Does that answer your QUESTion?

Parker Heiner
Spiritual and Intellectual Quests

“What,” dramatic pause, “is your name?” croaks the Bridgekeeper.
“Uhh, Parker Heiner. Of Arizona. Sort of.”
“What,” dramatic pause, “is your quest?” asks the Bridgekeeper.
I think for a while. “Are you sure you want me to tell you? I mean, I’ve been working on this for a semester now, and I ought have it down pretty good, but it’s going to take a little while for me to explain, so if you’ve got the time. I guess you’re the Bridgekeeper and can’t really go anywhere else, so here goes…”

“People are always more important.” Craig Decker’s first maxim in life rings like a tuning fork of perfect C. Clear, resounding, and unwavering, it is a truth I have denied some of my life, but which I have begun allowing to resonate within myself for the past several years. It becomes even clearer in the wake of Craig’s passing, as the waves of his life continue to influence mine. I pull a short excerpt from his family’s comments, “Craig Decker passed away tragically on July 5th 2008. However, in his short 25 years of life he has had a profound effect on thousands of people in such a positive way that we, as is family, have created this site to be a collecting ground for memories, inspiration and as a tool to continue on his legacy and hopefully make the world a better place.” This blog is incredible. You can read for hours and continually see new and incredible ways that Craig influenced others. This is a measure of how well he lived that first maxim of life.

Craig is not the first person to believe and live such a statement. Much earlier in my life, some nine months before my birth, another person who lived the same personal law set me on my mortal spiritual and intellectual quests. Growing up, my mother always focused on people, on improving their lives, on loving and caring and giving and never ever tearing down. Many a time did I groan at her “Life is about relationships, honey.” Only recently have I realized that this is the drive shaft in the vehicle of becoming what I want to spiritually and doing what I want to intellectually.

I share the same basic goal of most people I know—I want to be happy. My study of the Gospel and as much life experience as I could pack into my scant 23 and a half years has shown me that I need people. James Barry, the author of Peter Pan, once wrote, “Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.” Far too often, we insist on the gloom of self-pity, self-righteousness, self-despair, self-ridicule, or self-esteem. It is when we lose our lives that we gain them, when we forget ourselves that the Lord remembers us. All activities of the Gospel have the goal of bringing us happiness and they all inspire the same desire—service to our fellowman.

And I cannot disassociate my mind from my spirit, and so cannot, nor should, take the spiritual out of the intellectual in my pursuits. Ultimately, I seek the opposite goal—a marriage of the two—as I search for knowledge and the application thereof. As I gain in understanding of the world and of man, I hope both for a better understanding of God and to aid others in seeing the divinity in it all. In them. I pursue an understanding of everything so that I can understand everyone, and in understanding them, I hope to add to them.

My spiritual and intellectual quests seek to drive me to one shared goal: peace with myself and with my God. Through all the experiences that I have had in life, I have recognized the wisdom of those who have taught me through word and deed that this is done primarily through people. What good is all the scripture study and prayer if it does not lead you to do good, as Christ did? What good is all the knowledge and expertise in the world if it does not lead you to serve others? As President Monson shares in the most recent First Presidency message, “It was said of Jesus of Nazareth that He ‘increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.’ Do we have the determination to do likewise? One line of holy writ contains a tribute to our Lord and Savior, of whom it was said, He ‘went about doing good…; for God was with him.’” The measure of his good, and thus, the development of his mind and spirit, can be seen in the lives he changed. When I act in accordance with Christ’s will, following his example, I am happy and I am fulfilled, for I am serving. That is my quest.

The Bridgekeeper seems too busy snoring to ask me a third question, so I walk across.