Reader Question:
Dave, can you please provide a list of poems that your family has enjoyed over the years? Our family really likes poetry, and it may be useful to have a handy list around. We would truly appreciate whatever guidance you choose to give or poetry you might suggest.
To gather an answer to your question, we talked to our adult kids, and here’s the list that we gathered. Note that this will be a living list, a living post, that we will add to over time as we remember other poems or experience new ones that we wish to include.
For us, poetry is an ancient, vital language. It limbers up our imagination. Here’s the MormonPanorama Poetry List for helping to stretch the minds of your family. These are for a general audience unless otherwise marked, and parents are encouraged to read beforehand and judge for themselves.
Extended poetry list from MormonPanorama — A post with additional space in order to include selected excerpts of poems or complete poems that don’t have their own webpage
What we were looking for in poetry for kids as they grew up:
Poetry that gave us material to discuss – especially about what is right and what is wrong and how to resist wrongs that are embraced by so many others around you.
Poems that build up rather than drag down, that uplift and inspire.
We avoided literature which stated that our moral standards are silly or which encouraged us to become less than we should be.
We hope this answers your question and helps you understand us better and how to become a more effective family, create strong citizens, and have fun with our youth and young adults.
And let us know how we may help you further! If you find that you have any questions about religious issues that you’ve been wondering about or that you haven’t been able to get good answers to, feel free to continue on discussion with us. It turns out that there are a lot of people with questions, and most of them have given up on churches as a source of answers. In our family, it is our experience that answers are out there, that God wants us to have them, and that they tend to be answers we like and have learned to appreciate. Working together with Heavenly Father allows anyone to find certainty in uncertain times.
-Dave and the MormonPanorama Family
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Bonus Material:
1. 90% of People can’t pronounce this whole poem. Feel free to try it!
2. Monty Python on poetry—Kind of…
——– End of Bonus Material ——–
WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
This post is an extension of a post from MormonPanorama that lists poetry that our family has learned to love over the years.
Poems appear below for which we wanted to highlight selected lines on a webpage, or for which we happened to find no convenient website for an individual work of poetry. Enjoy!
-Dave and the MormonPanorama Family
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Martín Fierro, epic gaucho poem from Argentina (1872) — José Hernández
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I sit me here to sing my song
To the beat of my old guitar;
For the man whose life is a bitter cup,
With a song may yet his heart lift up,
As the lonely bird on the leafless tree
That sings ‘neath the gloaming star.
May the shining Saints of the heavenly band,
That sing in the heavenly choir,
Come down and help me now to tell
The good and ill that me befell,
And to sing it true to the thrumming strings;
For such is my desire.
Come down, ye Saints, that have helped me
In many a perilous pass;
For my tongue is tied and my eyes grow dim,
And the man that calls, God answers him,
And brings him home to his own roof-tree,
Out of many a deep morass.
O many singers have I seen,
That have won a singer’s wreath,
That have talked a lot as they passed the pot,
Of the songs they sang and the songs they wrought,
Till their voices rusted in their throats,
As a knife rusts in its sheath.
Now all that a son of the plains may do,
To none shall I give best;
And none may daunt with a windy vaunt,
Or bristle my scalp with a phantom gaunt,
And as song is free to all that will,—
I will sing among the rest.
I will sing my song till my breath gives out,
I will sing when they bury me;
And singing I’ll come where the angels roam
The rolling plains of their starry home,—
Into this world I came to sing,
As I sang on my mother’s knee.
And let my tongue be glib and sweet,
My words be not halt nor few,
And the men to come that I shall not see,
In days to be will remember me,
By the song I sang in the days gone by,
That now I sing to you.
[The first seven stanzas of Martín Fierro, epic gaucho poem from Argentina (1872) — José Hernández. It was very common for people to have quotes from the work hanging on the walls of their homes, with their favorite thoughts of gaucho-esque philosophy. The entire work is 2,316 lines long, 386 stanzas of payadas or rural ballads, each with a strict six-line rhyming scheme (like the six strings of a guitar) invented by Hernández specifically for this work of poetry, as well as an 8-syllable rhythmic pattern. The first line is kept “free” and unrhymed, allowing Hernández to present a “thesis” to the stanza without having to worry about the last word being part of the rhyme scheme. Lines two, three and six rhyme together while lines four and five constitute an independent rhyming group. The English translation (traditionally, the truest English translation, using an altered but similarly strict scheme) is by Scottish translator Walter Owen, who wonderfully called his work not translation but “transvernacularisation”.]
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The Works of Ogden Nash ·————————————·
Ogden Nash was best known for surprising, pun-like rhymes, sometimes with words deliberately misspelled for comic effect. Among his most popular writings were a series of animal verses, many of which featured his off-kilter rhyming devices:
The Jellyfish You can have my jellyfish
I’m not sellyfish
The Fly The Lord in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why
The Panther
The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn’t been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don’t anther.
The Eel
I don’t mind eels
Except as meals.
And the way they feels.
The most frequently quoted of these poems is his ode to the llama: The Lama
The one-L lama, he’s a priest
The two-L llama, he’s a beast
And I would bet a silk pyjama
There isn’t any three-L lllama.
(Nash appended a footnote to this poem: “The author’s attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh.”)
Nash’s poetry was often a playful twist of an old saying or poem. He expressed this playfulness in what is perhaps his most famous rhyme. Nash observed the following in a turn of Joyce Kilmer’s words, “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.” Song of the Open Road
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I’ll never see a tree at all.
A Word to Husbands
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.
Reflections on Babies
A bit of talcum
Is always walcum.
Reflections on Ice-Breaking
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
In 1968 he added:
Pot is not.
He also commented:
I often wonder which is mine:
Tolerance, or a rubber spine?
His one-line observations are often quoted:
People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.
Reader Question:
Dave, can you please provide a list of movies that your family has enjoyed over the years and used as you raised your kids? Our family would truly appreciate whatever guidance you choose to give or films you might suggest.
To gather an answer to your question, we talked to our adult kids, and here’s the list that we gathered. Note that this will be a living list, a living post, that we will add to over time as we remember other films or learn of new ones that we wish to include.
MormonPanorama Movie List for Encouraging Strong Families (for a general audience unless otherwise marked – parents are encouraged to view beforehand and judge for themselves):
What we were looking for in movies for kids as they grew up:
Films that have tons of material to discuss – especially about what is right and what is wrong and how to resist wrongs that are embraced by so many others around you.
Movies and videos (YouTube, etc.) that build up rather than drag down, that uplift and inspire.
We avoided films which stated that our moral standards are silly or which encouraged us to become less than we should be.
We hope this answers your question and helps you understand us better and how to become a more effective family, create strong citizens, and have fun with our young adults.
And let us know how we may help you further! If you find that you have any questions about religious issues that you’ve been wondering about or that you haven’t been able to get good answers to, feel free to continue on discussion with us. It turns out that there are a lot of people with questions, and most of them have given up on churches as a source of answers. In our family, it is our experience that answers are out there, that God wants us to have them, and that they tend to be answers we like and have learned to appreciate. Working together with Heavenly Father allows anyone to find certainty in uncertain times.
-Dave and the MormonPanorama Family
——– End of Post ——–
WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Reader Question: Dave, can you please provide a list of books that your family enjoyed and used as you “encouraged lots of intellectual exploring by reading widely”? Our family would truly appreciate whatever guidance you choose to give or titles you might suggest.
To gather an answer to your question, we talked to our adult kids, and here’s the list that we gathered. Note that this will be a living list, a living post, that we will add to over time as we remember other titles or learn of new ones that we wish to include.
MormonPanorama Reading List for Creating Strong Families (for children, youth, and young adults). These are for a general audience unless otherwise marked, and parents are encouraged to read beforehand and judge for themselves.
What we were looking for in books for kids as they grew up:
Books that have tons of material to discuss – especially about what is right and what is wrong and how to resist wrongs that are embraced by so many others around you.
Literature that builds up rather than drags down, that uplifts and inspires.
We avoided literature which stated that our moral standards are silly or which encouraged us to become less than we should be.
We hope this answers your question and helps you understand us better and how to become a more effective family, create strong citizens, and develop better young adults.
