor; though she lived, the surgery to remove the tumor effectively cost her her short term memory.  At the time she was very near the completion of her college degree.  After recovering she went back to school only to experience great difficulty.  She wrote me about one particular episode:

 “I just learned something new that I think will really help me.  My patriarchal blessing tells me over and over that I will influence people for good.  I haven’t been too effective at home, my Relief Society teaching is likely at an end, etc.  In my Spanish 4 and 5 class, however, they interviewed me and found I’d had a brain tumor.  They thought that meant I’d had cancer.  They think I’m a class heroine.  When I checked out of Spanish 5 (I could see that I couldn’t go on and get my B.A. without the ability to memorize), they wrote cards and called to get me to come back.  They saw me as someone who was persisting with life despite difficulties and I was a positive influence to them.  Sometimes we don’t understand the Lord’s reasoning or his timetable and we become discouraged, but there is hope in the future.  If you get discouraged, just remember your old mother got discouraged, too, before she saw answers.”

My mother did not get her degree even though she was just a few credits short of graduation.  In addition to her fellow students, my mother helped me through the trials I experienced on my mission.  I have referred to those two years as a university of life.  I learned more in those two years than at any other time in my life.  My mother helped me to learn some of those lessons.

The Signals We Send

Seventy-five years ago this month of May, the mighty German battleship Bismarck broke out in the Atlantic Ocean.  His mission (the ship's captain insisted that his ship should be referred to in the masculine rather than the traditional feminine) was to find and sink Allied convoys.  But this mission was quickly forgotten in the face of damage received during the Battle of the Denmark Strait; while Bismarck had sunk the most famous British warship, the battlecruiser Hood, she took a few hits from the battleship Prince of Wales which damaged a fuel-oil tank in his bow, and this led to a decision to make port in France.

The German battleship was shadowed by two British cruisers, Suffolk and Norfolk, as she raced east across the Atlantic toward the Bay of Biscay.  The intent of the British ships was not to engage Bismarck in another battle, but to track him by radar until another force of British battleships could close in for another major battle.  But at one point the German battleship circled around the British cruisers, breaking contact.  Ironically, the German sailors might not have been aware that they had broken contact, for not long after they sent a long radio message to fleet commanders ashore, and this helped the British find Bismarck again.

While the British had lost radar contact, it is likely that Bismarck was still detecting the radar signals from a British ship.  Radar, short for radio detection and ranging, transmits short radio pulses which are reflected when they hit an object like a ship or an airplane.  Some of the reflected energy is then received by the ship that sent the pulse, and this allows a reading of range and bearing to be taken.  The hitch is that the pulses have to be strong because only a fraction of the radiated energy would form an echo that the radar could detect.

Because the radar pulses must be rather strong, it is possible that those pulses were detected by receiving equipment aboard the German battleship, even though the echo was too weak to be caught by the British radar at the increased range following Bismarck's circle maneuver.  The cruisers were almost 125 miles (200 km) astern of the battleship when the message was sent -- the British battleships were actually closer, so it is possible the radar pulses came from them instead of from Suffolk and Norfolk.

The long message was picked up by two British listening stations which allowed a search aircraft to find the German battleship.  The sighting then led to an air attack by torpedo bombers launched from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and a one in a million torpedo hit disabled Bismarck's rudder, and this allowed the battleships King George V and Rodney to find and sink the German battleship.

A greater threat than German surface raiders, even one as powerful as Bismarck, were the u-boats which prowled the convoy routes across the Atlantic.  The two weapons which helped defeat the U-boat peril were radar and high frequency direction finding (HF/DF, also known as "Huff Duff").  By using antennas at different locations, Huff Duff received a radio transmission at different angles and used the differences to determine a bearing to the transmitter.  What made Huff Duff so successful during the war was the speed with which it could determine the bearing to a u-boat transmitting a radio message; this allowed allied warships to locate and attack the enemy submarine.

