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Sabbath Devotional :: The Creative Process and the Making of Peace
“Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty.” When I first heard those words in Elder Dieter F Uchtdorf’s General Conference talk over 10 years ago, I was both intrigued and inspired. At the time, I was trying to grapple with being a full-time caretaker to my young sons while nourishing my own creative spirit. I am an adequate housekeeper at best, an introvert who would rather spend time alone with a book or at my piano than cooking, cleaning, or frankly, playing on the floor with children. But I grew up…
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MWEG on the Hill
The women of MWEG come from across the political spectrum and are united in their commitment to peacemaking and to boldly calling for elected leaders to govern with integrity. Here are excerpts of letters written by our some of our members to their members of Congress:
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MWEG Members in the News
MWEG members all across the United States are writing some fabulous op-eds and letters to the editor about impeachment! Here is a selection of those pieces, with many more to come. Christie Black :: Arizona Capitol Times “Since when is ethical government a partisan issue? Is it only a concern when it is an offense from the opposing party? I have followed the impeachment inquiry and the report released this week. The evidence that the president abused his power and then obstructed the inquiry is incredibly compelling. The inquiry did not consist of slanted evidence with hyper-partisan witnesses. The witnesses were people of character, dedicated to their country.” Alicia Crowley…
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Sabbath Devotional :: The Gift of an Imperfect Christmas
Since that Christmas I have been learning to stop chasing perfection and instead let all the imperfections and disappointments and messiness be a reminder to me of what Christmas is truly all about: Why that baby was born in a stable, why we are celebrating His birth. That is a lesson worth reminding myself of all year long.
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Awareness Wednesday :: Service With Intent
How can we serve with the intent to heal? When we serve, what is our focus? Is it to check off a holiday goal? Is it to feel the spirit of giving? Is it planned with the intent to heal? What does service with the intent to heal look like?
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Sabbath Devotional :: The Light of the World
When I was a little girl in Chicago, we used to put our tree up about two weeks before Christmas. These days, my neighbors have their lights and wreaths up by mid-November. Do you ever wonder why the Christmas season, with all its trappings, has been starting earlier and earlier? I believe we all want to be surrounded by the Christmas feeling of love and warmth that the world needs so desperately. In this tech-savvy world, we are inundated with instant information about negative things — like the lives affected or lost by negligence or unkind actions. On social media, some take their anger out on people they don’t know,…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Things We Want But Already Have
Many years ago my family got on the want/need/wear/read Christmas bandwagon. In short, each child would get four gifts: something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read. The four gifts simplified the season, reduced our kids’ expectations, and made me a happier mama. This system has worked extremely well for us, but as the kids got bigger, the asks have, too. And suddenly, we risk losing our reasonable Christmas. This year, to stave off the gimmies we asked everyone to start the season by producing a list of 25 things they want but already have. It took my boys a while to get their heads around that. Once…
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Why I Am Paying Attention
I’ll be honest — I haven’t always paid attention to what was happening in the world. There was a time when I didn’t care much about what was happening in politics or on the news. I was focused on my own life. What was happening in the White House or on the five o’clock news didn’t seem to affect me very much. There was a time when I would use the same excuses I hear many people using today: The news is too negative. Politics are a joke. The media is a mess. There’s nothing I can do to change any of it, anyway. I don’t have time for any…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Loaves and Fishes
Last Sunday my nine-year-old daughter gave a talk in sacrament meeting as part of our ward’s Primary program. She prepared her own talk and bravely stood at the pulpit in front of the congregation to share some of the things that she has learned from the scriptures this year. During her talk she shared that one of her favorite stories from the New Testament is when Jesus fed a multitude of five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fishes (Matthew 14:15-21; Mark 6:34-44; Luke 9:13-17; John 6:9-13). After commenting on what an amazing miracle this was, she said: “How this applies to my life is that whatever small…
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Are You Aware? Queer and Mormon
This is part III in our LGBTQ+ Education Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. Hello, friends. I’m Blaire Ostler. I’m a born and raised Mormon. I come from nine generations of Mormon pioneers. I often joke that if there is a Mormon gene, I have it. I’m also a genderqueer and bisexual, but most of the time I refer to myself as “queer.” If there is a queer gene, I’m pretty sure I have that too. The constant struggle for a bisexual person, at least in my case, was never feeling like you belong somewhere. I was never gay enough and I was never straight enough.…
