An outting with Nana to the BYU Museum of Art

Madeleine, Ella and I went to the museum to draw picture. And of course, we had to get an ice cream cone in the Wilkinson Center.

Graham and his helmet obsession...

On the way to Denver....

Strawberries...

Caitlin LOVES chocolate covered strawberries. We had them for her birthday.....

Reflections of Christ

This photograph (not a painting!) is from an exhibit of images representing the life of Christ. To see a five minute clip of the exhibit put to music (Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) click here. It is beautiful. The exhibit is in the JSMB through Nov. 7. Click on the box in the lower right hand corner to see the images full screen. Another version put to music is here.

See below for more detail:

"For many years the Mesa Arizona Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had exhibits on the temple grounds during the Easter season. This year, there was also a 'Reflections of Christ' photography exhibit in the Visitor's Center. The photographer was given permission to photograph Pageant cast members for the exhibit. They traveled to various locations in Arizona that the photographer felt looked like the places in Israel where the events took place and recreated the scenes."

Two year old prodigals

My sister-in-law once told me that as she struggled to get a shirt over the head of her resisting every which way two year old she suddenly saw herself in relationship to God. As every parent of a two year old soon discovers, toddlers often insist on doing many things of their own free will and choice that are not good or are even dangerous for their well-being. Most parents of teenagers rediscover this same dynamic. Due to the laws of physics the parent cannot physically insist that the child wear their coat when it's cold, not run in the street irresponsibly (and this time they are behind the wheel of the car!) or eat in a manner that is conducive to their health. Yet still that teenager is somewhat under the protection of the parental environment while they throw caution to the wind through willful use of their agency.

As adults do we not repeat this process with our Heavenly Parent? He kindly instructs us to wear our spiritual coat but no, we insist on going out in the cold without it. He invites us to feast at His table full of many good things for our spiritual health but we consume cultural junk food instead. He knows if we apply the laws of the harvest and "lay up in store" we will have oil in our lamps in time of need but we prefer the foolish route. He warns us of the dangers of heading pell mell into the streets of life without looking both ways but often we make the choice to run a collision course with the fiery darts of the adversary.

Luckily, though it may seem otherwise, we are still under our Heavenly Parent's umbrella. This is a school. We do learn by experience to know the good from evil. He is watching over us patiently trying to teach us the why's and wherefores of life. As the very core of our nature is one of light, truth, intelligence and glory our use (or should we say misuse) of agency (and that of other's) often brings us affliction and unhappiness. He is inviting us to learn that the the surest, most effective, and shortest path to healing and happiness comes, as Elder Scott says, through the "application of the teachings of Jesus Christ" in our lives. In other words, when we as prodigals really do come to ourselves and are perishing from spiritual trauma and/or hunger, our Father will, when we are yet a great way off, see us in the way, run to us, bring forth the best robe, put the ring on our finger and shoes on our feet, kill the fatted calf and receive us into his bosom safe and sound.

Hanging Lake

I'm stealing Bethany's pictures from her Red Clover blog. Some of us jaunted on over to Colorado last week and stopped for a climb up to Hanging Lake just out of Glenwood Springs. It's a beautiful hike - one of my favorites. In fact my profile picture came from last year's trek to Hanging Lake.





Thanks for the pics Bethany!!

Lessons in confidentiality

Today my just turned 13 year old son came into the kitchen to philosophize. "I've figured out you can't trust people." he said. "I mean, if you tell someone something they won't keep it a secret. Like if you tell someone who you like they will tell someone else even if you ask them not to."

Yep - pretty accurate!

When We Come to Ourselves

I've been to bed but I'm up again.  Yet another night with too much on my mind.  My latest panacea for sleeplessness has been reading my currently favorite book.  M. Catherine Thomas' Selected Writings.  In my mind she is spiritually brilliant, humble, hopeful and a truth speaker (as well as seeker).    I thought I would share a few quotes:

From an essay entitled When We Come to Ourselves: 

"Choice is powerfully creative because there are no choices without consequences.  (Alma 41:13)  Each choice increases or decreases the scope of action of an intelligent being.  Our own intelligence was created with full potential to become godlike, but the actual development moves forward by the nature of the choices made."

"...the truth is that we move from dimension to dimension based on what we choose to believe and do.  States of victimization are self-chosen; states of self-libertion are also self-chosen.  We are capable of activating different realities - like degrees of glory - in this life, and depending on the laws we neglect or observe, we ascend toward a state of blessedness which can be tasted in this life, or we descend to a degree of misery, which is very common."

"Our spirit has been encouraging us to face the truth of our divine being for a long time.  It may even have precipitated breakdowns of various kinds in order to press us to that insight.  Even so, we may have buried the demands--or the call to truth--of our spirit in our subconscious, where these truths war with our actual choices.  It is a war to see which spirit, of truth or of lies, will have ascendance in our souls."

"To deny our divinity by our thoughts, words, and behavior is to have to keep lying to ourselves and to others.  To be who we really are is to give a gift to others."

"Until we come to ourselves, we are likely to be self-focused in a negative sense.  We have a lot of energy tied up in trying to establish our own worth and we're missing the coming and going of many higher purposes trying to get our attention.  We free up a lot of energy getting settled on who we are, why we're here, who God is, and how our own choices affect our reality."