And let us know how we may help you further! If you find that you have any questions about religious issues that you’ve been wondering about or that you haven’t been able to get good answers to, feel free to continue on discussion with us. It turns out that there are a lot of people with questions, and most of them have given up on churches as a source of answers. In our family, it is our experience that answers are out there, that God wants us to have them, and that they tend to be answers we like and have learned to appreciate. Working together with Heavenly Father allows anyone to find certainty in uncertain times.
-Dave and the MormonPanorama Family
——– End of Post ——–
WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
What do you do in your family to develop strong young adults? Here’s what works for us…
“Great Wave Off Kanagawa”, Hokusai (1829-32)
There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
–William Shakespeare (Marcus Brutus in Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene 3, lines 217-223.)
One of the first things a little child learns in swimming lessons is the importance of the wall on the side. When kids swim out into the pool, whenever they flounder, they can always come back to the safety and security of the wall.
Learning The Importance Of The Wall On The Side
No matter where they go or how scary the open water gets, the wall never moves. The wall is always there. Gospel standards, the words of the prophets, the commandments of Christ: All provide my family with the safety and constancy of the wall in the water of the pool. These standards give us the confidence that we can manage things just fine, even when we get in over our heads and the water runs deep.
“…the envy and wrath of man have been my common lot all the days of my life; … deep water is what I am wont to swim in.”
–Joseph Smith
As my kids grew up, I knew that the unquestioning faith they had as children would be replaced by all the important questions of youth. As parents, Kim and I encouraged lots of intellectual exploring by reading widely, continually discussing and debating with our children. It helped that she and I are usually at opposite ends of any spectrum of opinion, so the kids grew up knowing the importance of disagreeing agreeably and of digging out answers that satisfied their individual concerns. But we united as parents as far as eternal truths are concerned, and it was important that our kids have confidence that they could get solid answers. They could get solid opinions from Mom and me, and they could get solid answers directly from God. It was especially important that they do so when it came to matters of faith, whether to live righteously, to keep commandments, to stay morally clean, or to follow the weightier matters of the law. When they were teenagers, we’d spend hours studying to master scriptures and to wrestle for gospel answers, making a game of it whenever possible. Bribing with Skittles candy made it fun — It was a game only when the kids felt it was fun. Tackle scripture chase, anyone?
In the process, our children learned not only to stand on their own but to fight for what they know is right. Generally speaking, they’ve made decisions worthy of any adult, even when they were teenagers. They continue to choose to keep their feet firmly planted on the strait and narrow path, teaching their families to do so as well.
What deep discussions have achieved really is pretty dang incredible – thoughtful gospel education has helped the young adults in our family to feel the right things. It allows them to take time out of their busy schedules, to rebuke the winds of change and to calm the sea of life. It gives them experience with spiritual feelings. It gives them experience with standing on their own.
“And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
“And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”
Family Garden
The opportunity to experience and experiment with spiritual feelings is essential to my kids, both as teenagers and now as adults with families of their own, as they come to know Christ and to learn the variety of ways by which He interacts with each of us. This training of their spirit with eternal communication processes is enhanced as they have consistent experience repeatedly hearing the words of the Prophets.
“But unto him that keepeth my commandments I will give the mysteries of my kingdom, and the same shall be in him a well of living water, springing up unto everlasting life.”
I have learned for myself that these things not only bring me joy. They bring me safety and security.
Building Strong Young Adults
“And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim: and he shall bring down their pride together with the spoils of their hands.”
.
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Elder Bednar on answers to every question and challenge: “Acting in accordance with the teachings of the Savior invites spiritual power into our lives—power to hear and heed, power to discern, and power to persevere. Devoted discipleship is the best and only answer to every question and challenge.” -David A. Bednar, Ensign, March 2014
The secret of strong young adults for our family? Start ’em young. Keep sharing with them what’s really important to you when they’re old. Works for us…
Still Sharing And Finding Safety And Security In The Wall
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Bonus Material:
1. A Change in Course: Watch the Hopf Family story. (Length: 4:06.)
2. An Incredible Meeting, an Answered Prayer: Watch François Verny’s Story. (Length: 4:03)
Raising Strong, Studly Adults Who Contribute To Society
——– End of Bonus Material ——–
WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Ukiyo-e Woodblock Print, “Great Wave Off Kanagawa”, Hokusai (1829-32)—en.wikipedia. org/wiki/File:Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa2.jpg, with further info at en.wikipedia. org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa
Photo, “Learning The Importance Of The Wall On The Side”—www. eagerbeaverswimschool.com/
Photo, “Start ‘Em Young To Have Confidence In The Wall”—www. examiner.com/article/study-swimming-lessons-appear-to-have-a-protective-effect-against-drowning-for-tots
In a class that I’m taking at school, I’m learning about the history of creativity. It’s a really interesting class and I love learning about the things people did in Medieval times, the Renaissance, and the Baroque Era. While we were studying the Renaissance, we learned about Albrecht Dürer and his painting “Praying Hands”. I had seen this painting before, and I’ve always appreciated it. But after learning the story behind the painting, it has become one of my favorites and truly inspires me.
Dürer came from a large family, and he and his brother, Albert, both wanted to become artists. The family did not have enough money to send both to school to learn art, so they made a pact in which one would support the other while he was in school and then, when the other was finished and famous, they would switch. Albrecht won the coin toss, so Albert was to stay and work in the mines to support him.
Albrecht found success very quickly and excelled in his schooling. He began to earn good money for his work. After finishing his schooling, he returned home to give his brother the opportunity to go on to art school. But when he told Albert the news, he began to cry and said, “No, I can’t.” He held up his hands which had been bruised and battered from working in the mines, so much that he could barely hold his mining tools, not to mention the tools of an artist. Albert had sacrificed his opportunity by supporting his brother. Albrecht was deeply moved and then immortalized the hands of his brother in his painting, “Praying Hands”.
I never thought I would get emotional while reading a textbook, but this story hit me hard. I was touched by the love that these two brothers showed each others. I immediately thought of my siblings and all the things they have done for me. They’ve all made sacrifices, big and small, for me to get me to where I am now. I am reminded of the third verse in the hymn “Lord, I Would Follow Thee”.
I would be my brother’s keeper,
I would learn the healer’s art,
To the wouned and the weary,
I would show a gentle heart.
I would be my brother’s keeper,
Lord, I would follow thee.
My siblings have been their brother’s keeper to me. Here are a variety of stories of some sacrifices made for me and lessons taught to me: Mike took me out for lunch and a movie one day for fun when my school lost power. Brian was not being too cool to let me come to play Risk with his friends late at night. Whitney set me straight telling me to treat our Father with more respect. Kyle took time away from his wife to come down and watch the National Championship rugby game with me. Todd was willing to help me with a practical joke as I would drive with a blindfold over my eyes (I could see through it, don’t worry, Mom!) and he would pretend to direct me as onlookers freaked out. These are just a few of the special memories and times I’ve had with my siblings. It may seem small, but their examples and friendship have helped shape me.
I pray that I, too, may be my brother’s keeper. I may not be near a lot of my family at this time, but there are plenty of others who surround me. We are all brothers and sisters in God’s family. I hope that I may emulate the love the Dürer brothers had and that I may make sacrifices for those nearby, to lift them up, to lend them a helping hand, and to bring them joy.
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Much of the story of Dürer comes from the textbook, “History of Creativity” by Brent Strong and Mark Davis.
(Please forgive the long post. It’s for a good reason: a local interfaith/multifaith group invited me to speak at an annual ecumenical event for interwoven faiths as part of Week Of Prayer For Christian Unity. For twenty minutes. It was my pleasure to say Yes. Here’ s the result, if you wish to read it. Enjoy!)
Christian Crosses At A Joint Service For The Week Of Prayer For Christian Unity
I’ve attended many ecumenical meetings, but this is the first time I’ve ever spoken at one. As part of my faith tradition as a Mormon, I’m used to closing sacred remarks “in the name of Jesus Christ.” Will it be OK if I do so this evening at the end? (Response: Unanimous and general Yes.)
