Virtual Musings Open!

Welcome to the world of geeks! If you're reading this, you would have been called one at some point. You're in front of a computer, reading the words of some other person at a computer, thanks to folks a bit like me - only a heck of a lot smarter.

I'm a husband, father, Elder, student, musician, handyman, mechanic, and a bunch of other things. Right now, my study is focusing on geek. I thought it was minor geekdom, but it turns out that it's not so minor, after all. Go figure. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.

Anyhow, this'll be the place I come to share a bit of myself. Some of you will like it, and identify with what I'm saying. Others will get angry. Some won't care a hoot about what I say, and still others will find it ridiculous enough to mock.

Please, feel free to comment, but don't be a hater! There is so much else you can be doing, whether you believe as I do or not. I don't want to moderate nasty comments, but I'll gladly take comments that require critical thinking to answer.

Perhaps a good place to start is this: it seems to me that our culture still tries to portray a man the same as it has for generations -- the more appetite-driven, the coarser, the less-sensitive, the physically stronger and faster, the more dominant, the better!

I don't buy it. At least, I try not to. Turns out, every once in a while, I find that I have bought into what society says a real man is, and it's a bunch of garbage! Hooey. Drivel. Whatever you choose to call it, it isn't truth. I find, when I have bought into what society teaches manhood to be, that I need to seriously consider some things, and usually make some changes. Real men are kind, responsible, driven (but not by physical passions), sensitive, strong, and know that emotion is a wonderful part of life -- not just the boisterous emotions we may show the world, but also the sad, tender, or otherwise private emotions.

For years, I was told that I couldn't be a certain way, because "real men" aren't like that, and "women don't want that." When the time came, I found a wonderful woman who loved me for who I was at the time. I have changed so much since then, much of that because of her teaching me as we have gone on. It wasn't the kind of teaching that Bill Cosby talks about on his album "Revenge" or that Jeff Foxworthy talks about when he says, "Men, women are training you! And don't you think they're not. You just think about it the next time you hang up a pair of jeans in the closet and then think, 'Hey, I didn't want to do that!'"

I'm talking about showing me different ways of looking at things. Some things I already knew, and some things she already knew. Since the time we started dating and while we've been married (5 and a half good years now), we've both learned a lot together and independently.

I'm a Christian, and so try to have Him be my Example. I try to live like Him, but I've got a long way to go yet. I remember some years ago hearing a sermon by Bishop Richard C. Edgley, called "Behold the Man." He gives two simple criteria for manhood:

1. A true man is strong enough to withstand the wiles of Satan.
2. A true man is humble enough to submit himself to the redemptive powers of the Savior.

Neither of these is mutually exclusive of the other. I find that I can't have one without the other, because failing at (1) means that I'm failing at (2), and vice versa. Bishop Edgley ends his talk to a young man with a simple admonition:

Every [man] should seek to be known simply as a man of God. That, my dear friend, is manhood.


I couldn't agree more.

If you'd like to read the entire sermon, given in October 1999, follow this link.