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Sabbath Devotional :: Life Lessons for Trying Times
“Pleasant words areas an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and healthy to the bones.” Proverbs 16:24. It has been quite a week. I have felt mute but stirring internally with bitter retorts. I have felt sucked into chaos and frustration. During the breaking news of hurled insults, repudiations, excuses and gas lighting, I have had flashbacks to hard won lessons of parenting. (My three children are grown, flourishing and beloved. Parenting them was not always a walk in the park, however — as they are each discovering now that they have their own children.) Here are three examples of lessons that resurfaced this week. Whether or not you have children,…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Keep Trying
In my piano studio, the spring months are spent preparing for our annual recital. I work with each student to learn and polish pieces to perform in a formal setting. We carefully lay the foundation for success by first getting the correct fingers on the correct notes, then adding rhythm, dynamics, and articulations as they are ready. At every stage in the learning process, we pay close attention to melody and musicality. Of course it is crucial that the students are prepared to play the right notes; but it is just as important to perform those notes in an expressive way. As we approach recital time, we make plans for…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Go Forward
A wise friend has often reminded me: “You pedal, and the Lord steers.” This counsel is not meant to dismiss the power of my own choices or suggest that I play a passive role in the direction that my life takes. Rather, this insight has been offered to me when I am worrying about the unknowns of the future. What if, despite all my best efforts and intentions, I end up making the wrong choice, taking the wrong path, and inadvertently throw my life’s plan off course? What if I don’t accomplish the things I am meant to do? This wise friend reminds me that the Lord is much smarter…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Life is Life is Life
My daughter Eve and I found a tiny bird egg while digging underneath a Blue Spruce this week. She carefully rolled the white egg over in her small grubby hands, tenderly inspecting each minuscule speckle. Then looking to me for answers. She asked, “Where mommy-daddy bird go?” I could tell she was deeply troubled why the egg was all alone. I explained that the egg must have fallen from the nest and that the family must be somewhere high in the trees. She proceeded to line up the pine cones she had been playing with. Biggest cone became “daddy pine cone” with the slightly smaller pine cone as “mommy pine…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Following the Divine, Higher Law
In the time that I have spent advocating for more compassionate immigration reform, one counter- argument I have heard members of the Church use repeatedly is that our shared religious beliefs require a commitment to obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. As a student of both the law and the gospel, I see great wisdom in the 12th Article of Faith, but I have always been troubled by the implication that any ethical or moral failure — of an individual or society — is automatically excused or justified by strict adherence to the law. The argument is often used as a trump card of sorts to squelch thoughtful and nuanced…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Zion
I have a confession to make. I haven’t always been a fan of the notion of Zion. When I was younger, I thought Zion meant that we all had to be the same. You know, same heart, same mind. And I couldn’t bear the thought of all that sameness. I was, of course, mistaken. We don’t have to look beyond the natural world to recognize how much God values — delights in, even — diversity. As the Jesuit priest and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Great, Spacious, Empty and Airborne
Recently, on an early spring evening, I found myself in the back of a van, craning my neck toward the dusty window to catch a final glimpse of a sprawling, hilly, mottled landscape. As the van spluttered and climbed the winding dirt road out of Cox’s Bazaar, the largest refugee camp in the world sheltering well over one million Rohingya, I glimpsed what our Bangladeshi humanitarian aid worker friends called the Tree of Hope. It stood alone on a knoll, a boney silhouette stretching its knobby arms over this hopeless panorama, this landscape of utter despair. REPURPOSING LEHI’S DREAM Lehi’s dream with its Tree of Life hovered close. (If you…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Just Because I Love You
Sheri Dew has said that there are two questions that we can ask that will help open the heavens: “First, ask the Lord to teach you what it feels and sounds like for you when He is speaking to you via the Holy Ghost, and then watch how He tutors you. And, second, if you’ve never asked the Lord how He feels about you, that is a great question to ask” (Sheri Dew, “Will You Engage in the Wrestle,” May 17, 2016). The first question is one that I began asking many years ago after hearing Sister Dew speak about personal revelation. I began diligently asking the Lord to specifically…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Grace
Growing up LDS in the mid-seventies and eighties, I don’t remember hearing much about grace at church. One of my first memories of learning about grace was when, as a sophomore in high school, I attended a Baptist service with a friend. The band (a band!), complete with bass guitar and drums, sang of grace like the rockstar doctrine it is. At the time, the spiritual concept of grace sounded about as foreign to me as the “ch-chch-ch, chch-ch, chch-ch — ting” of sticks against cymbals in church. It stands to reason that, for a time, the Church neglected grace. The concept of unconditional love and forgiveness seemed almost too…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Creation, Destruction, and Redemption
I was still reeling and in deep despair over the loss of a dear friend who had just been killed in a tragic car accident when I saw the news that Notre-Dame Cathedral was burning. The thought of more than 850 years of history, all of the meticulous efforts of thousands of unnamed builders and artisans, not to mention the 300+ years it took to grow the trees used as lumber for the original construction, all going up in flames sort of broke something in me. For a few weeks now, I have felt absolutely undone over the fundamental unfairness that it is so terribly, exhaustingly difficult to create and…
