cc: file, Mom, Sara and Des, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Charles and Diane Cluff, and Claude and Katherine Warner, Forest and Amy Warner, Ivan and Chell Warner, and Eric and Renee Miner
"One of my all time favorite books is `The Screwtape Letters,' by C.S. Lewis. In the book he has a section that talks about `The Law of Undulation.' It has been several years since I last read the book, but my recall and interpretation is that he approaches undulation as a natural part of nature's cycles. There will be days, like today, when it rains very hard, and there will be days like yesterday, when it was absolutely beautiful, and Rob and I went and played our first round of golf together.
From my limited perspective, it seems as I watch others, my lows are lower and my highs have been higher than average (the amplitude of the cycle). Lately it seems like these undulating cycles have been happening closer and closer together (high frequency). It also seems like most of the cycle has been negative (phase or polarity). I gave a presentation to four managers from Corpoven (the Venezualian oil company we are doing the project at The Bureau of Economic Geology for) in which I explained the amplitude, frequency, and phase of a complex seismic trace by bending a clothes hanger into a spirial and rotating it in front of a slide projector to show the `real' and `imaginary' projections of a seismic wavelet. The wavelets on the wall reminded me of `The Screwtape Letters' and that in life everything that goes down comes back up, and everything that goes up comes down.
In thinking about what to write today, it seemed appropriate to describe how everyone gets down sometimes. Some of us get really down. But the natural law of undulation teaches us that the time will come when we will be up. In fact, sometimes we will feel really good. I very much appreciated the letters from my sister Sara and from Chuck Cluff. I, like each of you kids, know the things happening in our home right now are not one person's fault. In fact, if you look at your choices closely, I believe you will come to recognize they are not two people's choices either. I will support your Mom as best I can, and hope you will also. I do not agree with her decision and hope and pray she will change her mind. I hope you all will join your prayers with mine, for the benefit of each of us and for the benefit of our family as a unit. For the benefit of all of the Thanksgivings and Christmases, vacations and grandkids yet to come.
But as each of us have our own life with its own rate of undulation or cycling, I specifically hope you will each learn from the choices and mistakes of others and live your life so your next low is higher than the last low, the amplitudes are fairly consistant and don't jump to extremes, and that the changes are fairly low frequency, i.e. there are not rapid changes to disorient and create a loss of context. Please remember how, even now, when I feel like I am `walking through the valley of the shadow of death,' I know that there will be better times ahead, and hope these times will be for all of us together as a family."