A Sabbath Experience...

Wow. I have so many adjectives to describe today in my mind, but this Sabbath cannot fairly be described as restful or a 'day of rest'. It's funny, but if you attend any church I cannot imagine that you have much rest at all. If you have children, then there is no possibility that the Sabbath is a day of rest. And for those of us with callings at church, those callings-even when enjoyable and fun- are learning experiences and as such are often work.

I will admit that Sundays for the last few years have always been a great deal of work. Taking Bug to church, getting us through the day and home along with the joys and responsibility of helping my friend Sarah Drew left me fairly wiped out. The pressure and work load was intense and after some Sundays of carrying 40+ pounds on my shoulders for two hours plus helping Sarah I will admit that I didn't really feel the spirit much at all. The struggle was just too great. And the weariness was manifested in almost everyday of my life as I would struggle and fight to stay awake any time I was at all stationary-while driving, while eating... even while driving a car.

In so many ways, Sundays have changed over the last year. I no longer have a best friend to sit with and I no longer have the struggle with Bug. I come to the building an hour before church and I open the library. I copy the programs and the inserts. I choose the items to change and put up front for checkout – the DVD's, new books, etc... I prepare the Sacrament kits and help people get what they need for their lessons. When the meeting starts, I close up and get up the courage to join into the group in the chapel... to reconcile myself to learning, to listening... to feeling alone in the crowd. If needed I also give of the time and my energy to help others with their children... to hug them, distract them, to quiet them... and to love them. That is my average typical Sunday. The work is different and is less physically exhausting than I used to do, but I would be lying if I didn't suggest that it isn't work. The secrets I bring and the burden and emotion and pain are just as much of a struggle in many ways. Heck, sometimes the weight of the pain and emotions and my silence feels somehow heavier than the weight of my son riding along on my shoulders for the hours on end as I bounced him quietly and tried to keep him silent in the past.

In some ways, this Sunday was no different. I had all of these tasks as well as my burdens, but one of my choices and circumstances today very much added to the stress of the day. One circumstance was that my phone broke and so I didn't arrive as early as I usually do... so I lost track of time and was only about 1/2 an hour early. When I arrived, I found that things were actually a bit chaotic and so I started my work by trying to hunt down the program and then racing to the supermarket to buy gluten free bread after it was discovered ten minutes before the meeting started that there was none to be found. I was back in twelve minutes (a record I think) and was only three minutes late for the start of the meeting... a stunning achievement, but I will admit not very spiritual. So it was with a relieved heart that I sat down in the foyer on the couch to catch my breath, to think and to try and bring myself back to be ready for the spirit.

However, my choice to sit in the foyer was a big mistake. While well intentioned, I discovered that I then had the difficulty of trying to listen to the talks in Sacrament with the members of one family walking back and forth every few minutes checking the foyer. It was very clear immediately that these members were no willing to enter the meeting, but were also not willing to sit in the foyer while I was sitting there... so they kept checking to see if I had left. The behavior was so obvious that another sister who came out of the meeting to sit in the foyer commented that I really need to apologize for offending these members as I surely must have done for this behavior to continue.... it was so clear to her what their purpose was. I tried to smile and just bite my tongue to continue to keep my silence. And so every time I saw one of them come to check, I would think of getting up to go into the meeting. Not because I felt comfortable or able to do so, but because I felt hounded and hunted and pressed to do so. So I tried to breath deeply and continue to sit... fighting the feelings of fear and anger welling inside and tried to listen. It was almost impossible to glean anything from the talks because it would take me a few minutes to really get myself refocused... and then they were back to see if I had gotten the 'hint' yet.... and the fragile peace in my head was shattered. It is hard to sit through this behavior and not feel like I have done something awful and deserve it... to remember that I have not only done all I can but have bent over backwards to try and make the situation manageable... to remember that in many ways I am the one who was wronged and now struggle to deal with the reality that her choices have helped create for me in my life. So I sat... and I sat... and the meeting finally ended.

I tried to deal with the library and some things there, but when I heard shouting a few minutes later in the foyer, I gave up and walked out. There I found one of the sisters yelling at the missionaries to force the child playing the organ in the chapel to stop- it was apparently inappropriate. (Frankly, yelling at the missionaries and in the church was inappropriate, but I digress. ; ) So I went into the chapel to see one of my favorite summer visitors happily playing the piano and celebrating song and church. Adam is a beautiful child with so many difficulties and disabilities and his joy was as obvious as his father's slight embarrassment. So he can't actually play music that we recognize and the composition is his own. Doesn't that make it an even greater gift to the Father? Soon he was distracted and came with me to the library for crackers and I gave him one of my very favorite books. Off to class he headed with his dad, satisfied and ready. And I picked up my stuff, left a message for the branch president, and took off hoping to steal an hour or two of silence for myself.

