greaterthansparrows

Boo, boo, boo, boo! I'm a ghost to scare you! From Halloween town I've come this night, All dressed from tip to toe in White. BOOoo-oo, BOOoo-oo, BOO! (My kids will remember the tune.) at Sister Haney's We have a definite lack of Halloween pictures with costumes over the years.  We have actually almost none, casualty of a lack of a camera.  This one was taken by Geraldine Haney, a grandmother and great-grandmother who lived a block away from our first rental home in Tacoma.  She had a Polaroid camera and always took a shot when we showed up at her door.  She was my first visiting teacher, and she personally made a baby quilt for every baby born in the ward for decades.  Roseanne still has hers, it survived.  We also went and sang for her at Christmas every year.  Her home no longer exists, it was bought out and leveled for a parking garage because it sat right across the street from the County-City building--which is the courthou...

A new teacher was called this fall for the Thursday evening section of the same class that I teach on Wednesday mornings.  We had talked on the phone after he received this call, but had never met before September when he showed up for my first class.  We trade some materials back and forth as we prepare, and he attends my class be fore he teaches his own .  He found the accounts of the  selection and ordination of the first modern apostles compelling, as I did, and we talked after class about what those callings and experiences meant.  How does our Father see us, and see the road ahead? As He lines out our promises, knowing our diff iculties, what does He see, and do we trust in what He sees?  Are we going to hang on?   On Wednesday, Brother Dargan went home after our class and had an afternoon of prayer and pondering in the Spirit.  I am offering a guest spot, if you will, today, for what he wrote that day and gave to his class the following...

Taking over the dining room table This is the shot of what I left for the night on Tuesday when I went to bed, spread as my mother would say, 'from heck to breakfast.'  There's room for Hubby to sit and eat his actual breakfast on the other side, honest.  The stack of mail is on the upper right corner, that's not due to me.  By the time my beloved was downstairs to eat, this spread pile was gathered from the left and right into its center and ready to be loaded in the car when I was.  Our lesson yesterday [Wed.] was on the calling of the Twelve Apostles in Kirtland February 14, 1835.  How's that for a Valentine's present to the world?  The keys to take the gospel throughout the earth.  I had a lot of research materials printed up from GospeLink, Deseret Book's indispensable database which only drives me crazy some times, my normal lesson materials, the Church Almanac because it lists information on every apostle ever called, my markers, pen, and...

When I was in Utah in August, I did something I'd never done before.  I needed to see a chiropractor and got a recommendation, and I had to fill out paperwork at his office.  Name, address, occupation, we are all familiar, medical history.  Under occupation, I put two things instead of one:  homemaker and writer.  I have had some years where I had work descriptions to fill in, small part-time jobs, but I had never thought of myself as a writer, in any way that I would declare to the world, before this year. A 'maybe-someday' writer, a potential writer, but not an actual, concrete writer. The doctor ushered me in, glancing over my forms, and said, "It says here that you're a writer.  What kind of a writer?  Are you a journalist? Free-lance work?" "No, well, I have a blog--of course lots of people have blogs--but I write a column for a new Mormon online journal called the Nauvoo Times. It just started up in May."  He was interested, hadn't hear...

It's beet season, and that may gladden your heart or be something you care nothing about. Beets were the only food that my oldest daughter, in her high chair, ever spit right back in my face. Daughter #2 didn't like them either, though her reaction was less vehement.  Daughter #3 was favorable, but I made the mistake of trying them on her while her older sisters were present--you know, dinner time--and both of them immediately clamored at her that those were awful, you don't want them!  So she didn't.  (She eats them now as an adult.) Hubby and I like beets a lot.  Jonathan and his new fiancee were having dinner with us, and they were still finding out things about each other.  I had either cooked beets or the topic came up, I don't remember which.  Jonathan turned to Maeby and asked, "Do you like beets?" "Not really, no.  Do you like beets?" "I despise beets ."  He turned to me and said, "That's settled. ...

Watching General Conference, this performance of a beautiful hymn was beautifully done.  The usual soprano line on the last line of the verses is one repeated note, but it had not struck me that, like the hymn "The Lord is My Shepherd," the actual melody there is in the lower part, not the soprano.  On the final verse here, you can hear the choir sing that note while the soloist repeats the moving line.  That repeated final note, the one I always sing, is like a warm, sustained chiming of a bell, but the melody moving beneath it is lovely.  Next time the congregation sings this I may sing it entirely differently than I have done before. I love the words.  I love this understanding of the music, in this arrangement.

At the dedication of the Kirtland Temple (yesterday ) I looked at the marvelous outpouring of spiritual gifts and the visitations of angels; I touched on such a small part of all that happened, recorded in the personal accounts of those who were blessed to be there. One thing that surprised many was that the  dedication prayer given by the Prophet was something he read, not spoke extemporaneously.  He had taught them to pray from the heart, to follow their feelings.  He said of this prayer, that it had been revealed to him.  God had made known to him what to say to God.  Did that mean that there was a set prayer to dedicate a temple, such as there was for blessing the sacrament?  Not at all.  Every dedicatory prayer of every temple in the world since has followed that pattern: it has been given by revelation and it has spoken to the circumstances of that place and time.  It has also reflected the prophet or apostle offering it--I don't think yo...

Finishing the Kirtland Temple Today we looked at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple , at the prayer given and recorded as Doctrine & Covenants 109 . This had not been an easy requirement from the Lord in the conditions of their lives, but they had been chastised for delay and promised that great blessings would be poured out.  There are numerous accounts of angelic visitations and manifestations; the dedication date was 27 March 1836, and work had commenced in June 1833, so it had taken almost three years and everything that the Saints in Kirtland had, and more.  Missionaries had pleaded for funds for this house of the Lord as they labored in their preaching.  John Tanner had sold considerable property to be able to offer funds for this undertaking, and many had neglected their livelihoods and been fed by families who were doing scarcely better.  But it was accomplished. The Prophet Joseph had set out a course of spiritual preparation.  Every...

Reading while visiting in Utah, I found a selection of essays, titled The Redeemer.   In one of them, Camille Fronk talks about feeding the five thousand in John chapter 6, the lad who had five barley loaves and two small fishes.  Jesus has been teaching a very large group of people who have followed him to the Sea of Galilee.  They need to be fed. She talks "first about the intent becoming known, looking for who has what to contribute--some might have said to themselves, I have enough to get  by, but not more, not enough to contribute; some might have reasoned, I have enough to get by, so I will not expect more from anyone else.  The lad simply volunteered what he had without waiting to see how it added up or whether it mattered, and the Lord turned that simple, forthright offer into a vast miracle." Isn't it easy to say, what could I offer? Not enough to matter.  Isn't it understandable to think, I don't need to bother anybody, I can get by?  I w...

A most unusual thing happened last week.  I woke up to find that all the blankets were on my side of the bed, all the way to the floor.  Now, it does happen from time to time that the covers end up all the way to the floor--on HIS side, not mine.  Meaning, that I was often left cold. He had pulled the bottom corner out with his feet and his tossing, apparently, and he wasn't cold yet--the temperature being only marginal--and had pushed them off; whereupon--no longer anchored to the mattress--they came to me (since I was a little chilly and pulled them up), and kept going.  All of it unconscious, both of us asleep. Now, before I was married I liked to be snug in my blankets, and I liked to nestle down; but I did not like to have that top line tight across my neck.  That means I would kind of pull the center down, like a cowl neckline, snug over the shoulders but not confining under my chin.  I knew just how I liked it. (When my mother wanted to break ...