The battle of the laboratories continued during the Cold War, and the U.S. Navy spent a lot of effort on what it called "emissions control," or EMCON.  The purpose of EMCON was to prevent the Soviets from homing in on the radar and radio transmissions of U.S. Navy ships.  EMCON could be as simple as turning everything off, radar, radio and any other equipment that emitted an electronic signal.  During World War II, the Germans developed a radar detector and such detection equipment became more sophisticated during the Cold War, to the point that it was no longer necessary to use radar to search for the enemy as you could track him through his electronic emissions -- assuming that he had not turned everything off.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been another wave of technological progress with wireless communications.  Rear Admiral William Leigher, USN, a veteran cryptologist who recently carried the title "director of warfare integration for information dominance," stated in a 2013 interview that the electronic emissions problem is significantly greater now than it was in the past.

“It’s not as simple as EMCON that I might have done in the mid-’80s or early 90s,” Leigher warned.  For one, you can't just turn everything off because you need your sensors to detect incoming missiles and your jammers to disable them.  In the future, suggested Leigher, instead of shutting systems down to avoid detection, a Navy ship might deliberately change the signals it emits to make the enemy think that it is something else -- during World War II, the allies tricked German u-boat commanders into turning their detectors off by suggesting that aircraft could home in on its signal.

Fascinating as all of this is, I'm sure there are many of you who are wondering just what it has to do with anything.  As humans, with or without the aid of electronics, we are always emitting something.  People see us and hear us, and we send signals through body language as well as through the things that we say -- or even the things that we don't say.  Social media allows us to interact with people around the world, even people we don't know -- even people that we are not aware of.  We might try a form of EMCON by avoiding people, on social media or in person, but that would leave us isolated and, in any case, probably wouldn't actually work.  Even when we keep to ourselves we are sending out signals.

It would be more useful, then, to take a look at what we are emitting.  Through our body language and our words we may signal happiness and friendship, generosity and other good things, or we may signal anger, suspicion, selfishness, immodesty, etc.  We may signal other things via social media by what we choose to post, or what we choose to like or share.

In recent efforts by members of the LDS Church to share the gospel via social media, people have been using the hashtag "sharegoodness".  We can share goodness, or we can share things that are less than good.  We may even share goodness on the one hand, while also sharing some not so good things on the other, in which case we are sending mixed signals that may serve to confuse.

When Alma the Younger started his mission to the Zoramites, he took along with him Amulek, Zeezrom and two of his sons.  One of these sons left his mission to chase after a harlot; Alma later said to this son, "Behold, O my son, how great iniquity ye brought upon the Zoramites; for when they saw your conduct they would not believe in my words" (Alma 39:11)

Alma went on to say, "And now the Spirit of the Lord doth say unto me: Command thy children to do good. lest they lead away the hearts of many people to destruction" (Alma 39:12).

People are watching us, whether we like it or not.  If they see in us a good example, they may become interested in learning more about the church.  If they see in us a bad example, they may be less likely to become interested.

We might think that we can hide behind the anonymity offered by social media, but we would likely be deluding ourselves.  Some seek to hid their identity as they post certain thoughts, quotes or photos, while at the same time broadcasting that they are active LDS.  Even if their identity is never discovered, these actions are mostly likely just as damaging.

We, of course, are human, and we will make mistakes -- and there are those who will deliberately seek to push our buttons in order to accuse us of hypocrisy -- but let us strive to be a good example, let us strive to share goodness.  Let us be ever mindful of the signals we send when we post, like or share things on social media.

--

Sources:

Freeberg, S. J. (2013) "Navy Battles Cyber Threats: Thumb Drives, Wireless Hacking, & China." Breaking Defense.  Accessed September 10, 2014 at: http://breakingdefense.com/2013/04/navy-cyber-threats-thumb-drives-wireless-hacking-china/

Zettering, N. & Tamelander, M. (2009). Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany's Greatest Battleship. Philadelphia: Casemate Publishers.