We are always teaching. What shall we teach? With the 2014 theme of this event being “Has Christ Been Divided?” and the scripture reference of 1 Corinthians Chapter 1: verses 1 through 17, I’d like to quote verses 4 through 7:
4. I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;
5. That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;
6. Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you:
7. So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jewish Quarter, Old City, Jerusalem
This past week, Rabbi Jeremy Schneider, the spiritual leader of Temple Kol Ami in Scottsdale, Arizona, and vice president of the Greater Phoenix Board of Rabbis, toured the Mormon Temple in the nearby city of Gilbert during an open house for the new building. In the recent edition of Jewish News, he teaches us:
In last week’s Torah portion, we read about Moses learning a valuable lesson from his father-in-law, Jethro. Jethro tells Moses to appoint judges who will handle the burden of judging the people from morning until night, taking only the most difficult cases for himself. Jewish sages note that Moses learns this valuable lesson from his non-Israelite father-in-law Jethro, a Midianite.
Our tradition asks the question based on this interaction: “Who is wise?” The answer, “One who learns from ALL people” (Pirkei Avot, Chapter 4: Mishna 1).
We are always teaching. What do we teach? What do we teach about God? As part of this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, I have thought of my own powerful moments of communion with God. When I was a child and walked in to see my parents at prayer, I remember the whoosh of feelings of safety and security but mostly of sacredness.
Cairo, Home Interior
My favorite memory of the power of a prayerful life is one at work. I knocked on a friend’s office door; normally, he responds quickly with, “Come in!”, and I open the door. Sometimes, I’ll hear water running in the office bathroom as he makes ablution, and I know not to knock at the door for a few minutes after he returns to his office. But this day I was distracted and failed to notice that my knock at the door from without brought no invitation voiced from within. Out of habit, I called him by name, adding the customary honorific suffix, and opened the door. I found my elderly friend kneeling lowly on his prayer rug. It was such a holy moment. I felt that I had entered a bubble – a bubble of spirituality – of spirituality established by my friend, as he created a sacred space for prayer. In a familiar whoosh of feeling, I was aware that I had missed the cues of the sounds at the sink. Having cleansed himself without as he focused on cleansing himself within, he was now talking with his Maker, expressing humility without as he voiced humility within. It was just like walking in on my parents at prayer. After prayers were done, we embraced; I apologized for disturbing a sacred moment. “Oh, I don’t mind. I am just doing my duty,” he said. I replied, “It is the duty of us all.”
When I think of my favorite moments of prayer, I will always see in my mind and in my heart an elderly man from Uzbekistan, with shoes removed from off his feet, kneeling submissively on sacred ground in his office, visible to none but to Him who sees all.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
In Robert M. Edsel’s book, The Monuments Men, I recently found this gem:
Children live in a closed world, and young Harry [Ettlinger] assumed life as he knew it had gone on that way forever. He didn’t have any friends who weren’t Jewish, but his parents didn’t either, so that didn’t seem unusual. [In 1930’s Germany, he] saw non-Jews at school and in the parks, and he liked them, but buried deep within those interactions was the knowledge that, for some reason, he was an outsider. He had no idea that the world was entering an economic depression, or that hard times bring recriminations and blame. Privately, Harry’s parents worried not just about the economy, but about the rising tide of nationalism and anti-Semitism. Harry noticed only that perhaps the line between himself and the larger world of [his town of] Karlsruhe was becoming easier to see and harder to cross.
⁞
In September [1938], twelve-year-old Harry and his two brothers took the train seventeen miles to Bruchsal to visit their grandparents for the last time… Opa Oppenheimer[, Harry’s grandpa,] showed them, one last time, a few select pieces from his collection of prints… His art collection contained almost two thousand prints, primarily ex libris bookplates and works by minor German Impressionists working in the late 1890s and early 1900s. One of the best was a print, made by a local artist, of the self-portrait by Rembrandt that hung in the Karlsruhe museum. The painting was a jewel of the museum’s collection… Harry had never seen it, despite living four blocks away from it his whole life. In 1933, the museum had barred entry to Jews.
⁞
A week later, on September 24, 1938, Harry Ettlinger celebrated his bar mitzvah in Karlsruhe’s magnificent Kronenstrasse Synagogue… On October 9, 1938, they arrived in New York harbor. Exactly one month later, on November 9, [was] Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass… The Jewish men of Karlsruhe, including Opa Oppenheimer, were rounded up and put in the nearby Dachau internment camp. The magnificent hundred-year-old Kronenstrasse Synagogue…was burned to the ground. Harry Ettlinger was the last boy ever to have his bar mitzvah ceremony in the old synagogue of Karlsruhe.
Three generations of a Jewish family light a menorah during Hanukkah
But this story isn’t about Kronenstrasse Synagogue, the internment camp at Dachau, or even the Holocaust against the Jews… For when Private Harry Ettlinger, U.S. Army, finally returned to Karlsruhe, it wasn’t to search for his lost relatives or the remains of his community; it was to determine the fate of another aspect of his heritage stripped away by the Nazi regime: his grandfather’s beloved art collection. In the process he would discover, buried six hundred feet underground, something he had always known about but never expected to see: the Rembrandt of Karlsruhe. (Ibid, Pages 7-13.)
We are always teaching.
I was asked to share with you this evening the story of my own interfaith journey. I used to think that the work of interweaving faiths was about crossing lines, such as the lines that Harry Ettlinger saw between himself and the larger world of Karlsruhe. After years, I learned that I was wrong. Very wrong. I noticed that focusing on lines encourages designations of WE vs. THEY. So I started thinking instead about circles. Years earlier, when I was about eight years old, in our weekly family home evening, my mom had us memorize the poem Outwitted, by Edwin Markham:
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
So I began to move beyond the Here or There of lines, or even the In or Out of circles, and instead tried to focus less on who was In and who was Out and to focus more on expanding my circle to include another. Despite a person’s flaws, for me the challenge became to see the good in them, to see what good I could find to help me be good, to help me be better.
For example, I lived in South America for a couple of years as I served a Mormon mission among the people of Argentina. I had been there just a few months, when I was straightening up the bookshelf in my room, picked up some pamphlets, and saw something flutter to the floor. I stooped to pick it up and found that it was a U.S. stamp. On it was the image of Thomas Jefferson. And I burst into tears. My immediate reaction was, “I’m starting to lose it‼” But then I started to realize why I had burst into tears. This stamp was from my homeland. It had been months since I had seen anything from home. And this was Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence in just seventeen days, who wrote the words, “All men are created equal,” who wrote, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” which Ben Franklin changed to, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” I think that everyone should spend a couple of years after high school in a foreign country; it can deepen one’s feelings of patriotism, even without them knowing it. It certainly did mine.
Gauchos a caballo (1900), Ángel Della Valle (“Gauchos on horseback”)
Then, as I lived among the people of Argentina, I learned to love them. I learned traditional Argentine folk songs from our local Mormon bishop, who played a wicked Latin guitar, and we’d sing with gusto like gauchos around a campfire. I learned the National Anthem and sang it with gusto at every parade and holiday. It surprised everyone around me, but my heart just wanted to join in, and not just sing, but to know the words and why they were meaningful. In spite of the day of the stamp, I began to wonder what I was going to do when I returned home and no longer could buy delicious Mantecol candy bars or drink amargo, a bitter, BITTER soft drink that I had grown to love.
At that point, I discarded the idea of circles in my interwoven faith work. I loved the people of Argentina not because they were all Mormons—They weren’t! I found that my core feelings of being an American remained at my center and indeed were strengthened. I loved extending my circle as far as it could go, only to learn that, really, I could extend it yet a little further. But the circle analogy didn’t seem to work anymore; it just didn’t seem expressive enough for what I felt. I had lived in Argentina for not yet a year, and I realized that I no longer felt like an outsider extending my circle. I was Argentine. I was American. Americans were my people, and Argentines were my people. I had developed a dual citizenship of the heart. Just as I had moved beyond the We/They of lines, I had moved beyond the concept of designating circles. I had learned that what was important for me was to develop feelings down deep. I would be happy in the United States my entire life. I now would be happy in Argentina my entire life, “perhaps until the day I die.” I had succeeded in making their lives my life.
