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Sabbath Devotional :: The Healer’s Art
“If you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.” (C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy) This may not be the message that any of us want to hear right now, but I believe that it is perhaps the most important one I can offer. Simply put, having done one hard thing, it may be time for us to do another and harder and better one. We must each commit to transition from warriors to healers. So how can we “learn the healer’s art” and truly accelerate the return to health that we are all in desperate need…
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Are You Aware? Face Value
This is part IV in our Awareness Wednesday series on the Asian American Experience. Read the other posts in the series here. As we anxiously awaited the birth of our daughter, I found myself, as countless parents before me, wondering about my baby and her future. What would she look like? What would her personality be like? What traits would she gain from us and our families? However, I also spent time thinking about how my baby girl would see and be seen in the world — how would she self-identify in terms of race, and how would others define and perceive her because of her appearance. In 1941, another first-time mother was…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Christ-Centered Leadership: Examples from First Nephi
When our son TJ was a young child, my husband and I visited my graduate school mentor. As he watched our son totter around his office energetically, he said to me, “Lisa, you’re a psychologist now, trained in personality theory and behavior. Let’s see you control that child!” My mentor was, of course, teasing. But he was also reminding me that children come with the developing ability to act for themselves; and we, as parents, have the opportunity to help nurture their ability to make good choices. In our capacity as leaders, and in our roles as parents, we are constantly faced with decisions about encouraging or restricting the agency…
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Are You Aware? A Brief Review of Asian American History
This is part I in our Awareness Wednesday series on the Asian American Experience. Read the other posts in the series here. Asian culture and peoples have always been the “East” to the European “West.” During the Roman Empire, trade routes and networks were established early on between these two regions and cultures. The fascination and desire to trade with the East and its otherworldly foods, animals, and the like is what compelled many, including Christopher Columbus, to embark on a voyage in search of Asia. Early migrations The first Asians to set foot in the Americas were mostly from China, Japan, and the Philippines, arriving in New Spain (Alta California and parts…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Broken
Jesus Christ invites us to “come unto [him] with a broken heart and a contrite spirit” (3 Nephi 12:19). What does it mean to have a “broken heart”? I once heard a teacher point out that we use the word “broken” to describe the process of taming a horse and training it to be ridden. Knowing that the Lord would like us to be someone who “putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Perfect Brightness — Light of the World
I have been thinking a lot about light. This is probably because I have been experiencing a lot of darkness. During this time when the world feels so strange and unsettled, when there are so many uncertainties, I often feel a heavy weight on my chest. The landscape of our current situation appears bleak and dreary. Dark. And so I think about light. I visualize light. I ponder light. I look for light. I seek after a “perfect brightness of hope” (2 Nephi 31:20). That phrase is in my thoughts, my prayers, my meditations, my heart — every day. I can’t say that I fully comprehend that “perfect brightness.” But…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Accepting the Wilderness
Several weeks ago, I found unexpected comfort in the words of Amulek. They came at the end of his sermon on prayer, the one where he tells the people to pray everywhere — in their fields and houses, over their crops and flocks, for protection from their enemies and Satan. And then he says: ye must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness (Alma 34:26). It’s that last phrase that caught me: your wilderness. He uses it so casually that I hadn’t noticed it before. Wilderness, whatever. But this time it stopped me cold. Wilderness. That is the word that I started following in…
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Are You Aware? The Consideration of the Ongoing Colonizing Project of Education
This is part V in our “Nation to Nation” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. “They steal, then they take your memory of the theft.” — Shad (2018) I sit here, in my living room, by my window overlooking the intersection in downtown Provo, Utah (if there is such a place). On the four corners are the Provo City Center Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the county health department, an auto body shop, and the apartment building where I live — Church, state, commerce, and home. Cars buzz by. So do the clouds. The sky is blue. And today is Pioneer…
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Are You Aware? COVID-19 in Indian Country
This is part IV in our “Nation to Nation” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. The effects of COVID-19 in Indian Country have been devastating. COVID hit Indian Country later than many other places in America. The Navajo Nation was the first. The Navajo reservation is the size of West Virginia, making it the largest reservation in the United States. With 170,000 people living there, it is sparsely populated. The Diné (their preferred name) keep themselves fed and warm by sheep herding. The sheep are used for food and sheared for the wool to make yarn for weaving. Known worldwide for their beauty, Navajo rugs are…
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Are You Aware? Who Are We, America?
This is part III in our “Nation to Nation” Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. Recently, I was in the lobby of a radio station with a city law enforcement officer who is a criminal investigator (CI). The two of us were waiting to be interviewed on the radio about missing and murdered Indigenous people. The criminal investigator spoke to me about a case that happened downtown. She said she responded to a call where police officers told her they found a deceased Native American woman inside an apartment. The lead officer told the CI that the Native woman died from suicide. Upon investigation, the CI…