Sadly these are just a few extrapolations from a larger whole well worth reading.

The Sacrament

"We must come, however, to the sacrament table hungry. If we should repair to a banquet where the finest of earth’s providing may be had, without hunger, without appetite, the food would not be tempting, nor do us any good. If we repair to the sacrament table, we must come hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for spiritual growth." (Elder Melvin J. Ballard - The Sacramental Covenant)

6 And blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost. (Book of Mormon | 3 Nephi 12:6)

Happy Birthday Caitlin!

Caitlin turns 15 today and last night we went shopping for her birthday. We had a good time perusing the mall (minus the horrific music in most shops) stopping by here and there to pick up a treat (See's Candy is always on the list - buy one and get your free sample) and looking for the much desired skinny jeans which she wore to school this morning. Yes, that would be the same jeans she looked upon with horror when they first appeared on the racks.

Caitlin is the 10th child born on the 10th day of the 10th month AND she has 10 siblings. I guess that makes her a definite 10! Caitlin is smart and very motivated which is good when you are that far down the line and your parents are becoming a little foggy and forgetful. She is a hard worker, gets straight A's, and is making great progress on the piano (Thank you Alena!). She loves her nieces and nephews and is the texting queen and proud owner of a new cell phone. (Yes, she finally did prevail. She pays for it by teaching piano.) And we can't do a post on Caitlin without mentioning the name David Archuleta.

Caitlin can get things done. She is the family brownie maker and began at the age of three when she wanted brownies and I was busy sewing something. I told her to get out the ingredients and that I would be up in a moment. She went up and down the stairs to ask me about each ingredient one at a time. Then she got out the bowl and asked me how much of each item to put in. She hunted up the measuring spoons and cups and would bring them to me to see which one to use. Believe it or not she made the brownies all on her own, put them in the oven and baked them and they tasted fabulous. (These were brownies from scratch by the way - not a mix!)

Caitlin and I are the only girls at the moment holding down the fort in a household of male majority. We stick together. Caitlin I love you - Happy Birthday!

Mom

Proposition 8

No, I don't live in California but I am weighing in on Proposition 8. With all due respect for my friends, acquaintances and loved ones who have chosen to live a gay lifestyle, I believe children need both a father and a mother.

As one article states:

"... extensive studies have shown that in general a husband and wife united in a loving, committed marriage provide the optimal environment for children to be protected, nurtured, and raised. ^[6] This is not only because of the substantial personal resources that two parents can bring to bear on raising a child, but because of the differing strengths that a father and a mother, by virtue of their gender, bring to the task. As the prominent sociologist David Popenoe has said:

The burden of social science evidence supports the idea that gender differentiated parenting is important for human development and that the contribution of fathers to childrearing is unique and irreplaceable. ^[7]

Popenoe explained that:

. . . The complementarity of male and female parenting styles is striking and of enormous importance to a child’s overall development. It is sometimes said that fathers express more concern for the child’s longer-term development, while mothers focus on the child’s immediate well-being (which, of course, in its own way has everything to do with a child’s long-term well-being). What is clear is that children have dual needs that must be met: one for independence and the other for relatedness, one for challenge and the other for support. ^[8]

Social historian David Blankenhorn makes a similar argument in his book Fatherless America. ^[9] In an ideal society, every child would be raised by both a father and a mother."

See full article here.

Also from the L.A. Times: Protecting Marriage to Protect Children by David Blankenhorn

Well...?

Just thought I would ask Charlie what happened to A Spider's Cave.

Election Day Blues Part II

I may have to change the title of this blog with the way things are going. Debate #2 (or really was it #3) gave me no reason to hope the muddle will begin to clear up any time soon. After paying a short visit to "Fact Check" to ascertain the level of truthfulness practiced by both candidates there's something I do know. They should both attend Sunday School and re-learn what it means to tell the truth.

Election Day Blues....

What do you do if you can't bring yourself to vote Democrat, you don't want to vote Republican and to mark the ticket for anyone else is throwing away your vote. Maybe I'll start my own country. It will consist of a 100 ft. by 100ft. square parcel of land in the west end of Orem, Utah (with a nice view of Utah Lake). Randy can be the executive branch, I'll be the judicial and the kids can be the legislative leg of things. We might have to raise taxes.

Joe Six-Pack

In case you missed this on Yahoo this morning it's an enjoyable and thoughtful read.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081003/ap_ca/looking_for_joe_six_pack

To save you the advertisements here it is:

By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 3, 3:08 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Joe Six-Pack is somewhere out there on the campaign trail, coveted and courted by the presidential candidates. He is the electorate, reduced to one guy. He would be really interesting to talk to if we could only find him. Nobody ever seems to say what he looks like or where he is, exactly.

Rumor has it he is, um, a he. The "Joe" is probably a dead giveaway, though Sarah Palin has referred to putting "government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-Pack like me." He probably wears a shirt with a blue collar and lives someplace on Main Street, or at least sometimes goes to Main Street, perhaps to pick up a six-pack.