So many people say that I am strong- my branch president, friends, family... but I don't tend to feel that way. I feel like I am walking on a fragile cord struggling to keep my balance and hoping the cord won't break and send me crashing to the ground. Still, after all this time.... I am not sure about much, but I think I need a redefining of myself and my life. I need a new focus... a way to feel strong. But until then... I guess I keep going. :)

2012 Poetry Corner # 8 - Bug :)

Brilliant
Radiant
Optimistic
Creative
Knowledgeable

Adventurous
Delightful
Amazing
Miraculous
Smart

Gentle
Resourceful
Outstanding
Expressive
Silly
Blessed
Enthusiastic
Cuddly
Kind

I love him very much. He is a joy and one of the biggest blessings in my life!

Short Views on Biocentric History and its Early Adherents

This post is about biocentric history and its important past American historians. I also spent some time writing about the philosophy of transcendentalism. I found this topic fascinating and fun to study. I hope you enjoy!


Biocentric history is most easily defined as history compiled from the point of view of nature. However, collecting or 'doing' this form of history is quite difficult. It requires the historian to try to rid themselves of some basic unconscious biases that most human beings have. The historian must step back and recognize that humans are not the center of all things and that the world was not created solely for our benefit and use. The understanding that we as a species are not separate from other species and that all species are equal in importance and depend on each other for survival is also key. This is not an easy thing to ask of anyone I suspect. Certainly as a human I tend to anthropomorphize animals and plants and while a part of my brain considers other species to be equal to humanity, I can't really believe that if I am willing to eat meat (I think... I might need to think more on this.) Henry David Thoreau was considered a pretty good biocentric historian and in his writings and work he recorded activities of any animal he saw (be it bird, fish, insect, etc...). He tracked the life cycles of several species throughout the year and he tried to figure out how the activities of different animals and plants were connected to each other.... and to us.

In 1988, historian Robert K. McGregor wrote about Henry David Thoreau and his work and studies on nature... in particular, the red fox. He makes the point that while many people would not see the writings and nature studies completed by Thoreau as history in the traditional sense, they are an important part of a historical record in a few ways. One way is that the descriptions of all the animals that were seen as so precise that they give a clear record of all forms of life – plant and animal- that Thoreau encountered in that area. (A rare primary source indeed.) It gives a record of interactions between the different species and these interactions are describes over long periods of time in minute detail. Mr. McGregor makes it clear through his studies of Thoreau that the later certainly qualifies as a biocentric historian due to the writer's ability to try and discover the truth of nature and not simply create it around himself. Even when using his skills as a scientific man or as a believing transcendentalist, Thoreau worked to keep the work pure and didn't try to make any particular discovery in the sense that he recorded and tried to learn, but tried to not have any preconceived notion about what 'truth' he might find.

The word transcendentalism describes a philosophical movement or way of viewing the world that developed around the 1840's in response to the strong Puritan thinking of the day. Someone who was a transcendentalist usually had characteristics of many different fields of thought including philosophers, psychologists, intelligentsia, naturalists, etc.... There are quite a few well known individuals who were known as transcendentalists, but two of the most important were Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both of these men were writers and intellectuals. Henry David Thoreau took his thoughts and desires and acted upon them...living and writing in nature. He wrote about the strength that nature gives us as individuals and felt that human beings needed to find a balance between nature and civilization to survive and thrive. Thoreau believes that the wilderness was the raw materials of life and the farther we as human beings get from it, the less intelligent and understanding we are. He also believed that to truly understand nature you had to study it in its natural environment... you can't just remove a piece to study and think that you will understand the whole. Ralph Waldo Emerson believed in many of the same ideas but came to them in different ways. He also wrote about humans and their ideal relationship with nature which was not that nature was simply a commodity or something to exploit. He also felt that humans should enjoy the technology that they developed but not to allow the technology to take over their lives or to remove them from enjoying and understanding nature. (Boy, I think in many ways I have failed in that regard and I don't think that I am alone!) Lastly, Emerson believed in the concept of the 'oversoul'- the idea that we as individuals can be one with others and to not see the world in different parts... but as one component that we are part of. And the only way to find our 'oversoul' is to look at and understand nature. These men are great examples of people who believed and tried to teach and live the concept of transcendentalism.


