Pray always

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the October 2008 Conference.

There are several memorable talks in this session. Elder Wirthlin's "Come what may and love it," which everyone loved and still quotes all the time (me included), Elder Holland's "The Ministry of Angels" [it's SO good; I'm not going to write about it but it's definitely worth a re-read!] Elder Christoffersen's talk about building Zion, and Elder Bednar's "Pray Always." As usual, these talks seem to have only gotten better over time! 

I'd forgotten that this is the conference where Elder Bednar talked about our morning prayers being a form of "spiritually creating" our days before we actually "physically create" the experiences of those days. I feel like that's a concept I just heard recently and have kept intending to think more about and implement. Pretty embarrassing to realize I've been intending to do so for over 17 years now🤦🏼‍♀️. Maybe I also heard about it from someone else? Anyway, here is the relevant passage:

We learn…that the spiritual creation preceded the temporal creation. In a similar way, meaningful morning prayer is an important element in the spiritual creation of each day—and precedes the temporal creation or the actual execution of the day. Just as the temporal creation was linked to and a continuation of the spiritual creation, so meaningful morning and evening prayers are linked to and are a continuation of each other.…

Morning and evening prayers—and all of the prayers in between—are not unrelated, discrete events; rather, they are linked together each day and across days, weeks, months, and even years. This is in part how we fulfill the scriptural admonition to “pray always.” Such meaningful prayers are instrumental in obtaining the highest blessings God holds in store for His faithful children.

I love that idea of our prayers all being linked and building on each other. Someone in Relief Society the other day mentioned that she "opens" her prayers in the morning and, although of course she has to move on with her day and take care of other things, she doesn't say "amen" until the night prayer, so that anytime she has a free moment she sort of just takes up where she left off. I always worry that my prayer somehow won't be as good until I've said "in the name of Jesus Christ," but I still like the idea of it all really being one day-long prayer. I also heard someone else say once that she makes sure to say "in the name of Jesus Christ" at the beginning of her prayers…so if she gets interrupted or has to cut off abruptly, she has already made clear in whose name she is praying. Interesting ideas, both of them, but most of all I just like the concept that our hearts and minds can continually be turning back to prayer all day long, and as Elder Bednar says, even midday and in crucial moments, we

discern heavenly help and strength and humbly recognize answers to our prayer. Even in that moment of recognition, we offer a silent prayer of gratitude.

I also really liked this insight:

Just as expressing gratitude more often in our prayers enlarges the conduit for revelation, so praying for others with all of the energy of our souls increases our capacity to hear and to heed the voice of the Lord.

Though I know I have improved significantly in the past several years, I want to continue to improve the power and effectiveness of my prayers, and this talk seems like a great place to start. I will try not to take seventeen more years to get working on it!

Other posts in this series:

What General Conference Teaches Us—by Jan

A courageous decision to hope

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the October 2008 Conference.

None of the passages I liked this week seem like they teach anything revolutionary. But as always, my experiences at this season of life make them seem more meaningful to me than they used to. I've had two friends with heart-wrenching circumstances this week, one enduring the sudden loss of her husband and another experiencing a church membership council. My heart has ached for both of them in their particular challenges. At the same time, I have rejoiced in the way "looking unto Christ in every thought" can make every difficulty more bearable. As I've imagined what sorts of fears and doubts might be going through my friends' minds, there is literally not a single one of them that isn't improved and lightened by the reality of Jesus' sacrifice for us. His mercy with our faults, His understanding of our circumstances, His victory over sin and death, His ability to heal us, His power to send angels to our aid. I'm so grateful that, though what I can do for my friends is so small, what Jesus can do is so great!

With those thoughts in my head, Elder Uchtdorf's words about hope become even more beautiful:

Hope is a gift of the Spirit. It is a hope that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection, we shall be raised unto life eternal and this because of our faith in the Savior. This kind of hope is both a principle of promise as well as a commandment, and, as with all commandments, we have the responsibility to make it an active part of our lives and overcome the temptation to lose hope. Hope in our Heavenly Father’s merciful plan of happiness leads to peace, mercy, rejoicing, and gladness.…

There may be times when we must make a courageous decision to hope even when everything around us contradicts this hope.

I love that idea—that when we "against hope believe in hope," we are being not naive, but courageous! It's so easy for me, when I'm facing something hard and discouraging, to feel foolish about my former hopes. I think, "I should have known it wouldn't be so simple. How could I have gotten my hopes up like that? How could I have been so dumb as to think things were getting better/working out/going to be okay?" It's so easy to let go of hope. I don't know why disappointed hopes are always accompanied by that "I'm so dumb for believing" feeling. I'm sure that's Satan trying to take away our hopes.

