The help we need is given to us freely

 This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the October 2005 Conference.

This week, I really liked Elder Uchtdorf's talk about developing Christlike attributes. I was also studying Elder Renlund's most recent talk on the Doctrine of Christ cycle, and the two talks went really well together. Elder Renlund talks a lot about how repeated repentance changes us, and Elder Uchtdorf talks about some of the ways those changes can be manifested in our lives. He says,

Developing Christlike attributes in our lives is not an easy task, especially when we move away from generalities and abstractions and begin to deal with real life. The test comes in practicing what we proclaim. The reality check comes when Christlike attributes need to become visible in our lives—as husband or wife, as father or mother, as son or daughter, in our friendships, in our employment, in our business, and in our recreation. We can recognize our growth, as can those around us, as we gradually increase our capacity to “act in all holiness before [Him].”

Then he says (and this would have fit right into the Elder Renlund talk):

Christlike attributes are gifts from God. They cannot be developed without His help. The one help we all need is given to us freely through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Having faith in Jesus Christ and in His Atonement means relying completely on Him—trusting in His infinite power, intelligence, and love. Christlike attributes come into our lives as we exercise our agency righteously. Faith in Jesus Christ leads to action. When we have faith in Christ, we trust the Lord enough to follow His commandments—even when we do not completely understand the reasons for them. In seeking to become more like the Savior, we need to reevaluate our lives regularly and rely, through the path of true repentance, upon the merits of Jesus Christ and the blessings of His Atonement.

I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father didn't leave us on our own in our efforts to become like Him. I'm so glad we have Jesus to follow, and I especially love that He has given us the perfect method for developing the Christlike attributes we need—that constant, seemingly mundane cycle of faith, action, repentance, and improvement. I am learning to trust that cycle in my own life even when I can't really see much progress in myself from day to day! And I love the positive way Elder Uchtdorf ends his talk (with airplane imagery, of course):  

Our faith in Jesus Christ will provide power and a strong forward thrust; our unwavering and active hope will provide a powerful upward lift. Both faith and hope will carry us across oceans of temptations, over mountains of afflictions, and bring us safely back to our eternal home and destination.

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Grand Teton National Park

We didn't do anything to mark our anniversary this year (23 years!). Not a thing. Just went to church and had meetings and made dinner and the usual routine. We said "Happy Anniversary!" to each other and that was it. And it was just fine! We have had many years where there just wasn't much time for any sort of celebration, and we haven't minded. All the days with Sam are good days! BUT, this was Sam's year to be in charge of it (we switch off years) and he decided that maybe we would have time to do something if we waited a few weeks. So he asked if I wanted to be in on the planning and I said certainly not, and at the end of May he informed me that we were going to go somewhere for the weekend. Yay! I like being surprised.

Sam decided we would go see the Tetons. We've only seen them from afar, driving through Idaho to Yellowstone. This time we drove up Wyoming way through Cokeville and Afton and Star Valley. I don't think I've ever driven that road before. Highway 30. It was so beautiful!

Drove by the Star Valley Temple, which I remember hearing the announcement for and thinking "Where is that?" This photo looks like an artist's rendering for some reason.

We stayed in a cute little studio apartment above someone's garage. This was our view from the door!

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It doesn't seem to matter where or when

 This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 2005 Conference.

Sister Carol C. Lant (whom I am sorry to say I don't remember at all…usually at least the names sound familiar to me, but hers doesn't!) gave a good talk on scripture study during this session. My favorite part of it was this:

Sometimes I have the luxury of immersing myself in the scriptures. Sometimes I read them in snatches. However, it doesn’t seem to matter where or when I read the scriptures; I can still carry them in my heart. I have found that by reading them in the morning I am able to carry the influence of the Spirit with me throughout the day. When I read them midday, it is usually because a need has taken me there where I am able to find answers and directions that influence my decisions and actions. When I read them at night, the sweet, comforting messages from the Lord linger in my subconscious mind as I rest. Many times I awaken at night with ideas or thoughts that originate from the words I read just before drifting off to sleep. My mind may go many places during the day, but my heart securely embraces the words of the Lord found in the scriptures and “pondereth them.”

