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Sabbath Devotional :: Lucille, Martha, and Amanda
This month I am especially drawn to examples of historical Latter-day Saint women who have persevered in faith and who demonstrated by their actions and gumption ways to improve society. Allow me to introduce you to three remarkable Saints. These brief sketches are taken from BlackPast.org which defines its purpose this way: BlackPast exists to weave the truths of the black American experience into every American’s identity, in order to make our union more perfect and our society more just.” That is a sentiment that should resonate with every MWEG sister. First meet Mary Lucille Perkins Bankhead (1902–1994) “Lucille Perkins . . . was a lifelong member of The Church…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Being One
Lately I have felt overwhelmed by insignificance. When I witness the unrelenting onslaught of misrepresentations of the truth; egos out of proportion; locked political horns despite 800,000 people struggling without paychecks; families separated at borders or savaged by crime and greed and disloyalty, I feel powerless. What can my one voice do to bring peace to this broken world of ours? I am reminded of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price where, after seeing a vision of the eternities and the vastness of the world and its people, he — “left unto himself” — admits, “I know that [humankind] is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.” Left “unto…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Advent: Of Grace Notes and Glory
I’ve had a busy week. Household chores were taxing and unrelenting. Juggling our families’ schedules for upcoming Christmas visits seemed as complex as prepping for the Olympics. Mountains of recycling needed to be schlepped over to the center — cardboard, paper, glass, plastic, metal — heavy, unwieldy and smelly. The mail offered bills and stacks of catalogs we didn’t need from mostly unlikely sources (Cigar connoisseur? Horse & Saddle?) What probably bugged me the most was the sudden dysfunction of my car’s Sirius XM radio. How could I keep up with our chaotic government without the news informing me mile after out-of-signal mile? Despite my frequent efforts to tune the…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Love Your Enemies
Years ago I discovered an amazing book called “Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus” by Neil Douglas-Klotz. It shares explanations and meditations on the Aramaic meanings behind some of the most familiar King James Version scripture passages. The book’s foreword gives some examples: How much . . . might result from hearing, for example, that what we have translated as “be you perfect” really means, “be you all-embracing,” or that . . . ”blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” also means “soften what’s rigid inside and you shall receive physical vigor and strength from the universe . . . and that…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Thoughts on My Vision
I woke up one morning this past June with what seemed to be a smudge of Vaseline on my right eye. When I looked straight ahead the center of everything was blurry. As the day wore on, my vision in that eye stayed wonky. I tracked down an ophthalmologist who did a variety of tests with expensive machinery that could take images of the inside of my eyeball. Apparently some small blood vessels in the back of my eye had burst. “Vascular occlusion” was the term the doctor used. Untreated, it could get worse, eventually leading to possible blindness. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s a treatment. A series of shots…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Thistling
My husband and I have a routine in July. At 5:30 pm we deck ourselves out in rugged clothing from hats to thick gloves to boots. We climb into our UTV (Utility Terrain Vehicle), arm ourselves with sturdy, sharp little clippers and drive on our acreage (which includes a lot of wilderness land) until we find a batch of thistles. In sunlight, thistles can look dazzlingly beautiful — like a hundred proud purple heads surveying their domain. In Scotland the thistle is the national flower. In some areas thistles are used for teas and some say dried out thistle heads can be used for horse fodder. For New Age mystics,…
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Sabbath Devotional :: An Anniversary
Yesterday, June 16th, was the anniversary of my baptism. I remember being the nervous young college student who (after two years of being a “dry Mormon”) had finally persuaded my parents that what they feared was an “adolescent whim” was in fact a stable commitment to follow the path I sensed God calling me to. We gathered at the mission home in Mt Prospect, Illinois, and I was baptized in their small kidney shaped backyard pool. I remember clutching the poor missionary’s arm so tightly it probably left marks. I remember being nervous while changing into dry clothing, hoping I’d done the right thing — or at least a right…
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Sabbath Devotional :: The Parable of the Power Wash
“Unless the Lord builds the house, they that labor build it in vain.” (Psalms 127: 1) During the late winter of 2016-2017 lots of things were running amok. The government, yes, but also personally for our house. That season we had a series of ice dams and gigantic icicles from our deck dripping into the walls and ceiling of the family room just beneath it. Fixing this situation was an expen$ive project that took most of the Spring and Summer of 2017. The contractors had to remove the stone surfaces on the deck, strip off the siding of the house between the main and second floors, fill every crack in…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Musings on Palm Sunday
All glory, laud, and honor to thee, Redeemer, King, To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring. Thou art the King of Israel, Thou David’s royal Son, Who in the Lord’s name comest, the King and Blessed One. On a donkey he came to the Holy City. Such an odd war horse. And strangely there’s no weapon of vengeance. This healer, this miracle man, this strange talking Galilean who promised upheaval, overthrowing of false authority, a new world. Surely this was the long awaited King, come to save the people of Israel from the brutal grip of Roman oppression. As Moses delivered the forefathers from slavery in Egypt,…
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Sabbath Devotional :: French Fries, Fear, and Faith
In December 2016 I sat across from my 30-year-old son Chase at a table in the cafeteria in Chicago’s Art Institute. While he dipped his fries in ketchup and mayonnaise (a taste treat he acquired on his mission to the Netherlands), he reached for my phone. “Here, Mom, I’m going to put the phone numbers of your state representatives into your phone. Who are they?” he said. “I have no idea,” I answered. I was a new citizen of Utah and really didn’t pay attention to such things. Tapping away at other buttons on my phone he pulled up a site that tells you who your representatives are by your…
