Powerful Notes

Today I read the second half of a novel that greatly inspired me. About a mother who loses her entire family in Hitler's occupation of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) during the reign of Stalin. It was horribly depressing, and I cried through the whole thing. It was, however, not about tragedy. It was about the nature of love and forgiveness and moving on in the face of the impossible. It made me take a very hard look at myself, things that I've done and ways I've reacted to the things done to me. This author gets more into the mind of women than any I have ever read. Immediately after finishing (literally, I read the last pages in the car on the way) the story I went to Institute, where we talked about the nature of God and ourselves as His children. Needless to say, I had a LOT come to mind. I don't want to turn this into an essay, or elaborate in detail because I feel the true significance would be lost or twisted. But I thought I'd post the notes I took during this institute class, because it's something I want to share. Something very powerful.

'Steel in the blood.' 'The -insert chosen nationality or occupation-in me.' 'Her -insert chosen strong relative-'s relation.' So many sayings that boil down to the same thing. The God in us.


The part that continues to want to live, to create, to endure. The part that CONTINUES.



God is love. Love is all that endures. Love is all that creates. Love is a force in every dimension. Physical, emotional, spiritual. It is everywhere, in everything.

Every action is caused by or fueled with love. It is the origination of everything.

I have seen depravation, horror, death, hate. Lives ruined by every type of sin imaginable. I have not seen nor heard any thing to negate the evidence of God's love and power in all beings, in everything around me.

People are choosing to deny love, to deny and defy God. They deny themselves. They choose to separate themselves from the forgiveness and joy that comes automatically with love. I can not deny myself-my Savior-my love-my God. I am a child of God. God is love. I am love.

We have only to see and feel our own reactions to hate, anger and pain to realize we are made of love. It hurts us and we protect ourselves however we can.

I am sure that God is real and of His love for me through a thousand tiny little things that he shows me each and every day. For the guidance that I recieve, the spirit that I feel, the questions I am asked and what they make me think. I can feel His love in the hug of the two year old girl I nanny, and see it in the eyes of my friend who thinks she is beyond redemption and yet holds onto hope. I see Him in change for the better, in flowers among the thorns, in nature that continues to heal and rebuild-no matter how many times it is destroyed.

The tree of life in the vision is the love of God and the seeds are grown inside of you! You taste it only when it is grown and bearing fruit. When you have become and are able to issue to others the true love of God.

Battle

How do you fight a battle when you don't understand your enemy? How can you win a war when you're fighting on both sides? How will I defeat my foe if every step I take pulls me in two directions so forcefully that I will soon be split in two? How do I fight a battle when my enemy is me?

The Psychospirituality of Dreams

Ocean of Dreams by Josephine Wall
http://www.easy-dream-interpretation.com/

In my Senior year of High School I wrote a song. Now people close to me will exclaim that this is hardly a statement, since I play around with writing music all the time.

This song was a little different however. It is a lullaby to be precise, but not in the usual sense of the word. It sort of turned out more like a haunted melody along the lines of an LOTR song or a gypsy ballad. I called it a lullaby merely because I meant it to be sung at night, and because it was mainly about dreams and the unexpected yet revealing things that happen in the night. My father asked me to sing it at a ward talent show next week, and so I have been dwelling on it for the past little while. Now, I can't write out the melody for you to hear here, but I think I will jot down the lyrics, so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

Dreams

The shores of the moonlight glow soft in the night,

Hiding her wonders just out of your sight.

For who looks in shadows for dreams to begin?

And who knows the night, with all of her whims?

In dreams live the secrets that have yet to be told.

Stories of valor that never grow old.

Memories that time has diluted and dimmed

Become nothing more than their silver rims.

When shadows are banished by breaking of light,

The dreams of the waking are taken in flight.

And few will remember what visions they've seen

They know only shadows that come with the Eve'n.

Of course, in singing it so often and getting it ready for presentation, I have thought to wonder what caused me to write such a song in the first place.

I have always been fascinated by dreams and waht they can tell us about our inner psyche and mortal experience. I don't believe our night visions were meant just as an escape from our worldly struggles or even as simple manifestations of our inner troubles and struggles-though certainly many of them are. I believe sleep to be one of the times we are most in tune with our spirits and our eternal connections. I believe dreams are a way of connecting to ourselves and revealing our deepest destinies, most inspiring stories, our prevailing fears and most troubling detections that we have yet to bring to the forefront of our minds. I do believe that one can see the future in a dream. I have experienced deja vu multiple times throughout my life, though usually I can connect it exactly, not to a past experience, but to a dream. I think dreams can show us those who will be most important in our lives before we know them enough to love them. I believe dreaming is an unproclaimed miracle. One I am most grateful for.