I love that! No matter what my current method, I always feel vaguely that there must be some “better” time or way to read the scriptures and I’m not doing it. But I love the thought that there are benefits to all the different times and ways, and they should all be sought after in their place. It sort of reminds me of Elder Gong's recent "All Things For Our Good" talk…like no matter our current way of studying the gospel, Heavenly Father will turn the effort to our good in some way or another.

Other posts in this series:

Ministering and Forgiveness—by Rozy

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Goldie-Alice in Wonderland and The Firebird

The girls' studio did two Spring Ballets this year, Alice in Wonderland and The Firebird. And guess who got to be Alice? Yes. It was our Goldie. She was perfect for the part!

She is not dancing en pointe yet, but she danced so wonderfully. It was a joy to watch her. I hadn't seen Alice before and didn't know anything about it! I still don't know, actually, if this version was taken wholesale from some other production or if they cobbled it together with their own music. It was a cool mix of genres—some Shostakovich, some Prokofiev, some Danny Elfman for the lyrical dances, some other modern stuff I didn't recognize. Really fun. My first time seeing any of it was at the dress rehearsal.

First some costume pictures. Daisy was the March Hare. Or the March Bunny, as we call her.

What a leap!

Here is Goldie-Alice.

Such a cute costume. She was thrilled because it was made just for her, and fit her perfectly!

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Cute Animal Night, time loops, creme fillings

A few Friday evenings ago, Sam and I slipped out for a walk. We'd been out on our weekly date and gotten back too early—you know what a mistake that is, I'm sure, getting home before dinner is cleaned up and the little ones are in bed! So we went out to enjoy the beautiful evening light. While we were walking, Abe called, so we walked along with him on speakerphone, listening to him talk about his classes and his new job at the MTC. After a while we went up on the hill to look at the sunset.

Suddenly we saw a parade of children running excitedly toward us…

…and a fire engine driving up! The kids told us that some baby ducklings had fallen into the storm drain! The mother duck walked over the drain cover and the tiny babies following her fell in one by one— plop, plop, plop! Luckily our fireman are the best and they come rescue little ducklings all spring long. Ziggy and Gussie were so excited to watch the rescue! After filling us in on what was going on, they ran back for a better view of the proceedings.

We watched from the hill (keeping Abe up to speed, of course). The firemen reached down into the drain with a net and got some of the ducklings that way, and then one of the men even climbed down into the drain to get the stragglers! Sam and I watched the fire chief cross the street holding something carefully in his hands. He had one of the ducklings! He let all the watching children look at it before walking carefully back and setting it down near its mother. What a kind man!

Then, from the other direction, Nutmeg came running up the hill. Goldie had brought him out to play.

He's so cute here mid-hop!

He hopped joyously around the hill, resting now and then so someone could pet him.

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That is why we are here

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the October 2005 Conference. 

Elder Bednar gave a talk in this session called "Becoming a Missionary," and I thought this quote from it was good:

My beloved brethren, you and I, today and always, are to bless all peoples in all the nations of the earth. You and I, today and always, are to bear witness of Jesus Christ and declare the message of the Restoration. You and I, today and always, are to invite all to receive the ordinances of salvation. Proclaiming the gospel is not a part-time priesthood obligation. It is not simply an activity in which we engage for a limited time or an assignment we must complete as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Rather, missionary work is a manifestation of our spiritual identity and heritage. We were foreordained in the premortal existence and born into mortality to fulfill the covenant and promise God made to Abraham. We are here upon the earth at this time to magnify the priesthood and to preach the gospel. That is who we are, and that is why we are here—today and always.

Now—as to how to inspire the boys and young men I know to accept and embrace this spiritual identity and heritage—I don't know. But it's cool to think about the power that could be theirs if they did accept it. And, I suppose, there is a similar responsibility for me to bear witness of Christ that I could better embrace too!

Other posts in this series: 

The blessings of General Conference!—by Rozy

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Spinning

Trigger Warning: This post is going to make an analogy using calculus. Mathophobes beware! The good news is that I don't really understand the calculus very well myself, which may allow the reader to feel smug about his or her superior grasp of the subject matter. Either way, read at your own risk!

