Love Life and Learning
How many of you have your life turning out exactly like you imagined it would when you were a little girl? Or maybe you got just what you wanted, but its not what you thought it would be? I read a lot of fairy tales when I was a girl, and I imagined –would I be like Cinderella, or Snow White or Sleeping Beauty? One Sunday, as I was trying to keep my children quiet during Sacrament, I gave one my ring, and one my bracelet, and one my keys—I realized my life is a lot more like the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin, me attempting to bribe small capricious creatures to do impossible tasks with shiny things.
I knew how to love life as a child. Then I forgot for a while and I’ve been relearning. I have spent a great deal of my motherhood years like this: Get up in the morning, feeling like super woman with a huge list of things to get done. Then life would happen, I would be so frustrated as my children and other life stuff kept interrupting my plans.
C.S. Lewis said: “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day.”
About 7 years ago, I began to change how I thought about things. What I actually did each day did not change much, but how I felt about what I did changed dramatically.
The Poet, Kathleen Norris, said “We may resist the drudgery that seems to pull us away from what we vaingloriously perceive to be our “real” lives, but we are fools to do so.”
I began to purposefully think of housework not as drudgery, not as a Sisyphean task–
but a sacred calling. Jesus fed the hungry, clothed the naked, encouraged the weak, and healed the sick. Each day I get to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, encouraged the weak (myself), and heal the sick.
As women we criticize ourselves constantly, and we are super harsh and mean about it!
On a Sunday Morning in January, two years ago, I stayed home from church with my 2-year old twins, who were both feverish. As I sat on the couch snuggling them, I felt suddenly an awe that my presence was what they wanted most. They were miserable, and I was the magic that made life better for them. It’s kind of incredible, really. All the things I constantly criticize myself for, they didn’t care about. They didn’t care that I need to lose 40 pounds. They didn’t care that I wasn’t wearing makeup or dressed in trendy clothes. They didn’t care that the dinner I fixed the night before was hasty and not very tasty. They didn’t care how many things I didn’t get done on my to-do-list the day before. They just wanted me because I’m their mother. That’s true unconditional love! Sometimes we are told we should try to see ourselves as God sees us, and its hard to make that leap, but maybe if we start by seeing ourselves as our children see us, we might get closer.
A poem I love:
Take joy home,
And make a place in thy great heart for her,
And give her time to grow, and cherish her!
Then will She come and often sing to thee
When thou art working in the furrows; ay,
Or weeding in the sacred hour of dawn.
It is a comely fashion to be glad—
Joy is the grace we say to God.
—J. Ingelow
“Home is the place where we pour our hearts into so much work. So it stands to reason that a spirit of joy that sings to us in the midst of that great work can make a big difference—in our own hearts, in the atmosphere of our homes, in our family’s lives.” ~
Sonya Shafer
Browning ground turkey while your children are arguing in the kitchen, you may not feel connected to this great mystery, [God] but you are. This is the sort of thing that parents, poets, mystics, and monks come to know very well, if they are willing to be always beginners, setting yesterday’s burdens behind them in order to recommit themselves to each new day. …[a story is told of 2 monks. The young one asked ] “Can a man lay a new foundation every day?” The old man said, “If he works hard, he can lay a new foundation at every moment.”~Poet Kathleen Norris
We have this idea in the world that repetition is death, that things which move like clockwork are boring and dead, and that variation is life and excitement.
G. K. Chesterton explained that this is a mistaken idea. “For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the [river] Thames goes to [the sea].
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
What could our lives be if we could find the strength to delight in repetition?
You and I, we may get frustrated, thinking that we want to be DONE with cleaning, or Done with repenting, or done with asking our children to clean up their rooms. But
“If we want things all done, over, ended, is that not in a way wishing for death?…So repetition is a fact of life, and it turns out that’s a good thing. Even Paul writes, in Philippians 3:1: ‘To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.’ What if we mothers had this same attitude? “To repeat the same things to you is no trouble to me.”~Mystie Winkler
Shinhichi Suzuki, the great violin teacher said, “We do not count how often we say ‘mama’ before the child actually learns the word. We are willing to repeat it as often as necessary.”
My aunt Kathleen, who taught kindergarten for decades told me that “As a teacher I was told it took at least 600 repetitions to have something stick it a child’s head.”
As adults maybe we need even more repetition, and our Heavenly Father never tires of repeating his invitations to us.
“Clean homes do not have fewer messes, they are just picked up more often. Clean living is the same—not fewer sins, but more repenting. You haven’t failed if the house is a mess, you just have a job to do—soon! You haven’t failed if you lose your temper—you have a job to do—soon (modeling repentance to your children!)” ~Mystie Winkler
What would happen in our homes if we dedicated ourselves to more repenting, both the picking up messes kind and the putting down of sin kind?
Humans were created to work, and we aren’t fully happy unless we are busy with a work. Even Adam and Eve had a job in the Garden of Eden before the fall. And after the fall, God cursed the ground for their sakes. Many philosophers have written on this subject.