Anyway, but it's a lie! Elder Uchtdorf says hope is a "courageous decision" and I'm going to try to see it that way from now on. It's not "refusing to face reality"; it's having the vision to see a truer reality! The joyful reality of Jesus Christ overshadows any other despair that seems so real to us in the moment. And I want to share that hope with the people around me if I can. I want to let my mind "catch hold upon this thought of Jesus Christ" (as Elder Andersen talks about) and allow that thought to give me, and those around me, that "infinite power of hope" Elder Uchtdorf promises.

Other posts in this series:

The Sacrament: A Precious Gift—by Jan

Lest we forget, lest we forget

Perhaps you are all thoroughly tired of Quebec posts, but I persist! This is the last one, I think: a little collection of details about the house and city, which we can read and smile at when we are old and grey. (Not so far off.) I think the kids will like remembering these things someday.

1. About the shape and character of the city:

Willa Cather wrote this about Quebec:

The way has always been prepared

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Young Women's Session of the April 2008 Conference. 

I found a new favorite scripture this week in Doctrine and Covenants 3:1. I don't know why it's never struck me so forcefully before, but right now I love it:

The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught.

!!!!

They CANNOT be frustrated! They CANNOT be for nothing! God has a work and a design and a purpose for me, and it CANNOT be frustrated. No matter how weak I am, no matter how badly I mess things up, no matter what Satan does to me and those I love, God's design for my life will prevail, if I let Him prevail! What more do I need to know in life than that? All I have to do is keep turning to God and his beautiful, wonderful, perfect plan for me will be made real in my life!

President Eyring gave a beautiful talk in the Young Women session that is a second witness of this:

…You have been protected and watched over by your Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. They know you. They know all of the forces and individuals around you. They know what is ahead of you. And so They know which of the choices you make, which of the desires you decide to satisfy, and which of the circumstances around you will make the most difference in keeping you walking in the light. I testify that by the Spirit of Christ and by the Holy Ghost, you may walk confidently in whatever difficulties will come. Because you are so valuable, some of your trials may be severe. You need never be discouraged or afraid. The way through difficulties has always been prepared for you, and you will find it if you exercise faith.

Other posts in this series: 

Testimonies that light the way—by Jan

One Last Miracle

 

We planned at first to leave in the early morning on the Monday, but looking at the weather and other logistics, decided to leave on the Tuesday instead. It turned out well because that gave us one more non-Sunday day to do things—like get poutine one last time! We packed and cleaned like madmen so we'd be mostly done and free to have fun on Monday.

Sunday, after we went to church and said goodbye to everyone there, we were all very sad. We cheered ourselves up with my chicken soup. ("In June I saw a charming group/Of roses all begin to droop./I pepped them up with chicken soup!")

There was a snowy, blowy storm that night. We were happy to get to see it.

Je me souviens

Every time we walked along the streets of Quebec City, explored the neighborhoods, or drove through the villages up and down the river, we saw churches. Beautiful, towering, prominent, empty churches. It was strange to me, and then interesting, and then unsettling—almost haunting. I wanted to understand it, so I read about Quebec's "Revolution Tranquille" in the 1970s, when the Catholic Church's influence in Quebec fell from pervasive to almost nonexistent. Church programs were turned into government programs, a huge church bureaucracy became government bureaucracy, and the entire character of the province changed overnight. The numbers are almost unbelievable:

• 95 percent of the population went to Mass weekly in the 1950s, but only 5 percent do so today. 

• The birth rate went from 40.6 births per 1000 in 1909, to 8.8 in 2023.

• The abortion rate ("voluntary termination of pregnancy") went from 1.4 per 100 births in 1971 to 40.2 in 2002.

• In 2003 (this was the earliest I found numbers for; it was probably higher later) there were 2746 churches in Quebec; by 2022, 713 of them had been demolished, closed, or converted into something else.

