In this episode, the speaker shares the backstory of his grandfather's brother, Owen. Owen was a Mormon who believed in having multiple wives and moved to Mexico to join a communal group. He eventually lost custody of his children and was released from a mental institution with a partial lobotomy. He later committed suicide. The speaker also mentions the impact this had on his family and the differences in belief systems between the staunch Mormons and the more countercultural members. The speaker reflects on the idea that Jesus didn't allow himself to get close to people because he knew their true selves.
Episode 26. There are stories, events in your life, in my life, that take place that they require backstory, or the backstory is part of what makes them interesting, for sure, but maybe even relevant. In 1975, my grandfather, Paul, who I mentioned in the last one, he came from a big family. They were they were Mormons and they lived in Alberta most of the time, I guess, when he was young, but he had a lot of brothers and sisters.
In 1975, with reference to Paul and his family and his upbringing, his brother, Owen, came to live with him. And, you know, I don't recall getting to know him very well. I knew I met him a few times and, you know, there wasn't much conversation between us. I mean, he was, I would assume he was 60, late 50s. I don't know how much interest I, as a 16 year old, had in him in particular. I did see him around town and he apparently was quite a good chess player and was considered a bit of an intellect, like a smart guy.
The group of people that he did befriend in this area were definitely considered intellects, I guess you'd say intellectuals, maybe. This brother, Owen, had, as he grew up, he had moved towards the fundamentalist Mormon ideal of, or ideology, or belief system, that a man should have more than one wife. And in the Mormon, in the Mormon understanding, there's reasoning for that. Getting out of this place and going to heaven and women needed to be married for that.
I don't, you can read the Book of Mormon if you want. I read it so long ago I don't remember much of it. It was irrelevant to my life, except for I have Mormons in my family, so how irrelevant? That's why I read it, because I wanted to understand where they were coming from. And there's different types of Mormons too, so now called Latter-day Saints, or LDS. The story is that he, Owen, took himself to wives.
They went to Mexico, and in Mexico they were part of a communal group. And I think he may have been one of the founding members of it. I don't really know. The group is still down there in Mexico. I don't know if you remember, guys, within the last 10 years, I think, you know, I lose track of memory, but there was a family on the way to a wedding in Mexico that got gunned down. There was 11 of them.
Those were Laverrons. Those were part of what's left of that communal group down there that holds to polygamy, so having more than one, a man having more than one wife. There wasn't a way to support his family sufficiently from Mexico, so he would travel into the United States and work. So I always thought this was like in the 50s, but it may have been in the 60s, because after I did some research on that fellow. But anyway, so that's what he would do.
He would go into the U.S. and work, and then go home to his family. He had two wives and a whole bunch of children. And the story that I got was that one Christmas, he decided to bring his whole family, both wives, across the border to celebrate Christmas, and with, I guess, with family in the United States. Apparently, they were him and his two wives, and the kids were all arrested at the border coming into the States, and him and his two wives were put in jail initially.
I think the story that I got was that he ended up going to a mental institution, and I assume the wives as well. They were considered insane, I guess, because they were misled. Then the story goes is that before they released Owen, from that prison experience, before it was all over, apparently there was court cases, and the family, Owen and his two wives, lost the right to custody of their children, and they were sent to the maternal grandparents to live.
So one of the wives' maternal grandparents were staunch Mormons who believed the current narrative of the time in the United States, which was one man, one wife, very family-oriented, much the same as you would see today in the LDS movement or LDS system. Very family-oriented and conservative. They would be considered quite conservative. The other wife, her parents, I'm not sure how esconced or whatever, how strong their Mormon beliefs were, just judging from the way that those children turned out as opposed to the ones for the other wife who had a very strong contemporary Mormon influence.
I got to meet most of those kids and both of the wives in 1975. The story is that after he was released from the mental institution, or before he was released, they gave Owen a partial lobotomy. So they didn't completely rattle his brain. They did frontal lobe stuff, apparently, where they can nullify or dull the emotional senses. So bring him down to a place where he wasn't able to express emotion, or he had some difficulty in expressing emotion.
And I don't know where he went right after that. I think now, and the real story is, shortly after that, he came to live with Paul. And that was in 74 or 75. So anyway, I'll explain as I get going here. He lived in Qualicum with my grandpa Paul for, I don't know, eight months, I would say, or maybe a year, year and a half, something quite, you know, not a long time, but long enough to meet people and get somewhat established.