But almost all seriousness aside, dreams can also tell us some pretty disturbing things about ourselves and make us recognize that which we have been denying. I recently started keeping a Dream Diary on advice from a friend who had begun translating my dreams into very believable meanings for me. All in good fun, this experiment was meant to show me what recurring themes were appearing in my subcranium and get me to confront them and work out my anxiety issues. I noticed over time that what it was also doing, was forcing me to acknowledge the recurring variables and as I did so they became more solidified and unchangeable in my dreaming. Is this a good thing however, or is it taking something that's not meant to be taken so seriously to extremes?

Everything Starts With A Wish

"Fall-der-all and Fiddle-ee-dee, Fiddly, Faddelly, Foodle. All the dreamers in the world are dizzy in the noodle!...well I was just wishing, but I suppose that's not any good either....hmmm-Everything starts with a wish" ~Roger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella

I don't think I've ever really understood that song before. What on earth is the difference between a dream and a wish? I used to think. Aren't they essentially the same thing? After all, the cartoon Disney version of Cinderella says, "A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep..." But I suppose I've demonstrated already that we should not depend upon Disney movies as the source of all wisdom. Rogers and Hammerstein however, are like the ultimate creators of deep thought in theatre production. Ok, not really, but I really, really appreciate their insights. This one hit me today as particularly clever, and true.

I am a dreamer. A very bad one. I am often accused of leaving parts of myself in the dream world and forgetting to bring myself back to reality. I dream of being a successful writer and touring the country, no: the world! I dream of discovering hitherto undetected lands full of ancient artifacts and knowledge that will bring hundreds to the realization of truth. I dream of love and a warm, fuzzy, happily-ever-after with a companion who will never abandon me. I dream of peace and even saving all those little starving children in Africa and China. But do you know what? Not a single one of these dreams does me a lick of good. Sure, some of them have good purposes and intentions behind them, and none of them are truly bad things to dream about. Most of them are pretty good long term goals. But what does dwelling on them day after day and dreaming about what I could do or become tomorrow, do for today? Where does it get me? I'll tell you where. Sitting on my bed wondering why my arms are empty and being caught staring into space with a vacant expression during important conversations and having to rehear everything I missed because I was in lala land for the last fifteen minutes. Not particularly endearing to the speaker. No ma'am.

But a wish. A wish is grantable. Wishes are made one at a time, out of pure intention. If you are willing to get off your duff and believe in yourself and your wish, you yourself can make it come true. "I dream about marrying the prince," is very different from, "I wish to go to the ball so I can meet the prince and fall in love."

Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm not sure I'm being very clear. The thing is, dreams are passive. They are vague inclinations of what you think your future might be like, but probably feel it never will be. A wish is a clear and solid demand on reality of what you would like it to become. Wishes establish active intention, they're agressive!

So right here, right now, I'm going to establish some good solid wishes.

#1: I wish for a job. *I will now do the Cinderella-like thing and hunt one down with confidence

#2: I wish I could finish writing a book. *Now I shall work until the Eye is complete.

#3: I wish I could go on a mission. *I can start to prepare now and take the proper classes. I can save up everything I can and then ask for help with the rest. I will let others help me.

#4: I wish I were healthier. *And what kind of Cinderella doesn't clean up well? I'll cut out the crap and start running again. I can conquer asthma! I can conquer aching muscles! I can conquer my stubborn anti-will! Raar!

#5: I wish I were happy. *And what's stopping me? Happiness is a decision right? So you know what, from now on, I'm going to be happy! Try and stop me! I'm going to love my life for what it is and enjoy the ride. I'm going to stop criticizing myself and everyone around me and just love them. I'm going to stop worrying about the things I can't fix and happily solve the things I can. I'm going to walk on the sunny side and ignore the doom and gloom. As the good Lord instructs us, I am going to rejoice!

Each Life That Touches Ours For Good

One of my very favorite things about living at my house is sunday afternoons. Particularly the ones that my dad and I (and varying family members depending on who feels like it) sit together in the living room and sing hymns and family favorites (folk songs, home written, etc) for hours. I missed this sooo much while I was at school.

This afternoon after church we were singing together in the kitchen while we prepared lunches, and we kept the hymn book on the island counter inbetween us. Dad was flipping through it finding songs we don't sing very often, so we could have the challenge of figuring them out by ear and memory. At one point he turned the page and left it open to a spot he hadn't tried to pick because he had to get something out of the oven very quickly. I looked at the hymn book. It was open to the song 'Each Life That Touches Ours For Good.'

