Childhood faith and forgetfulness

Faith All Around

My parents knelt with their family in prayer every night all their married life and listened at our bedsides to our "little" prayers when we were small. We always said "the prayer" before we ate dinner together. And we were active members of the Mesa 25th Ward of the LDS Mesa Arizona Maricopa Stake.

I remember vividly the sensation of sitting in a stake conference with over 1000 Latter-day Saints singing the early LDS hymn "The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning" with all my heart and voice to close a 2-hour meeting. I remember brightness and warmth and singing so strongly I was afterward in awe of how loudly I had been singing.

Secularism and the Childhood Mind

Television was a central feature of my early childhood. The Sesame Street was brought to me by the letter G and the numbers 3 and 12. The Electric Company brought me the power so that I could read. Mister Rogers believed in me and loved me. Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha brought me the Wild Kingdom.

When I entered Emerson Elementary School in Mesa, my schedule was defined by television. After school each day I watched Sesame Street, Electric Company, Gilligan's Island, and Mister Rogers with my younger siblings. Dad usually got home during Mister Rogers, then we would watch Gomer Pyle and My Three Sons together during dinner, with a quick prayer during a commercial break.

In those days (the 1970s) in Mesa, television programming was limited to three network stations (CBS, NBC/KTAR, and ABC/KTVK), one local station (KPHO), and PBS/KAET (plus the Spanish and the religious stations). Programming was not overtly offensive to our family, but it was Godless. I don't remember that anybody on Gilligan's Island prayed, or that there were any expressions of faith in the Mike Douglas (My Three Sons) home. Mister Rogers ran a deeply spiritual (loving) program, but without any reference at all to God or Heaven.

That Awful Crisis

The implicit secularism in the medium that fed my mind three hours daily during my formative years likely influenced my world view in my adolescent years.

When I was about 13 years old in Mesa, Arizona, I took a day trip with Scout Troop 556 (sponsored by the LDS Mesa 25th Ward) to Oracle Cave south of Oracle Junction, which is south of Mesa. After exploring the cave, we boys explored the ravine around the entrance.

Near the entrance (my memory says east/downstream) we found a diagonal crack in the rock about 1 foot wide that seemed to go back into the mountain a bit. To enter it we lay down diagonal and rolled into the mountain. After several feet of rolling I came to a rest with my face inches from the rock face above and in front of me.

At that moment the thought occurred to me that the mountain might shift a few inches and crush me to death. The terror I felt at that moment can only be felt by the ungodly. At that moment there was no God, no heaven, and no spirit in man. There was only my fragile frame and that mountain above me.

Through the following years I allowed that moment to haunt me. _In the moment of terror, I had no faith. Then did I have faith at all?_ These memories and questions helped frame my spiritual quest.

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