Witt's End

I was one of the little kids growing up. That can be hard to believe given my 5'11" frame that has only been below 200lbs for a brief period in the last decade. But it's the hand over heart truth. I was little. 5'0" part way through freshman year little. Fit in the locker all of middle school, was consistently short in elementary school little.  I was also a nerd. Super nerd. With a 90s bowl cut. I loved to watch Star Wars,  Wishbone, most cartoons. I read Animorphs, comics, and the World Book Encyclopedia, all the time. I was obsessed with animals and sci-fi (and eventually fantasy, yay Redwall and Tolkien). I averaged over 100k new pages of new material in the summer.  All of the above was true, as was a love of sports. A big love. A love that I didn't feel that I could deliver on.  See I was often picked next to last or last. And it wasn't for a lack of trying. If you're literally on the little dudes, and you get pegged or slammed, you're down. ...

I hate not breathing. I really really do. It's one of the worst feelings that there is. Your body tells you, informs you how vital the function that's missing is. I've had a few different times in my life  I hate wildfire season. Living in a valley prone to inversions has been interesting. It's resulted in that difficulty breathing more than once. This year is starting to shape up dangerously. The debate surrounding these fires seems to be that it's either a result of global climate change or poor forestry practices. After this year's record heat wave I would proffer that two things can be true at once. And I would also proffer that they can exacerbate each other. This not an easy dichotomy. This is a problem with multiple variables that we need to take into account.  The truth is that the earth does appear to be warming. The truth is that we don’t deal with underbrush and forest management like we used to. The truth is that because both of these are true, it’s ...

 Faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost.  The four steps I’ve learned my entirely life as the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I recited it in primary. I taught it as a missionary. It’s been an ingrained thing that often became recitation and less practice. There are other aspects of faith like that. For me it’s the primary answers for any spiritual problems, “pray, read your scriptures, and go to church.” It’s easy for these to become rote and routine that they lose their power. I want it back. Most of the time when we discuss power in religion we are talking about miracles or acts of God. We’re discussing the power of creation,  Moses splitting the Red Sea, Christ raising the dead, the resurrection, the Apostles casting out devils or healing the lame. The big stuff. I worry that by focusing so much of the power on the big stuff that we can trumpet off the mountaintops that we lose sight of the quieter powers. The power to change people. Too often in my ...

  A church is meant to be a place of fellowship. Of gathering. It serves that purpose well. It truly does. Yet sometimes we still don’t feel that we belong. That we feel alienated or isolated. That our participation is worthless or forgettable. If you’re experiencing those emotions can I offer one more way to look at it.  The church. The body of Saints. Is a magnifier. It allows us to accomplish more good in unity than we ever could on our own. Think about it. I don’t have the financial, physical, or emotional means to care for as many people as I would like to. As a group we can organize food, service, and accomplish greater good than I ever could on my own. I can’t unilaterally deliver vaccines, medicine, or food across the world, my church can and does. I don’t personally have the means to establish service centers for immigrants, my church can and does. Establishing medical education for new mothers in third world countries, they do that too. Organizing thousands of volunt...

I’ll just say it. I miss the Army. It’s still hard to think about sometimes. It’s crazy that I feel this way.  You get your DD-214 and your free. The moment you were waiting for your entire enlistment. It's there. The negative is over. And there is hardships and negativity to service.  There were times that were tough physically. Some of the hardest outside of sports in my life. There were days that were mentally straining, the only things harder were the mission I served at a younger age. There were times without family and loved ones, that got harder the longer I served and the more my family grew.  Those were the things that were "hard" that recruiters and people that served warned me about. They were the aspects that you anticipate. There were parts they don't tell you. The parts that were rare. The ostracism that comes from not drinking. The power that corrupt NCOs and officers can wield. How dark racism can be to witness. The devastation of sexual harassment and...

I have actually spent a significant amount of time researching whether there is systemic racism and what impact implicit bias plays into that. I’m currently looking at the role of implicit bias in medicine, law enforcement, and other sectors of society. Systemic racism is often wrongly interpreted as an accusation that everyone in the system is racist. In fact, systemic racism means almost the opposite. It means that we have systems and institutions that produce racially disparate outcomes, regardless of the intentions of the people who work within them. With that in mind,I began looking at this topic after Pres Oaks talk last October. After beginning I found there was a lot more to uncover. Let me go study by study, legal case by legal case, of a portion of my research. You say look at the evidence. This is what I have found over the past 6.5 months. First real demonstrable case studies involving housing: Sept 24 2015: Hudson City Savings Bank settled for $33 million for avoiding mort...