Nancy's Musings

I woke up from a nap today at about six, and it was dark outside, and I was the only person at home. No lights were on, no sounds came through except the leaves rattling in the wind. It felt like The Lathe of Heaven , and I was George Orr, changing the world into my nightmares. Today my Thanksgiving gratitude post on facebook was about living with people. I need people around me. So when my friend posted that he was feeling bitter about the onset of the Christmas season, I responded very passionately, with all of my sad, Romantic soul (read: Wordsworth and Shelley, not Twilight and Harlequin). I love Christmas because of Germany. It transforms the world, in Germany. Here, though, Christmas has its own uses. Usually, the argument about Christmas boils down to how much Jesus should be in it. but I don't like that argument. Jesus the Christ is sacred, and his name is sacred, and too much of him will only dilute the meaning: spread hallowness too thin. So my arguments will be for the s...

I've been thinking a lot of chronology lately, especially in Renaissance Literature class as we discuss embellishment and ornament. Truth seems to pre-exists art/beauty in the minds of the metaphysical poets. And then I stumbled across a scripture. 1 Nephi 9:6 says (paraphrased) the Lord knoweth all things from the beginning, therefore he prepareth a way for us to accomplish the stuff he asks. That's chronologically fascinationg, because it seems to imply that the Lord has set everything up for success even before we enter the apparatus. So that feeling we get sometimes, that we're being set up to fail - that's the devil and his angels. If we are doing the work of the Lord, we are set up to succeed, like a marble with agency. But what about sin? I think sin happens, and I think God is smart enough to take it into account. His apparatus doesn't fail because we make a mistake; we simply use another part of the apparatus: The Atonement. Now, thinking back to the metaph...

I'm a VERY talented person, but not universally so. Here is proof: This photo is actually published in an online journal.  I took this on my mission to Germany, when I lived in Dusseldorf. This is also in Germany, a winter I spent in Muhlheim. This is their Muhl, of name. The super-saturation here is Disney's fault. The photo was taken on a 35mm. Lake Tahoe is ALWAYS photogenic. Even up close, Lake Tahoe has AMAZING skin tone.  Virginia also has its moments. I use this image on another blog somewhere. . .  Growing up in St. George, this stuff is everywhere. Yucca and a Lava Floe.  This is just a texture study. Very saturated, though. Wonder if I edited it. This is just Lake Tahoe being photogenic again. From the other side, this time. This is the Exeter College Fellows' Garden. These are colleges in Oxford, and the Radcliffe Camera to the left. I took this in I70 on my way to Virginia. My first spring in Germany, Bonn.  Heinrichstrasse - ovesaturated. My fault. ...

Keats wrote "Ode on a Grecian Urn" very much with Herbert's "Jordan (1)" in mind. "Is there in truth no beauty?" George Herbert asks his readers. Well, what shall we answer him? Wait, what was the question? Is he asking us if beauty is real? Probably secondarily. I think his primary question (in the context of a poem (which is inherently embellishment) about embellishment) is whether truth itself contains enough beauty without adding conceits and puns and innuendo. When I was thirteen, I would have scoffed. Truth was bare and ugly to me then. If you want to know how I feel now, read my previous post about taste (Ostensibly, the Word of Wisdom). Herbert's question joins a discourse well in motion by the time he wrote, though, which centered around the now extremely controvercial idea that aesthetic value indicates some essential moral value, or "goodness." But how can that possibly be true? How could something as shallow as beauty have any...

The first thing I imagine when I hear "sacred" is the Sacrament of bread and water on the Sabbath. It's a symbolic act reminding the partaker and witnesses of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, his pain and death, to which we owe our existence, our salvation, our comfort, and anything that comes afterwards. When a soul feels that debt, the union and gratitude to the Savior becomes precious, and we cling to it as best we know how. How often, though, have you heard someone shout his name as a curse, either on television, or in your presence? If you believe in His divinity and the Atonement, how does that profanity make you feel? That difference, the mocking use of something sacred for something trivial or supremely inappropriate, defines profanity very succinctly. William Shakespeare, almost half a millenium ago, wrote a funny and insightful comedy called Twelfth Night whose name even refers to a reversal, a contrast, and reveling in the inappropriate. Shakespeare questioned t...

I don't know how many times I will have to, or get to, say this, but the Word of Wisdom does not forbid sugar of any kind - processed, natural, or taken intravenously. And yet, in any given lesson on the Word of Wisdom, somebody will bring it up. We invent health laws for ourselves, and think that God has sanctioned them. It's dangerous. It's never a bad thing to take care of yourself, but did you know that your brain NEEDS sugar ? Too much is probably almost as bad as none at all, but none at all isn't something to aim for. And yet well-meaning, middle-aged singles jump on every fad diet like it's the answer to their prayers of finding a husband. Girls, If he doesn't like your personality BEFORE you diet, it's just going to be more obvious when you're all Zenobia Fromme. I am a diet-free zone for two reasons: first, I follow the Word of Wisdom as closely as I am able, and that is where the blessings lie, not in "looking beyond the mark" and tr...

Reading that title, I'm guessing you immediately thought this would be a post about not paying attention during the Sacrament, or something. It isn't. It's something much more complicated. I had a dear roommate (one of my favorite people in the universe) diagnosed with Adult ADD. She explained to me that one of the symptoms is a lack of impulse control - it means that when you get the urge to do something, you just do it out of anger, curiosity, or any other emotion. I imagine that normally, a human fields dozens of impulses without even noticing. We think "I really want to hit him in the jaw" or "I really wish I could spit right now" or "I wonder what it feels like to fall off a tall building," or "I wonder what it's like to kiss him." What would it do to your life if you just did it - without thinking? Part of the gospel is learning when and how to obey impulses, and when to reject them. We are meant to reject temptation ("...