We are always teaching. What should we teach? I suggest that we take a cue from my Muslim friend and teach about duty. We should teach about our duty to God. Anyone involved in the Boy Scouts of America, youth or adult, uses the Scout Oath to teach others “to do my duty to God and my country.” Part of our duty to God is to listen to Him, to see as God sees, to think as God thinks, to act as He would, to be a tool in His hands. The prophet Isaiah taught us:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
Las Lajas Sanctuary, Ipiales, Colombia
I learned yet again to go beyond lines and circles, learning yet again the importance of feeling things down deep, when I hurried to help Felipe, whose wife and family had just died in a plane crash. I helped Arturo, his brother, as we stood and waited for hours in the heat, watching as officials opened each body bag they had carried from the helicopters to the basketball arena used as a temporary morgue, until, in the last helicopter trip of the day, the bags opened to familiar faces, and we were able to identify the bodies of their loved ones. Felipe wasn’t a Latter-day Saint; he was Catholic. I was from the United States, and he was from Colombia. He was athletic and an avid soccer player; my wife is the sportsman in our family. Despite our differences, Felipe and I bonded. Despite his being suicidal at the time, despite all the turmoil in his life that made him crawl into a shell and shut out the world, he would allow me in. This surprised me as much as it surprised his extended family, but in his darkest moments, they would come running to me repeatedly: “Come, Davy. Come quick. Felipe needs you again.” I’d hasten once more to his side—we’d sit, sometimes talk. He liked looking at pictures of my kids. But I felt that our hearts were in constant conversation, even in silence, and I could feel him taking strength from me, and I gave freely, for I knew that I had strength to spare. By connecting with those around him, with people for whom he cared deeply, he quickly learned to develop his own sources of strength.
Panorama Of Las Lajas Sanctuary, Ipiales, Colombia
Felipe asked me to be with him as he entered sacred ground, as he and Arturo returned to his apartment for the first time after the deaths of his wife and children. I was there when he entered the bedroom that he had shared with his wife, Amparo. Felipe just sat on the bed, and it was as if the energy just left him; he seemed like a beaten man, forsaken and alone. I looked over at the bedroom’s TV; on it, I saw a ceramic object and a stuffed toy, a plush lion cub, “Simba”, from “The Lion King.” A thought hit me to pick up the little Simba and to give it to Felipe to cuddle, which I did. Felipe pulled the toy to his barrel chest, doubled over as he sat on the edge of the bed, and just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. My first thought was, “Oh, Dave, you blew it.” But immediately on its heels came the assurance that, no, this was exactly what Felipe needed. We stayed quiet a few minutes and let time pass; eventually, he approached me and said, “Thank you, Davy. That was perfect.” I’ll never know what that little Simba meant to Felipe and Amparo, nor do I need to know; maybe its only meaning was simply something to cuddle for the moment. Regardless, I followed an impulse when it occurred to me, and it appears it was the right thing to do. I had no need at the moment to be a tool in God’s hands, but Felipe was hurting, and God knew he was hurting and needed to heal some very deep wounds. And God trusted me to listen and to know without trying what Felipe was feeling down deep. It’s my feeling that on that day, I did my duty to God.
Interfaith experiences can even occur among people of the same faith. When I lived in another state, my congregation leaders assigned me as a home teacher (a volunteer shepherd) to a family with five young children. Jason and I had nothing in common, and our belief systems were vastly different, even though we were both LDS. For example, he held a cultural belief in the little people, such as leprechauns and fairies, and several of his tattoos bore an Irish Celtic theme, whereas my Celtic roots are Welsh, and the little people are not part of my reality. Despite his severe substance abuse concerns, this young father and I bonded easily, to the amazement of everyone in our congregation, including ourselves. I’d been visiting him for about a year, and he was working very hard to stay clean—he had recently developed a deeper desire to conquer his addictions, to really lick it this time. On one visit, we had just sat down to talk with Jason and his wife, when he interrupted, “How do you do it, Dave? How do you get us to feel these things?” After that, we opened our hearts to each other like never before, and our souls were knit together like David and Jonathan of old. It was as if we could read each other’s minds. Each time, we would plan our next visit, a week away or more often a month away, depending on what he felt he needed for support. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when the pull of drugs was strong and he was weak and needed to talk, he would just call me out of the blue and say, “Please come, Dave. I need your help. I need to stay clean.” These were some of my favorite moments. We’d sit on the stoop of his small house in the darkness, and we’d have the most amazing discussions filled with light. As we talked of truths at night (“Sweet Is the Work,” end of Verse 1), I remember many times thinking, “There is nowhere else on earth that I would rather be than right here, right now, on this stoop, talking with this man.” I could feel him taking courage from me, and I gave freely, for I knew that I had courage to spare. But I simply could not go to see him often enough, and I looked forward to each visit with all my heart. Eventually, he moved away, then I moved, and always I will miss our conversations.
Accra Ghana LDS Temple Grounds
We are always teaching. What do we teach? What do we teach about God? We teach that, as important as actions are, the feelings behind our actions are even more important. We teach that there is no We/They; we teach that there is no reason to expand our circle, because mankind is our circle. We teach the need tostandinholyplaces, to spend time there, to spend some quality time there on our knees, not just during this Week of Prayer but always, for Christian unity and for global unity. We teach that God doesn’t need just one of us, he needs all of us, and that if we work together as individual wires of communication with God, that interwoven together, we become a cable, and with cables, we may all build a bridge. And we teach that life is too short merely to go through the motions but that we must feel these things in our hearts. Each of us must feel these things down deep.
In closing, I’d like to share another of Edward Markham’s poems, this one entitled Anchored To The Infinite:
The builder who first bridged Niagra’s gorge,
Before he swung his cable, shore to shore, Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands
To grasp upon the further cliff and draw
A greater cord, and then a greater yet;
Till at the last across the chasm swung
The cable then the mighty bridge in air!
So may we send our little timid thought
Across the void, out to God’s reaching hands—
Send out our love and faith to thread the deep—
Thought after thought until the little cord
Has greatened to a chain no chance can break,
And we are anchored to the Infinite!
We are always teaching. What shall we teach?
I say these things in the sacred name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Thank you for your time tonight.
(By the way, the sponsoring organization was the local Mennonite Fellowship congregation, with additional support from the Bloomington, Indiana Unit of Church Women United. My earliest years were in Eastern Ohio in the middle of Amish and Mennonite country. We spent long hours at friends’ homes with no electricity, and my pre-school was a local Mennonite Bible School. Consequently, at this Week of Prayer event, many congregation members looked so dang familiar, even though we had just met. I felt very at home, they made us feel very welcome, and I’m glad I hung around until the last dog was hung for the warm conversations afterwards. It was just plain fun making new friends of people from all sorts of backgrounds and faiths.)
Experts say that parents modeling how to practice faith is important, but that influence can be blunted if either parent doesn’t have a close relationship with their children
WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Photo, “Christian Crosses At A Joint Service For The Week Of Prayer For Christian Unity”—en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week_of_Prayer_for_Christian_Unity
Photo, “Jewish Quarter, Old City, Jerusalem”—carta-jerusalem. com/biblical-sites/old-city-jerusalem/
Photo, “Cairo, Home Interior”—Personal collection
Photo, “Three generations of a Jewish family light a menorah”—www. deseretnews.com/article/865593024/Faith-in-the-family-How-belief-passes-from-one-generation-to-the-next.html?pg=all
Painting, “Gauchos a caballo” (1900), Ángel Della Valle (“Gauchos on horseback”)—commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%81ngel_Della_Valle_-_Gauchos_a_caballo,_c._1900.jpg
Photo, “Experts say that parents modeling how to practice faith is important, but that influence can be blunted if either parent doesn’t have a close relationship with their children”—www. deseretnews.com/article/865593024/Faith-in-the-family-How-belief-passes-from-one-generation-to-the-next.html?pg=all (NOTE: This image is not in the online version but only in the print version, Page P7.)
Photo, “Interwoven Faiths”—www. isna.net/. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is an independent, open and transparent membership organization that strives to be an exemplary and unifying Islamic organization in North America by contributing to the betterment of the Muslim community and society at large. ISNA is committed to freedom, to eradicating prejudice and to creating a society where Muslims can live peacefully and prosper alongside other Americans from all walks of life and diverse traditions and faith. Everyone is helpful, warm and gracious, and Dave loves visiting there.