A few weeks ago I was lying in bed thinking about the day. It had been a typical day, full of annoyances and impatience and dashing from here to there, but there had been a little window in the middle of it all where everyone—actually everyone, Sam and Abe and Seb and all the other children—happened to be home while the younger kids and I were doing a little school activity at the kitchen table. One by one, every person gathered to do it with us. We sat there together for maybe half an hour, talking with each other and tasting different kinds of chocolate and writing down what we observed. For those moments, there was happiness and learning and peace. I looked at the whole family sitting around the table, together and briefly at rest amid the thousand other demands on our time and attention, and the thought that kept coming to my mind was: "those moments make these moments possible."

Then the day's schedule moved on and the family scattered again, and the constant work of daily life resumed, and I didn't have time to think about anything at all. But at night when it was quiet, my thoughts kept going back to the contrast of those midday peaceful moments with the commotion of the rest of the day, and the idea that somehow one enabled the other. Then another thought came: "Heavenly Father needs a vessel to pour blessings into. Mortality, with all its necessities and demands, is that vessel."

I've been thinking about it ever since. Of course there's nothing new about the idea that we learn through contrast. We have to taste the bitter to know the sweet, and so forth. But this idea feels different to me. It's not just "We have to endure a lot of stuff that's hard and tiring and boring and frustrating and sorrowful and painful and infuriating and terrible—so that someday we can say, 'Wow, I'm so happy, and I know I'm happy it because I'm not experiencing all that bad stuff anymore!'"

Instead, this thought felt more like: all that hard and bad stuff is part of the happiness. Or—it is the way we get the happiness. Or maybe—it is the vehicle through which the happiness comes. ? It's hard to describe exactly the feelings I've been having about it. It's not that I think a celestial life won't be better than a mortal life. I certainly hope it will! And I hope it will be free of many of the heartaches and frustrations of mortality. But I've just been feeling this little glimpse of a different perspective, where mundane and spiritual, trial and blessing, are far less separate than I think…and where I may not even be seeing accurately which one is which!

As my mind has been casting about for further illustration of this, I started thinking about how, in calculus, you learn how to calculate a volume for a two-dimensional shape. That seems pretty impossible at first glance, but it is done by taking the 2-D shape and rotating it around an axis. Here my understanding of the actual math is iffy (though I could do the calculations, years ago), but for the sake of this description, if the shape rotates infinitely fast and is therefore in some sense occupying every slice of the three-dimensional space at once, it begins to have volume rather than just area. And furthermore, theoretically, you could pour something into that "solid of revolution" (or "volume of revolution," it's sometimes called) and have it not drip out.

You see where I'm going with this, of course. The 2-D shape is me. The "revolution"—an active and persistent spinning, you could call it—is the unceasing effort required to live the gospel in a mortal world. The axis is Jesus Christ. And if I fix myself upon him and keep up that unceasing motion—then He is able to pour blessings into my life, "good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over."

In this view, it's not so much that the demands of mortality contrast with the blessings of God as that they create a dimensional space for them to occupy! It's strange to think of it, but how would Heavenly Father have possibly given me that precious gift of those specific moments with my family—a gift I felt and valued and recognized—without all the things undergirding it? The years of building relationships through time, discipline, and sacrifice. The meals made, the rooms cleaned, the clothes washed, the scriptures read, the lessons taught. The schedules and routines. The habits and rules. Even the mistakes, the arguments, and the apologies. Without the constant spinning of mortal life with these people—the way it keeps going and never stops, the way it forces me to choose and balance and stretch and grow—there truly would be nowhere for the blessing to go! No vessel to hold it! Even if God poured out the blessing, where would it stay? It would drain out, useless, though our holes and cracks. To be put at a kitchen table—even if we were to taste the finest of chocolate together!—with eleven strangers with whom I had none of that history nor any of those experiences—is not only not the same, it borders on unpleasant!

Or what about any number of other beautiful, miraculous moments that have given me hope and brought me joy recently? For example, watching Sebastian love and connect with Clementine this past year—would those moments have brought the same balm to my soul without the frustrations and tears he and I have experienced as we've spun through his adolescence together, and as we've started to navigate his adulthood? If I could have brought a halt to the spinning, what blessings would I have lost?

Or what about any of the evenings I looked up from making dinner and saw gold clouds out the window and went running up the hill to watch the sunset, wiping my chickeny hands on my apron as I ran: what comparable stillness and peace could those few contemplative moments have held, without so many mundane tasks in motion to surround them?

