Learning to Like Life: A Tribute to Lowell Bennion

by George B. Handley

This book is meant to honor Lowell Bennion’s legacy by reflecting on what he taught and practiced in his own life, and thinking about what this can mean in our own lives today.

All of Doc’s aphorisms imply a simple our goodness and happiness must begin in the heart and depend on the quality of our affections, and, perhaps most importantly, we have the capacity to change those affections through a kind of cultivation. “Learn to like,” he repeats. Don’t assume that what you like is unchangeable, deeply rooted in your personality like some genetic code. Our affections stem from what we serve and devote ourselves to, and even if we don’t yet love as we should, it is enough to want to love better, more deeply, more generously. And loving is a way of practicing what we like.

Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Birch Creek Service Ranch, which continues the spirit of what Lowell Bennion began and which needs your support. Read about BCSR at

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Mormonism

124 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 2, 2017

About the author

A Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Brigham Young University, George B. Handley's creative writing, literary criticism, and civic engagement focus on the intersection between religion, literature, and the environment.

Reviews

[Peter W · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives straightforward advice on becoming a more happy, cultured human being: "learn to keep your wants simple," "learn to like reading and conversation," etc. It doesn't really come across as a self-help book because it is crammed with literary quotations and little anecdotes (largely from the author's life).

The advice originally comes from Lowell Bennion, a Mormon humanitarian, but the author makes the advice relevant by citing several modern challenges. He argues that the application of this advice would help mitigate environmental damage, racism, political polarization, and technology-induced social withdrawal.

I'm biased because I know the author and I am familiar with Lowell Bennion, but I would recommend this book. It's short, so you can read it in a few hours. The advice is not complicated, but I still think it is profound in its simplicity.

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you grow up in Utah, the name Bennion in ubiquitous. You probably have met a Bennion somewhere in school or at work or at church. The name Bennion to me brings to mind the Bennion Center at the Union building on the University of Utah campus. But while the name became familiar, I never knew the significance of the namesake.

As I have had the chance to read more literature in LDS literature, history, and doctrine, the name Lowell Bennion kept coming up, and it seems he was probably someone worth getting to know. The first encounter I remember was in Gregory Prince's David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism when he is mentioned for being slightly outside of mainstream Mormonism:

And Paul H. Dunn, of the First Council of Seventy, spoke of McKay’s attitude toward those who were outside the mainstream— not in action, but in thought. After spending a decade as a teacher in the Institutes of Religion, Dunn was called by McKay to be a General Authority at the unusually young age of thirty-nine:

Here I am a young buck coming into the system, and the circulation is, “Let’s excommunicate the Sterling McMurrins of the Church, and weed out the liberals.” That got thrown around a lot. Even poor Lowell Bennion got thrown into some of that. If it hadn’t been for President McKay, we’d have had a fiasco on Lowell Bennion. There’s one of the sweetest, great Christians of the world. I would be totally surprised if all of heaven isn’t a Lowell Bennion philosophy. There isn’t a kinder, more gentle Christian in the world. And yet there were those in the system who tried to weed him out, because he kept the President McKay kind of vision open….

The George Boyds and the Lowell Bennions kept people in the Church whom nobody else could have. Philosophically, they could go with you on the trip through your frustration in thinking, and bring you back. Not many people could do that. I worked with George for many years down at the University of Southern California. I watched him save kids that nobody else could. And yet there was that element in the Church that tried to get him bumped, because he didn’t teach what they taught. I’ve found in the Church, and this is what gave me great comfort with President McKay, that there is room for all of them, not just a few, not just those here or there, but the whole spectrum. President McKay would say, and two or three times I heard him say privately, and once or twice publicly in meetings where I sat, that “if you would have to take action on that kind of a person thinking that way, you’d better take action on me, too.”

Even without knowing very much about Lowell Bennion, I knew I wanted to find out more. I appreciate the people within Mormonism who don't get noticed necessarily by the system for the good they do. They may not be apostles or seventies or stake presidents or bishops. But they think deeply, they are committed to their faith, and they bless the lives of others. Perhaps what President Uchtdorf referred to as "helpers" in the Church.