I like Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Camel’s Hump”
THE Camel’s hump is an ugly lump
Which well you may see at the Zoo;
But uglier yet is the hump we get
From having too little to do.
I believe there is a corollary to this—though I couldn’t find any famous quotes to support me. As our bodies were made to work, our minds were made to learn.
At least, I know this is true for me, I am not happy unless I am learning something.
D&C 88:118 And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.
Don’t you just love it, when you are reading and you come across something that you recognize as truth?
“No sooner doth the truth. . .come into the soul’s sight, but the soul knows her to be her first and old acquaintance.”~Charlotte Mason
And yet this old acquaintance feels new and beautiful!
Joseph Fielding Smith taught “A new commandment, the Lord has said, and yet like many other commandments it is as old as eternity. There never was a time when that commandment did not exist and was not essential to salvation, and yet it is always new. It never grows old, because it is true.”
And we aren’t just to learn the gospel, though it is most important. We are also to learn
“Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms.” (D&C 88:79)
“We do not merely give a religious education because that would seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular education, for example. But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that … the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind…”~ Charlotte Mason, educator in the late 19th century
Dr. Barry M. Willardson says: “God is the greatest scientist and the unbeliever should be careful not to dismiss God as he scratches at the surface of God’s knowledge. Likewise, the believer should not dismiss the discoveries of science, because they may be revealing the handiwork of God. We need to understand that truth can be obtained by both scientific and spiritual inquiry.”
“The only fit sustenance for the mind is ideas…For the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only; mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body; there are no organs for the assimilation of the one more than of the other.” ~Charlotte Mason
In other words, I’m not talking about learning as memorizing facts or a timeline of history. We are talking today of feeding our minds with living ideas. We are talking today of making connections between these ideas in ways that make those ideas important to you as an individual.
These books that I brought to display are books that have profoundly influenced my life. Many of them are fiction.
“My main argument for reading literature like this is that it offers us a new way of seeing things. To be moved by the beauty of lives, either real or imagined, and the intricacies that make them unique but also relatable, is all literature has given me. And not that this is any small thing. To make the world intimate and relatable and thus much more deserving of our compassion and empathy is a great thing.” ~Daniel Hunt (cousin, a beautiful soul who died at 28)
“We learn in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” that “mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.” Providing an education for your children is part of that nurturing and is your sacred responsibility. Like the stripling warriors, who “had been taught by their mothers,” you will be the most important teacher your children will ever have, so choose your learning carefully.” ~Mary N Cook Seek Learning, You Have a Work to Do, April 2012
Why?
The following has been written about discipleship: “The word disciple comes from the Latin [meaning] a learner. A disciple of Christ is one who is learning to be like Christ—learning to think, to feel, and to act [like] he does.” (Chauncey C. Riddle, “Becoming a Disciple,” Ensign, Sept. 1974, 81).
The revelations teach us that “the glory of God is intelligence” (D&C 93:36). We typically may think the word intelligence in this scripture denotes innate cognitive ability or a particular gift for academic work. In this verse, however, one of the meanings of intelligence is the application of the knowledge we obtain for righteous purposes. As President David O. McKay (1873–1970) taught, the learning “for which the Church stands—is the application of knowledge to the development of a noble and Godlike character.” We are blessed in mortality with endless opportunities to apply what we learn and know for righteousness—or to increase in intelligence. And learning from experience is one of the primary vehicles provided in the Father’s plan of happiness to accomplish this eternally important outcome.” David A. Bednar, “Walk in the Meekness of My Spirit,” BYU University Conference, Aug. 28, 2017
Here again we get the idea that we are going to have to do a lot of repeating!!
So we need to learn by reading out of the best books, and we need to learn by experience.
What? What should I choose to learn about?
“True education is a form of repentance. It is a humble admission that we’ve not read all that we need to read, we don’t know all that we need to know, and we’ve not yet become all that we need to become. Education is that unique form of discipleship that brings us to the place of admitting our inadequacies.” ~George Grant
-Patriarchal Blessing: a good place to gain insight on what your particular gifts are that need development, and what your purpose on this earth might be.
President Monson taught: “The same Lord who provided a Liahona for Lehi provides for you and for me today a rare and valuable gift to give direction to our lives, to mark the hazards to our safety, and to chart the way, even safe passage—not to a promised land, but to our heavenly home. The gift to which I refer is known as your patriarchal blessing. .. Your patriarchal blessing is your passport to peace in this life. It is a Liahona of light to guide you unerringly to your heavenly home.”
–Learn about things that bring you joy: did you notice when you watched the video for the new children and youth program that the goals the children chose to work on were things that brought them joy? Little girl learned to bake chocolate cake because baking with her father was something she loved. Young man brought unity to his quorum with a filming project because he loves photography.
