It is Six in the morning and I’m struggling to get back to sleep. My “Soul Voice” (1.) isn’t happy with me and it is gruffly telling me “Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” But there is another darker voice.
I know my mind, and when it gets like this trying to sleep is a waste of time. So I am up and tuning in on the signals buzzing in my head. I am trying to find the courage and the commitment I need to pick up the proverbial gauntlet that my best self has been incessantly throwing at my feet. But the dark voice hovers.
I have been here before, many times – I know the sound of the music in me and I have gotta dance – If I am to find any peace and self satisfaction in myself I got to engage and move.
I’m sure if Clarence the Angel (Think of the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”) was to assess my life I have to admit it has been great. But divine discontent rages and I have got to put up my sails and “push the edge of my personal ‘aging’ envelope.”
“The enemy of my soul” (2.) provides me with brand new examples as to why I should not present myself as any kind of counselor or educator. Maybe it’s an old guy thing, but I wake up afresh with startlingly new recollections of some asinine face plants I did decades ago. There are so many times I wish I had been a better me , but C’est la vie, that’s life. I wish I had Panache, Sprezzatura – a casual brilliance. But I have a lot of “I’m a mess” moments, and my dark angel(not my Soul Voice, some one or something else), I’ll call him Larry, is sharing new units of mucked up memories. I tried to set up a new phone yesterday and it will take ten days, with expert help, to clean up the technological havoc. I’m a schlemiel, but I do know some good stories.
This is my paternal grandmother’s brother, Edwin Forward, my Great Uncle. He survived Gallipoli. Gallipoli is considered one of the most ill advised battles of the 1st World War.
The Gallipoli peninsula is located in Turkish Thrace, the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles strait leading right up to the Black Sea on the east. On paper, a naval assault on the Dardanelles made sense. It would protect Russia, an ally, from the German and the Ottoman Empire and provide access through the Black Sea to the heart of Eastern Europe – Constantinople.
The campaign was the first major military action of Australia and New Zealand as independent dominions, and is often considered to mark the birth of national consciousness in those nations. The date of the landing, 25 April 1915, is known as “Anzac Day” (Australia New Zealand – Anzac). It remains the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in Australia and New Zealand.
These two movie previews will give you a sense of it –
It was a catastrophic Failure – Britain alone – 22,000 died, and close 55,000 were injured, but the Turks got the worst of it – 250,000 were killed or injured. The blame for the expedition was placed on Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.
He tried to make amends and soothe both his conscience and vanity by volunteering for the western front. Most people felt he would never recover from the humiliation. A lessor man would have just crawled under a rock.
But he went to the front with Britain’s Royal Fusiliers and led and fought bravely.
The 40-year-old First Lord of the Admiralty thought he had been brilliant. He asked the prime minister, “Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders?” Churchill, believed Gallipoli was the solution for breaking the impasse—a second front. He confided in a friend, “I have it in me to be a successful soldier. I can visualize great movements and combinations.” He was right, but his moment would come in another war – World War II – Britain’s “Finest Hour.” He was politically “drummed out” forced to quit the field, for a time and hang with his “old black dog” – his manic depression. 3.
Watch The Gathering Storm staring Albert Finney as Winston Churchill
Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine “Clemmie” Churchill to see what he did. The movie opens in 1934, Churchill had gone fallow for a bit and he was spoiling for a second chance. This film shows you how he evolved into his greatness, to become the man we remember.
And then watch Into the Storm to see how he transcends into his “Finest Hour,” But he finds the darkness still hovers and waits – it waits for the best of us.
Ken Burns, said it very well, “We believe that heroes have to be perfect. But the ancient Greeks point out that, yes heroes have strengths, but heroes also have some, not so obvious weaknesses and it is the war between both aspects of our humanity that actually define heroism. And if we let the ‘fresh air’ of flawed humanity in we suddenly have heroes all around us and we see the fact that we can step up and do great things, even though we are weak, and this can and should fills us with hope and faith. The reality of the shades of humanity’s grey shows us that weak and strong cannot be separated. The Greatness of the hero is they did great things even in the presence shame and weakness.” 4.
So the best of us are flawed, and at the right time of the “Dark night of my soul”(5.) we know it – so we “duck and cover” or we dance – “I’m a Dancer,” and a “Feeler.”
If you are a feeler you’ve read – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book The Little Prince. Remember what the Little Prince learned from the fox.
Watch Gene Wilder (We’ll miss him and his unique touch) explain it –
I hope our relationship, such as it is, will “tame us” both – a little.
- B H Roberts an LDS General Authority – Found it in Truman G. Madsen book Defender of the Faith The B H Robert Story pg. 21. Roberts recalls –
He depended a Mrs.Tovey to read to him and she fell asleep:
“I sat alone with the paper and my thoughts, marveling at the miracle, that, that a paper could speak to one only if he had the power to read it. On this thought my mind dwelled and after some time had elapsed I spoke out loud ‘Will the time ever come when books and papers will speak to me? Will I ever learn to read books?’ Then a peculiar silence, and the soul voice said, ‘Aye, and you’ll write them too.”
He would become a premier scholar and faithful defender of the LDS faith through his books and other writings.
- A Book of Mormon hero – Nephi’s name for the devil – 2 Nephi 4: 27 – 28.
3. http://www.history.com/news/winston-churchills-world-war-disaster.
4. Ken Burns https://youtu.be/jCxbCYHVZ7k. This is a paraphrase of the essence of what he said.
5. Saint John of the Cross a 16th Century Spanish Mystic and one of 36 Doctors of the Catholic Church. A reformer with Teresa of Ávila – “In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.”
6. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The clip is from The Little Prince a 1974 British-American fantasy-musical film with music by Learner and Lowe – it also provides a nice turn by Bob Fosse as a snake. Interestingly enough Netflix has just produced and is playing a new tweak of the story – check it out.
Nicely done pops! That was a wonderful read.