Right now I am going through boxes of my old stuff. I found a calendar of inspirational quotes and pictures that a friend gave me for Christmas once, so here are some faves:
"Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path." -Sir Winston Churchill
"Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it." -Confucius
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" -Aristotle (one of my faves but I didn't know who exactly said it. Good old Aristotle)
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams." -Henry David Thoreau
"A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ( I love Romantics!)
"I never think of the future - it comes soon enough." -Albert Einstein (relatively.)
"It is easy to be brave from a safe distance." -Aesop
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." -Mark Twain
"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time." -Friedrich Nietzsche
And my personal favorite quote of all time:
"Be great in act, as you have been in thought." -William Shakespeare
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
Christmas
Now that Christmas is completely over, I can write about it.
I started this Christmas out with Midnight Mass at the Catholic church up at the U. One of Cory and Alyssa's friends invited us to go, and I was lucky enough to sit next to her during the mass, so I got a lot of explanationabout tiny little things throughout the meeting (ceremony? session?). There was a rock band choir and a lot of singing of traditional Christmas hymns. There were also a couple of poppy songs about the power of love, which I tried to imagine in an LDS service. :) That at least was amusing. My favorite part of the mass is when they had an open prayer session and people in the congregation could shout out whatever they felt the need to pray for. One woman mentioned the soldiers, and I felt so glad, because that was what has been on my mind lately. During the Lord's prayer, we all held hands, and then everyone went around greeting each other and hugging and shaking hands. That was pretty cool, too. It seemed such a stark contrast to the feeling of the Catholic churches in Europe, although I didn't ever attend a mass there. This experience made mass feel so much more human.
I slept in my sister Jill's room on Christmas Eve, and then on Christmas morning, I was awoken by my parents moving around and talking upstairs around 8. I think that was the first time that they woke me up instead of the other way around. We started the present procession around 9 and finished close to 11. As usual.
Jill then made us a Christmas breakfast and we lounged about, watched Johnny English, then made Christmas dinner for which my step-grandma Annetta joined us. The mashed potatoes I made were probably the worst batch I've ever made - not nearly buttery enough. But my mom practically insisted they were fine, I think because she didn't want me to make them more fattening. Next time I am going to fatten them up with sour cream.
So now I am going to just copy from the Christmas email I sent out to explain my feelings about the season:
For my final essay in American Literature this past semester, I wrote an essay about T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and my thesis was that because the poem is so fragmented, the reader has to work hard to gather any meaning out of it, and because they have to work so hard, the poem means so much more. As I was sitting in sacrament meeting the Sunday after I turned the essay in, I was pondering on it, and I realized this was exactly what was going on in my life, spiritually, academically, socially, and emotionally. I had been receiving bits and pieces of light in a way I couldn't understand, so I had had to work to make sense of the experiences I was having. At that moment, I knew I had to have the faith to work hard enough to put those pieces together. That is what happened once I got home for Christmas. Life started falling in place, not in the way I expected, but in a way more surprising and beautiful. And God always works like that. He is brilliant! Although there are still a lot of unanswered questions, I have been provided with a way to move happily through life.
That way is faith in the healing power of the Atonement. I want you all to know that I know my Savior lives and this is what life is about. It's about experience, acceptance, and forgiveness. It's about allowing others to reach you and touch you and lift you up. It's especially about letting Jesus Christ lift you up, because he can lift you higher than anyone else ever could. This is why we have Christmas.
I hope I can remember that all throughout the year and not just at Christmas. As for now, I have a lot to think about and a lot to do...so more thoughts later. We will see how long Christmas holds out...
I started this Christmas out with Midnight Mass at the Catholic church up at the U. One of Cory and Alyssa's friends invited us to go, and I was lucky enough to sit next to her during the mass, so I got a lot of explanationabout tiny little things throughout the meeting (ceremony? session?). There was a rock band choir and a lot of singing of traditional Christmas hymns. There were also a couple of poppy songs about the power of love, which I tried to imagine in an LDS service. :) That at least was amusing. My favorite part of the mass is when they had an open prayer session and people in the congregation could shout out whatever they felt the need to pray for. One woman mentioned the soldiers, and I felt so glad, because that was what has been on my mind lately. During the Lord's prayer, we all held hands, and then everyone went around greeting each other and hugging and shaking hands. That was pretty cool, too. It seemed such a stark contrast to the feeling of the Catholic churches in Europe, although I didn't ever attend a mass there. This experience made mass feel so much more human.
I slept in my sister Jill's room on Christmas Eve, and then on Christmas morning, I was awoken by my parents moving around and talking upstairs around 8. I think that was the first time that they woke me up instead of the other way around. We started the present procession around 9 and finished close to 11. As usual.
