Nancy's Musings

I love Winter. It's my favorite season. But I am just having the hardest time coming up with reasons to look forward to next year. So since I'm a masochist, this is the "reasons 2017 might not suck as hard as I think it's going to" list. I'm determined not to stop listing until I have at least twelve. 1) If I stay on schedule, I could actually receive my PhD this year. I know I've said this before, that's why this list includes the word "might" in the title. 2) Plants grow in the Spring, so I can start my seedlings next month or so. 3) I get to celebrate everybody's birthday ALL OVER AGAIN!!! Thank-you, Facebook. 4) I could finally move to Idaho. I'm just waiting for the word. I have all my winter clothes packed. Under my skin, really. This *gestures to abundant self* never gets cold. 5) This could be the year I meet a kind, intelligent, confident, single, and open-minded man who wants to spend time with me. Any time at all....

Today, right before the Christmas Program, the Bishop's counselor announced the death of a member of the stake. He said it with a little bit of irony: my ward is being transferred to another stake at the beginning of next year. Most of the members of my ward don't live in these boundaries, and I'm sure most people shrugged off the announcement, but I'm afraid I was too surprised to look at anyone. I'm a local girl. I grew up in this house. I've been a member of this stake since the mid 1980s. The name was familiar to me - not because it matched a face. I have no idea what he looked like. I only met him once. But his signature is as familiar to me as my own. He was the stake Patriarch who gave me my Patriarchal Blessing. I'm not particularly sentimental. I was as surprised to find myself crying through three hours of church as anyone else would have been, if they'd noticed. But words mean a lot to me, and those words are alive. St. George is thickly do...

What changed overnight was how I think about people. And that change was not subtle. Maybe I sin in my new cynicism and mistrust: I certainly mourn. But I feel what I feel, and I'm not going to pretend. Perhaps my sin was relying on the arm of flesh, as the scripture probably goes. Or maybe I did not sin at all, and this is one of the consequences of earth life. In this absurd proportion of grief and drama precipitated by a long series of horrifyingly bad collective decisions, I am grasping for an eternal perspective: truths that will give me some firm ground to stand on, and maybe even allow me to move forward. The Book of Mormon is the singularly most depressing book I have ever read - and I've read several slogs by Thomas Hardy. Book of Mormon prophets Mormon and Moroni witnessed the destruction of their people. Older records describe armies literally killing each-other down to the last man until whole nations were corpses and the water was blood. There is no easy co...

" We join the story in 1942, a critical year for Britain, with British Generals slaving away at their autobiographies." - The Goon Show , "Tales of Men's Shirts" So yesterday was FHE with the siblings (and Lilia, who has no siblings, the lucky little squirrel), and we had set up our camp chairs on the grass above the breakwall on Hyrum Lake. The water has actually receded so you can barely see it from the breakwall, but we were looking for shade. It was a breathtaking day, and the leaves up in the canyons were changing. You should have been there.   We all chatted about our personal nonsense for a long while, as we do, when I mentioned that I'm writing a memoir. Immediately, the entire family erupted in derisive laughter. Michael piped up, "a memoir of what, sitting around doing nothing?" Even Judith, who isn't usually as obtuse as her older siblings, looked at me in consternation, "You're just writing it for yourself, right?...

When I was in high school, that petri dish of insecurities, we threw the accusation of "fishing for compliments" around at each other as if we could shame each-other into acknowledging inferiority. We felt annoyed, and instinctively sneered at their need and vulnerability, and felt morally superior that we were not so vain as they, to need something nice said to or about us. We judged their "overconfidence" and tried to take them down a peg. We were jerks. At some point that year, I began to realize that often (but not always) what looks like ego and vanity is actually deep insecurity, and if we are confident enough in ourselves, we don't have to compete with the people around us who lack that confidence. We can lend them some. People don't become vain and insecure from too many compliments, but from too few. Perhaps we breed braggarts when we starve them of self-satisfaction, and so they steal it from us, like Valjean. If we feed them, they have no ...

Looking back on my posts this week, I realize that I have a particular ideal/agenda that underlies how I interpret doctrine. The key concept for me, as I think more and more about what kind of world Jesus might want us to have, is unity - what would undo the divisions between us and strengthen our connections and interdependence? Each of the Young Women values contributes to a vision of a more unified world in very individual circles. They reduce contention and increase peace. Choosing Faith means standing up and letting your name be counted among the saints. It means following the Savior's commandment to gather often. It means not being ashamed of the gospel of Christ. While these outward signs of our inward resolutions ostensibly divide the saints from those of different belief systems, it unifies the church socially to give support for individual weaknesses. Creating clear borders between "in" and "out" does not mean that we are or should be exclusive...

This last value was added to the list in the late nineties - just after I graduated, I think. It seems refer specifically to chastity. And yet, even General Authorities speak of Virtue in its broader denotations. Rebecca pointed me to this talk, which I found enlightening. I find Virtue complicated, and I'm not sure I can write about it coherently: certainly not my best at 1:30 in the morning. But I'll try. I need to address some important issues about the law of chastity before I broaden my discussion. "Purity" doctrines do real damage to people already in pain, and so the world would have us rage against chastity. How can we ask girls to keep themselves sexually pure? The word itself is tainted by bad science and worse religion. We should be extremely careful about how we talk about purity (if we do), so that we do not re-injure victims, or unrighteously judge our young sisters. How do we speak of this sacred topic with gravity AND kindness? Remember that...