And he, though you wouldn't have known it, you know, the man that I met, you wouldn't have known he was severely depressed. And that may be because he didn't reveal he was severely depressed, or because of the partial lobotomy. Now, he got to the point where he couldn't stand living, and he committed suicide in Grandpa Paul's carport. He got in the car and ran a vacuum cleaner hose into the car, and started the car, and idled it away, and died in his sleep in the car.
That was very close, close to home, right? Bryce's uncle. A lot of grief at that time. I didn't have a deep sense of grief, because like I said, I wasn't that connected to the man. Paul, I think, was affected, not depressed, but saddened by it. My original memory of the story is that Bowen was released from the mental institution, and sought just help from Paul, and so Paul took him in. And at that time, the story that I got at that time, was that still the children were living at home.
So Bryce and all of his siblings were at home. I think Bryce was probably just getting ready to head off to the university. And the church at that time, and I believe they were living in Alberta at that time, so they were in Lethbridge, right near Lethbridge. I think there's a temple in Lethbridge, and they were somehow associated with that. But the elders of the church came to Joy and told her that she should take her children and leave Paul, because Paul was giving refuge to his brother.
And Joy, my grandma, she wasn't having that. They were faithful Mormons. So in her understanding of what that is, she was going to stand by her husband. And so then they went to each of the children. Bryce first, he was the oldest, and gave him an option to come and live with a Mormon family, and basically denounce his family. And he wasn't having that. But anyway, they went to Bentley and Sam and gave them that same option.
But then after that, it was Robert, John and Paula. And they were too young, they didn't give them that option. So the option was you take up with another Mormon family, or we excommunicate you from the church. That was what was offered, that was what was on the table. So they were excommunicated from the church, the three oldest boys and Paul and Joy. That changed the trajectory of their lives, all of their lives, considerably, I'm sure, because they ended up being very, all but Joy, I would say, ended up being very peculiar in their belief systems.
So anyway, when Bowen committed suicide, Bryce built him a coffin, and we ended up having the service, the memorial service, the funeral, it was an open casket funeral, in our house. So all of his children and their two wives came from Utah, California, Oregon, wherever they were living, and say goodbye to their dad. It was, now that was emotional. That really imprinted me. There's a lot of stuff that imprinted me about life and reality through that experience.
I later did some research into Owen and he was, in 1970, he was arrested in Vancouver and put in a mental institution because of molestation of a 14 year old. That's a matter of record that I found online. And there was a two other cases where he had been involved with a 12 year old and an eight year old. So I wonder if the lobotomy didn't happen then, that would have been 1970. I mean, granted, he was arrested and taken, his kids taken away from him.
And he was probably put in jail for polygamy. And that's when he left and went back to see Paul and Bryce. So that would have been that would have been early 60s and 50s. I'm guessing. I don't I haven't, you know, put it all together totally. So the thing about it was seeing his whole family and the differences, the very staunch, strong Mormon influence on the one side and the very peculiar esoteric counterculture for the time.
Now they would be mainstream pretty well. Maybe they are. And the sense of depression that our sadness or, you know, I think it was depression that sort of weighed on all of those children. And the wives, the wives were, I don't know if they had lobotomies too, but they were, one of them seemed a little more aware than the other. Anyway, that gets me thinking, again, you know, all this stuff causes me to, to think. And there's one portion of Scripture where Jesus, right, it's like second John, I should have looked it up, second John, right at the end of the Gospel of John, second chapter.
And it's talking about Jesus has done the miracle of the wedding, turning the water to wine. And then he's done something in the temple, I don't remember explicitly right now. But at the end of that chapter, he, there's a comment, it says Jesus, the comment is that Jesus didn't make himself, he didn't allow himself to be, you know, this is my interpretation, close to people, because he knew what was in the hearts of people, he knew what was, what they really were, who they really were.
And that, that has haunted me that, that has, I don't know about haunted me, but it's, it's become a reality to me where I realize how little I know of people. And I touched on it like two episodes ago, when I was sitting in and worked animals, and then I said, men were animals. So that whole thing, that's all part of that is we don't, we don't fully understand ourselves. Like I don't fully understand myself, I, the things that I think, the things that go through my head, the things I can't, it's like I can't stop from thinking about, you know, there's there's sex and money and power and fame, lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
These, these are the things, like, if you think about it, all these things that are pulling at you and tearing you apart, you know, bad devil and the good devil thing. That's it, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, things I want. These are for me. And I fight that, I'm fighting that all the time. And that's, I assume everybody is to lesser or greater degrees, struggling with those things, struggling with how do I maintain, keep my moral compass.
