Murray Ceff's Blog

 The Death of Murray Alexander Ceff I've been inspired to write this piece after reading the Tolstoy novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. (This 12 chapter novella would be a great start for anyone wanting to start reading Tolstoy, to become familiar with his style of writing, before you tackle War and Peace or Anna Karenina.) I felt inspired to read this at 3am this morning after my regular bathroom visit and having a difficult time getting back to sleep. I had absolutely no idea what to expect in the story, but have grown familiar with Tolstoy having read Childhood, Boyhood, and part of Youth. So I knew what to expect in terms of writing style at least, and his usual setting of 19th century Russia. When I saw that it was only 12 chapters I didn't expect to finish it all within a few hours though. In a nutshell, Ivan Ilyich lives and dies in late 19th Century Russia and struggles to accept the life he leads and searches for meaning in his life, particularly as he suffers from a t...

My Dad was my hero when I was a boy! I have taken some of what I will write from Sr Reyna Aburto of the General Relief Society Presidency, and I have also borrowed some themes and paraphrased some ideas from a book title the Crucible of Doubt, by Fiona and Terryl Givens. I will also quote some paragraphs from The Living Christ - The Testimony of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, published some 21 years ago. Most cultures around the world have developed some form of hero worship. This possibly started when the biggest and strongest man helped his tribe win territory over competing tribes. Or perhaps he was the best hunter. Perhaps that hero worship became so pervasive that the hero became the king. And the Kings eldest son became the next king and so forth. We see this pattern in the Holy Scriptures. And, as was the case in the Japanese culture, the king or emperor can become a god. It wasn’t until after WWII, with the American influence, that the Japane...