Many American artists of this time belonged to a movement called the Hudson River School. While this sounds like a physical place, it was truly an almost intangible movement that was started and embodied by several American landscape painters during the nineteenth century. These artists completed many portraits of the area and surrounding land of the Hudson River valley.... and later on other areas of the midwest. Many of the paintings from these artists (which included the acknowledged founder Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Doughty as well as later artists Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, and Thomas Moran) were themed on the idea that human beings and nature could and should coexist peacefully. This movement tends to be viewed in three stages. The first stage is known as 'the Wild' and the landscapes and paintings tended to attempt to represent nature and wilderness untamed... The second stage is known as 'the pastoral' where farms and people are shown side to side with nature and wilderness. The third stage is known as 'the urban' and these paintings tended to focus on the views of nature trampled and tamed under the weight of factories and cities and railroads.

The idea and motivation behind this movement was the artist's attempts to capture their thoughts of nature and its crash course with people and civilization. By studying these artists and their works... as well as watching the changes of the works over time, we can study not only what these people thought at the time about the clash of environment and civilization, but we can also see what they thought the future looked like from their viewpoint. The views are not entirely accurate in the sense that the artists tended to take a very romanticized view of nature. It was thought that to understand spiritual truths we must understand them through our intuition and emotions that are evoked by our experiences and understanding of nature. These views tended to cause the artists to pour out their yearnings for the spirituality that they were unable to get from the current Protestant revivalism or the large industrial cities. In a way, these men were creating their spirituality and their religion from their thoughts/fantasies and which were spread and drawn onto the canvases through their brushes. (It is no mistake that these artists were nicknamed “priests of the natural church” by art historian Barbara Novak.) And as very converted and zealous believes, the artists did tend to leave out of their painting real images that they didn't want to display. So nature was tranquil and peaceful and beautiful and the paintings never tending to show the reality of what had happened to much of the land that was being painted... the burned over fields, pollution in the lands and the streams, and other signs of the destruction of wildlife and human activity were rarely added to the portraits.

This movement is important as it helps us to understand the world that these paintings were produced in. We are able to see what they had hoped for and as time went on what they saw the future of nature and wildlife becoming... or maybe disappearing is more appropriate. We can also see how our current views of nature and civilization have merged and been formed through not only the beliefs and images of these men, but the beliefs of the society that surrounded them.

Another great painter of this time was George Catlin. He was a painter who was fascinated with Native Americans and their culture. It is not entirely known how his fascination developed to a point that he dedicated his life to their study, but it is known that his mother told him stories of her life as an Indian captive when she was younger and he also enjoyed the experience and inspiration of a visiting Indian delegation to Philadelphia where he was working as a young man. He was quite alarmed at how quickly civilization and other people were rapidly disappearing the differing groups and so he resolved to spend his life painting them in their 'natural habitat' before both the Indians and their natural habitat were gone. He was also a strong advocate of the idea of a national park in the hopes of saving both the vanishing Indian and the wilderness that was rapidly disappearing as well. His idea of a national park would be a place that both Indians and animals could live “in all the wild[ness] and freshness of their nature's beauty.” His work was seen as important because his works helps draw the parallel between the disappearance of pristine wilderness and the Native American. He also tried through his artwork to show others a picture into the daily lives of many Native Americans.... their tasks, work, clothes, relationships, etc.... It was his hope that a national park could potentially save both the Indians and the wilderness. It is with sadness that we know that his idea did not work and in fact, when national parks were developed, Indians who lived in its boundaries were then forcibly removed to make the areas safe and beautiful for white Americans.

So what are your thoughts? How is nature part of your worship or spirituality? Are the images of nature in your head rather fanciful and romantic? Do you think of nature and the wilderness as tamed and found in parks or other countries... Is it mysterious or a true part of you.....

Hope...

