The Motel and Dance

Made it home,
early, then,
the vacancy sign,
was lite.

Come home now,
to clean house,
for your Daddy
this day.

Maybe Daddy will work,
half a day, their being,
no burial today.

Daddy loves to dance,
it may kill him,
someday.

The Elks have a band,
this day, this Saturday.

Ten children,
to feed,
the motel to clean
and Voyle's wedding,
come soon.

This then the fight with Nancy,
the dishes this day.

I know Voyle's needs to help?
But this battle is a fight, I have lost,
long ago.

Lordy child,
how did I go so wrong,
with this one.

What my brother did was wrong,
so wrong.
This then the guilt,
I carry this day.

Lynn too, we will learn to love.
That child, I wonder if mature,
he ever will,
someday.

When come the babies,
to that two.
We will love and cherish,
and mourn this day.

Then another house to clean,
for their babies ,
a fresh start, that day.

To clean this,
a house, seams woman's work,
this day.

As men work,
to clean their lives,
this then,
love finds a way.

To make the dance,
this day.

Forsaken not, me

Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani.

I believed in the end,
that a lamb would be found,
in the thicket.

did you not find a lamb,
for Abraham.

Thus alone, now,
am I.

this time has come,
now i pay the price,
the full price,
for their sins.

Then am I,
the lamb in the thicket,
you found, for abraham.

then this cup I shall drink,
this penalty I shall pay.

For you love, them,
as do I.

-- 

Steven Bassett

On Personal Revelation

Revelation comes on the Lord’s timetable, which often means we must move forward in faith, even though we haven’t received all the answers we desire.

Alexander D. Hale, Personal Revelation: The Teachings and Examples of the Prophets, General Conference, October 2007 |

John Milton also learned this lesson the hard way.  Toward the end of his life, when the English Republic failed and he had not received his epic poem, he pondered if his life mission was a failure.   He then received this poem.

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

John Milton, On his blindness, 1673

We never know what God has in waiting to bless us.  We must be willing to wait and serve and listen to what he desires us to do with our lives.  With the Baptism of my only child, I thought I would never perform a priesthood ordinance for another child.  Little did I know the blessings that would follow with the adoption of my son.

So wait but also move forward and seek to bless the lives of his children, while he seeks to bless us with things in the due, and proper time.

On Proper family size.

A portion of this quote has been moving around the web and on Facebook. 

“"The most merciful thing a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Margaret Singer

It took me less time to find and locate the book this quote came from, thanks to Google, then it took to format, and compose this response.    

My mother faced the same dilemma in creating her own family.  My youngest brother was born impaled by an intrauterine device.  She had seen the effects of having many children on her mother’s family.  It was one of her biggest fears. She knew she was fertile, like her mother, and could have a very large family, with a child born every 14 months.   Her first three babies came between January 1964 and February 1967.  Still, she mourned the loss of Dana Allen Bassett the remainder of her days.

“Thus, we see that the second and third children have a very good chance to live through the first year. Children arriving later have less and less chance, until the twelfth has hardly any chance at all to live for twelve months.

“This does not complete the case, however, for those who care to go farther into the subject will find that many of those who live for a year die before they reach the age of five. Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members. Moreover, the overcrowded homes of large families reared in poverty further contribute to this condition. Lack of medical attention is still another factor so that the child who must struggle for health in competition with other members of a closely packed family has still great difficulties to meet after its poor constitution and malnutrition have been accounted for.

The probability of a child handicapped by a weak constitution, an overcrowded home, inadequate food and care, and possibly a deficient mental equipment, winding up in prison or an almshouse, is too evident for comment. Every jail, hospital for the insane, reformatory and institution for the feeble minded cries out against the evils of too prolific breeding among wage workers. We shall see when we come to consider the relation of voluntary motherhood to the rights of labor and to the prevention of war that the large family of the worker makes possible his oppression, and that it also is the chief cause of such human holocausts as the one just closed after the four and a half bloodiest years in history. No such extended consideration is necessary to indicate from what source the young slaves in the child-labor factories come. They come from large impoverished families—from families in which the older children must put their often feeble strength to the task of supporting the younger. “   

Sanger, M. (2014). Woman and the new race. Middletown, DE: Creatspace Independent Publishing Platform.

Now I am in no way advocating abortion for the regulation of family size.  Every child has the right to be raised in a family that has sufficient resources to care and raise them.

I am an adoptive parent.  I was fortunate to be given two babies by a woman who loved her children.   She still does. She sees them on many occasions and follows them on Facebook.

I am saying let us regulate our families sizes and if necessary make the hard choice to place our children where they have the best opportunity to thrive.