When Good reads recommended Learning to Like Life: A Tribute to Lowell Bennion I immediately added it. The author, George B. Handley, was a new one to me. He is a professor at the BYU known for his writings on environmentalism. Lowell Bennion had an immense influence on his life for whom he worked on a boy's ranch in his youth. The genre, a tribute is unique, because it isn't a biography or a memoir of Lowell's life. In fact, much of the book doesn't deal directly with Bennion at all, but rather the philosophy that Handley understood Bennion's life to represent. It's a book on life lessons. And they are profound. The chapters are as follows:

Learn to like what doesn't cost much.
Learn to like reading, conversation, music.
Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.
Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills.
Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different... different from you.
Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction of doing your job as well as it can be done.
Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs.
Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, and fixing things.
Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day.
Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.

Bennion lived a simple life, and one that defies many of the expectations and assumptions both within Mormonism and the monoculture of America. I could see why he may have upset some hoity toities in the Church bureaucracy; they may have supposed he didn't have his priorities straight. Take this exchange that Handley found initially unsettling as a youth:

I know Doc used to say that as he grew closer to death, he was less interested in heaven and salvation and more interested in simply continuing the work he had already begun. I might have winced hearing him say this, because at that point in my life heaven was just beginning to become a real desire of my heart. I wanted to hear him say that yes, indeed, heaven was worth pursuing because of how different and how much better it would be than here. But I now see that Doc didn’t mean anything heretical by this. Quite the opposite, because he understood that heaven’s use to us is to get our heads up from the trough of life long enough to see that earth work is what we should most desire.

The most important things are the ordinary ones. And Mormonism, at its roots, is this. But we sometimes like to over-complicate things, I think.

Another passage that struck me was a memory of Handley himself:

I remember a small crisis of faith on my mission instigated by an encounter with difference that was previously inconceivable to me. It happened the very first week. I was converted to the gospel. I was eager to teach, but I was terrified by the strange feeling of the streets of Venezuela, by the language I couldn’t yet penetrate, and by the sights and smells and shape of the place. On our first day, we were let into an elderly and poor woman’s home. She was not particularly excited by our presence, that much I could tell, but my companion was eager to show me how a discussion worked. As my companion projected a slide of the First Vision on the wall in her home, a small lizard walked across the image of the Joseph Smith kneeling in the sacred grove. Suddenly I thought to myself: “What am I doing here? Why am I so far from home? Can the story of the gospel really extend this far in its relevance? This woman doesn’t even care about this.” I was becoming aware of my cultural bias, my narrow world that I had been raised in, but instead of doubting the adequacy of my worldview, I instead doubted God. I wrestled with this feeling for several days, eventually coming to understand how irrational my doubt was. Did I really think that God was unaware of the world I had entered? That he didn’t know and love each person I met as much as he did me? Why was I so willing to shrink His vision when it was mine that needed to expand? God is our father and his love extends to all. So he apparently loves an enormous number of people who know absolutely nothing about the restored gospel, let alone about my middle class American life. Most of them don’t speak English. The vast majority of them are not white. It’s a safe bet that 50 percent are women. Many are very old. Many are so young they don’t yet know how to speak. Over a billion of them don’t have access to clean drinking water and live in extreme poverty. And most have suffered far more than I will ever know. I needed to get over myself.

Like Handley, it took me twenty years to even fathom a world outside of my immediate and very Mormon world. People are OK without being Mormon. Mormon than OK, they are good, glorious beings just as they are. I remember a few experiences on my mission similar to Handley's where this initially uncomfortable sentiment started to get through. I remember teaching one man who insisted the sacrament wasn't meant to be institutionalized, but it's value came in its simplicity. It should be a shared meal of bread and wine among friends, to live Christ's word that "where two or three are gathered in my name, there will I be also." I remember wanting to agree with him, but my Preach My Gospel answer had to dismiss it as out of hand, and I gave the well-known analogy of a policeman: "if you got pulled over by a random person, would you accept the ticket? No, because only policeman have the authority to do so." If that man is sharing the sacrament among friends, I feel that he may be getting more out of his sacrament than we as Mormons sometimes do on Sundays. And I'm glad he's drawing closer to Christ.

A great read, and I'm glad Handley is reviving the legacy of Lowell Bennion. I hope I can find a good biography of him soon too.

