Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Yes, I have a sweet tooth, and the dental bills to prove it. Because my favorite holidays are the ones that involve food, I love Halloween. Continue reading ‘Happy Halloween! (Don’t dress like Elvira at BYU)’
Archive for October, 2007
I just deleted 20 registered users and their associated posts. Most of them were from .ru ISP’s, with one or two from .kr. Those that were dot coms had names like “MarlboroCig” and no associated human names. All the registered users that I recognized or that appeared legitimate are still here.
If I deleted you, and you AREN’T a spammer, I’m really, really sorry. Next time, please put your name in the “name” box, so I’ll know you are a real person.
We have the Akismet spam filter running, and it’s pretty good, but some stuff still slips through, and I don’t want to make it easier for that to happen.
Brothers and Sisters, I would indeed be remiss if I did not stand before you today and tell you that I know 72 hour emergency kits are true. Cell phones are also true, as well as the internet and my local PBS Station, KPBS. And wise use of sufficient tax dollars is also a true principle.
Sunday, in the late afternoon, the wind was hot, and blowing hard at my house in San Diego County, Continue reading ‘Emergency Preparedness’
There is a great magazine called The Sun (not to be confused with Sunstone), I highly recommend it. I just read a wonderful interview with John O’Donohue, he is a philosopher, author and retired/resigned Catholic priest. It was so interesting and inspiring. Here is the first of a few parts I thought would be of interest to this group/blog and the Mormon experience.
Interviewer: You’ve said that each Catholic can create his or her own “niche” in the faith. Is that really Catholicism?
O’Donohue: The term a la carte Catholicism has been used to denigrate those who pick and choose from the tradition, selecting only what nourishes, challenges, and heals them. On the other hand, nobody goes into a restaurant and chooses everything on the menu. Continue reading ‘The Unseen Life - part 1′
A mission is not a natural act. This is something I believed long before I went with my companion and two other elders to an R-rated movie. (More about that later.) But I was reminded of this today when I saw our local missionaries’ car in the ward parking lot. Someone had written graffiti on the windows, making it look like high schoolers on their way to the homecoming football game. Instead of “Beat the Blue Devils”, or “Go Panthers!” it had LDS themes: “CTR” in a shield; “We’re Mormon Missionaries”; and my favorite, “We (heart) Mormon Girls.”
Yes, “We (heart) Mormon Girls.” Now, if that doesn’t inspire confidence in member-missionary relations, I don’t know what does.
Our missionaries are young, and they may even be immature enough to have decorated the car themselves, but I somehow doubt that it was their own graffiti. More likely, it was written on the car by the missionary fan club while the elders were in meetings. Still, it reminded me of my own mission experiences.
I went on my mission back before “the bar” was raised. If anything, it was as low as it had ever been. I went when males were called for 18 months, and with the way that transfers worked out, I served just 17. Granted, it seemed much longer than that, but still, the bar was low. Very low.
For instance, my mission president didn’t mind us seeing movies once a month, as long as they were “clean” movies. At the time, I didn’t even look at the marquis when we went to the small-town theater on P-Day and saw a matinee. There wasn’t much skin, but there was a lot of violence in that movie. It was a natural thing for four 20-yr-olds to do. The un-natural thing happened when one of the ward members came through the theater whispering, “Elders? Elders, where are you?” He wanted to take us to the district leaders’ baptism in a nearby town. Not finding us at the apartment, he looked around, asking himself where we might be. Seeing the theater down the street, he assumed we were there, despite the fact that it was an R-rated action flick playing. See, I told you the bar was low.
So I’m going to cut our missionaries some slack when I see their car decorated with graffiti, even if it is their own handiwork. Part of the reason is that I’m not looking to convert anybody. But the more important part is that a mission is not a natural act. As I recall, Joseph Smith himself said something to the effect that if you keep a spring wound too tightly, it will break. Even Elder G, the tightly-wound companion with whom I suffered tension headaches, loosened his spring when the next James Bond movie came out. Besides, the girls I heart are Mormon girls, too… although I never wrote it on my car windows.
If you haven’t seen it already, check out this interview with Ken Jennings, about being a Mormon.
I heard a story about a man of action. He had accomplished a great deal in his life; he’d had adventures, and engaged in interesting and creative hobbies. His wife followed him. In the process she also had adventures and engaged in interesting and creative hobbies. But they were his choices, his ideas. He was the instigator. He was the actor. She was along for the ride.
I find myself in much the same situation, and it bothers me. Few people who knew me back in my single parent days would describe me as a follower. If things happened in my life, I made them happen. Nobody was going to do it for me! Now, after ten years of marriage, I find myself a reactor to the life that’s happening around me, instead of creating the life I want to live.
I wonder how much my twenty years of church indoctrination has contributed to this? Nothing is really keeping me from writing music reviews, or auditioning for local theatre, or marching for peace from Washington Square through the French Quarter on October 27th. My husband would encourage my pursuit of my own interests and certainly isn’t standing in my way. However, I seem to think that the only valid alternative use of the hours I spend on the internet is housework. And I hate housework.
I think the church has not-so-subtly encouraged my passivity. I do what I’ve been called to do, and if I’ve not been called to do it, I don’t. I’m not creating my own life. I’m existing within the life I’ve landed in. It doesn’t have to be this way. So why is it? How do we become actors in our own lives, instead of reactors to others? I am reminded of a line from the play Auntie Mame: “Life is a banquet,” Mame Dennis declared, “and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death.”
In an episode of Law and Order, the director of a residential facility for severely mentally disabled children and adolescents is charged with causing the death of a resident by using a banned “control” device. As evidence in his favor, one of the other residents “testifies,” using a letter board, guided by his mother. A simple test by Our Man, Sam Waterston, demonstrates that it is the mother, not the boy, who is selecting what to “say.” It’s a very sad scene. In conference afterwards, Sam identifies what has happened clearly: the woman has now realized that she’s spent the last five years talking to herself.
I sometimes feel like that about prayer. Like I’m saying what I want, and what I hope, and what I feel, but I might as well be talking to myself. There are the occasional glimmers of a response, but they are few and far between, and I mistrust them even while I count myself fortunate for them.
This puts me in a predicament. I have a number of callings in my ward. One of these callings offers the scope to recommend others to replace me in some of these callings. Also, there are other callings that need filling that I need to make recommendations for. How am I to do this if God isn’t speaking to me? I get ideas, and ask God about them, and get back nothing. No “stupor of thought,” no warm fuzzies, no pleasant confirming thoughts. Nothing. Talking to myself.
I want to honor the process. I want to do the right thing. I want to recommend people to fill these positions. But there is a “right way” to do this, and I don’t seem to be capable of it.
General Conference came and went, and I didn’t see even a minute of it. I heard a couple of minutes of the first session on Saturday, but it was after the Big News. I didn’t stick around to hear how wonderful it is to live in Utah, courtesy of some guy who lives there.
I did closely follow the proceedings on the Bloggernacle. For those of you who are in somewhat the same situation as I am (sorta believing, but with limits) I highly, highly recommend it. Intelligent thoughtful people extract the best from the conference talks and make them interesting. I may even read some of the actual talks when the Ensign comes out next month!
Bloggernacle Conference Highlights:
- The whole series of discussions at Times and Seasons
- Guy Murray’s summaries at Messenger and Advocate
- Kristine Haglund’s inspiring and uplifting take on RS President Julie Beck’s talk
Once again, the Bloggernacle has come through for me. It’s amazing how much more I like church filtered through the lens of smart people who don’t have my cynicism or bias.
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