It’s dinner time. My husband and my two middle children have just rushed out the door to make it to an Eagle Court of Honor, leaving my youngest and oldest (both boys) and me goofing at the table. Gobbling and goofing at an end, we clear the table. I’m feeling excited! I don’t get much one on one time with my oldest son. He’s nearly seven years old, a delightful age! An age where he plays games well without a partner and where ridiculous scenarios about eight-sided light sabers are created. An age when books come to life and the humor of a giraffe at a school looking for the bathroom door that is labeled for giraffes dissolves us into fits of giggles. And an age when I’m still pretty cool. Yes, I’m looking forward to this!
I pulled the one year old, still in his highchair, into the kitchen to watch as I washed dishes. Turning the faucet on, I asked my oldest if he would wipe down the table for me. A water fight ensued and he wiped down the table while I wiped up the kitchen!
Humming, I set to work on the dishes.
My seven year old had a seat at the art table and began a project. The art table is set up in what is intended to be the breakfast nook of our kitchen. However, for us, it’s an art room/cloak room. The art table is an old flat door attached to 2×4’s. It sports paint stains, heat marks (from canning applesauce), stickers, glue, glitter, and Play-Doh–it bears the marks of art/craft love. I love this spot in our house. I love seeing our kids spend hours cutting, pasting, coloring ,painting, creating, and imagining at this art table.
My mind wanders as I scrub, the baby babbles and drops his cheese on the floor. Smiling, I pick up the cheese as I respond to my son’s request to double check the spelling of ‘obey’ and then ‘disobey.’ He and the brother a year younger than him love to author and illustrate stories of all sorts! I am used as a dictionary and thesaurus frequently. Intrigued by his choice of words, I wait for him to explain. He didn’t, so I went back to washing and a few minutes later he double checks the spelling of words such as, ‘lonely,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘steal,’ ‘heaven,’ and ‘everything.’ Now I’m bubbling with curiosity, and fortunately, he explains. He is writing a mini book about the things Jesus wants us to do titled, Follow Jesus’ Doings
I was astonished! “I wrote things like, ‘obey’, ‘help others who are lonely,’ ‘do good things,’ ‘help others who are hurt,” he explained. My heart filled with so much love for this little boy! We actively talk about the Savior and His role in our lives at our house. We regularly discuss the things Christ did while on this earth and how we want to become like Him. I thought to myself, “I wonder if this is a little bit how our Heavenly Father feels when we catch on! When we come to Him in study and prayer and when we reach out, serve, and teach those around us. What a blessed moment! To see my son, developing faith and a testimony of our Savior, His Life and His Role!”
I finish the dishes, clean up the baby, and sit with him on my lap while my oldest shares with me his completed book. The book is folded in thirds, which he unfolds slowly reading each small section to me, “Color good things. Do good things. Help others who are doing bad things to do good things. Jesus is good. He made everything for us.” Each section had a saying or a picture representing something of the Savior’s life. Everything from Sacrament trays, to the Tomb from which Christ rose! I watched in silent awe, as he carefully unfolded each new section and explained the picture or read it to me. I felt so much joy.
“Children are an heritage of the Lord” Psalm 127: 3 Their faith is so quiet, so pure and so earth-shattering.
Reader Question: My pastor made a point in his sermon last week of stating that church should be about one thing only, deepening a personal relationship with Jesus Christ of the Bible. Not even making friends or strengthening family or marriage relationships, just to learn about Jesus, that’s it, by studying the Bible, verse by verse. He said to do anything else puts the focus on us and our needs, not His. I think this is a real line in the sand. And instead of socializing with other believers outside of church, we should go into our room, shut the door, read the Bible and pray to Jesus, the one and only God. Not just the one and only God “for us”, the only one anywhere. What are your thoughts on this?
To gather an answer to your question, we talked to our adult kids. We also asked our local missionaries, because we knew they could help us. The answer from our local elders was the same as from our family: Part of a deeper personal relationship with Jesus Christ is trying to become like Him, to act like Him, to treat others as He did. Christ “went about doing good” and so should we. Christ served others all His life by being among them and commanded us to become like Him and follow His example: “Feed my lambs.” We believe that serving others as Christ would serve them deepens our understanding of Christ in real life application, not just in theory. By reading and studying the scriptures, you will find that Christ wants us to love and serve one another.
If you and I were to ask Christ directly, we think that He would say that the focus IS on us and our needs. What Paul calls “the heavenly gift” is the great Atonement worked on our behalf by the Savior. The ultimate aim of that gift is to bring us, the spirit sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father, back into His presence. To qualify for that, we must learn to be like the Savior; patient, obedient, kind, generous, and so forth. Studying Jesus’ life and works will help us understand what we must do, but practicing Christlike attributes in families, at church and elsewhere, will help us to become like Him. Thus, the most effective way to live the life of a Christian is not to shut ourselves away from others but to live and serve among our brothers and sisters here on earth.
We hope this answers your question and helps you understand us better and how to become more like Christ.
And let us know how we may help you further! If you find that you have any questions about religious issues that you’ve been wondering about or that you haven’t been able to get good answers to, feel free to continue on discussion with us. It turns out that there are a lot of people with questions, and most of them have given up on churches as a source of answers. In our family, it is our experience that answers are out there, that God wants us to have them, and that they tend to be answers we like and have learned to appreciate. Working together with Heavenly Father allows anyone to find certainty in uncertain times.
-Dave and the MormonPanorama Family
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WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Address, “Ask the Missionaries! They Can Help You!”, Elder Russell M. Nelson, LDS General Conference, Oct 2012—www .lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/ask-the-missionaries-they-can-help-you?lang=eng
One of my most cherished possessions is a stick figure drawing of my husband and me drawn by my grandson. Dave has a forthright gaze, and a jaunty, striped hat sits on his head. My hair is optimistically drawn in pigtails, and my hair bows are colored to match Dave’s hat.
Many things about this precious picture appeal to me. For one thing, I’m portrayed as skinny, as stick figures always are, even though I am not! The delightful labels and arrows, helping to distinguish between drawings of my husband and me, are charming. And I love the confident lettering of the title words, separated by thick bars so anyone who sees the masterpiece will know exactly who the subject of the drawing is. But the best parts are the slightly lop-sided smiles on each of our faces. Dave and I may be quirky-looking, but we’re happy.
The sweet little boy who drew this picture saw that Dave and I were happy. I suppose he thinks we always are—probably because we ARE always happy when we can see him and his family. But even though we have now been married more than 30 years (and we like to think we’ve worked out most of the kinks. . .), we have occasions of rancor. Not too long ago at the dinner table, Dave said something that made me put down my fork and burst into tears. Even more recently, I said something quite sharply to Dave, again at the table. Our kids have memories of loud voices (mostly mine) and one particularly shameful episode of a pillow being tossed out a car window (me again). I don’t want to paint Dave a saint and me a shrew—though he might not entirely disagree with that picture—we are just people living together, not always in harmony. Our children have certainly seen the truth in the old adage: “when two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.” Obviously, Dave and I are both necessary. And our home, while generally happy, was (is!) not always peaceful.
For a long time I worried that this atmosphere would adversely affect our children. Would they leave home as soon as they were able? Would they treat siblings and peers unkindly? Would they fear Dave and I are headed toward divorce? Would they hesitate to marry themselves?
While I can’t fully speak to all these questions, some observations from their lives have provided me reassurance. They left home for college or missions, but didn’t move out in a flurry of escapism. They have distinctly different personalities and preferences, but enjoy being together. They have their own homes or apartments, in most cases quite a distance from ours, but like coming home for a visit. They are particularly sympathetic to the less fortunate, but are wonderfully gentle to everyone. The oldest 4 are married—a sign to me that they found the prospect of matrimony pleasing. And I was much soothed by a comment made by my son Mike. He told me, “I always knew that you and Dad were devoted to each other.”
I think one important reason the kids felt secure, despite the occasional spat, was our commitment to our marriage. Dave and I were married in the Salt Lake City temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This December will be our 32nd anniversary. Our marriage was performed by a man who held the power—priesthood power—to seal us together as husband and wife for all eternity. Simply put, Dave and I will be married to each other even after we die. Of course, like all covenants made with God and blessed by the priesthood, the promise of eternal marriage depends on our willingness to be faithful. But we ARE willing.