I think most people in Quebec aren't bothered by those statistics. They see it as progress, and consider themselves well rid of religion's controlling hand. Obviously I'm not qualified to discuss the ins and outs of Catholic influence in government; I'm sure you could make a case for corruption and overreach and coercion and whatever else. Perhaps church and state were too intertwined, and individual Catholic leaders may well have been as power-hungry and prideful as any politician. But, also obviously, I am sympathetic to the Catholic church, our sister church in Christ, and I think about all the generations of faithful people who built those thousands of churches scattered through every town and every village in Quebec. Surely there were people who kept the faith because they had their own connections to Jesus Christ; people who had many children not because they were "forced" or "intimidated" by the church, but because they loved God and loved their families. People who had generations of religious belief in their blood; who looked for miracles; who served and sacrificed because they chose to put God first. People who would be horrified by what their grandchildren and great-grandchildren have forgotten.

Joy comes in moments

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the April 2008 Conference. 

Elder Ballard gave the sweetest talk in this session! I remember him becoming softer and sweeter after his wife died in 2018, but I guess he was sweet all along and I just didn't know it! In my memory, he was stern and intimidating all the time, but now that I re-read them, his talks really aren't like that at all. Yet another thing I got wrong as a young person.

This talk is called "Daughters of God" and you can really sense how much Elder Ballard loves and admires the women in his life. He mentions using hand puppets to entertain his kids in sacrament meeting. And he shows genuine understanding for all kinds of situations women face:

There is no one perfect way to be a good mother. Each situation is unique. Each mother has different challenges, different skills and abilities, and certainly different children. The choice is different and unique for each mother and each family. Many are able to be “full-time moms,” at least during the most formative years of their children’s lives, and many others would like to be. Some may have to work part-or full-time; some may work at home; some may divide their lives into periods of home and family and work. What matters is that a mother loves her children deeply and, in keeping with the devotion she has for God and her husband, prioritizes them above all else.

He also says this about the demands of motherhood:

Through my own four-generation experience in our family, and through discussions with mothers of young children throughout the Church, I know something of a mother’s emotions that accompany her commitment to be at home with young children. There are moments of great joy and incredible fulfillment, but there are also moments of a sense of inadequacy, monotony, and frustration. Mothers may feel they receive little or no appreciation for the choice they have made. Sometimes even husbands seem to have no idea of the demands upon their wives.

You should read the talk yourself, because he gives some beautiful (and very wise, I think) advice to husbands about supporting their wives, and even talks sweetly to the children saying "pick up your toys, thank your mother for meals," and so on. But my favorite advice he gives is to young mothers, and it is very simple:

Recognize that the joy of motherhood comes in moments. There will be hard times and frustrating times. But amid the challenges, there are shining moments of joy and satisfaction.

I think I am not a "young mother" anymore, which is strange, because I still have young children and I don't feel like I've mastered motherhood sufficiently to be considered a "non-young mother." Ha. But maybe that is why I can now see the profoundness and the truth in the statement "the joy of motherhood comes in moments." I was thinking about it in the first decade of parenting, but I think it has only become more meaningful to me in the second decade, as I've seen both how fleeting and how anchoring family life can be. As a "young mother," maybe I would have heard that statement and said "Joy in moments? I don't want just moments! I want joy always! What's the point of all this work if all I get is moments?" But now I think I get it. Moments are the form in which joy comes. Those moments aren't lessened by their brevity; in fact, they are deepened by it. And because the "shining moments" are glimpses of a better and truer world, they can come even during times of the most painful and exhausting "mortalness." They can't replace those hard things. They come in and through those hard things. They help you endure the hard things with your gaze on what life is really about.

Maybe this is true to some extent for everyone, but I can testify it is especially true for mothers. I don't know if I could have grasped it earlier than I did—perhaps you can't really feel it until you've lived it for a while. But it's interesting how different certain tasks of mothering feel to me now—now that I can see an end to them. This semester I've been taking the little kids on "field trips" while the bigger kids are at rehearsal for their Choir. I've often had to do that; entertain the young ones while taking the older ones somewhere. It used to feel so pointless and exhausting. Sitting in the car or at the library trying to keep them entertained, the baby screaming in a carseat or on my lap nursing, the toddlers constantly needing to find a bathroom, the preschoolers being noisy or fighting or asking me for help with everything, and all I wanted was to read my own book for a second or be able to string two thoughts together! I haven't forgotten how hard it was, and I don't minimize how hard it was! (And of course I don't have babies now, and that makes these times much simpler.) But though I'm still busy, I just don't feel those resentful or exasperated or panicked feelings as much now. I don't constantly feel like I should be doing something else. I am more peaceful about just watching the kids, talking with them, sitting there and experiencing those moments with them. I know they won't last forever. And I can feel and believe they won't last forever and it actually makes me so sad! I've learned to more easily recognize the beauty in those small, ordinary, boring, even frustrating little moments where my children truly want or need my presence. I'm still not always as patient in them as I should be! But I now know, deep down, that these moments really are the building-blocks of joy.