[MaryKay · Rating 5 out of 5]

p. 5 “… the gospel is the most effective means of respecting, healing, and ennobling people.”

p. 8 “He believed that cultivating the capacity to be generous to the poor, to refrain from judging others, and to be merciful were paramount virtues of the Christian life.”

p. 9 “… but it just wasn’t in him to own things that were unnecessarily expensive or luxurious.”

p. 9 “He did his best teaching working side by side with others.”

p. 10 “We are interdependent with each other and with God, and a principled life of integrity lived on behalf of others is the only possession we can obtain in this life.”

p. 21 “Where much is given, of course, much is expected, and certainly among those things that are expected are awareness of and compassion for the poor and a commitment to give of our surplus to relieve suffering.”

p.21 “… cultivate stronger contentment and a more modest appetite for things.”

p. 21-22 “There are, of course, other renewable and renewing resources too, like the love of relationships, the experience and appreciation of beauty, and taking simple pleasure in the fundamental facts of our mortal existence. Mastercard commercials notwithstanding, there is no inherent cost to quality family time, to spending time and talking with loved ones, or to cultivating an appreciation for what is already given to us.”

p. 22 “… Doc teaches not a kind of ascetic self-denial but rather a redefinition of pleasure and wealth.”

p. 28 “But when treated with the right kind of attention that they deserve, music, reading, and conversation all require a kind of concentrated listening, a momentary emptying of the self.”

p. 29 “Intimacy requires an active engagement of the imagination, profound listening, and a temporary suspension of self-interest, maybe even a temporary suspension of self-awareness.”

p. 29 “True conversation certainly involves risk since it requires honesty, humility, and vulnerability.”

p. 40 “I try to pray in true gratitude for my food.”

p. 40 “… sitting down nightly to a healthy dinner as a family. It gives us time to talk, to revisit the day, to laugh and enjoy each other, and to enjoy the recipes we will remember for the rest of our lives.”

p. 41 “This includes the time to build relationships at home, to develop discipline, independence, and creativity, …”

p. 41 “To like plain service might mean to learn to give our attention to the most obvious and immediate needs of others.”

p. 42 “I like the Jesuit principle of meeting people where they are at and seeking to identify what the next simple step might be that they need to take in their lives.”

p. 42 “What we should give, in all cases, is ourselves – our presence, our time, our attention – not some substitute. That is not to say that many people don’t need specific things – food, clothing, shelter, for starters – it is merely to say that receiving material gifts means more when we are also receiving a relationship, a bod, and opportunity to escape the solitude of all forms of destitution: material, spiritual, and emotional.”

p. 48 “As children of God, it is our duty to appreciate and worship Him and His creations.”

p. 50 “Just as we must learn to consecrate our experiences, to live with sufficient faith that God can and will transform our darkest experiences into something for our own good, we must learn to see all of nature, to welcome all of its unpredictability, its harshness, its ugliness, its oppositions.”

p. 51 “Doc is not describing exotic locals, the likes of which we might see on a cruise or an excursion, but the simple and mundane places that most immediately surround us.”

p. 53 “And what is significant, I think, is how ennobling and sanctifying awe and wonder are.”

p. 54 “For one thing, such amazement places us in proper perspective and helps to heal our human wounds and tame our egotism.”

p. 54 “In all our doing and making and creating, we must not lose sight of the fact that we are created beings who haven’t earned this gift of life.”

p. 54-55 “Once we understand ourselves as interdependent not only with each other but with all life, as part of something much grander, mush more complex and vast and diverse than our puny human interests, we begin to comprehend how strange and unnecessary beauty really is, as strange and as unnecessary as love or grace or forgiveness and mercy. And when we see them unnecessary, but nevertheless real, we see them as gifts of a Giver.”

p. 58 “I was in a state of stupefaction, feeling the uncanny possibility that I would be alive at all and that this stunning beauty could be observable by anyone.”

p. 64 “God commands you to love the stranger. He commands you to be kind to the least among you.”

p. 66 “And yet that mental geography we carry in our minds is woefully inadequate to the world’s diversity of life and peoples and cultures and individuals.”

p. 68 “I think that still holds today not only for race but for tensions between liberals and conservatives, between the rich and the poor, immigrants and citizens, religionists and secularists, town and gown, and so on.”

p. 79 “I know Doc used to say that as he grew closer to death, he was less interested in heaven and salvation and more interested in simply continuing the work he had already begun.”

p. 97 “… the need for all of us to awaken – spiritually and aesthetically – to the awe of this life, so that even one day would be sufficient to experience all joy.”

p. 99 “We don’t know how to appreciate simple beauty because we rely too much on others to tell us what to like, what to pay attention to, and what to value.”

p. 100 “And this, of course, is the great quest of all art, to tear us away from our ingrained habits of seeing, of paying attention to what we have already learned is worth paying attention to, and thereby missing virtually the entirety of what it is that stands before us. Children see like artists, which is why a twig, a rock, a broken bird’s wing – all of it can become a cause for wonder, for preservation, and care.”

p. 102 “… what we consume, what we work for, aspire to, and dream of – if we are not careful – can be controlled by what we perceive to be the expectations of others.”