Jill then made us a Christmas breakfast and we lounged about, watched Johnny English, then made Christmas dinner for which my step-grandma Annetta joined us. The mashed potatoes I made were probably the worst batch I've ever made - not nearly buttery enough. But my mom practically insisted they were fine, I think because she didn't want me to make them more fattening. Next time I am going to fatten them up with sour cream.
So now I am going to just copy from the Christmas email I sent out to explain my feelings about the season:
For my final essay in American Literature this past semester, I wrote an essay about T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and my thesis was that because the poem is so fragmented, the reader has to work hard to gather any meaning out of it, and because they have to work so hard, the poem means so much more. As I was sitting in sacrament meeting the Sunday after I turned the essay in, I was pondering on it, and I realized this was exactly what was going on in my life, spiritually, academically, socially, and emotionally. I had been receiving bits and pieces of light in a way I couldn't understand, so I had had to work to make sense of the experiences I was having. At that moment, I knew I had to have the faith to work hard enough to put those pieces together. That is what happened once I got home for Christmas. Life started falling in place, not in the way I expected, but in a way more surprising and beautiful. And God always works like that. He is brilliant! Although there are still a lot of unanswered questions, I have been provided with a way to move happily through life.
That way is faith in the healing power of the Atonement. I want you all to know that I know my Savior lives and this is what life is about. It's about experience, acceptance, and forgiveness. It's about allowing others to reach you and touch you and lift you up. It's especially about letting Jesus Christ lift you up, because he can lift you higher than anyone else ever could. This is why we have Christmas.
I hope I can remember that all throughout the year and not just at Christmas. As for now, I have a lot to think about and a lot to do...so more thoughts later. We will see how long Christmas holds out...
Monday, December 22, 2008
Snow-covered Funeral
Today I went to the funeral of a family friend. And it inspired me to start a blog.
No, not really. I'd been considering it for a while.
However, let me call upon my powers of description to set this scene:
Snow is falling lightly, the kind of snow that falls down in miniscule balls, not flakes. We walk down a sopping path of grass-stained snow to the grave site, and we can see the foggy Salt Lake Valley beyond the pine trees at the cemetery wall. A man hands out large umbrellas, and soon the small crowd around the grave is sheltered by a navy blue ceiling. A prayer is said, and a man steps up and inflates his bagpipes. His straight army face is softened as his piper-stiff fingers find "Amazing Grace" in honor of his grandmother. The snow continues to swirl in around us all we all gaze upon the valley and again upon the grave. At the music's conclusion, the pall bearers remove their boutonnieres and the women throw pale pink long stemmed roses onto the pink casket already bearing a white and pink bouquet with a long ribbon which declares "Mom." We stand for a moment; no one dares to move. Finally the group slowly disperses to return to the church and partake of funeral potatoes.
Here is what I actually learned from the funeral:
-Why wait until you are 60 and actually have grandchildren to be a grandma?
-Recipes are meant to be shared.
-Don't turn down opportunities to take care of kids.
-Listen to everything everyone tells you: getting to know people is priceless and precious.
-Keep your home open to anything.
-Learn everything you want to learn.
-Make cookies whenever you feel like it.
And for the record, it was actually my Aunt Frances's funeral that inspired me to start a blog. I just couldn't decide if I really wanted to give in or not.
No, not really. I'd been considering it for a while.
However, let me call upon my powers of description to set this scene:
Snow is falling lightly, the kind of snow that falls down in miniscule balls, not flakes. We walk down a sopping path of grass-stained snow to the grave site, and we can see the foggy Salt Lake Valley beyond the pine trees at the cemetery wall. A man hands out large umbrellas, and soon the small crowd around the grave is sheltered by a navy blue ceiling. A prayer is said, and a man steps up and inflates his bagpipes. His straight army face is softened as his piper-stiff fingers find "Amazing Grace" in honor of his grandmother. The snow continues to swirl in around us all we all gaze upon the valley and again upon the grave. At the music's conclusion, the pall bearers remove their boutonnieres and the women throw pale pink long stemmed roses onto the pink casket already bearing a white and pink bouquet with a long ribbon which declares "Mom." We stand for a moment; no one dares to move. Finally the group slowly disperses to return to the church and partake of funeral potatoes.
Here is what I actually learned from the funeral:
-Why wait until you are 60 and actually have grandchildren to be a grandma?
-Recipes are meant to be shared.
-Don't turn down opportunities to take care of kids.
-Listen to everything everyone tells you: getting to know people is priceless and precious.
-Keep your home open to anything.
-Learn everything you want to learn.
-Make cookies whenever you feel like it.
And for the record, it was actually my Aunt Frances's funeral that inspired me to start a blog. I just couldn't decide if I really wanted to give in or not.
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