Category Archives: Religious thought

`Seeking Miracles? See Miracles! Prose

As my father reaches his earthly life’s end, I often find I’m seeking miracles. Can he last long enough to see my new-born granddaughter (his great-granddaughter)? (Yes, he did!) Can he recover to eat and drink enough to get stronger? Can he get strong enough to get back home to Wisconsin and watch another sunset over Lake Winneconne, as he has always wished? Will he live long enough to hear the purple martins feed their young? Those are all miracles I — and others — hope for. But we’re not in charge.

Seeing The Miracles Given

As I hope for and wish for all those miracles from a loving Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ, I’m suddenly struck by a recognition that I’m being ungrateful. How? I’m not recognizing — and giving praise and gratitude for — the miracles They’ve already given my Dad, the miracles that — while not being maybe what I might want — are still amazing.

Here’s just a few miracles that, if I think about it, I can recognize:

  • Dad demanding, against all logic, that he come out to Arizona in mid-December, instead of going to Arizona later. (If he would have stayed in Wisconsin, it’s likely the septic sickness he probably already had would have killed him with nobody around)
  • Because he stayed with my sister in Arizona, she heard him fall, and recognized he was in trouble
  • My brother-in-law had the wisdom to demand calling 911, which took him to a hospital, which diagnosed him as being septic. Waiting even a day or two longer probably would have killed him
  • Getting him into a close-by rehab, where family members in the Phoenix area were at least able to visit him. (Yes, even though he hated being there, that was a miracle!)
  • It was a miracle and tender mercy that a nearby granddaughter had the impression to make his favorite (from his wife’s recipe even!) lemon meringue pie and boiled raisin cake. He’d been “verklempt” and in pain for days, not eating, but he wanted to eat that. Guess what!?! Things moved! And he was VERY grateful!
  • While my sister was out of town, worried about him, two grandsons and their families visited on separate days. One gave him a Priesthood blessing of comfort and health that greatly helped him.
  • Last summer, a couple visited my Dad’s church congregation in Oshkosh. I had the impression (as I often do) to turn around and introduce myself. Turned out that they happened to be from Arizona. Turned out that they happened to be from my sister’s congregation, and good friends with her and her family! They were able to come out, meet Dad, and I took them for an afternoon canoe trip up Mud Creek. While my sister was out of town, the wife — who “just happens” to be a nurse — was able to stop by and visit my Dad, assess how he was doing, and give my sister a report that calmed her
  • As we looked at long-term care options, our niece — his granddaughter — had a bed open up in Tucson, at a nice group home facility she owns, and where several relatives and friends work
  • Interestingly enough, last year on our visit to Tucson, we felt strongly to drive by the facility and visit my niece. Because we had been there, it made it much easier to imagine the place Dad might be going to. AND it helped “pave the way”, because Dad was able to imagine the place, and he knew — and said — “Her place is a REALLY nice place!”
  • As Dad got worse, the Phoenix Doctor refused to release him on the day we were going to take him to Tucson. Miracle? Nobody told the on-call caregivers. As a result, when my sister and I came to visit to tell him he was NOT going to Tucson, he was already dressed, sitting in his wheelchair, telling us “get me the #*$(#& out of this place!!” Then, he reminded us that, against doctors’ orders, he had done a jailbreak with his wife, taking her out of a similar situation years before. The doctors said she might live three or four days. They had three more years together at their lakefront home
  • My sister and I realized that, in his condition, we could not transport him in our car. Miracle? A wheelchair van transport company I’d cancelled on two days before was called, and “just so happened” to be leaving for Tucson with her own father an hour later. “If you had called even a few minutes later, I wouldn’t have answered.” But she did answer, and he was on his way!
  • Getting down to Tucson was amazing. His granddaughters and great-granddaughters who run and work at the place were all over him, hugging him and licking his bald head as they had for decades. You could see the joy in being around family
  • Decades before, my cousin (Dad’s sister’s son) and his family had moved to Tucson from Thailand. Their home, which they kindly allow me to stay at, is less than 15 minutes east of where Dad’s new place was. Miracle? You should have seen Dad’s face light up when they came to visit!
  • Staying at my cousin’s also meant I was minutes away from the Tucson LDS Temple, which I was able to visit multiple times during my stay. This gave me a great deal of peace, and was, for me at least, a personal miracle. Any time I’m down, or feeling sad, or just needing a mental or spiritual break, I can find sweet peace and respite in The House of the Lord
  • In addition, I’ve been able to attend the Mesa Temple with my sister (less than 10 minutes from her house!) several times, and have talked about thoughts of eternity with her in sacred space. I’ve also frequented the Gilbert Temple, 15 minutes from my son’s home and 25 minutes from my other sister’s home
  • The work we do at the Temple(s) is for our relatives who have passed away, so they have a choice of accepting the saving ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As the line between my father’s life and eternity gets more thin, it’s comforting to know (and I do know it!) that these relatives — many of whom were “found” in Bavaria and elsewhere because of Dad’s encouragement will be on the other side to meet him
  • As I rushed to be at my Dad’s bedside (because we didn’t think he would make it), there were several traveling miracles that happened to get me from my home to Atlanta (both in the throes of a rare snowstorm) to Phoenix earlier than I’d planned
  • My sister and her family have been warriors in taking care of Dad, organizing his care, and taking care of him. What a miracle that he happened to be staying with her when all of this happened, and that she has the knowledge and wisdom to coordinate his care in a logical and hands-on way
  • My daughter, her husband, and my new granddaughter were able to fly down from Seattle and introduce Dad to his newest great-granddaughter. He and I were able to give her a naming blessing, while my daughter held her. Dad had so much joy in seeing yet another one of his wonderful grandchildren
  • His other grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as well as other friends and relatives — many who live within an hour or two of his new place — are able to regularly visit him and shower him with love and affection
  • In fact, my two nieces own and work at the facility. Most importantly, ALL of their children, grandchildren, in-laws, and friends — most of whom know Dad — live within a short drive of where he is, and they’ve already visited him several times
  • Because of technology AND that Dad knows how to use it (a huge miracle), he is frequently on video chats with friends and family thousands of miles away
  • Working with excellent caregivers — including his loving granddaughter who owns the facility — Dad is getting his pain meds and other living processes in order. My niece’s goal has been “to make Grandpa comfortable.” He has become “more comfortable than I’ve been in months.” If end-of-life is near, having Dad be, finally, comfortable, with hospice available (another miracle), surrounded by dozens of people who love him and care for him, is one of the biggest miracles of all