This is a summary of a talk that I gave in sacrament meeting a few weeks ago. I hope this summary might be helpful for someone out there. Preparing this talk was very helpful for me. :)



What exactly is hope? Hope is the word that we use to describe an emotional state or attitude in which we hold the belief and wish for a positive outcome in our circumstances. In many cases, we tend to treat hope as a noun... a simple object... easily described and dissected. Therefore, the idea of hope in our lives tends to become simplistic... almost wishful as in “I hope I pass my test” or “I hope it doesn’t rain.” In this way, hope can almost be described as an irresponsible or fickle friend... the friend who follows through on agreements sometimes or not at all. If we view hope through this lens, there can be very little wonder as to why the word has become trite and trivial in the majority of ways that it is used in our lives.

When I was asked to give this talk and was given my topic, I will admit that I didn’t want it. I have been having a really hard time feeling hopeful about much over the last few months. Trying to look at my uncertain and unknown future has felt more appropriately fearful than hopeful. And doing random 'scripture opening' for inspiration was no help at all – do you have any idea how many verses in the Bible contain the words 'there is no hope' or 'hope is lost?' It wasn't funny the first few times it happened, but as time has moved closer towards the date that I must present something, I have started to find it pretty funny.

So, instead of using the scriptures to start.... I tried to stand back and think about what hope means to me in my life. And I found something a little extraordinary. The first clear thought that I had is that hope is a verb... very active. When I have truly felt that I understood hope, it has been when I have been busy doing good things. When I conjure up an image of hope in my mind, it reminds me more of a cheerful, quickly moving beam of light the color of the clearest blue. Quick moving, but not frantic. Purposeful and kind. So to understand hope, we must truly understand that hope has three important aspects for true understanding.

First - hope is a voluntary and changing mindset. To feel positive and hopeful towards the experience that you are living through and to believe in good for your future, you must actively cultivate the aspects of faith and gratitude in your life. Good thoughts, optimism and true joy are things that we must work to gain and do not necessarily come from doing the right things. It has been my experience that some of the most faithful and charity-filled members that I know can also be the most depressed and find the challenge of negative thoughts to be one of the strongest wars that they have had to fight in their minds and their lives. So to be hopeful is truly an active process. Elder Wilford has stated clearly that “Hope, with its attendant blessings of peace and joy, dos not depend upon circumstance.” It is a constant awareness and recalculation of our thinking and or emotions... an unending process where we must actively through our circumstances seek to cultivate an environment where hope can feel welcome and can thrive. I will not pretend that this is an easy process and it is truly easier said than accomplished.

C.S. Lewis once said, “Hope is one of the theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.”

Second – is that Hope is a call to caring and to active work. Hope asks us to care... and to care intensely! Yet also asks us to understand that things may not always be the same so we should not care too much. Hope tells us and pushes us to work because there is much to work for... even though what we are working for may sometimes be unseen or elusive to our understanding. However, hope also calls us to play and to celebrate... to be active in our joys as well as our tasks. Hope is not passive.

2 Nephi 31:20 - Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.

Close your eyes and think about the verbs in your mind and the images they create.

'ye must press'
'steadfast'
'feasting'
'endure'

Can any of these words been seen as passive... easy... weak? All require action on our parts.

Third – it must be stated that hope is an action that we are asked to give others. This is one of the only times that the word should be treated as a noun. It is by our actions towards others that we can give hope to people whose trials have overwhelmed their ability to actively cultivate hope. It is through the actions of love and charity that we are able to share the burdens of others and bring them the small but exquisite and beautiful pearl of hope. We cannot provide hope to those who struggle with a small pat of our hand and our 'hope that tings will get better for them'... it is provided through active work – thought, prayer, and service. In this sense, we are able to be hope for someone else and to give them the temporary ability to be buoyed up in hope so that they can again commence the personal work of creating their own foundation in hope.

Elder Neal Maxwell stated, “Genuine hope is urgently needed in order to be more loving even as the love of many waxes cold; more merciful, even when misunderstood or misrepresented; more holy, even as the world ripens in iniquity; more courteous and patient in a coarsening and curt world; and more full of heart felt hope, even when other men's hearts fail them. Whatever our particular furrow, we are to 'plow in hope' without looking back or letting yesterday hold tomorrow hostage.”

My brothers and sisters, may we be inspired to do the work necessary to cultivate hope in our minds and our lives and to give hope to others. May we allow the things that we hope for to lead us to a greater faith in Christ and our Father and that the things that we find hope will lead us firmly towards charity and love. I saw these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

2012 Poetry Corner # 7 : Duo Haiku

My heart feel so full
love, grief, confusion, need, hope
May today be well


Hope springs eternal
love wells upwards inside me
May the day be blessed