In many of our neighbors’ lives there is much…exquisite goodness which can never be written or even spoken–only divined by each of us, according to the inward instruction of our own privacy.
-From Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Sometimes I wait for permission to do something that would make me happy. Here is a superficial example. My favorite color is red, and I love interior design, but red has been “out of style” for a long time. So, dutifully, after Christmas, I have ushered out most of the red from my house. This year, someone gave me permission to keep some red things on the shelves in January. Four red plates and my seasonal red seat cushions are all it took to make me smile at my January kitchen.
The trends are mainly fueled by consumerism, so here is permission, if you need it, to put whatever you love on your shelves. To ignore the trends. To ignore the noise that tells us we are not stylish enough, sophisticated enough, or tidy enough.
On another level, here is permission to ignore some of the calls to listen to podcasts rather than seek our own revelation from God about life, faith, and joy. Our time is limited. Do we want a life diluted by noise?
There is a universe of possibilities within each of us. It’s a shame when we allow the world to dictate to us that we are inferior and the answer is to chase after relentlessly changing trends. Here is permission to follow the simpler and better way.
My plea to you this morning is to find rest from the intensity, uncertainty, and anguish of this world by overcoming the world through your covenants with God. Let him know through your prayers and your actions that you are serious about overcoming the world. Ask him to enlighten your mind and send the help you need. Each day, record the thoughts that come to you as you pray, and follow through diligently. Spend more time in the temple and seek to understand how the temple teaches you to rise above this fallen world.
Russell M. Nelson
“The Lord is hastening His work to gather Israel. That gathering is the most important thing taking place on earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude, nothing else compares in importance, nothing else compares in majesty.”
-Russell M. Nelson
One paradox of gospel living is that if we want to be gatherers, we will need to scatter in some way.
This might look like spending time away from home, scattered about in service.
Elder Cook taught, “When we shine, we gather.” Abandoning old habits, scattering them in the wake of better choices and Christ’s grace, has an effect of making a person shine.
Our family may be scattered for now, but wherever we are, we can be gatherers. Each time we have sent a family member to serve a mission, I have felt the blessing of additional spiritual strength. This is another paradox of gospel living, that in feeling incomplete, I become more intact in Christ. Gathered.
A few months ago we took a shift to clean the temple from 10 pm to midnight. People are doing this all of the time, and it was not a big sacrifice. I helped clean the baptistry, and part of my job was to dust the walls of the laundry room, which were not dusty, unlike the walls of my own home.
I was regretting that I wasn’t having a spiritual experience in this temple laundry room when this song came to my mind. The Spirit reminded me that caring for this room was a way to show my gratitude to my Heavenly Father for this temple and for His goodness to me all my life. So, I finished my shift, singing this song in my mind. The Spirit showed up for me in the laundry room that night to expand my vision.
I should ask the question more often, what can I do this day to show my gratitude to God?
On Mark’s ninth birthday I took him to the Payson temple open house. Later, this was the first temple that Mark entered to do baptisms for the dead. Through these experiences and more, this became his favorite temple, and recently, he received his endowment there.
In the Payson temple there is a fruit motif in the interior design, as it was built on land that was previously an apple orchard. As you ascend within building, the blossoms in the motif change to fruits.
As I reflect on raising Mark, I see that small, sacred things like attending a temple open house have yielded very sweet fruit.
In his life.
In mine.
And for our ancestors.
The last answer is my favorite part of this interview with the Church Architectural Historian who worked on the renovation of the Manti temple. (Nothing sensational or controversial here.)
This Instagram reel is an experiment to make my Grandpa Stewart’s home movies more accessible to my family.
One thing I have learned from watching his movies is that my grandmother was the star. ♥️
This was taken at the Spencer home in Salt Lake City at Christmas time in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s. My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother are beautiful in this clip. Carol is in the pale pink dress, JoAnn is in hot pink, and Lucille is in red.
I don’t know, I just really needed to see this film today.
I will post more short clips with music now and then. I look forward to sharing some very special family times with you.
After reading through my 2023 blog posts, I’ve decided that I want to end the year by listing one daily, one weekly, and one monthly thing that helped me get through a year which was actually very challenging.
A daily practice that helped:
A weekly practice that helped:
A monthly practice that helped:
I have also looked over my reading list from 2023 to see where I have been. I have a special shout-out for Charles Dickins’ David Copperfield and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
As I prepare for 2024, I don’t have any major resolutions. I do have plans to keep my good habits, while giving myself the grace to just do one thing at a time, including new things.
Wishing you a gentle look back at your 2023, and a hopeful look forward to your New Year.
Love,
A.
The most extraordinary thing in this world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.
G.K. Chesterton
The end of all activity in the Church is to see that a man and a woman with their children are happy at home and sealed together for time and for all eternity.
Boyd K. Packer
Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done…
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature…spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life.
George Eliot, Middlemarch