we tend to isolate ourselves

I remember thinking about God's plan for this earth. Here I was a young man not knowing much about life and yet being involved in births, deaths, and sickness - in what we sometimes term "raw life." I thought again how we tend to isolate ourselves and our children from some of those fundamental parts of this earth's experience. When someone gets sick, we turn them over to a doctor or a hospital. People generally die in a hospital or a rest home or under professional care. Too often family members do not experience the feelings that come from being part of the whole experience.

I quickly add that I do not advocate a return to primitive conditions. I am grateful for health professionals, the morticians, and other helpers in our modern society. I am convinced, however, that there is something missing from our mortal experience when we do not participate to some degree in some of these basic life experiences firsthand. Sometimes we, or our children, see a person getting sick, and the next time we see them is in a beautiful casket all nice and pretty. We don't realize the trauma and pain that has occurred in the interim, nor the reality of the physical and spiritual separation that has taken place.



John H. Groberg (born 1934) is an emeritus member of the First Quorum of the Seventy for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the Eye of the Storm. By John Groberg 1993. p.102