And the thing that, that I find really interesting, and this is another one of those, you know, things that I've built up over the years, is people form their belief systems and call Christians weak because they rest on their faith or, you know, like, they use it as a crutch. And the Bible says in Proverbs, so Proverbs are sayings of wisdom from Solomon, who was supposed to be the wisest man ever lived. And, you know, second king of, or third king of Israel.
And the second, in the second Proverbs, or first, right up first or second Proverbs, there's a, there's a talk about, like all through Proverbs, there's this beginning of, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. But right in that area, the first or second, there's another one that says the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge. So I recognize that wisdom requires knowledge, right? To, to increase in wisdom requires that you absorb knowledge, that you accumulate knowledge.
So we all form our, every single one of us forms our view of the world. This is like the, the worldview, how we view the world, how we see what we think is real, what we think is not real. We all do it through that position of the knowledge that we have, right? So, so we form, we form a belief system of atheism, there is no God, if there was, we wouldn't have so much cruelty in the world.
Those are all philosophical and spiritual or religious questions that can be answered. But you form your basis of your whole belief system on how you answer those questions of who am I? Why am I here? Why is there something rather than nothing? Is there a God? What happens after you die? How did this all start? So you ask those questions and you form, you accumulate knowledge and you form a worldview. And if you're, if you're wise, your worldview will be fluid.
There will be some things that anchor it. There will be some things that give it substance, give it weight. But you should be open to realizing at any point that you were wrong at another point. The thing is, is only God knows. Like nobody, like Jesus knows the heart of men. He understands men. He's the only one. You don't. I don't. I don't even understand myself. So I'm sure it isn't us. You know, even, even some of my closest relationships, I don't fully know people.
My kids, like I don't know, I don't understand some of the decisions they make. I don't understand the decisions I make. I guess that's the point. Even the decisions I make, I don't understand how I got there. Was it altruistic or was it, was it from wisdom or was it from selfishness? Only God knows. There's one more thing. All those things that weigh on me, they, I said, what did I say, sex and money and power and fame, those things, they still come into my mind.
I'm 66 years old and I'm not, I've never stopped. I've never been able to stop thinking about any of those things. Like I can subdue them and push them away and not focus on them, but they come back. They come back into my brain and I'm not alone. Even people that say that they don't think about those things, that's fulfilling something that they need, which is related to those things, probably. Probably. I can't say without a doubt because I'm not God.
But God knows. So, in Luke 24, it's Jesus talking about the last days. It's another place I don't, you know, there's, not 24, Luke 21, there's Matthew, Mark, and Luke who all have a story of Jesus talking about the last days, the end of time. And at the end of that, that's Luke 21, at the end of that in Luke 21, there's a call to prayer. Pray always so that you can withstand, so that you can survive, so that you can escape the things that are coming upon the earth.
The judgment. That's the judgment. That's what he's talking about. So, I think about that pray always so that you may be able. So, is it like, is that, do I pray God, I pray I'm able and I may escape? Initially, when I started praying about it, yeah, that's what it was. Then I realized it's praying always. It's praying always gives me the strength so that I will be able to overcome, to survive, whatever it is. Doesn't stop the sadness, doesn't stop the grief, doesn't stop the, it stops the angst, it stops the fear, it stops those things because I'm praying always.
I'm in this position of seeking God, Jesus, my brother, my Savior, my Lord. Perhaps that's what it boils down to. Those are earthly, those are material ways that we try to understand the depth of the relationship that we have with Christ. And we don't fully comprehend it because we don't fully see him as he is. That will happen when he returns, when he comes back. We'll fully understand and we'll see him as he is. Anyway, that's 26.
There's other stories that spin off of this as well. Thanks a lot. This is a Michael Rowe song. I learned it from the 77s band from the 80s and 90s. Inspired by a portion of scripture John, 2nd John. I don't remember exactly, but it's in 2nd John. Well I feel like I have to feel something good all of the time. With most of life I cannot deal but a good feeling I can feel, though it might not be real.
Person, place, or thing can deliver, I will quiver with delight. But will it last me for my whole life or just one more lonely night? The love, the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life drain the life right out of me. I see something I want, bam, right now. I want it, no questions asked. Don't worry how much it costs me now. I want it, I want it, baby, I want it fast. And I'll go to any length and sacrifice all I already have.
That might get just one more thing. I don't need it no more. Don't ask me why. The love, the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life drain the life right out of me. And I love it when folks look right at me, what I'm doing, what I have done. And let on about how crazy I am, and I know that I'm broken, grand. And every single word makes me think I'll live forever, never knowing that they probably won't remember me tomorrow.
Tomorrow I might be dead. The love, the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life drain the life right out of me. The love, the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life drain the life right out of me. The love, the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life drain the life right out of me.
