So Small A Thing

In "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," the character Boromir makes the observation:

"It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing."

This quote went through my mind last Saturday evening as I sat stranded and cold at the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport... awaiting a ride that wasn't coming.

You see, just before boarding my plane in Salt Lake City, I made the horrible discovery that I had left my cellular telephone in Cache Valley. No big deal, right? They can mail it to me on Monday! Clearly I knew little of the journey in store for me that evening.

My flight landed in Arizona just after 10:00pm. My roommate had flown in at 9:30, and I thought I'd somehow be able to track them down on my own. After all, there are payphones still, right? The tricky thing about pay phones is that you have to have exact change, and you have to know the phone number of the person you'd like to call. I had neither.

I had managed to scrape up $.75 from the bottom of my purse. To make a long-distance call, it would cost me $1.00. Calling my mother was out of the question. My original plan had been to call my mom so she could call the people who had my phone so they could use my phone to call my roommate. With $.50 I could make one local call, and the only local number I knew was that of my sister. I had to give it a shot. The tricky part was that my sister was on vacation in Georgie... making it after midnight her time. Needless to say the call went straight to voicemail and I didn't get my $.50 back.

Plan B: wander around the pick-up zone in case they're waiting. This was doomed to fail. At the Phoenix airport, there is a pick-up zone on either side of the terminal. After making a sweep down both sides of the terminal, I came up with the perfect plan! The cell phone lot! That's where you park while waiting to hear from recently-arrived travelers. Surely they would be in the cell phone lot! It wasn't too far away...right?? I had a 50% chance of choosing the right end of the terminal. The first attempt landed me in a creepy, semi-deserted employee parking lot. Walking another length of the terminal and past a few more unnerving lots, I did reach the cell phone lot... only to see a lot of unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar cars staring at me. I walked back.

Final plan. Pull out my last dollar bill and beg for change. This was not only a mental challenge for me, but an actual near impossibility. By now it was after 11:00pm and all shops and desks in the terminal are closed. Finally I came to a shuttle ticket desk. The lady there informed that they didn't have change for my dollar.

This is where I began to cry... just a little.

"What is it for?" she asked... obviously noticing my suddenly pathetic demeanor. I accidentally half-shouted back that I just needed to make one phone call. She pulled out her own purse and found four quarters.

I was able to get through to my mother who just happened to have my roommate's phone number. Unfortunately her cell phone needed charging, so after finding the charger and getting it plugged in and turned on, she encountered some trouble scrolling through her contacts. Remember how pay phones only give you 5 minutes to talk? Yeah. It hung up on me before I could tell her where I needed to be picked up.

Assuming she got ahold of my roommate to tell her I was stranded, I perched myself in the spot I thought I'd be mostly likely to get found. 45 minutes later (after being hassled by three segway cops telling me how they found God) my roommate arrived! Oh joy of joys! Apparently the plan had changed and someone else was picking me up... which may be why I didn't find her car in the cell phone lot. Since they hadn't heard from me they'd given up and left.

The moral of the story is that I now know that I can live without it... but I'd rather not. Also, I apparently don't own a clock.

It is a strange fate....

Man is Generally Good

Yesterday I had the opportunity to work with Habitat for Humanity in building a house for a family that needed a hand. As I was signing in, the woman in charge asked how I'd heard about the project. I mentioned that I'd met the group leader through friends at church and that the people I had brought with me were friends from church. She then asked what church I went to and sounded surprised when I told her The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It occurred to me that I had assumed the people there would be if not fellow members, at least aware of our church and its teachings. Perhaps I've lived in the Arizona "bubble" too long.

I was impressed with the other volunteers and found myself wondering what their various motives were. Sometimes I think in the church we learn to serve out of a sense of obligation. These people weren't there from obligation... just from a genuine desire to serve.

As many do, this train of thought led me to something I read from C.S. Lewis. At the end of his book, The Last Battle, Lewis describes a scene where the children are taken back to Narnia (heaven) to live with Aslan the lion. (**spoiler alert** Everyone dies at the end. Don't cry... it's a happy ending.) When they arrive, one of the soldiers of Calormen has also been taken to Narnia. The soldier describes what happened when he found himself there and met the Lion:

"Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than... to live and never have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, 'Son, thou art welcome.' But I said, 'Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.'
He answered, 'Child all the service thou hast done unto Tash, I account as service done to me... Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites -- I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done unto him... unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.'

I've spent a lot of my life being a cynic... always assuming the worst of people. It has come to my attention that this way of thinking has profited me nothing. In fact, I'm sure I've missed numerous opportunities because of it. In spite of man's carnal nature and tendency toward pride and selfishness, humans also have a general tendency toward good will and service... no matter their differences in religion, race, etc.

I would do well to recognize that more often.