Much of what I know about marriage and its natural partner, the family, is found in a prophetic proclamation called “The Family: A proclamation to the World.” You can read it for yourself here.Knowing we are taking part in a plan devised by our loving Father in Heaven brings much to our marriage. We have delighted in the opportunity to have children. We recognize our responsibility to love each other. We know that following the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ will bless our lives and the lives of our children and our children’s children. We look forward to accounting for our efforts as husband and wife, as father and mother.
We are not getting it all right, so we’re grateful we can rely on the principles of repentance and forgiveness. But, as our much-loved grandson has noticed, we are happy.
P.S. I checked with Dave–we’re in agreement on this one!
This morning, I was struck by this thought-provoking sentence: “I don’t know one of [my own circle of girlfriends] who doesn’t have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past.” I read this in a footnote to a talk in a recent LDS General Conference interestingly titled, “The Moral Force of Women.”
The entire two-paragraph context by author Jennifer Moses is good:
So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn’t), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us don’t know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We’re embarrassed, and we don’t want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.
Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the desire to push back is strong. I don’t know one of them who doesn’t have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman I’ve ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she’d “experimented” more.
In fact, the entire WSJ article is good, and not only because it stirred up a strident response. (See “Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That?”, Jennifer Moses, Wall Street Journal, 19 Mar 2011, Page C3). Here is a selection from the address that referenced Moses’ article:
[In the view of many in the world, in sharp contrast to God’s view,] there has long been a cultural double standard that expected women to be sexually circumspect while excusing male immorality. The unfairness of such a double standard is obvious, and it has been justifiably criticized and rejected. In that rejection, one would have hoped that men would rise to the higher, single standard, but just the opposite has occurred—women and girls are now encouraged to be as promiscuous as the double standard expected men to be. Where once women’s higher standards demanded commitment and responsibility from men, we now have sexual relations without conscience, fatherless families, and growing poverty. Equal-opportunity promiscuity simply robs women of their moral influence and degrades all of society. In this hollow bargain, it is men who are “liberated” and women and children who suffer most. (“The Moral Force of Women”, D. Todd Christofferson, LDS General Conference, Oct 2013. )
In his address, Christofferson also teaches us the importance of appreciating everyone’s influence for good, regardless of the ways they work all day: “A pernicious philosophy that undermines women’s moral influence is the devaluation of marriage and of motherhood and homemaking as a career. Some view homemaking with outright contempt, arguing that it demeans women and that the relentless demands of raising children are a form of exploitation. They ridicule what they call “the mommy track” as a career. This is not fair or right. We do not diminish the value of what women or men achieve in any worthy endeavor or career—we all benefit from those achievements—but we still recognize there is not a higher good than motherhood or fatherhood in marriage.”
In a second footnote are cited important words from another address: “If being ‘selfless’ means a woman must give up her own inner identity and personal growth, that understanding of selflessness is wrong… But today’s liberationist model goes too far the other way, stereotyping women as excessively independent of their families. A more sensible view is that husbands and wives are interdependent with each other… The critics who moved mothers from dependence to independence skipped the fertile middle ground of interdependence. Those who moved mothers from selflessness to selfishness skipped the fertile middle ground of self-chosen service that contributes toward a woman’s personal growth. Because of these excesses, debates about the value of motherhood have, ironically, caused the general society to discount not only mothers but women in general.” (“Motherhood and the Moral Influence of Women”, Bruce C. Hafen, World Congress of Families II, Geneva, Switzerland, Plenary Session IV, 16 Nov 1999.)
Some may assume that these thoughts refer to virtue, to dressing modestly, or to the value of a working woman, rather than viewing them as a related whole. For me, the issue here is one of influence and of power. Women wield power and influence in diverse ways, and everyone should appreciate good work, independent of where a woman chooses to do it. I have learned for myself that, regardless of our views, it is selfish to say unkind things. We can learn to use our power and influence to build rather than to belittle, even if a person makes choices we would not make for ourselves. Women should not limit themselves to roles that others define for them. The far-reaching effects of the power and influence of women is well described in and certainly not limited to the why-do-we-let-our-kids-wear-immodest-clothes article by Jennifer Moses, Matt Walsh’s …Me?-Ha!-I-WORK! post, Sheri Dew’s two-are-better-than-one talk, or Julie Beck’s mothers-who-know address. “The world’s greatest champion of woman and womanhood is Jesus the Christ.” (Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society, Page 3.)
Early in her life, my wife nurtured a strong desire to be a woman of power and a woman of influence. She decided that she could do that most effectively by choosing to stay at home to raise a family. Her influence on our six adult children and on their families cannot be measured. That is influence; that is power. We are grateful for her wisdom to wield these skills in such a way as to have a true impact on society.
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WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Poster, Don’t Be A Dummy: A mannequin wears whatever the world is selling. Your standards are higher than that.—www.lds.org/media-library/images/mormonads/dress-and-appearance?lang=eng#mormonad-dont-be-a-dummy-1118328 [Church standards of modesty apply equally to all genders.]
Poster, Don’t Short Change Yourself: The way you dress advertises your standards. Send the right message. (See For The Strength Of Youth, P. 8.)—www. lds.org/media-library/images/mormonads/dress-and-appearance?lang=eng#mormonad-short-change-1118313 [Church standards of modesty apply equally to all genders.]
Article, “Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That?”, Jennifer Moses, Wall Street Journal, 19 Mar 2011—online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703899704576204580623018562
Address, “The Moral Force of Women,” D. Todd Christofferson, LDS General Conference, Oct 2013—www. lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/the-moral-force-of-women?lang=eng
Poster, Are Your Standards Shrinking? If it’s too tight, too short, or too revealing, it doesn’t fit church standards. Don’t stretch your standards to fit the world’s. (See For The Strength Of Youth, P. 14-16.)—www. lds.org/media-library/images/mormonads/dress-and-appearance?lang=eng#mormonad-standards-shrinking-1118383 [Church standards of modesty apply equally to all genders.]
Address, “Motherhood and the Moral Influence of Women,” Bruce C. Hafen, World Congress of Families II, Geneva, Switzerland, Plenary Session IV, 16 Nov 1999 —worldcongress.org/wcf2_spkrs/wcf2_hafen.htm
Blog Post, “You’re a stay-at-home mom? What do you DO all day?”, Matt Walsh—themattwalshblog.com/2013/10/09/youre-a-stay-at-home-mom-what-do-you-do-all-day/
Address, “It Is Not Good for Man or Woman to Be Alone”, Sheri L. Dew, LDS General Conference, Oct 2001—www. lds.org/general-conference/2001/10/it-is-not-good-for-man-or-woman-to-be-alone?lang=eng
Address, “Mothers Who Know”, Julie B. Beck, LDS General Conference, Oct 2007—www. lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/mothers-who-know?lang=eng
Book, Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society (2011, Intellectual Reserve, Inc., United States of America)—www. lds.org/relief-society/?lang=eng
A friend just shared this Vocal Point video with me, and an entire post popped in my head. The song is “(I Want To See You Be) Brave,” by Sara Bareilles. I thought of my wife, Kim, of our six adult kids and their families. I especially liked the sign that reads, “When I talk to new people.”
As a Mormon, as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe that we lived with God before we were born. True of anyone. And by celestial design, none of us remember — It was all veiled at birth. For eons before we came here, we studied hard, acquired knowledge, and learned skills, all with the goal of trying our guts out to live as God had taught and to do whatever we could to keep ourselves and others on the narrow path back to him. As we prepared with him for the moment of our birth, we knew that we would learn more from life on earth, because here we would be able to learn to walk not by memory, not by sight, but by faith, for the first time making decisions on our own in an environment where Heavenly Father was no longer around. As he sent us off, I wonder if he was singing to us a similar pre-lullaby message of “I want to see you be brave!”
This idea of a pre-existence changes many a perspective. I see my body not as mine, not to do with as I please, but as a temple of God, a gift from him, a house for my spirit now that I’m no longer with him. Such a view demands that I treat my body with respect and not with selfishness. The idea of a pre-mortal life and the idea of your body being a temple and not your own are ideas that permeate the popular post of Mormon blogger Seth Adam Smith, “Marriage Isn’t For You” (at his blog or at Huffington Post). His earthly father taught him, “Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.” While I heartily agree, I also counsel our kids as they head to the altar that marriage is so dang fun (for themselves as well as for their spouse).