I read a book last year called Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. by Stuart Brown. In it is the story of a doctor who decides to start baking bread because of the happy memories he has of baking with his mother. He gets a doctor friend to bake with him, he turns his basement into a bakery, and they start learning how to bake artisan breads. He leaves these breads on his neighbor’s door steps. The neighbors loved it! They loved the bread so much that they talk about it to local restaurants, and soon, the two doctors have a healthy side business baking bread. When I read this story, I was struck by a thought: This doctor’s neighbors were not starving. They did not need the bread, but they loved it anyway. How many times have you wanted to serve someone and felt frozen, unable to serve because you didn’t know what they needed most? This doctor and his friend gave service out of their overflow of joy –I submit to you that you don’t always need to know what is most needed, but that you can serve out of the abundance of what brings you joy anyway.
–Work on the extremes.
“My mother was a great delegator. Each Saturday morning as my brothers and sisters and I were growing up, we received housecleaning assignments from her. Her instructions to us had been learned from her mother: “Be certain you clean thoroughly in the corners and along the mopboards. If you are going to miss anything, let it be in the center of the room.” L Tom Perry, “Discipleship” Oct 2000
Elder Perry’s mom knew that if he took care of the corners, the middle would take care of itself. Do not try to fix everything about yourself at once! Choose one weakness with the goal of bringing it up to a neutral—not to become great at it, but just for it not to be a negative strike against you. Then choose one area of strength/enjoyment to take to the next level. It is not necessary for you to be amazing at everything—we are supposed to need each other.
-Choose something to learn about that you have to do anyway (like pay bills, purchase insurance, teaching primary, etc…)
How? How do I learn?
“If you want great answers, ask great questions.” ~Brooke Castillo
Ask good questions.
“Why?” is generally a terrible question.e.g. “Why is my house always so messy?” Instead ask “How?” or “What?” questions:
How can I get my housework done and have fun at the same time?
What can I do to laugh a lot today?
How can I make today better than yesterday?
What can I do to show my boss that I am the best person for this job?
What can I do to help my child take responsibility for her own room? (Hint: What does my room look like?)
When? When should I learn/when should I begin learning? Seth Atwater from tells me that the answer is “as soon as possible!”
President Russel M Nelson taught : “The doctrine of repentance is much broader than a dictionary’s definition. When Jesus said “repent,” His disciples recorded that command in the Greek language with the verb metanoeo. This powerful word has great significance. In this word, the prefix meta means “change.” The suffix relates to four important Greek terms: nous, meaning “the mind”; gnosis, meaning “knowledge”; pneuma, meaning “spirit”; and pnoe, meaning “breath.” Thus, when Jesus said “repent,” He asked us to change—to change our mind, knowledge, and spirit—even our breath. A prophet explained that such a change in one’s breath is to breathe with grateful acknowledgment of Him who grants each breath.”
Where?
President Hinkley said:My dear friends of the Relief Society, whatever your circumstances, wherever you may live, may the windows of heaven be opened and blessings come down upon you. May you live with love one for another. May you reach down to lift up those whose burdens are heavy. May you bring light and beauty to the world and particularly into your homes and into the lives of your children.
The poet and essayist, Wendell Berry said
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
…and desecrated places…
“At the end of our lives He (God) is going to look into our hearts. What is it He will find there, I wonder? Will He find that we used the geography lesson, the dreaded math test, the teetering laundry pile, and the boiling over soup pot to draw closer to Him? Did we use these gifts to teach our children to lift their eyes heavenward? Were the tedious details of a … day offered up as a way for us to love Him, or were they merely gotten through, checked off, accomplished? Did we even realize that every… ordinary day, we were standing on holy ground, building a cathedral far more glorious than what we could dream up on our own? “~Sarah Mackenzie
Cautions:
–Time: Don’t wait until your work is done to learn something, take time during the day. We have this idea that we have to get all our work done before we can do something fun. It’s not true, and it’s dangerous for women especially; our work is never done! I used to fear that I had an addiction to my phone. But when I learned to schedule time in my day for the things I enjoyed, my phone “addiction” went away. It turns out that I was struggling with was feeling trapped and not able to do anything that I wanted to do—so I wasted hours on Facebook/Pinterest. When I allowed myself time in my daily plan to do things I enjoy (like reading, painting, sitting in a quiet room by myself for 5 minutes) I stopped wasting time on my phone; I just no longer needed it as a buffer for my frustration.
–Support: Find a friend who is interested in what you are learning—your husband may not be the best person to talk with about your new enthusiasm. I’m not saying don’t share with him. I’m saying, don’t be shocked if he says, “that’s nice” and turns back to the football game/political debate. His job is providing and protecting, and that takes most of his brain power.
–Focus: Do not just focus on your weaknesses. That’s depressing! Heavenly Father gave you gifts for a reason.
1 Timothy 4:14 Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery (elders).
If you can’t find or recognize your gifts, ask others what your gifts are. You’ll know that they’ve hit on your gift when you want to respond with “Can’t everyone do that?” “What’s so special about that? it’s easy.”
These knuckle-heads went to their second 21Pilots concert. Looks like they had lots of fun.
Marvelous Pigs in Satin 