I flew back in time to one of my trips to Salt Lake when I was in school. It had been a very difficult drive, the snow was like those cartoons you see of wolves in the clouds and snowstorms, viciously chasing after the brave hearts venturing out in it and tearing them from the road. I saw countless cars flipped over, nearly lost in snow drifts, spun out in ditches, piled on top of one another, lit into great roadside bonfires and even jack-knifed and splinched semi trucks. It was terrifying.

On the freeway I was cut off and I slammed on the breaks, desperate to keep myself from sliding into the little red car I could surely run right over in my jeep. My car spun around twice, moving toward the opposite lanes of traffic. I nearly had it back under control, but I over corrected and we (I had a roommate and a close friend in the car with me) spun the other direction several times until we flew of the other side of the road. We hit three small metal poles but were otherwise unharmed. As friends in a stressful situation will do, we made humor out of our predicament. My surfer roommate from Cali was in the backseat sleeping when I lost control and woke up to the first of the metal poles hitting her door. "Oh...this sucks." She said as she sat up. The release of tension from the resulting laughter was euphoric, it was a helpful tonic that helped me remain calm as the ranger (of course I slid off the road right next to a parked ranger, because who else in the world has that kind of awful luck?) held us in place on that frozen roadside for over a half an hour until he finally called a cop who took over and held us there for another twenty minutes (by this time we have surely missed my roommate's plane) before letting us go with only the proviso that I pay for the poles we took out.

We were the lucky ones. As I sat on my cousins couch that evening I recieved several panic'd texts asking if I was alive, ok, hurt or otherwise. Assuming that my roommate or friend must have let spill about our accident to someone back at school I answered these with a light humor. However, the next day was Sunday and another of my roommates called to give me awful news.

A young man in our ward, one of our well-known secretary's, had been killed in the snowstorm driving to Utah at the same time as me. Until church no one had known who it was, she explained, only that someone in the ward had gotten in a bad car accident and passed away.

He had been driving down with his girlfriend to visit family in Salt Lake and a woman in the car behind him had bumped his car slightly, doing a very small amount of damage. Both cars pulled over to exchange numbers and information, standing at the back of his car. Another car on the highway lost control and spun out toward them, splinching both the young man and the woman in half between the two cars. Both died instantly. The girlfriend, sitting in the front seat, was injured but survived.

The next sunday we had a small memorial sacrament meeting for the boy and his family joined us. They invited us to the funeral and thanked everyone for all the help they had given their family, for packing up the boys things and for being the people who made up his life. They bore their testimonies to us and told us about him, and the father's speech in particular broke my heart. He seems to have taken the death of his son harder than anyone else, and didn't understand why it had happened. He was struggling to hold onto his faith. He was so very, very heartbroken.

I can not imagine a greater trial than losing a child. I do not think that any of us who have not experienced it can ever, ever understand the pain of it. I have never seen a man so broken before, I've never seen so much hurt in someone's eyes. It was painful just to see him. It was painful to know that there was nothing I could do, no way to help.

I have never lost any one even close to my own age before, never known someone who has died before they were sixty. I guess I felt that oft mocked confidence of youth that we are invincible. I think we all had quite a shock. It was so strange not to see him there in the office on sundays with his big welcoming smile and teasing eyes, the emptiness of walking into the rooms he used to haunt was harsh and troubling. For weeks whenever the boy was mentioned in sacrament meeting you would find the girls bathroom full of weeping girls after the meeting. The halls were solemn and quiet, people were always hugging and trying to comfort each other. This boy had been one of God's chosen, and we all knew it. He was one of those people that lights up and room and makes everyone feel comfortable, like he's known them since birth. He loved everyone, accepted everyone. It truly felt like we had lost a brother.

That sunday when we held the memorial, we sang a song I had never heard before, and haven't been able to sing all the way through since.

1. Each life that touches ours for goodReflects thine own great mercy, Lord;Thou sendest blessings from aboveThru words and deeds of those who love.

2. What greater gift dost thou bestow,What greater goodness can we knowThan Christlike friends, whose gentle waysStrengthen our faith, enrich our days.

3. When such a friend from us departs,We hold forever in our heartsA sweet and hallowed memory,Bringing us nearer, Lord, to thee.

