Contented Ramblings

I'm waiting for my (absurdly enormous) loaves of bread to rise, so I thought I'd write a bit about what's been going on in my head for a while.

--You know when people ask you what you want to do with your life? I always want to come up with some grand things like cure the common cold and end world hunger, but if I'm being honest, the answer I keep coming back to is that I want to use my youth well and grow old with grace. I don't want to be one of those people who try to hang onto the past with a death grip. I want to be like Sister Hinckley and embrace my life in all its stages.

--I read an article the other day by a Christian pastor blogger who said that he had no desire to know the historical Jesus. It's really a beautiful article, and he talks about hope for most of it. It really resonated with me. But I read the comments, and all of them got hung up on how he didn't want to know the historical Jesus. People kept saying that you couldn't know Jesus at all unless you studied the historical accounts in the Bible. They all focused on that and didn't even mention the rest of the article, which says wonderful, profound things like this: "As Christians, we are never looking back. We are looking forward. We are not trying to get back to Eden. God is not calling us back to the way things were, but God is calling us to what will be."

I felt sad for the commenters, because I completely agree with the writer. He wants to know Jesus now, the Latter Day Resurrected Lord, instead of the Jesus before the cross. And so do I. I love and honor the Bible and the accounts in it, but every time I read it it's readily apparent that things have been garbled and lost in translation. I've never gotten a really clear picture of Jesus from the Bible stories. The Jesus I know has come through the words of the living prophets, the Book of Mormon, and especially the D&C, which is literally a transcription of the voice of the Resurrected Lord. It's a 100+ sections straight from His mouth, in first person narrative. I feel like that provides an infinitely clearer picture than the first-hand Biblical accounts that have come down to us through who knows how many translators. So I want to write to the pastor and tell him that there is a way to know the modern day Jesus. And it's free to anyone who wants to read it.

--Being an adult is weird. I used to get all happy over a trip to the waterpark or a new movie or a new toy. Don't get me wrong, I still do that (especially over waterparks. I took my nieces to a little waterpark a few weeks ago and I'm pretty sure I had more fun than they did. Ah, the eternal internal twelve-year old). But now I also go into raptures over storage space (my new apartment has a pantry! and a linen closet! oh, the bliss!) and derive an intense satisfaction from a well-stocked freezer. The fact that I have a bowl full of crookneck squash on my counter and unseemly amounts of peaches in my fridge makes me inordinately happy. As a kid, I never expected that these things would make me (almost) as happy as a trip to the waterpark. Like I said, being an adult is weird.

--Speaking of weird things, facing a fall semester and not being in school anymore is creating this odd sense of unreality. I've been starting a new year of school each fall for the past 19 years of my life. 80% of my life has revolved around school. And suddenly, it doesn't anymore. The fact that I'm going to go to work each day and then come home and have free time to do whatever I like, that homework is a thing of the past, is really very strange. Good, but so very bizarre.

--So I just got a job as a line cook in a hipster taco shop. I am a college graduate. I gave six years of blood, sweat, and lots and lots of tears for that degree. Am I now working in music education? No. Will I be using my degree in my work? Yes, but not in the way my professors intended. 

And I'm really ok with that. I'm grateful for my degree. I learned huge amounts about my chosen field and myself, and I will always enjoy music. But one of the things I really struggled with the whole time I was working on it was that I had to devote pretty much my entire life to being a music major and I felt like I was so much more than that. I'm more than just a music major. So I'm happy to work in a "menial" taco shop job. It lets me be more fully me. It lets me explore other sides of me that I've been forced to neglect for much too long. 

Someday I will probably find my way back into the music field. Once it gets into your bones and your soul it never quite lets you go. But I'm glad to take a break and do other things, so that when I do come back to music, it will feel like coming home again.

--A few weeks ago in sacrament meeting, one of the talks was about sacrifice. He said that sacrifice isn't just giving up something, it's trading something worse for something better. It could be a bad habit, a sin, anything.

It was my first Sunday in this ward. We'd just moved back to Provo, and my life was changing yet again. I was scared--of trying to make new friends, of job hunting, and of the unknown. But he said that a sacrifice could be anything. So I thought, "today, I will sacrifice fear." I will take my fear and trade it to God for something better. I'll trade it for courage, for friends, for confidence, for hope in the future. 