He likely drinks that six-pack at his kitchen table, where, if he's still married, he and his wife, Soccer Mom, talk about how it feels to personify Middle America and how Washington insiders are out of touch.

But at least they're better off than Six-Pack's cousin, Joe Lunchbucket, a working stiff who has to pack his own lunch and can't even afford beer. Nobody seems to mention him much.

Another prominent resident of their town, Small Business Owner, has it tough, too. To be honest, these days even the guy in the McMansion one subdivision over, White-Collar Elite, faces hardships. He could get laid off anytime. When it comes to heavy mortgages, high gas prices and the other weighty issues of our time, he's starting to look an awful lot like Joe Six-Pack, even if his shirt is a different color.

Fact is, Joe Six-Pack knows a lot of so-called blue-collar types — plumbers, electricians, truck drivers, the guy who owns the local car-repair shop — who make more money than White-Collar Elite. In fact, if you catch them after they've taken off their white or blue collars and put on t-shirts to go watch football, they're awfully hard to tell apart.

Still, Joe Six-Pack is the one the politicians seem to like best. It is generally understood that he is a heckuva nice guy. He drinks, but he never drinks and drives. When he does drive, he would be the last person to tailgate or cut anybody off in traffic. He just Wants What is Best for America.

Maybe the reason Joe Six-Pack sounds so good is that he doesn't exist.

Tagging voters with cliches simplifies them to the point of caricature — and is far removed from reality. People are more complicated than that, whether their employment status is classified as blue-collar, white-collar, retired, self-employed or unemployed. However pollsters might slice and dice the public, there is no Everyman. Thank goodness. That's one of the things that makes the two-year journey to the election interesting.

I grew up in a blue-collar family. My father's name isn't Joe and he doesn't drink beer. Never has. Can't stand the stuff. My mother was a "stay-at-home mom" and didn't go back to work until my brothers and I were teenagers. She wasn't a "soccer mom" or a "hockey mom." Those sports were expensive, too expensive.

My mother did pack my father's lunch each day, and later on, when she went back to work, my father used to pack hers. Did that make either of them "Joe Lunchbucket?" Now that they're retired, what are they? Just what they've always been: People who know the score and have their own opinions about politics and policy, none of which fits the candidates' cliches.

Back when I was a reporter in Wisconsin, I remember getting dispatched to one of President Clinton's speeches to ask voters "in the Heartland" about their views on his impeachment proceedings.

Democrats and Republicans on the talk shows had already offered their caricatures of the average person's opinion. But the people I spoke to — Democrats, Republicans, independent or indifferent — all had nuanced views on the impeachment. They weren't simply pro or con. And I'll bet if I had asked whether they thought of themselves as Joe Six-Pack, Soccer Mom, Main Street or any of the other categories, the answer would have been none of the above.

There used to be a feature on one of the network new shows in which a correspondent picked a spot on the map, went there, closed his eyes and pointed to a name at random in the phonebook. The theme was that everybody has a story, everyone was interesting. No one was the same. And whether the reporter went to small towns, large cities or a lonely house in the countryside, no one was a stereotype.

Yet politicians never seem to see that. Pandering politicians are as old as politics. The idea seems to be that claiming kinship with this or that voting bloc is enough to win that bloc over.

Will the mythical Joe Six-Pack swing this election to one candidate or the other? Remains to be seen. Besides, what I really want to know, if there truly is a Joe Six-Pack out there somewhere: Is he single?

____

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sharon Theimer, an investigative reporter, has been with The Associated Press for 16 years.

"Who is this weeping angel?"

41 And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Enoch, and told Enoch all the doings of the children of men; wherefore Enoch knew, and looked upon their wickedness, and their misery, and wept and stretched forth his arms, and his heart swelled wide as eternity; and his bowels yearned; and all eternity shook. (Pearl of Great Price | Moses 7:41)

Hugh Nibley comments on the weeping Enoch:

"In the Syriac Apocalypse of Paul, the apostle also is introduced to Enoch, being told when he is asked, "Who is this weeping angel?": "It is Enoch, the teacher of righteousness."

"So I entered into that place, " Paul reports, "and saw the great Elijah, who came to meet us." He too was weeping, saying, "Oh Paul, how great are the promises of God and his benefits and how few are worthy of them?"

"There is, to say the least, no gloating in heaven over the fate of the wicked world. It is Enoch who leads the weeping, as it is in the Joseph Smith account. Enoch puts forth his arm and weeps, and says, "I will refuse to be comforted." (Moses 7:44) Enoch is the great weeper in the Joseph Smith version. Of course, he doesn't want the destruction of the human race. But in the Joseph Smith version, the amazing thing is that when God himself weeps and Enoch says, "How is it that thou canst weep?" Enoch bears testimony that the God of heaven actually wept. It is a shocking thing to say, but here again, if we go to another Enoch text, there it is! When God wept over the destruction of the temple, we're told in one of the midrashim that is was Enoch who fell on his face and said," I will weep, but weep not thou!" God answered Enoch and said, "If thou wilt not suffer me to weep, I God will go wither thou canst not come and there I will Lament..."

Hugh Nibley, Enoch the Prophet p.5.