I’m certain there are other miracles that I’ve missed, and others yet to come. None of these may culminate in the miracle of getting him back to Wisconsin, but maybe that’s not in God’s plan. Laying out these miracles has helped me realize that, no matter what we might want, recognizing God’s Hand in all things is a worthwhile and worshipful exercise.

No matter what the outcome, as Dad has often said, “I’ve had a good life.” And that’s the greatest miracle any of us can hope for.

Mid-Winter Cold Preparation: Free-Verse Thoughts

At nearly noon,
it felt like early morning.
Or perhaps late afternoon,
so dark and gloomy were the skies.

The wind and temperature
didn’t help much,
cutting through my jeans and sweatshirt
as if to say: “Your warmth serves no purpose here.”

Yet in spite of its mocking
I laughed, and sat down.
Cold? It’s above freezing
in late December, Northwest Georgia.

I’ve laid down and made snow angels
in sub-zero now-that-is-REALLY-cold cold.
I’ve sat on cross-country skis and eaten lunch at +1 degree
on a sun-swept Utah mountain peak.

THIS is not cold. It’s hardly even uncomfortable.
Yet I do not linger long in the woods this day.
Micro-garbage plastic, blown by the stiff breeze,
dances past my feet.

It reminds me: I must clean
and prepare,
and sanctify,
and make this property ready
for that time when warmth, love, and Light
shall banish and sweep away
all this grey cold
and darkness.

The Morning Before Peace

Our hand-cut cedar tree, decorated,
glows green, gold, and red
with lights, globes, and ribbons
(not, as some might say, toilet paper).



The early-morning sun shines,
gold and red,
through the gently-frosted kitchen window.
Its light matches the tree’s glow.

In this peaceful morning before,
cup of hot chocolate warming my hand,
I sit and listen to Crooners Christmas Classics.
No one is up yet. This is my time before chaos.

Yet tonight, Mr. Como reminds me, is Oh Holy Night.
When I think of Him, the Son and Light, I’m always at peace.

Stop Making Excuses And Do It: Lessons From Doctor Do It

Why don’t we exercise? Why don’t we get out into Nature? Why don’t we connect with God and Christ? Why don’t we feed our spirits? Why don’t we nourish our souls? Why don’t we stretch our minds?

Why don’t we?

Why do we atrophy, whether physically, spiritually, emotionally, socially, or mentally? Why do we let ourselves just waste away, in any one – or all – of these areas? Why do we deny ourselves a better life?