Today, I will sacrifice fear.

This is my ranty post about women and the Priesthood

You have been warned.

I just read an article that frustrated me. It was another one about how women are unequal to men when it comes to the Priesthood, that we are just passive recipients. The real kicker for me was the writer seemed to think that the "exercise of the priesthood itself is the greatest blessing of the priesthood." 

How? How is that possible? How is it that the simple physical acts of giving blessings and presiding in meetings the greatest blessing of the priesthood? Isn't the very definition of the priesthood God's power given to man? The authority to act in God's name? Men are given the priesthood keys, the authority to formally act in God's name. Has anyone ever thought about the informal ways to act in God's name--those ways we can help and bless and lift others and serve and love as Jesus did? Why are we all so hung up on the formal authority? I personally don't care a single bit that I don't have formal authority. I can be an instrument in God's hands just as well using only my loving heart and my desire to do good. 

Why does it matter so much who leads the meetings and who gives the talks if we can ALL actually GO OUT AND BLESS LIVES, regardless? Will it matter more in the eternities if we had the "authority" or if we actually went and did something? I feel like this whole debate is looking short of the mark. We're so hung up with titles and equality that we forget the bigger picture, which is the same for every single human being who has ever lived or ever will live, regardless of race, class, social standing, gender, or chance to have priesthood keys: we are here to do good and to be good, to learn to love unconditionally, and to get our butts back into the presence of God. There is nothing in there about equality or authority or anything but PERSONAL development. Will having the priesthood get me back to God faster? No. Will not having the ability to exercise priesthood authority deny me any blessing? No. God is no respecter of persons. Having or not having in no way influences how He chooses to bestow blessings.

Also, I don't believe that "exercising the priesthood [authority/keys] is the greatest blessing of the priesthood." Merely having the opportunity to exercise authority is NOT on par with the blessings we receive in the temple, which are made available through the priesthood. If you were given the choice between presiding at meetings or, oh I don't know, being able to literally walk back into God's presence, which would you choose? The things we learn and covenant to do in the temple are the greatest and truest blessings of the priesthood, and they apply equally to everyone. 

Why are we so concerned about who is nominally in charge of officiating? Why are we so concerned about who seems to be in charge? Because, news flash, world, neither men nor women are actually running this show. God is. And if He chooses to put men in a more visible leadership role and give them the priesthood keys, I couldn't care less. I couldn't care less if He decided that the roles should be reversed. The thing I care about is that I have a way to get back to Him. And it has nothing to do with who holds the priesthood keys and everything to do with me and my heart and my actions. 

Maybe this makes me a bad feminist. I don't care. I'm tired of hearing people argue about something that matters a lot to the world and not at all to eternity. 

The faith to try

These are the lamentations of an unsure music major:

Change is hard.

I feel overwhelmed by the upcoming semester. I feel like I don't know anything, that I'm not good at anything, and that's causing me to panic. It's not very fun.

We talked about talents today in Relief Society, and one of the ladies said something profound. She said, "Anything we do that we can develop is a talent." 

Anything we DO. NOT anything we DO WELL. I feel like I do not do most music major things WELL. But I DO them. And I can DEVELOP them. My whole life will be smothered under a terrible feeling of inadequacy if I continue to believe that I am a sub-par musician and a sub-par music major. I am not perfect. I should not expect to be. I may never be a prodigy. In fact, it's very likely that I will never become an earth-shatteringly good horn player, or pianist, or whatever. I simply don't have the desire to devote that much time and pain and effort to perfecting that craft.

BUT.

I have to believe that I can become competent in my chosen field. That I have a talent for music education--not because I do it well, but because I DO IT. I do it, and by golly I can develop it. Yes, I know very very little about it, and most of what I have learned I've forgotten over the summer. Yes, I will make a great many mistakes, and they will hurt and embarrass me and make me want to cry and sink into the ground. 