Reading Out Loud

As I have posted before, I work in a call center.  Today one of the callers I spoke with paid me one of the best compliments I have received in a while.  She said right off that I had an excellent phone voice and finished the call by saying that I had missed my calling and that I should be doing voice overs or narrating documentaries.  The irony is that I have actually dreamed about narrating historical documentaries!

In fact, I will tell you just how weird I am; I often read history books out loud, pretending that I am the narrator of a documentary.  Some books, on certain subjects, just seem to call out to be read out loud.  But, if that is not weird enough for you, I have spent hours upon hours in public parks, reading books out loud!  I hope you are not frightened by this startling revelation.

But here is the unexpected part of the story; all of that reading out loud actually prepared me for the job I currently have.

There was a time in my life when I had somehow gotten the notion into my head that I had a communication problem.  I think it was because I left my job with the family business after ten years and started working for other people.  I became rather self conscious about my quiet personality and my occasional stumbling over words.  It got to the point that, when asked in job interviews if I had any weaknesses, I would answer that I had a communication problem.  Hey, I had to be honest!

As long as I believed I had a problem, then, in a way, I did.  In fact, my problem was that I believed I had a problem.  One summer I took a sales job just to prove that I could do it; a low pressure sales approach with a product that all but sold itself.  What I found out was that I do not have a communication problem -- also, stumbling over the occasional word might actually put the customer at ease, thus helping to make the sale!

Those job interviews taught me something else: if don't want the job, a great way to end the interview is to tell them you have a communication problem.  Translation: "I have no self confidence."  Trust me, no hiring manager will give you a second thought after you tell them that.  As a result of this, I was out of work for a number of years; and I had plenty of time to sit in public parks and read out loud.

I read recently a quote from President Thomas S. Monson -- and, yes, I did read it out loud -- on how to improve communication skills:

"1. Improve your vocabulary by keeping a dictionary available when reading or writing.  Check words about which you have a question to see if your understanding of their meaning is the same as the dictionary definition.  The listening vocabulary should be greater than the one you use to speak or write so you can learn on a higher level than that on which you speak or write.

"2. Read aloud (as a drill) when the opportunity to do so presents itself.  This strengthens the voice and makes it more clear.  It helps the reader to enunciate words more clearly, carefully, and naturally.  It helps to prevent speech mannerisms and monotonous patterns because the reader has an opportunity to use other people's word combinations. The reader should also practice voice inflection and develop a wider range of tones to make the voice more interesting."

Another quote from President Monson also applies:

"Reading 'out of the best books' stretches our mental muscles and expands our horizons.  It takes us out of our mundane worlds and lets us travel as far as our imaginations and the picture painting words of the authors can carry us.  Reading keeps us vibrant, it keeps us alive and makes us far more interesting to our marriage mates and our families.  It is also a form of insurance against mental aging.  We are only as old as we think we are.  Some people say that one way to keep alive is to keep interested in many things, and the way to keep interested is to read widely and wisely."

So read, read out loud, read out strong . . . sorry, I had to say it.

Here are some other benefits of reading out loud, according to Stephanie Ciccarelli: doing so "sharpens your focus, increases your vocabulary, results in greater comprehension, gives you an opportunity to play, exercises your body, challenges your use of intonation, and improves listening and reading skills."

When I was still in high school, an older gentleman once saw me reading at a bus stop.  He asked me if I liked to write.  When I said that I did, he said something I have carried with me ever since.  The more we read, the better we will write, and the more we write, the better we will read.  This is absolutely correct.  If you want to improve your ability to communicate, read and write and write and read, and read out loud.


Sources:

Cannegieter, L F. (2011). Teachings of Thomas S. Monson. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book.

Ciccarelli, S. (2008) "7 Way Reading Aloud Improves and Enriches Your Life." Vox Daily, accessed at Voices.com on 5/02/2016.  http://blogs.voices.com/voxdaily/2008/11/7_ways_reading_aloud_improves_your_life.html