What “Doctor Do It” Says

The other day I was talking to a childhood friend about this very trait we humans have: To stop doing. In fact, he’d just written his Doctoral dissertation* about this subject from a physical perspective.

To understand the depth of his concern, you must know him as I have. From our childhood, he was always the most in-shape, active person I ever knew. An early fan of Bruce Lee, he studied and practiced martial arts. He told me (paraphrasing Bruce Lee) that “When you put limits on yourself, you hold yourself back.” He also believes in the concept attributed to the Navy Seals but used throughout the military: “When you reach where your mind says is your limit, you have only approached 40% of your capability in whatever it is you are doing.”

He ran track, played hoops, and was involved in all sorts of sports on a personal and team level. As a result, his body, his physical presence, was the envy of everyone who knew him.

And it didn’t stop as he grew older. In college at BYU, he was on the university’s track team. He played hoops there, too, and almost any other sport he could think of. He wasn’t a star athlete, but he was in shape, and being in shape was important to him.

This kept up as he got older. After college, he made a career out of the Army, where he was a Ranger. In fact, we’d always kid him about jumping out of perfectly good airplanes just for fun.

Being Active When You Are Older

Most of us, sometime around our 30s or 40s, put away our sports dreams. We start to sit around more and more. Maybe we get out and do things outdoors, or play rec soccer or pickleball. But it becomes easier and easier to just … sit.

Not so my friend. After the Army, he started a cross-fit gym just outside of Denver. And this is where he started formulating his thesis for his Doctorate paper. He told me: “I see people come into the gym all the time who should know better. Doctors. Former trainers. Former athletes. And every one of them starts to go downhill the minute they say: “I can’t do that” or “I don’t want to do that” or “That would not be good for me because of XYZ reason.” And they start to atrophy.”

He is a big fan of this line from a movie:  “Don’t use all of your muscles (brain cells, talents, etc.), only the ones you want to keep.”

He told me: “Our society tells us that at certain ages we have to change or stop doing things. This is so ingrained into our psyche that we almost automatically stop doing things. It takes a leap of faith to try to do them again.”

Eating His Own Dogfood

Interestingly, it was while he was working on his Doctoral thesis that he experienced the most profound insights into just how easy it is to fall into that “Do Nothing” trap. At almost the same time as he started putting in extra hours studying and writing, he got Covid. Bad. It laid him up for weeks. He could barely do more than study and work on his thesis.

When he recovered from Covid, he found himself making excuses to not go work out as much as he used to. “I’m still sick” he’d tell himself. “I need to work on this dissertation.” “There are other things I need to do.”

He felt himself spiraling downward, not only physically, but emotionally and mentally as well.

That’s when it hit him: Even when you don’t WANT to do something, get out and do it. In fact, he said that he discovered the best way to know you need to do something, is when you don’t want to do it.

Do it anyway.

He shared this “aha” moment with me: “Be positive. Avoid talking or thinking negatively about yourself in anything. Our church leaders have continually urged us to be positive. Even when we’re injured or spiritually or emotionally down, we have to be positive, we have to take that first step, no matter how small. That is progress.”

Everything Is Interconnected

At this point in our discussion, I realized I’d had the same epiphany the day before, about getting out and being in Nature, connecting to God and Christ in Nature, finding peace “out there”, and grounding and recharging.

I’d been feeling disconnected, out of sorts. There was a lack of peace in my life, and I felt like I was wandering and floundering, and not in a good way. I knew what the solution was. In fact, my wife wrote a book about finding peace in Nature and connecting with God and Christ. It outlines how we can find and connect with our core sacred selves, and how we can feel the message of love, peace, and joy that The Creator sends out through His Creations in Nature.

Every time I felt the urge to go out in the woods, to go down by the creek, to do something on our property, to “get my hands dirty”, I would find some excuse to stay indoors, to not do what I needed to do to reconnect. “I have to clean. I have to plan. I have to do laundry.” Or, even worse, “It’s too hot. It’s too bright. It’s too cold. It’s too windy. Not now, I have a headache.”

Doing Brings Healing

As my friend and I discussed his dissertation, and our mutual experiences, we realized that the problems were all interconnected. If you feel bad physically, you are off-center spiritually. If you’re disconnected emotionally, you don’t feel good physically or mentally. And on and on it goes.