These ideas and others are discussed concisely in the LDS Family Proclamation. These ideas help protect me, keep me be safe and secure. These perspectives, these teachings, are why families are so important. Families help us get ourselves back to God.
And in addition to giving us a family to help, God went further to give us another gift, both urgent and important. He allowed us to have a portion of his power. He gave us his priesthood, the authority to act for him, to do what he would do, if he were here with his amplearm around us, whispering what he would like us to know, to do, to be, to become. The priesthood of God isn’t for some and not for others — It’s for any of us, for all of us. It applies equally to people of any gender, in any country, of any position in life. For example, watch how Sheri Dew answers the great question: “In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what do women get?”
I can see how God sent ALL of us here well prepared, not just to thrive, but to fight to find our way back. When we’re unsure of the path, he continues to guide us. We call that prayer, and it works like a phone. With a bit of effort, it’s a two-way communication device. Beats a cell phone or Star Trek communicator with a stick.
Dieter Uchtdorf taught us to be brave against doubt when he said, referring to another’s phrase which was first penned in 1924: “It’s natural to have questions—the acorn of honest inquiry has often sprouted and matured into a great oak of understanding. One of the purposes of the Church is to nurture and cultivate the seed of faith—even in the sometimes sandy soil of doubt and uncertainty. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters—my dear friends—please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.” (See F.F. Bosworth, Christ the Healer (1924), Page 23, as quoted in “Come, Join With Us”.)
Most importantly, these perspectives shift my thinking, so that I tend to view life through a lens of patience and peace. These ideas give me hope and humility. Seth’s dad is spot on — It isn’t all about me. Sometimes, I don’t want my stinkin’ thinkin’ shifted, but if I learn to adjust my vision to a more godly perspective, I realize that it was short-sighted to fight the shift in thought. I hope it makes me a better husband, a better father, a better man, a better person. It helps me be brave.
From the lyrics of Brave: “Show me how big your brave is.”
Seeing Ourselves As Brave — Being Brave For Others
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WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Video, “Brave by Sara Bareilles—BYU Vocal Point (a cappella tribute)”—www. youtube.com/watch?v=XeX3r8j66Qk
Blog Post, “Marriage Isn’t For You”, Seth Adam Smith—sethadamsmith.com/2013/11/02/marriage-isnt-for-you/
Blog Re-post, “Marriage Isn’t For You”, Seth Adam Smith—
www. huffingtonpost.com/seth-adam-smith/marriage-isnt-for-you_b_4209837.html
Document, The Family: A Proclamation to the World—
www. lds.org/topics/family-proclamation
Video, “Lean on My Ample Arm”—www. youtube.com/watch?v=iWn48w7vX80
Hymn, “Lean on My Ample Arm”, music, recordings, lyrics—www. lds.org/music/library/hymns/lean-on-my-ample-arm?lang=eng
Video, “What Do LDS Women Get?”—www. youtube.com/watch?v=-QYlDLChzig
Address, “Come, Join With Us,” Dieter F. Uchtdorf, LDS General Conference Oct 2013—www. lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/come-join-with-us
Illustration, Seeing Ourselves As Brave — Being Brave For Others—https://www. lds.org/media-library/images/primary/illustrations?lang=eng#children-barking-dog-778662
At the archery portion of the Naadam Festival held in July each year in Ulaanbaatar, a female archer in elegant Mongolian dress aims to topple a small wall of marked blocks from over half a football field away. The skill demonstrated by the archers in the competition is absolutely amazing as they more often than not hit the center portion of the marked blocks.
For Hunger Games archer Katniss Everdeen, it was take initiative or starve to death. After her father died and her mother was crippled with grief, feeding the family fell to Katniss. It took time, but she learned to recognize that she had developed skills that could save her family if she would put to work the tools her father had given her:
For a while, I hung around the edges of the Meadow, but finally I worked up the courage to go under the fence. It was the first time I’d been there alone, without my father’s weapons to protect me. But I retrieved the small bow and arrows he’d made me from a hollow tree. I probably didn’t go more than twenty yards into the woods that day. Most of the time, I perched up in the branches of an old oak, hoping for game to come by. After several hours, I had the good luck to kill a rabbit. I’d shot a few rabbits before, with my father’s guidance. But this I’d done on my own.
We hadn’t had meat in months… The woods became our savior, and each day I went a bit farther into its arms. It was slow-going at first, but I was determined to feed us. (The Hunger Games, Chapter 4, Paragraphs 17-19, Pages 50-51)
Nephi also learned to show initiative when faced with severe difficulties. His ability to feed his family was threatened when his bow made of fine steel was broken. He made a decision that saved his family. While others complained, he set a self-imposed goal: To make a bow of wood and to put it to work. Nephi would have had to carve a piece of wood long enough, thick enough, straight enough, and flexible yet strong enough to draw back with great force without breaking it. Suitable wood in the area may have included olive, pomegranate, acacia, or juniper.
Nephi chose to act. He did what he could to fix a bad situation. He didn’t wait to be “compelled in all things” but decided to be “anxiously engaged” and to do something “of [his] own free will” (D&C 58:26–27). The Lord then blessed his efforts by helping him to have a successful hunt (1 Nephi 16:29–31). His goals were not just self-imposed goals; they were goals that saved his family.
Clayton M. Christensen has put this same lesson to work. As a world-renowned innovation expert and the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, he has bit of experience with showing initiative. Throughout his book, The Power of Everyday Missionaries, Clay describes repeatedly how he has used self-imposed goals to bring about incredible changes in his own life and in the lives of others. No simple quote — Just lots of inspiring counsel from one who knows, from one who learned by doing.
I have learned for myself the importance of showing initiative. It helps us to aim high, to stretch ourselves and our bowstrings, and to reach new goals. It especially helps when we seek counsel from a trusted spiritual leader. And I know that by so doing, we may save our ourselves and our families.
Book, The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (2008, Scholastic Press, New York NY), ISBN 978-0-439-02348-1
Painting, Nephi Finds Food While Others Complained—www.lds.org/manual/book-of-mormon-student-manual/chapter-5-1-nephi-16-18
Photo, Ideas That Change The World—www.claytonchristensen.com
Book, The Power of Everyday Missionaries: The What and How of Sharing the Gospel, Clayton M. Christensen (2012, Deseret Book, Salt Lake City UT), ISBN 978-1-60907-315-2 (paperbound), 978-1-60907-316-9 (hardbound)
Article, “Nephi’s Bows”, New Era, Sep 2013, www .lds.org/new-era/2013/09/nephis-bows?lang=eng
or www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/images/magazines/new-era/2013/09/ne13sep24-25-000-nephis-bows.pdf
What makes a strong family?
“How we preserve time for family is one of the most significant issues we face in most cultures.
“At a time when I was…in our law firm, one lawyer explained to me how she always felt like a juggler trying to keep three balls in the air at the same time. One ball was her law practice, one was her marriage, and one was her children. She’d almost given up on time for herself. She was greatly concerned that one of the balls was always on the ground. I suggested we meet as a group and discuss our priorities. We determined that the primary reason we were working was to support our families. We agreed that making more money wasn’t nearly as important as our families, but we recognized that serving our clients to the best of our abilities was essential. The discussion then moved to what we did at work that was not necessary and was inconsistent with having time for family. Was there pressure to spend time in the workplace that was not essential? We decided that our goal would be a family-friendly environment for both women and men. Let us be at the forefront in protecting time for family.” (“Lamentations of Jeremiah: Beware of Bondage,” Quentin L. Cook, LDS General Conference, Oct 2013.)
Strength Against The Storm
What makes a strong family? The importance of a strong family narrative is highlighted in the New York Times article on well-researched studies on vital long-term benefits of family history,
“The Stories That Bind Us“:
The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.
“We were blown away,” Dr. Duke said.
And then something unexpected happened. Two months later was Sept. 11. As citizens, Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivush were horrified like everyone else, but as psychologists, they knew they had been given a rare opportunity: though the families they studied had not been directly affected by the events, all the children had experienced the same national trauma at the same time. The researchers went back and reassessed the children.