But mistakes are proof that you are trying. And if there is one thing I can be good at, it's trying. And if that is all I do this semester--if all I manage to do is try--that will be no small thing. That, in many ways, will be a great victory. Because I have a talent for music education. And I will try.

Terrified

You know those moments when you're on the brink of something new? Something huge and life changing? And you're caught between the old and the new, today and tomorrow, excitement and sheer bloody terror?

I'm right there.

I'm right there, and I'm terrified.

Humans are creatures of habit. We find our routine and we stick to it. It's comfortable. It's familiar. It's easy. My life is none of those things right now. And yet it's all of those things. It's midway between the familiar and the unknown, and the transition is definitely not comfortable.

I've done this a few times before. When I left for college. When I got my first boyfriend. When I blindly auditioned for a brass band that put me through the wringer and changed the course of my life. In all those times my world has shifted and rearranged itself and made me seriously consider what it was and who I was. I had to redefine myself and find room for both the old and the new--the things that made me who I was to that point, and the new things that were changing me, like it or not. And in all those times it was hard. It was hard to go from the high school girl living at home to the college girl who had to cook all her own meals and set her own schedule. It was hard to go to a new place and become a missionary and adjust to different rules. It was very hard to set aside twenty years of single-ness and re-conceptualize myself as a girl with a boyfriend.

But I managed it. In all cases I worked through it and cobbled together a new me that learned to survive and thrive and conquer that new sphere.

Now I find myself at a new transition. In mid-leap. The apex of that leap is arriving in eight short days. Then I have to rearrange the pieces of my life into a new pattern--one that works with another person's life. And although I was more than ready to quit the sphere of college apartment living, the habits and conditioning of five full years are proving hard to alter. It's been a long time since those last big changes. And none of them, honestly, were quite this big. Not this life-changing. Not this important. Not this profound.

It's a good thing I'll have my best friend along with me to conquer this world. To define it, and me, and us. Wish us luck as we begin our next great adventure.

Two Years

*Dedicated to my one and only*

Two Years

I look back in time

and I laugh

I laugh and giggle and shake my head

and roll my eyes

and laugh some more

did it really take

THAT long?

two years

two YEARS

months of denial

and waiting and wanting and crying and praying

and hoping and dreaming and overthinking and second-guessing

from a frisbee in October

to a bus in March

to a basement and a barbeque and a hot tub in May

to a duck pond in January

and again in February

and March

and then April

which led to a kiss on the couch

and a car in the rain

and a little tiny park

hidden on a hill

full of giggles and mosquitos and handy park benches and hard questions and patience

and then another park

(which I lost)

and another couch

(which was new)

and a few words

and a lot of tears

because my joy was too full

and leaked

and these in turn

(two years and a little past that frisbee game)

led to another couch

the best couch

on a perfect afternoon

and another question

which was not hard at all

and a night full of fireworks

and plans and dreams and joy

and a kiss

to bring in another year

two years?

let's make it three

or four

or a hundred

or forever

and count the Octobers

and the Marches

and the couches and the duck ponds and the parks and the buses

and all the other things to look back on

and laugh about later

like our first two years

Love Like Fire

Love

is what?
so many people
say so many things
what is it?
and why
are there so many kinds?

we love family
like a hearthfire
gentle
contained
constant
a place to gather
in comfort and peace

we love friends
like a campfire
bright
warm
far too far into the night
we gather round
to laugh and warm ourselves
at its flame

but I love you
like a firework
delightsome
wonderful
dazzling

I love you
like a shooting star
magnificent
inspiring
thrilling

I love you
like a sun
beautiful
powerful
blissful

because you
shine
and your light
shines through me
all of me
and there is no darkness
left at all

love like fire

Mother Eve

The Nobility of Woman

A choice
in a garden
pondered
thought through
foreseen and understood

A choice
between innocence
and sorrow
pain
death
and an unending, unchangeable
now

A choice
to embrace the bitter
that she might
fully understand
the sweet

A choice
life
not existence
struggle
not safety
agency
not innocence

A choice
made with eyes open
heart in tune
and courage
grasped with both hands

A choice
made by Eve
and all
her daughters after
to willingly walk
through the fire
that they might
fully know
joy

Thus is the nobility
of woman