But the solution is simple: Do it. Whatever it is that is holding you back, do it. No excuses. No logically reasoning. Just do it. If you’re hurting and feeling sluggish physically, go do something physical. Feeling “bleh” mentally? Challenge yourself by writing something, or solving a problem, or working on a mental task. Emotionally and socially disconnected? One of my favorite solutions is going out and doing karaoke, or going to a comedy club and laughing it up with others.

Disconnected from God? Study His Word. Listen to uplifting talks about Him. Pray. Ungrounded and disconnected from life? Get out into Nature. Touch a plant. Take photos of birds, flowers, bugs. Stare at the stars. Howl at the moon. Wave good morning to the sunrise. (In fact, this is on my mind so much recently that I wrote a blog about it a few days ago! https://spirittreefarms.com/when-natures-peace-isnt-working/ )

As my friend discovered, and as others have known for years, whatever the disconnect is, the solution, the healing, is found in doing the thing which seems so difficult. He points out that “When you stop doing things, they appear more difficult than they are, your confidence fails and you end up avoiding the thing you should be doing.”

In the opposite vein, when we start doing things, they become easier because our ability to do them increases, we gain confidence, and we end up doing the thing we should be doing.

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

In fact, as I’m writing this piece, I’m thinking I should call my friend by a new name: Doctor Do It.

Who Says What To Do?

As Dr. Do It and I discussed this, I realized something vital: While we may turn to others for help and advice in what to do and how to do it, ultimately, we have to decide, ourselves, what we are going to do.

In part, Dr. Do It gave me the inspiration for this. What I realized is that, in his gym, people come in seeking answers. They want him to tell them: “Do 50 of these, then 20 of these, then 100 of these, then repeat.” And for some people, that works.

Often, though, he works with them to help them decide and discover what THEY think they can do. And when they say they can’t do anything, then he encourages them by telling them to just do something.

Connecting With Nature Should NOT Be Just Another Bucket List Item

We have the same response when we at Spirit Tree Farms encourage people to get out into Nature, to find God and Christ’s peace in Nature. We often hear: “Oh, we don’t live out in the woods like you do. It’s too hard to get out and connect like you can.”

Someone recently told me that. My response? “Do you have a balcony? Go out and look at the sky. Do you have a front door? Step outside and feel the sun on your face. Is there a tree, a bush, a flower, a plant nearby? Maybe you even have one inside. Look at it. Examine it. Discover the wonder of that small bit of Nature.”

We hear too many people say: “Oh, I love going to the beach, to the woods, to the mountains. I love getting away from it all, and getting recharged. But I don’t do it enough.”

While bucket list trips are great, if that’s the only time we’re connecting with God and Christ in Nature, we’re missing the boat. Literally. Mother Nature is fantastic, whether on thousands of acres in Northwest Georgia, or hundreds of thousands of square miles in southern Utah, or a balcony view in Seattle, or rooftop garden in Harlem, or a small birdfeeder in Milwaukee.

After all, it’s not a contest to see how much, how big, you can experience Nature. Feeling God and Christ’s peace in Nature can be as wide as looking out over the Grand Canyon at sunset, or as small as seeing a blue wasp on a native wildflower. It can be as planned out as taking a long-awaited trip to the coast, or as spontaneous as waving at a flock of migrating geese honking wildly as they fly in their moving V over your back yard (can you tell what just happened to me?)

In much of the Northern Hemisphere right now, it’s autumn. Pick up a colored leaf, or watch it fall and float on the air, or tumble down the street. Feel the change in seasons. Smell the new scents. Taste the richness of the Earth.

Remember What Doctor Do It Says

Ok, I got sidetracked into Nature a bit. So that’s an example (Oh, look! A new type of native bee just landed on my deck railing!) No matter what it is that you’re feeling stuck with, and no matter how you feel, and no matter what your excuses are, the bottom line is to remember what my friend, Dr. Do It, says:

“Do something. Anything. Do it. And then do it some more. And then do more. And then find other things to do, and do them.”

Because, if you don’t do something, anything, you not only die.

You fail to live.

*Dr. Do It’s Dissertation can be found here:  https://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqm&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:31300247

It is titled:

“PERCEPTIONS OF CROSSFIT PARTICIPANTS AGED 50-65 ABOUT HOW THEY MOTIVATE THEMSELVES TO ENGAGE IN INTENSE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY”

By MICHAEL J. VOGL, COL (Retired) US Army

Owner/Coach CrossFit Evergreen, Personal Defense Readiness Coach

University of Arizona Global Campus for DOCTOR OF PSYCHOLOGY

(“Bear Down”)