“Once again,” Dr. Duke said, “the ones who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress.”
Why does knowing where your grandmother went to school help a child overcome something as minor as a skinned knee or as major as a terrorist attack?
“The answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family,” Dr. Duke said.
⁞
The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.
Strong narrative, strong family, strong kids. In the world we live in, we are expected to keep more and more balls in the air, with fewer and fewer on the ground. Well do I ask myself: How will I manage it? How will my adult kids and grandkids?
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WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Photo, keeping the balls juggling in the air—womenonthefence.com/2009/11/25/keeping-the-balls-juggling-in-the-air/
Address, “Lamentations of Jeremiah: Beware of Bondage,” Quentin L. Cook, LDS General Conference, Oct 2013—www .lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/lamentations-of-jeremiah-beware-of-bondage?lang=eng
Photo, Strength Against The Storm—ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/09/extreme-weather/miller-text
Article, “The Stories That Bind Us”, Bruce Feiler, New York Times, 15 Mar 2013—www .nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html
Address, “Good, Better, Best,” Dallin H. Oaks, LDS General Conference, Oct 2007—www .lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/good-better-best?lang=eng
Photo, Strength To Manage Floods That Happen In Life—www.cuindependent.com/2013/09/17/photos-cu-independents-coverage-of-the-boulder-flood/46514
Questions are important. Questions can be good. Questions, like anything else, come in various shapes and sizes, such as Good, Better, Best.
Thor Learning To Ask Better Questions
As do we mere mortals, Thor (God of Thunder) learned this the hard way. “My father was trying to teach me something, and I was too stupid to see it… I had it all backwards. I had it all wrong.” His friend, Erik, counseled him, “It’s not a bad thing finding out that you don’t have all the answers. You start asking the right questions.” Always tough, yet always rewarding.
Mike Nielson from Rogers, Arkansas, learned the importance of asking and discussing really good questions:
To Where May Questions Lead? With his friend, Jeremy, Mike began to learn why dialogue is important. Bob Millet, former dean of Religious Education at BYU (Brigham Young University), learned this lesson as well with his friend, Pastor Greg Johnson. “I was surprised when [Greg] then said to the group: ‘Are you listening to Bob? Do you hear what he is saying? This is important! It’s time for us to stop criticizing Latter-day Saints on matters they don’t even teach today.’ …The last question asked was by a middle-aged man: ‘This thrills my soul. I think this is what Jesus would do. I have lived in Utah for many years, and I have many LDS friends. We get along okay; we don’t fight and quarrel over religious matters. But we really don’t talk with one another about the things that matter most to us–that is, our faith. I don’t plan to become a Latter-day Saint, and I’m certain my Mormon friends don’t plan to become Evangelical, but I would like to find more effective ways to talk heart to heart. Could you two make a few suggestions on how we can deepen and sweeten our relationships with our LDS neighbors?’ (Read on? Click here, Page 15.)
Questions May Lead To Certainty My wife, Kim, and I usually see things from different points of view. Even though we know we are equally yoked in our responsibilities as spouses and as parents, each of us sees life through a different lens, and we focus on different things. We help each other to ask the best questions. I am the man who has the keys and she is the woman who has the influence (see Paragraph 8 in the section “Teaching the Rising Generation” in this address), and together we strive to bring about the work that God wants us to do in our family and in our community. By asking the right questions, I have learned for myself that working together with Heavenly Father allows any couple to raise children who find certainty in uncertain times.
Finding Certainty Together By Asking Great Questions
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WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Address, “Good, Better, Best”, Dallin H. Oaks, LDS General Conference, Oct 2007—www .lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/good-better-best?lang=eng
Photo, “Thor Learning To Ask Better Questions”—musingsfrommarsh.blogspot.com/2012/06/thor-co.html
Article, “What Is Our Doctrine?”, Robert L. Millet, The Religious Educator, 2003, p. 15—ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/RelEd/article/viewFile/1950/1911
Address, “Teaching the Doctrine of the Family”, Julie B. Beck, Ensign, Mar 2011—www .lds.org/ensign/2011/03/teaching-the-doctrine-of-the-family?lang=eng
The other day, my 4-year-old son and I were looking for bugs, and he wanted to hold a “roly-poly”. He was having a good time. I looked away and turned back, and I didn’t see the roly poly anymore. I asked where it went, and he said, “I smushed him with my fingers because I was done playing with him.” I told him sternly that we don’t do that, and later when he was recounting the scene to Amanda, he said, “I smushed him, which was not nice—He is dead, and he needs a Jesus roly poly to make him come back alive again.” I almost peed my pants. I think Amanda spit out whatever was in her mouth.
My younger son, who is two, just figured out that he can bother my older just as much as he is harassed him. Aaaaaaaaah… these kids… How did you do it, Mom and Dad?! Sometimes I secretly wonder if there were more of us kids to begin with and Mom and Dad only kept the better products alive….my 2-year-old is super cute though.
My older son is crazy, funny, frustrating, and messy. He loves to draw! He is very good at taking apart clicky pens and putting them back together successfully, springs and all. Sometimes, he doesn’t feel like putting them back together and thinks that playing with the ink is more fun—as we learned last week. I got home from work, and he was in his room having some quiet time and drawing. When I went to check on him a while later, he had pen ink smeared all over his face, legs, arms, stuffed animals, dresser, bed, box fan, and the walls of his bedroom. It was like someone threw a paint grenade in there. I started to yell and told him he could never use a pen again, when he burst into tears and said, “Daddy, Daddy, I drew a picture for you, see?! See, Daddy, this is for you!” I almost burst into tears looking at him with tears streaming down his face and his bottom lip quivering just trying to show me his accomplishment. Whelp… So much for that discipline… Daddy’s a sucker and just melted like Silly Putty melts into carpet (another story for some other time…). I gave him a big hug and told him how proud I was of his drawing. I still told him that his stuffed animals were gone and that he could never use pens again (today, he is still only drawing with pencils).
This experience allowed me to reflect on the Savior’s atonement for each of us. I thought of how many times I have screwed up in my life and the Lord has been very patient with me. It was those experiences, knowing that I have been in my 4 year old’s shoes so many times throughout my life, that allowed me to keep my cool and be proud of his drawing. It was difficult, and I was still very disappointed in his behavior, but I wanted him to know I was proud of his accomplishments. I feel this is how the Savior is with each of us. He is disappointed when we make poor decisions that we know are wrong, but He is there for us to join us in our celebrations of our accomplishments, and He encourages us to make better choices in the future.
Splatter Of Ink
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WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
I love the words of the narrator as we focus on his wedding ring at Time 2:53 and the kid at the door watching his parents pray at 2:34. When I walked in to see my own parents at prayer, I remember the whoosh of feelings of safety and security but mostly of sacredness.
My favorite memory of the power of a prayerful life is one at work. I knocked on a friend’s office door; normally, he responds quickly with, “Come in!”, and I open the door. Sometimes, I’ll hear water running in the office bathroom as he makes ablution, and I know not to knock at the door for a few minutes after he returns to his office. But this day I was distracted and failed to notice that my knock at the door from without brought no invitation voiced from within. Out of habit, I called him by name, adding the customary honorific suffix, and opened the door. I found my elderly friend kneeling lowly on his prayer rug. It was such a holy moment. In a familiar whoosh of feeling, I was aware that I had missed the cues of the sounds at the sink. Having cleansed himself without as he focused on cleansing himself within, he was now talking with his Maker, expressing humility without as he voiced humility within. It was just like walking in on my parents at prayer. After prayers were done, we embraced; I apologized for disturbing a sacred moment. “Oh, I don’t mind. I am just doing my duty,” he said. I replied, “It is the duty of us all.”
When I think of my favorite moments of prayer, I will always see in my mind and in my heart an elderly man from Uzbekistan, with shoes removed from off his feet, kneeling submissively on sacred ground in his office, visible to none but to Him who sees all.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
Vintage Prayer Rug
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WebCredits—List of web resources used in this post but not explicitly credited above:
Photo, “Knock, And It Shall Be Opened Unto You”—westsoundmodern.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/go-away-im-washing-my-hair-2/knock-knock-3/
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