Tag: General Conference

Categories
life

Conference Traditions

This morning as I went to the temple I began to wonder if I was in the middle of a common conference tradition of going to the temple to mentally prepare for General Conference (or to make up for the fact that a weekly Saturday trip would not be possible with the temple closed on conference weekend). It was busier than I have seen it before with almost as many people waiting to perform ordinances as performing them. It was so busy that the man who normally keeps everything in order flawlessly was hard-pressed to keep everything straight with so many people coming, waiting, and going.

As I thought about it throughout the day I considered some other conference traditions that we are trying to establish in our family. We have developed a tradition of having some fun treats in stock for the weekend so that the kids can be more self-maintaining and so that they can look forward to the conference weekend. We also have a tradition of going out to dinner as a family the night before conference as a fun way to start a long weekend. I am also trying to establish a tradition of taking Friday (or most of Friday) off of work so that I can do any tasks that would normally be saved for the weekend in order to allow myself to focus on the conference rather than dividing my attention with other tasks.

All in all, I think we have some good traditions to work on so that conference weekends are getting to be perhaps our third biggest holiday of the year at our house.

Categories
life thoughts

Not Enough


photo credit: garlandcannon

Sometimes I find myself feeling stuck in life; feeling that no matter what I do I have no real meaningful choices. I have described it as having, in any decision, a choice that is blatantly obvious (like deciding whether or not to wreck my car), or a choice that is meaningless (like deciding between Cheerios and Rice Krispies for breakfast).

Laura has asked me before if I have ever prayed for options and the answer is that I have with the result that I have still never felt like I had a real choice. Either the way was clear or the choice was inconsequential. As I thought about the feeling of impotence that comes with seeing no alternatives, no options to choose from, I realized that I was wrong about never having any options – especially in times that I have prayed for options. There have been plenty of instances where the choices really were black and white such that I would never take one of the options presented (wrecking my car for instance). The other times that I have felt stifled I realize that there are two different types of situations. First is when I have desired something only to be guided away from it. The second is when I have desired to do something and the answer from the spirit when I ask about pursuing it has essentially been “what are you willing to give for it?” The answer has virtually always been “not enough” or at least “not enough for the price that would likely be required.”

Anytime I am called upon to do something I am willing to do do whatever is necessary to complete the task but whenever I am left to choose my own direction I am unwilling to take significant risks for something I feel is entirely of my own choosing. That makes it sound like I don’t trust my own judgment, or that I don’t trust that I will be supported in my own choices.

There have been times when I have been willing to give enough but in the two cases that I can clearly recall – one resulted in me getting what I worked for on something that, so far as I can see, is transitory and unimportant while the other resulted in me putting in a lot of effort and making a lot of progress before I was instructed to abandon the pursuit (at least temporarily – maybe I have not seen the end of that yet).

Continue reading “Not Enough”
Categories
culture life meta

Change is in the Air

I’ve been feeling the need to reorient my online (and offline) activity for a while now. It has been interesting to work through the process of identifying what needed to change and how. There may be some person out there who noticed yet another title change. I never was particularly comfortable with the previous title, but as I identified the kind of purpose and image I would like to pursue I am very excited about “The Zion Chronicle” as it captures what I am working toward and seems fitting. I expect to be doing a lot more here writing about life and society in a quest to identify and promote the development of Zion in my own life. Hopefully others will find some gems that can bring them to Zion (or Utopia, Shangri La, Eden, or whatever other name you might assign to your ideal for human society).

As part of this change I started using Stats Counter to have some idea of what is actually happening besides me writing and people commenting. Interestingly one of the first three searches that landed someone here at my site after I signed up for stats counter was a search for “sister beck conference talk.” I don’t know if my Canadian friend was looking for Sister Beck’s most recent conference talk or something else but they landed on a post I wrote in the aftermath of Sister Becks incredible talk “Mothers Who Know” from the October Conference of 2007.

As it had been so long since I wrote it I took the time to go read what I had written about the talk. When I read the post I was, quite frankly, disappointed that someone might see that as indicative of who I am. At the time I was so busy trying to keep my site from being overly religious in an attempt to foster an open political dialog that I said almost nothing of consequence and I completely failed to convey what an inspiring and inspired talk it was. That talk is a beacon to those wishing to establish a Zion rooted in a strong family culture and I managed to water down my reaction to the point that it sounded like little more than a breath of fresh air.

Since that time I broke my political writing off into another site and actually found that I was not comfortable maintaining the kind of political neutrality that lead me to give so little praise to such a wonderful talk. I have been pleased with the outcome of abandoning that neutrality in my political writings and now I am looking at refocusing on some spiritually significant topics here (some political others apolitical). I hope that others will never have any excuse to wonder at the depth of my feeling for the topics I address here like they might well have done when reading what I wrote in October of 2007.

Categories
life

Book of Mormon Witness

It’s always interesting to see how people respond to powerful messages from General Conference. Although I spent much of conference somewhat distracted by children (what else is new) I was even able to recognize in that half attentive state that what Elder Holland was saying was powerful. In fact, it was powerful enough that I stopped paying attention to the kids for a minute when I heard him start to share the following testimony:

I ask that my testimony of the Book of Mormon and all that it implies, given today under my own oath and office, be recorded by men on earth and angels in heaven. . . I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true.

When I heard that I thought that I would be happy to stand with Elder Holland and declare, with much less public office, that I know for myself that the Book of Mormon is truly the word of the Lord tailor made for our day. I consider that to be absolutely public information recordable and repeatable by anyone who would care to record or repeat it. The message obviously touched others as it inspired Connor Boyack to create a website called Book of Mormon Witness where anyone may add their witness to that shared by Elder Holland. Hundreds of people have already added their names in the last three days since the site went live.

Categories
life

Who Is That?

Conference was very enjoyable for me. For the first time in years I was not exausted for any of the sessions and I really connected with most of the talks, rather than just a few of them. I did manage to miss most of the Saturday Afternoon session as we got locked out of our own house (that’s the first, and hopefully last, time I had to break into my new house).

After the last session we started watching a recording of the Saturday Afternoon session. With that video playing in the background I worked on getting dinner ready while Alyssa was watching. Right after Elder Holland’s talk ended Alyssa called out to me, “Who’s that?” I asked her if she was talking about the last speaker or the person currently speaking. She pointed to President Eyring, who was conducting that session. I told her it was President Eyring and she told me that she had recognized him from church. It was fun to see her make the connection.

Categories
life

Excited for Conference

Things have been so busy around here that I have not really had time to look forward at all. In the back of my brain I have known that this was the weekend of General Conference, but this afternoon that realization came to me as if I had not known and I recognized a real excitemnet buried inside me. I am looking forward to this weekend and the opportunity to put the rest of the world on the backburner while I get some much needed nourishment of spirit.