This article was written by Jenn based on her presentation at the Australian New Church Women’s Weekend in Nov 2024

I like to listen to a Christian radio station in Sydney, Australia, that plays great Christian songs as well as run-of-the-mill songs that have good messages. I am often inspired by songs that they air, one of which is ‘This Is Your Life’ by Switchfoot (you can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx9RcI_EueM).

This song has a message that really grabs me: “This is your life: are you who you want to be?” It’s basically saying, “Look at yourself, look at your life: you’ve only got one pass at it, there are no re-dos; are you happy with it? Is your life what you want it to be? Are you who you want to be?” Time is ticking, none of us is getting any younger; are we actually happy with who we are? Are we living meaningful lives, are we proud of what we do and think? Or are we just ‘fluffing along’, not feeling any purpose in what we do? To be fair, life is a roller coaster: we all have peaks and valleys, times of bounty and times of harvest; if we do feel like we’re just fluffing along, it may be ok, we don’t necessarily have to beat ourselves up over it, the next good thing might be right around the corner. Goodness knows, sometimes we need to have mercy on ourselves, to recognise that we’re in a valley, life is tough at the moment, we’re doing the best we can. We need to pick our battles – as with toddlers, as with our own lives.

….But if we’ve made a habit of just fluffing along, we might find that it’s time to make some changes happen.

I think, too, that we probably reach a certain point in our lives when we find that we can lead meaningful lives even if we aren’t having the best of luck, even during a dry spell. How do we get to that point? The Heavenly Doctrines are a treasure trove of answers for this kind of life thing. For a long, long time, I fluffed along (more or less) on the coat-tails of my historical faith, living according to what I learned and was passed down to me by my parents and taught to me in school. I can’t tell you what changed, but somewhere along the way I started reading the Writings for myself – I’d read parts of them in various religion classes at Bryn Athyn College, in early adulthood, so I was no stranger to their existence, but it had all sat pretty superficially in my mind. Whatever it was that changed my trajectory, changed it for the better. I wasn’t living an overtly sinful life, but I was more grumbly in my head, more self-righteous, more self-interested; I still have that in me, I’m not gonna lie, and those beasts bob beneath the surface, sometimes closer, sometimes deeper, but, on the whole, they’re deeper than shallower.

(Trigger warning: mention of child death, but not actual! Just as a basis for comparison)

My husband and I are blessed with one biological child: a nearly-eighteen-year-old, tall, handsome, responsible, kind, gentle young man. I may be a bit biased, but he really does seem to be a good guy. I love that boy with all my Zach-loving heart! That has 100% not changed, nor will it likely ever.

….And yet, thinking back on his infancy & childhood, returning my mind to snuggling with him, breastfeeding him, carrying him around, laughing and playing with that little boy…. That’s all definitely gone, never to be retrieved. It’s just as well that our young adult progeny doesn’t require breastfeeding or carrying, goodness knows! We’re proud of his achievements in the various aspects of his life, not the least of which is his ability to nourish himself and get himself around, not only within the house but now from one suburb or city – or state – to the next; and we wouldn’t change a thing about him, really…… 

It’s just that it hurts. I blessedly haven’t experienced a child of mine dying – praise be to God! I hope I never will, and my heart aches for those who have; but it occurs to me that this transformation from little child to grown (nearly) adult is akin to that. The baby that we knew, the toddler, the rambunctious preschooler, the inquisitive, parent-adoring, question-asking schoolboy, he’s definitely gone. We weathered the holier-than-thou phase of adolescence and, I’m happy to say, appear to be on the other side of that: Zach really is such a sweet young man, and I very much love sharing hugs and kisses and laughs and insights with his nearly-adult self. I wouldn’t trade him for the world! ..I just mourn the loss of my sweet little boy, sometimes. 

“People who have applied the teachings of the church from the Word directly to their lives are in the inmost heaven and more than anyone else are absorbed in the pleasures of wisdom. They see divine realities in particular objects. They actually do see the objects, but the corresponding divine realities flow directly into their minds and fill them with a sense of blessedness that affects all their sensory functions. As a result, everything they see seems to laugh and play and live.” (Heaven and Hell 489.3, emphasis added)

I remember reading this passage as part of my Logopraxis study last year. That last line grabbed me, it’s captivating! “Everything they see seems to laugh and play and live.” How jovial! I want to see the world around me laugh and play and live!

When I walk with my dog in the woods, I relish the feeling of being engulfed in nature. I love it! I love being surrounded by the greens and browns and yellows of grasses, leaves, vines, mosses, trees and logs, the gray rocks, the blue and pink and purple and yellow and orange wildflowers, the dark earth….  It’s all beautiful to the eye, which is a blessing, to be sure! But it doesn’t really feel like it is joyful and laughing, to me. I hear many birds in the trees above my head: some of their sounds could certainly be interpreted as laughter! Colourful flowers, maybe I could pretend that they look cheerful; lush grasses and moist, verdant trees, maybe…. but rocks? Roots? Soil? Nope; I’m not seeing it.

Reflecting on this, straining to envision these inanimate, dead-looking objects as laughing, playful and living, it occurs to me: personifying nature may be my mistake. The natural world around us may be living, but it isn’t human, it isn’t a person. None of it has feelings or a higher consciousness (well, depending on who you ask, but that’s a deep-dive for another day!). Nature can’t laugh, play and live the way we laugh, play and live; I reckon that thinking of it as responding, reacting as we do, is misguided.

About a year and a half ago I shared an article here titled ’Walking in the Light’ (Nov 16, 2022). In it I mused about walking along the sidewalk in the morning sun, eyes completely shut, absorbing the sunshine and trusting in the Lord’s guidance, basking in His love and wisdom. Ahh, that was an idyllic time! Those walks were so nice, and the insights were even more delightful.

I’ve been ‘walking in the light’ pretty much every day since then, too – literally, engaging in that practice of walking with my eyes shut on that stretch of sidewalk. It’s been nice, peaceful, uneventful,……….

……That is, until I walked smack into a telephone pole, on a morning walk one week before Christmas 2023! 😮

No joke. I hit that thing hard, too: I wasn’t going very fast (I was walking with my eyes shut, after all; I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb!), and I feel like I briefly felt the pole with my hands – I didn’t hold them up in front of me, they were just casually hanging by my side, but somehow I think I touched the pole in front of me with my hands? I mentally acknowledged that there was a telephone pole there,.. and yet apparently this message didn’t make it as far as the rest of my body, because my forehead hit that telephone pole with a mighty whack! I took a step back and kind of shook it off, chuckling at myself (in part for the benefit of any onlookers 😬 – of which I don’t think there were any, but just in case..), but even as I walked the remaining 5 minutes – not even?! – to my house, I could see the welt ballooning over my left eye, beginning to obstruct my vision. I applied arnica cream as soon as I got home (after taking some pictures, for posterity’s sake, y’know), and the goose egg actually did subside as the day wore on! ….I didn’t think to apply the cream around my eye, however, and I didn’t anticipate the blood sinking down and pooling around my eye socket,…. I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference, if I’d slathered it with cream, but I ended up with a black eye. 🙄 Even now, nearly two months later (at the time of writing), there’s no lingering outward sign of trauma – thankfully! – but I can still feel slight tenderness and a bit of a lump over my left eyebrow.