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By writing down insights and by mentioning accomplishments, I hope:
- to give some credibility to this book - for those of you impressed by such things;
- to give a context for my personal experience; and
- to share my testimony of the blessings accompanying being a conduit for the workings of a spiritual source outside of myself.
The scriptures teach us “surely he scorneth the scorners: but he giveth grace unto the
lowly” (Proverbs 3:34, also see James 4:6 and I Peter 5:5).1.8 I choose to call this source of light and truth God, and in my mind and heart He deserves and has all credit for anything I have had
the faith to recognize, and which has proved useful or helpful to others. I do
continue to strive to learn that through humility we find freedom from pride
and arrogance.
Expanding on my background for context, in the fall of
1972, I returned to the University of Utah, after spending two years as a family and self funded missionary for my church in southeast England. A couple of
my professors tired to talk me out of continuing studying geophysics. The oil
industry was in a bust cycle, and there were not job opportunities for graduates.
Plus they felt my leaving the Department after my first two years of study in
order to serve a mission showed more interest in humanities and social sciences
than in hard sciences (or what one professor called "real" sciences). On
reflection, I possibly embarrassed someone in the Department when I turned
down the last two years of the Pan American Scholarship to serve a mission.
However, I had grown up walking the outcrops of
Southern Utah, and it is realistic to say geology, or the red irrigation mud
from the Jurrassic aeolean sand dunes turned to rock up Cedar Canyon, was in
my blood. My home town of Cedar City, Utah is at the southern end of the
Great Basin (Figure 1). Our farm is a few miles south of Parowan Gap, where
Lake Bonneville cut through when it was at it's farthest southern extent,
about 2,000 years ago. There are iron mines in the valley and coal mines
up the canyon. We visited both of them while growing up and in school, and
I learned to love rocks and the mysteries they hold. I particularly like
to look at the big picture, the regional view, the outcrop overview, and to
understand how the entire system works. I had worked for Pan American
(later Amoco and now BP) the summer before going to England, and had
discovered how much I enjoyed exploration geophysics, specifically because
it included both the detailed and the overview aspects of geology. A few
months after returning to the University of Utah the 1973 the Yon Kipper War
happened, along with the first OPEC oil embargo, and the lack of oil
industry jobs opportunities evaporated. Offers were for more than the
professors were making. Mobil gave me three raises between when I
accepted the job and when I reported to work on July 15th, 1974. In fact,
by the spring of 1975 I was back on campus recruiting for Mobil Oil.
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paradoxes