I don't mean that busyness=holiness or anything like that. Of course we need stillness in our lives. The moments of stillness and peace are still part of the spinning I'm talking about—part of the effort to keep climbing, keep following Christ. I guess we could also call it living the Doctrine of Christ in a never-ending cycle like Elder Renlund talked about. But I don't think just existing in mortality generates the "volume of revolution" needed to hold the blessings God wants to pour out. It's the intentional motion, the moving forward (through both stillness and chaos), that's needed, because that effort fixes our eyes on Jesus Christ. It's saying, "I keep moving because I have to, but I do it trusting God because I want to." And I think it's the mundane routines and the repetitive sacrifices, the things of God we do daily, which move us about our axis the fastest and allow us to hold more of the constant stream of blessings from God. 

I just think about so many tender mercies I've seen in my life the past few years, and nearly all of them have come through, or come as part of, the everyday things. A dreaded task made easier. A routine conversation given wings by the Spirit. A comforting thought initiated by a happy experience and then deepened by a difficult experience. A truth driven home by a verse of scripture. A spiritual realization driven by a mortal annoyance. A desire borne of weakness. A love deepened by sorrow. A gratitude awakened by want.

I don't know how many of the tiring, plodding, difficult parts of mortality are unnecessary in the long run. Maybe we'll be entirely free of those things in the Celestial Kingdom. Or maybe we will be so good that we won't feel the weight of them as we do now! But either way, I want to trust the promise of all things for our good. 

And goodness knows I feel weary with the spinning from time to time, and blessings or not, I'm tempted to stop and rest. But because I have to, and because I want to, I keep moving. Then as the blessings come, I can glimpse that it's all God's plan and all God's work; the interrupted naps, the distracted scripture studies, the imperfect sacrifices; the repetition and the mundanity as well as the great soaring moments. And because of that plan, the dull daily efforts that feel like they could never mean anything, do mean something—they are the empty vessel into which God pours his endless, merciful love.

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A sacred privilege

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the October 2005 Conference. 

Elder Ballard gave a great talk about families in this conference session. He gave this warning about destructive attitudes of the day, and this has only gotten worse in the years since:

Rampant materialism and selfishness delude many into thinking that families, and especially children, are a burden and a financial millstone that will hold them back rather than a sacred privilege that will teach them to become more like God.

A friend and I were talking the other day about the blessings that come with having a large family, and laughing a little about how hard those blessings are to describe to young people just starting out. Even as you speak them you can hear how weak and pathetic they must sound to someone who doesn't see what you see. "Well…yes…it's true you likely won't be able to do a lot of travel or trips to Disneyland. Or pay for all your children's college tuition. Or have very nice cars…or very nice anything. And it's true you will often be scrambling to find even a tiny bit of time for your own spiritual development…and you'll wish for more hours in the day…and you'll feel overwhelmed much of the time…and you'll be constantly tired." 

Most young couples' eyes glaze over and you've lost them by that point! And who knows if they even comprehend what you want to say next: "But…but…if I could just make you understand—it's worth it. Every single sacrifice—everything you can't do, everything you have to do and wish you didn't, everything you look wistfully at other people doing—it's all swallowed up and brought to insignificance by the joys and growth and fullness you do receive!"

It is discouraging, because I wonder how such knowledge can possibly be passed on in a culture where the values and expectations depart so wildly from God's values! Yet through experience, little by little, somehow we can come to gain a testimony of these counterintuitive truths. Elder Ballard says:

And yet most parents throughout the world continue to know both the importance and the joy that are attached to natural families.

Yes. We learn it as we go. And we can also learn it by having faith in prophets who tell it to us. Elder Ballard quotes Joseph F. Smith saying:

“There can be no genuine happiness separate and apart from the home, and every effort made to sanctify and preserve its influence is uplifting to those who toil and sacrifice for its establishment. Men and women often seek to substitute some other life for that of the home; they would make themselves believe that the home means restraint; that the highest liberty is the fullest opportunity to move about at will. There is no happiness without service, and there is no service greater than that which converts the home into a divine institution, and which promotes and preserves family life.”

I have gained, and am still gaining, a testimony of this principle: no happiness without service, and no service greater than in the home. It's not self-evident. But it's true. And this "sacred privilege" which God has given us, of being tied to others in family relationships, will truly be our best chance to become like Him.

Other posts in this series:

Start early and be steady—by Rozy

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