My Testimony

I know God exists, that he is the literal Father of our individual spirits.

God is both a master artist and scientist.

I believe God “… has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being …” (Alma 26:35). I believe God moves things in the world to bless me, and I will receive those things if I will allow him to lead me and accept the blessing and opportunities that are placed before me.

I believe Jesus Christ is God’s son, and that he fulfilled God’s plan in coming to earth, living and dying for me (and everyone else individually and personally).  I believe Christ still lives for me. 

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the third member of the Godhead.  I have developed (and continue to do so) my ability to hear/feel his promptings.  

I have come to trust God – even when I don’t understand why he leads me in one direction when I felt the opposite direction was where I wanted to go.  He is always right.

I believe God calls prophets to direct His affairs on earth.  Prophets remind us to keep looking to God.

Keeping God’s commandments (particularly partaking of the sacrament, scripture study, and prayer) leads to life flowing smoother. 

Seeking God’s will for me and obedience to that Will ALWAYS make life better.

Early Feelings

There are some truths that I have always felt.  I have always felt God exists, that he is an artist, and that he was good. I have early memories of feelings of worth and accountability to God.  The feeling that the young men and women of my generation had/have a great work to do is also very prominent.  I felt God expected great things of us, and that we were capable of accomplishing these things by nature of our valiant nature (and the support and orchestration of God).

Over time, through some study and more experience and experimentation my testimony has morphed increasing in breadth and depth.

I AM

Having just bought a beautiful new laptop, I am currently in the process of transferring files from the old computer to the new one.  It is pretty exciting revisiting documents, and I have been finding many interesting (for one reason of another) things I have written.  Here is a poem I wrote back in 2007 for one of my college courses.

I Am

Painted in 1999

I am lost on a journey to a known destination

I wonder why God’s timing has to differ so much from my own

I listen for the sunshine in a world that’s raining

I see things as they could be

I want a cottage with a creek, a library with large comfy chairs and a ladder, an orchard with a tree swing

I am a daisy in a bouquet of roses

I am spontaneous – I sing, skip, fly, and laugh for the joy of it

I pretend, to become; and act to gain

I feel God holding me in his hands

I read to escape

I worry when I don’t know the whole plan

I am a garden sprite – I live in a fairy garden

I understand I am not perfect, and I am alright with that

I say what I think when I can no longer stay silent

I dream with my feet on the ground and my head in the 
                                     clouds

                              I try to improve…

                                         I have hope for tomorrow.

                                                                          I am on the road.

Classics Count Down

A while back, the BBC published a list of the top 100 books that have been published.

According to the article, the average person has only actually read six of these novels.
I thought I would keep track of how I am doing, bolding books as I get them read.

So far I am sitting at 13/100.  Not too shabby. 

Note: There are some books on this list I plan on not reading.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (just parts, not in entirety)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (some titles, not all)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X,
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White 
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Third day of Advent: Christmas Letters

Twas the third day of advent and my advent calender said to me ... write Christmas letters!

This year, for Christmas I am writing letters as gifts.  I would encourage all of you to do the same :)  . Write a letter to someone you care about and tell them:
- why you love them
- your memory of meeting them
- what you love about them (yes, this is different from why you love them)
- your wishes for them
- your thoughts on something you are passionate about

Really anything would do. Share your thoughts and your love through a letter this Christmas. 

Here is a song for you to listen to as you write:

Mary Did You Know

Love you, and happy letter writing :D

.

What’s in a Name?

Hello dear ones.

Jess and I have decided to divide the newsletter and write up our portions separately.  I have also decided to turn my newletter into a blog.  This way we can both send out instalments when we have the time and when we are ready, rather than having to wait for the other or hurry to get something written.  Also I can send out a story here and there rather than waiting to have an entire newletters worth.  

The only problem was, what do we call our separate Publications???  Common Mercies was a name Jess thought of through mutual discussion.  We both love the name and what it represents dearly.  God is so good. Evidence of his love for each of us individually – common mercies – are everywhere if we will only look for them.  This is what I love to look for and find and share.  Life is sweet when can see God’s love for us, and it is bleak and dark when we can’t.  By sharing these experiences with you I see more of them and my life is brighter.  We tend to find what we look for .

So, what am I to call my newsletter now?

