Angela – Page 26 – Letters from Home

A drive into Salt Lake City

My friend Janine took me to the roof of the Conference Center so we could get a view of the construction surrounding the Salt Lake Temple. Each crane was in use, cement was being poured, and there were workers everywhere. There was a lot going on.

There are many beautiful pieces of art on display at the Conference Center. This is an enormous mural of the Savior greeting people of all nations. If you look carefully at the clouds, you will see that they are angels. 🤍

A few quotes I want to remember

Reading this book was like revisiting my old life as a college student, doing field work, collecting insects, identifying trees, and watching for wildlife. My interests in the Bible, theology, zoology, botany, and writing held a party in my mind as I read Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. I loved this book.

A few quotes:

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

I cannot cause the light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.

Fish gotta swim, and bird gotta fly; insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another.

The creation is not a study, a roughed-in sketch; it is supremely, meticulously created, created abundantly, extravagantly, and in fine.

I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves.

I am buoyed by a calm and effortless longing, an angled pitch of the will, like the set of the wings of the monarch which climbed the hill by falling still.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Spring Recital 2023

Mark played Mendelssohn’s Preludium in E minor. Each student dedicated their performance to someone. Mark dedicated his piece to his Grandma Carol.

Concert

My friend Stephanie took me to a Millennial Choirs and Orchestras concert on Friday night. This was one of the songs that they performed, although this recording is from an Arizona performance. There are chapters of this choir and orchestra in several states, including California, Arizona, Texas, and Utah.

My favorite piece that they performed was A Mighty Fortress is our God, arranged as a piano concerto with a full choir and orchestra. The pianist was Brandon Stewart on a Fazioli concert grand piano. I never want to forget this. However, there doesn’t seem to be a recording of this piece available. Were You There When They Crucified our Lord was also very good. If you have a chance to see this group perform, I hope you can go.

Enlightened faith

Above, you’ll see a short clip of one of the best devotionals on the topic of faith. The speaker is eloquent and sincere.

If you like the short version, I’ve also included the full version, below. A friend shared this with me right after it was given. I searched my post history and realized I hadn’t shared it here, and I had to fix that.

I like to listen to things like this while I do the dishes or clean a room because words like these are such good company!

Working and waiting.

Lately, I have experienced really low motivation to achieve, work, go out, and improve. I have needed to ignore how I feel, and like a robot, I continue to work each day.

I find satisfaction in accomplishing things I don’t feel like doing, and I’ll keep working until my motivation sneaks back in, well past curfew.

“Where have you been?” I will ask. But the answer won’t matter because I have continued to grow, regardless.

The blank years

I often dodged having my photo taken in high school because I didn’t like how I looked. My grandfather took this photo in 1989.

Hair volume aside, when I see this snapshot, I realize that my negative thoughts about my looks were big fat liars.

Workspace

I have a temporary workspace set up in Paige’s empty bedroom where I am sorting through family history documents and photos. I have two main goals: identify individuals in the photos so we can attach them on the FamilySearch website, and assemble a family tree of Great-grandmother Cerie’s Swedish relatives.

I have found a lot of incidental treasures in the process:

A collection of squares of toilet paper from various countries throughout Europe from 1957. These vary in quality and composition, ranging from waxed paper to gritty and rough-ridged. Strange souvenirs.
A lengthy journal which described a long journey from California to Sweden, only to be almost silent about the relatives they visited there.
A photograph of a great-great-great grandmother that I do not recognize. She is merely labeled, “Mormor,” which means maternal grandmother.
Menus from the Swedish American Line from 1957 with artwork so beautiful that I framed them to display in my house.
Hair samples of loved ones.
A scrapbook of sensational stories and pictures from newspapers from 100 years ago, highlighting the cute, macabre, and cultural. I think of this book as “Cerie’s Pinterest boards.”

It is a big puzzle, and I have spent many hours studying, reading, and cataloguing these things. It is incredibly slow work. I have learned that in 100 years, when your great-grandchild is sorting through your photos, she will not know the identities of your close loved ones. Please, label your photos with care, including first and last names and locations.

28th anniversary

It is a stunning gift to enter into the covenant of marriage within the temple. This covenant is not just between husband and wife, but also with God. This has breathtaking implications, not only in the eternities, but now.

Today I share a quote from a mind-shifting article that President Nelson wrote. He is teaching about all the covenants we make, and as I study these words in relation to the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, I see the years of our marriage with more informed eyes. The Lord’s imprint is everywhere.

Just as marriages and families share a unique lateral bond that creates a special love, so does the new relationship formed when we bind ourselves by covenant vertically to our God! This may be what Nephi meant when he said that God “loveth those who will have him to be their God” (1 Nephi 17:40).

This is exactly why, as part of the covenant, a special mercy and love—or hesed—is available to all who enter this binding and intimate relationship with God, even “to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:9).

Making a covenant with God changes our relationship with Him forever. It blesses us with an extra measure of love and mercy. It affects who we are and how God will help us become what we can become. We are promised that we, also, can be a “peculiar treasure” unto Him (Psalm 135:4).
Russell M Nelson, “The Everlasting Covenant,” Liahona, October 2022.

This disaster is actually a tender mercy.

Richard awoke at 3:30 am on Saturday and had an impression that he should check the furnace room. He found the beginnings of a flood in this basement area, and bleary-eyed, we cleared out the wet boxes and vacuumed up excess water on the floor through the early hours of the morning. We were able to discover the leak was from the water heater. There was minimal damage, and the carpets are fine.

We were disappointed, as we had plans to go to Susanna’s wedding reception on Saturday, which we had to miss. We were also without hot water for a couple of days.

The thing that we will remember is that we were so completely cared for by the Lord.

He inspired Richard to wake up so he could protect our home. The flood began before we were scheduled to be away from the house. Mark was home on Saturday and could help Richard move out the old water heater and bring inside the new one. Richard had tools, knowledge, skill, and some helpful insights from others so he could install the water heater himself, long before any plumber could come.

I don’t know why we were spared the trial of a fully flooded basement, but I know who spared us.