Nancy's Musings

I'm hoping this post is really, really short. Because it's extremely late and I'm exhausted. I cannot tell the difference between opportunity and distraction. I am at a place in my life where I have been left desolate by the absence of opportunity - not the absence of privilege. I got that in spades, but the absence of specific opportunities that usually accompany my types of privilege. I have debts and obligations, and no way to fulfill them, and then along comes this offer. . . The only offers I have gotten, including the one that enables my current living situation, are well below my value, and don't even begin taking advantage of my specific range of acquired skills. They wouldn't pay a quarter of my obligations, even before tithing and taxes. There was a time when you just took any work you could get to keep yourself and your family alive. My dad tells these stories all the time. Do whatever you can. I remember going with him on a paper route at obscenely...

I very recently blogged about miracles. I'm very adamant about my belief in miracles. And yet just the other day I read an article titled "'By Small Means': Rethinking the Liahona" in which the authors posit that rather than the ex nihilo wonder we have accepted as true, the Liahona was both a common astrolabe, and a dowry from Ishmael to Lehi's family. I don't see that it's outside the realm of possibility, but I did not find the paper unproblematic. From a scholarly standpoint, its Book of Mormon exegesis was acceptable, if not compelling. It was perhaps dismissive of passages, choosing which ones it favored because they supported the argument. That's shaky logos, but a necessary part of putting the idea into the historical conversation, and it's an idea that shouldn't be dismissed simply because the more spiritual passages of scripture seem to favor a more "magical" explanation. The problem I had with the article begins...

Once upon a time there was a country divided into (more or less) two factions (with very fuzzy edges). The country was full of frequently self-serving people who nevertheless still strove to increase the good in the world. Both sides agreed that with the abundant resources of this very wealthy nation, much good could be done for the want and need of people inside the country, and for the benefit of the whole world. The country had a big, if bureaucratic, heart. At first, the two factions merely disagreed about how best to make the world better. You couldn't swing a cat without hitting optimism. It was a little frustrating, come election time, to decide which of the old white men to vote for since they both sounded mostly the same and were both too fuzzy on the details to be pinned down. And then, to solve this problem of vague homogeneity, along came the marketers, publicity analysts, and professional rhetors (also, probably Satan) to give the people what they thought they...

The God I worship is a God of miracles. It becomes difficult, the older I grow, to believe in miracles. One of the few benefits of age in our youth-worshiping culture is that we develop strong intuition for patterns. Our life experiences and education implant in us an instinct for how things will turn out. When I was babysitting the other day, I had the privilege of explaining to a very bright child that one of the reasons that babies play with their food is because they're learning. Their muscles are learning how to respond to electrical signals from the brain, and their eyes and fingers are learning about textures and consistencies and weight and gravity. Also, it's fascinating to watch cheerios scatter. But sometimes our experiences do not serve us well. For instance, people with PTSD have learned incorrectly to anticipate assault, and they become (usually unnecessarily) hypervigilant long after the danger has passed. Anxiety, depression, abuse, and other long-term...

This morning as I sat on my bunk bed gazing blearily over my mess lit only by the morning light bouncing through the blue sheet over my basement window, I felt happy. But I also felt well, and I wondered briefly if there might be a difference. I mean, at that moment any difference was irrelevant, because I wanted to hug the world (and that's rare, because I'm touch-averse. Hugs can trigger panic). But is it possible to feel happy and unwell? Is there such a thing as feeling well while feeling negative emotions? We treat the quest for emotional wellness like the quest for hyperthymia , but what if that's not right? Even recently, I've had periods of mourning when things happened to me that hurt me deeply, that changed my future in unpleasant ways. But those feelings were often accompanied with the subtle reassurance that things would get better. Is it possible to be sad and emotionally well at the same time? At times of deep sadness, I think it is important to allo...

I'm getting older and I'm still single. I'm a body-positive fat woman, which means I sometimes have to do some creative guessing to figure out why people interact with me the way that they do - would they be doing/saying this if I were thin? Mostly I don't know. I like dating. I like meeting new people, and I meet a lot of nice people. Mostly women, really. Men seem to be a bit more bashful. But I do meet men, sometimes in person and sometimes in digital spaces. I'm equally as comfortable with either. Some men my age have grown impatient. I am also impatient, but about different things. Men crave emotional intimacy, and our cultures have starved them of it. They are so hungry for acceptance and validation that they become heat-seeking missiles for any woman who is warm or welcoming. Twice this week, men I barely know have shared things with me that our friendship does not warrant, and that I am not strong enough to carry. These men have given me knowledge that...

People are great, you know? I mean, not everybody, but everybody I know personally is just salt of the earth. Just yummy people. Once in a while, though, a great virtue becomes twisted into a vice. We're supposed to be involved with each other's lives. Elder Dallin H. Oaks describes this " interdependence " in an address given at a conference for mid-singles in Salt Lake City, and although it's very contextualized for people in a dating scene, the evidence exists that pure independence isn't actually the ideal: evidence from our understanding that we cannot be saved without our dead, to programs of ministering and humanitarian efforts locally and abroad. We're supposed to be concerned about others, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves (because in some abstract and metaphorical ways, they ARE us). Concern for others is a virtue. Until it is not. Contaminants can sour concern, can turn it into something not just hurtful, but harmful. And it'...