Jess has been tossing around all sorts of ideas, but none that express the same purpose or idea.  In exasperation she even suggested we chop the old name in half!  Mine could be called Common, and hers would be Mercies.  Hmmmp.  Asking around, one of my friends suggested (among others) the name Blessed Stumble.  I rather like this one!  It is an apt description of how I travel through life.  Lacking grace and foresight, I look around fling myself at the best point in view.  Then I raise my head and do it again.  (kinda like the donkey and the carrot)  Like a little child who is learning to walk, I set my sights on the goal and go for it.  I crash into, trip over, and fall onto things.  Sometimes it hurts, but much of the time the stumble adds to the joy – like the feeling of flying and the discovery of new things within my reach!  Either way, the struggle makes me stronger so I can run farther, climb higher, and experience more next time. 

Seeing life as a blessed stumble is an acceptance that a life full of the pursuit of learning and of seeking new experiences and of self improvement is one filled with hazards and joys.  Finding joy in the journey, let us all stumble along together.

Advent

I love creating, developing, and practicing holiday traditions.  I find these traditions help build a sense of expectation and excitement.  They can help you focus on why you do what you do, reminding you that the day or the season is special and set apart for one reason or another.  

Christmas means so many things to so many people.  It is a time to spend with family; to think of and support the less fortunate; to reconnect with those you care about (or feel you should care about); and it is also a time where we remember Christ's birth and mission (but mostly his birth).   

Unfortunately, along side with those things I love about Christmas are things I do not love.  Of Gary Chapman's 5 love languages my predominant love language is quality time.  This means I love spending time with those I care about and almost resent it when the amount of time I have to do so is limited by other obligations.  Also, my least predominant love language is gifts.  They just aren't important to me to make me feel loved.  I like them - but they rarely carry significance.  This also mean gift giving is difficult for me.  If I know what you want, and can get it for you I will.  But if I don't know what you want (as in you haven't told me bluntly several times) I won't know what to get and it is sooooo incredibly stressful for me to try and figure out what you'd really like.  This poses a problem at Christmas time where there is such a focus on gift giving. (Incidentally, if anyone is wondering what to give me for Christmas, I'd absolutely love a letter :) - really really).

Another thing I don't like about Christmas is how the different purposes are prioritized. I know everyone's priorities differ, however, the last few years Christmas has seemed a little fragmented.   

Because of this I have been trying to adopt, create traditions so the pieces of what makes Christmas for me, become more unified - like so :

Note: family includs those I was blessed to be born to and those I have adopted

Last year I adopted the tradition of Advent. Here is a description of some  Advent symbolisim and tradition from the Eric and Elaine Huntsman Family :

The term “advent” comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming” or “appearance.” Advent is the season marking the four Sundays before Christmas and developed as a way of helping Christians prepare not only to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in his First Coming but also to help them look forward to his glorious Second Coming. Although Advent customs may be foreign to many Latter-day Saints, we have found that, like so many seasonal traditions, they are a wonderful way to turn our attention more fully to the true meaning of Christmas Elements of Advent liturgy existed by the time of Gregory the Great (Roman pope, A.D. 590-604), and much of the celebration was formalized during his papal reign. Many familiar Advent traditions, however, originated in Germany, where Martin Luther encouraged its continued observance as a way
of teaching children and families more about the significance of the coming of Jesus Christ. It is still widely celebrated by Roman Catholics, Anglicans,
and Lutherans and has become a common celebration in many Christian faith communities throughout the world.

One of the best known Advent customs is the lighting of the candles in an Advent wreath, a simple or decorated evergreen wreath with four candles placed in the circle and a single white candle in the center. The wreath itself represents the never-ending circle of God’s love, that he is the same and forever in his love towards his people. The green of the wreath, as in the Christmas tree, represents the hope of eternal life that comes through Christ and serves a reminder of the freshness of God’s love and promises. The light of the candles reminds us that Jesus is the Light of the World, that his birth represented the coming of the light into darkness, and that we are called to reflect that light in our lives. The outer candles are purple, the color of royalty, although customarily the third one is rose or pink. Traditions differ regarding the symbolism of the candles. One is that they represent the hope, love, joy, and peace that come through Jesus Christ. Each Sunday before Christmas an
additional candle is lit, creating a beautiful stepped-effect as the previous weeks’ candles burn down further. Scriptures can be read and carols sung as part of the lighting, which we do before family prayer. The four candles can also represent the different Old Testament covenants that God made with his servants, beginning with Noah and continuing through Abraham, Moses, and David. The central white candle is known as the Christ candle. It is lit on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and represents the new covenant made possible through Christ.

For Advent this year I have daily scriptures, songs, stories, activities, and snacks.  I will try and keep you posted about how it goes.

I still don't have Christmas where I want it, but I like to think I am getting closer.

Note: Check out the on-line quizes to see which are you and your friends primary love languages are and how knowing this can help you care for each other better: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessments/love/