Other posts in this series:

Giving and Becoming—by Rozy

Power to Overcome—by Jan

The Last Walk

I'm a great one for "last walks," it seems. I've gotten in the habit of praying while I walk or run, and now I feel I can't face any big event or important change without having a good long walk and talk with the Lord about it. I feel downright unsettled until He and I have had our time together and I've poured out to Him all the things I'm feeling—doubly so when there's a lot of uncertainty or fear or sadness mixed in. Before we came to Québec, after we came to Québec, when we moved from our old house, before each baby was born, during miscarriages, whenever I get a new calling—whatever it is, you can bet I will be out walking or running to try and make sense of it all.

Of course I say plenty of prayers on just regular old everyday walks too—but I become very sentimental and especially remember these significant "last" or "first" ones! This walk was beautiful; such a gift on the last morning in Quebec. There was new snow and the sky was clear and brittle, and the sun rose and turned everything a cold pink and blue. Oh, I miss this city.

Eglise St. Matthew

Looking back down the hill on Rue Honoré-Mercier. The wind is always bitter on this street—I'm not sure why; maybe the tall buildings make a sort of tunnel for it?

The fountain in front of the Assemblée Nationale all wrapped up in plastic for the winter. The lighted trees help it look somewhat prettier :)

Up onto the plains of Abraham, chasing the sunrise

Lamps still lit

Looking back sideways across the parc

Up onto the walls of the citadelle

Lots of spires visible here—the tall elegant one is the Wesleyan church ("Chalmers-Wesley United Church," I see upon looking it up), with the Price Building (art deco-ish skyscraper) near it, and down below you can see the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (tall and green) and Notre-Dame-de-Québec (hollow and octagonal). The two little twin lit steeples near the Wesleyan church are the tiny Sacré Cœur Chapel-that's-not-a-chapel-anymore across the street from it.

Château Frontenac peeking out

Avenue Saint-Denis

Saint Lawrence River reflecting the sky

I tried to get a picture of me in my big puffy coat but I couldn't stretch my arm far enough. But rest assured I am as warm as a little pig in a blanket.

You can see the toboggan slide down there through the trees

Steps covered in snow

And the little Terasse Pierre-Dugua-de-Mons (whoever that is)

The river was icy! But not frozen solid. It usually doesn't freeze all the way across, people told us.

Avenue Saint-Denis, closer now

Looking down into Quartier Petit-Champlain

It looks like such a jumble of roofs! But half of those are the Château.

Another steep set of stairs. You can't escape them in Old Quebec.

Down to Terasse Dufferin

And the sun finally peeked out, behind Lévis

You can see the exact point when the sun rays finally crossed the river. From this—

to this!

I was watching with considerable interest as this snowplow plowed the Terrace. There was a turning screw (?) (kind of an auger, I guess?) that churned up the snow between the tractor's wheels and funneled it into a long chute to blow out the side. That is possibly how all snowplows work? I haven't watched them much before. But it was different than the push-plows I see on our roads, anyway.

This toboggan slide didn't open till a few days after we left, and the kids were sad about it. We watched them constructing the track and railing all through the beginning of December.

Big pile of snow from the plow

Such beautiful golden light reflecting off the windows!

You can see both Notre-Dames from here: "de Québec" on the left and "des Victoires" on the right. And between them, the Samuel Champlain statue and that big clock building that just says "Post Office" on one side but I KNOW it has to be something else too.

Bishop Laval statue. And Parc Montmorency in front of him.

I could hear the bells ringing time for Mass at Notre-Dame-de-Quebec.

So I went in to warm up and listen to Mass. The priests (monks? from the Séminaire de Quebec? I never figured out if there are still monks there) were singing Matins when I went in. I was delighted to see the huge Advent wreath in the front, with two candles lit!

Petit Séminaire

Looking back at Notre Dame

St. Andrew's church

Maison de la Litterature

Looking down Rue St-Stanislas

Looking up Rue St-Ursule

Parc de l'Esplanade

Up on the city walls and across Porte Kent

There are often people sleeping under these little archways, and it always startles me! This day was no exception, even though it was so cold.

Looking down from the top of Porte Saint-Jean. The ice skating rink looks so smooth and shiny!

Off the other direction, up Rue Saint-Jean

And looking back up at Porte Kent

Down the stairs and back through the gate

And back along Rue Saint-Jean toward home!