Recently I have been involved in several discussions about ideals. 

I have heard from women who say the Church hurt them by stating ideals when they were young, because they felt they were put ‘outside’ those ideals. I’ve spoken with women who have been harmed by selfish people..people they trusted to uphold the ideals but who instead threw them aside and chose to hurt others..

I’ve heard women who grieve over people mocking, discounting,  or ignoring the ideals set forth in the doctrines; feeling they are standing at bay protecting against an onslaught. 

I’ve heard women rejoice in, and bring the ideals forward for appreciation, like precious jewels.

And I have rejoiced with women over an ideal they’ve just rediscovered after a long spiritual winter, as they hold it in cupped hands for others to gather around and see, a tiny new growing Hope.
Continue reading Affirmative Idealism →

I grew up in a household with many books. Especially children’s books.

One of my Mama’s favourites, and mine too, is a sweet book called Miss Rumphius.
In this book, a little girl dreams of growing up and traveling and seeing the world like her sea-Captain-artist Grandpa, and then when she is old, living in a house by the sea as he does. He tells her there is also a special thing she must do…she must make the world a more beautiful place.

“‘All right’ said Alice, but she did not know what that would be.”

*


Little Alice Rumphius grows up and has many travel adventures and experiences…and eventually gets older, and lives in a little house by the sea that she just loves. She hurts her back, and becomes ill, and as she lies in bed getting better, she wonders (worries?) what she will do to fulfill the important thing her Grandfather charged her with…to make the world a more beautiful place.

Continue reading Real Life…(when I grow up) →

You know that feeling when you are working on a project, and it’s full of joy and excitement…it sails along, the ideas come freely, and when finished, you are so excited about the result that you feel like doing a little joyful jig?

Or the feeling when you are happy with your performance, and your place in the world around you…excited to share ideas or your presence with people? The feeling of having actually contributed to an event or gathering… of having connected with people in a real way?

I think many of us know those feelings. They are lovely feelings, I find they help me be creative, and keep me interacting with others in social/work settings.

Unfortunately, too often I instead know anxiety, worry, and a paralyzing or suffocating sense of inadequacy or despair about myself or my work. It lurks around many creative and social corners. I know others feel this too –sometimes every so often, sometimes frequently. Continue reading Confidence, Herod, and Stealing from the Lord →

In my studio I have a beautiful card my mother made me with a photo of my sister, poised like a dancer with one foot planted, drawing a circle around herself in the damp sand on the beach with her extended foot. Beside it is written a portion of this gem from the Writings:

‘Man was created for use, because use is the containent of good and truth, from the marriage of which proceeds creation.. While… a man is in any employment and business, or in any use, in such case his mind is limited and circumscribed as in a circle, within which it is successively arranged into a form truly human’ (Conjugial Love 249)

Continue reading Establish →