[Jenny Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Handley's reflections on the lessons learned from Bennion are beautifully rendered. One of those books that is deceptively simple to read, but that stick around in the back of one's thoughts so that one may return to it again and again for enjoyable (and useful) reflection.

[Zachary Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wise and affirmative endorsement of Lowell Bennion’s legacy. Similarly to Christian Wiman, Handley is particularly good when it comes to incorporating the writings of others into his essays. Those other voices in this collection include Marilynne Robinson, Derek Walcott, Adam Miller and Wallace Stegner. I think my biggest takeaway from this short collection is the importance of learning to love what is simple, lasting and thoroughly good.

“Loving a place requires an all-inclusive love, an unconditional fondness even for the sometimes boring or otherwise unremarkable moments when the skies are gray, when the rain drizzles, or when we find ourselves between seasons. That, anyway, is what I have learned from Walcott about how to live here in the American West. Even this western landscape where I live, as beautiful as it seems to me now on a daily basis, has been seen historically through the lens of Eastern bias as lacking sufficient water, greenery, trees. Too much brown. Too much openness. And of course it is too arid. It certainly felt that way the first time I saw it, and it has struggled ever since white men arrived here to get out from under the weight of expectations—shaped by generations of those who came from the British Isles, from Scandinavia, and from New England—to have more grass, more trees, and more water than the ecology of this semi-arid desert could provide. Wallace Stegner once said that if you are going to live in the West, you are going to have to get over the color green. Certainly what this requires, then, is not so much greater engineering of the landscape to make it conform to our expectations, but rather a greater humility and deeper appreciation for its own bounteous gifts. The desert is already always blossoming. It already has its own unique colors, moods, and subtle beauty. Once you have the eyes to see, this place needs no apologies on its behalf. It needs instead the equivalent of ‘Isaiah's elations’ in response the gift of its bounty. It deserves the highest attention of art” (95-97).

[Lisa Reising · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read two books now by George Handley and have connected with both in meaningful ways. Another reviewer of this one said, "One of those books that is deceptively simple to read, but that stick around in the back of one's thoughts so that one may return to it again and again for enjoyable (and useful) reflection." I completely agree. A fast book to read, and very full of wisdom.

I think this quote from the book is wonderful:
"'Learn to like,' he [Lowell Bennion] repeats. Don't assume that what you like is unchangeable, deeply rooted in your personality like some genetic code. Our affections stem from what we serve and devote ourselves to, and even if we don't yet love as we should, it is enough to want to love better, more deeply, more generously. And loving is a way of practicing what we like. This is a hopeful teaching because it gives us a chance to change our hearts if we have the courage to begin with simple steps and learn to like more of life."

His list of things we ought to learn to like is quite good. My soul resonates with someone who unabashedly loves God's creation of the earth!

[Julie Rowse · Rating 4 out of 5]

While definitely written for an LDS audience, this book has plenty of applications to everyone, regardless of faith tradition. It's the kind of book that deserves multiple reads, and the kind of book I savored, instead of reading in one sitting, so I could process the advice. Proceeds go to a charity, so I had no problem paying for it--it's a steal at twice the price.

[Soren Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s no better modern source of simple wisdom about how to live the good life than Lowell Bennion, and there’s no better LDS essayist than George Handley to help the reader grasp the scope and profundity of those lessons for our lives. This is the kind of book that halts you, frequently, to ponder and wonder and elevate your gaze.

[Shirleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. it's deceptive in its simplicity - short and simple to read but contains many interesting ideas to think about and apply in one's daily life. The author is a great writer and deep thinker. I don't agree with all of his views, but could feel his love of nature and his desire to enjoy the simple things in life.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deceptively simple book about finding happiness in life is filled with beauty and depth. Though I never met Lowell Bennion, I knew that he was a caring, humanitarian individual. This little book is a wonderful introduction to a great life. Handley adds a number of artists’ views to elaborate on Benion’s values; they are like nuanced seasonings to an already delectable dish.

[Eli Speckart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carried a great overall theme of aligning with a cause higher than oneself. Life is not meant to be holistically self-serving, and the moments most precious are often the ones where we “forget” ourselves.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Bennion’s aphorism’s. I think that the world would be a better place if we tried to live by them.

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

FANTASTIC and thought provoking.