4. For worthy friends whose lives proclaimDevotion to the Savior’s name,Who bless our days with peace and love,We praise thy goodness, Lord, above.
If there was ever a boy whose life proclaimed devotion to our Savior's name, and touched the life of everyone around him for the better is was him. Even in death he brought people together as nothing else could have, he brought us closer as a ward and helped us to learn to depend on each other to get through the hard times. I will be forever grateful that I knew him. I know he is doing great works on the other side. I hope that wherever they are, his parents know what an amazing spirit they raised, and that he is surely there watching over them as they try to go on with their lives.

I'm still watching you friend

I'm watching you friend. I'm watching your standards crash around you as you dance. I'm watching your dreams be crushed under your own mincing feet and I'm screaming for the dance to end. I'm watching you die a little with every step and still you will not listen. I'm watching you laugh at the blood you see trailed along the path of your twirls. Blood is fashionable these days. I'm watching you friend, and I can see the pain your dance is causing. I'm watching you wince with every movement, gasp with every breath. I'm watching you and I'm crying for you to let someone hold you, let someone love you. I'm watching you friend, but I do not think you see me. Why can't you see me friend, why don't you listen? I can see the tears roll down your face as you beckon for a dancing partner. I whisper to you friend, and I try to take your hand, but you're still dancing. You're still dancing, and I cannot dance this with you. But I'm still watching you my friend.

Oh The Issues (On a Serious Note)

It's true that living in Rexburg is very like living in a safe little buble free from the constant push of politics, persecution and issues that assult the rest of the church (and world) every day. However, in talking to family recently (as well as a small mention in church today) it has come to my attention that since Propisition 8 was passed there have been revolts and protests not only in San Francisco (where it would have actually affected the locals) but also in SLC at TEMPLE SQUARE. I have to tell you, I was shocked. I decided to look it up for myself and the first thing that came up was this: http://qsaltlake.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=870&Itemid=93 its an in your face organization and proclamation of the protests with no attempt to hide their hate and disregard for the church's right to stand up for their moral beleifs whatsoever. I do not understand how people who say they are trying to promote "love and acceptance" and protest "hate speech" can lead such cold-hearted protests and harrass people for trying to do what they think is right. This makes me so sad.
I am not unbiased, I know, I grew up a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I beleive it with all my heart and know I always will. However, I am also a product of my generation and several of my very best friends growing up were outrageously gay. I have absolutely no discrimination against them whatsoever, I am still friends with most of them and I love them to death. That doesnt mean that I agree with what they are doing. I know they dont agree with my religion and they know I dont support their decisions. We still love each other. I beleive that we can live in harmony and peace together.

I have to say, being in Rexburg at BYUI, since Obama's election (esp) I keep hearing comments such as, "This is it, this is the end, the second coming is coming, everyone is going to burn, you better be ready." Well, perhaps this is true. But NO ONE knows when He is coming! Its not right to scare everyone to death and we shouldnt be living in fear. If we are living righteously and are personally prepared, we WILL be all right! No matter what comes. Unity in the church is absolutely essential right now. We need to support each other and love each other and be one is heart, mind and purpose. We must be Zion in the world of Babylon, Soddom and Gamhora. Our purpose is to spread the gospel, to LOVE God's children, to support one another and show the world the light of Christ. We cannot do this if we are the ones who are hating. Please do not react with hate and fear to the troubles that plague our world and our church right now! We are going to see horrible things yes, but wonderful ones as well! Miracles surround us even now, we have to look and we have to REMEMBER, we must have open hearts and open minds! Remember that if He is coming it is a WONDERFUL thing! If He is not then we have so much work to do in Zion to prepare for when HE does, we can't afford to let in hate, fear, anger, sadness and dissention! The separation of the righteous from the worldly is coming, we are going to have to decide once and for all Who's Side we are on. As Bri put it, "there is no longer going to be a middle ground...Who's On the Lord's Side Who?" Supporting His prophets that are ON THE EARTH TODAY, is essential to those who want to be on His side. Times are changing, the Devil is throwing in every bet, pushing forth every evil purpose, his effort is not waning and neither should ours! The church, and the disciples of Christ cannot sit idly by and pretend they dont notice. We have to try to protect ourselves, our families and our world from the wickedness, corruption, horror, and hate that pervade from every side! We have to put up our standard as Captain Moroni did and proclaim to the world and to Our Father in Heaven where we stand, what we will fight for and Who we are! Angels surround us, they will fight with us and they pray that we will have the courage to fight with them! We are NEVER alone, Remember that! I pray for all of you, and most especially for the children we will be raising in this world. I hope the Lord is with you in these troubled times, and that you are with Him. Keep the Faith, I love you.