Lesson recap: Our Father's Love

Margie Clark taught today's Relief Society lesson. She took her materials from two articles.

If you read nothing else this week, read this articles. Your life will be blessed and maybe even changed.

The Doctrine of the Father, by Quentin L. Cook, February 2012 Ensign

... how personal and individual are Heavenly Father’s love for and relationship to each of us. Understanding how He feels about us gives us the power to love Him more purely and fully. Personally feeling the reality, love, and power of that relationship is the source of the deepest and sweetest emotions and desires that can come to a man or woman in mortality. These deep emotions of love can motivate us and give us power in times of difficulty and trial to draw closer to our Father.

Margie reminded us, because sometimes we just forget, how much God loves us.

You are his daughter.

God is a righteous and loving father. Your spirit came into being out of love and a deliberate choice to give you life and opportunity.

As a spirit child you are known individually by our Heavenly Father. He has known you at least from the time you became a begotten spirit.

You are His precious daughter, whom He loves individually.

He knows you by name.

He uses names to express that He knows and identifies you personally and individually.

Within you lies the latent seeds of godliness ...There is power in saying or singing the words “I am a child of God.

Now for those of us who might not have the example of a righteous father to draw on, know this:

Your  relationship with your earthly father may have been lacking, but your Heavenly Father is with you. His presence can be strong in your life. Know He loves you, cares for you, and will always want a relationship with you. Know that He is your Father. And He is not going anywhere.

His Grace Is Sufficient, by Brad Wilcox, July 12, 2011, BYU Speech

The evidence and gift of love God could give us is the Savior.

“Jesus doesn’t make up the difference. Jesus makes all the difference. Grace is not about filling gaps. It is about filling us."

Elder Bruce C. Hafen has written, “The Savior’s gift of grace to us is not necessarily limited in time to ‘after’ all we can do. We may receive his grace before, during and after the time when we expend our own efforts”. 

So grace is not a booster engine that kicks in once our fuel supply is exhausted. Rather, it is our constant energy source. It is not the light at the end of the tunnel but the light that moves us through the tunnel. Grace is not achieved somewhere down the road. It is received right here and right now. It is not a finishing touch; it is the Finisher’s touch (see Hebrews 12:2).

Margie asked that we look for the love of our Heavenly Father and our Savior in all the world around us. To remember that he loves us.



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Mormon Poet Emma Lou Thayne: On Going Away

My spiritual life withers in too much togetherness,
just as it thrives in quiet.

I traveled with my husband and family and with tennis players and members of boards. I spoke to groups across the country, always to be met and taken care of. My life was full. And I was dying. In all my busyness, something was missing that I could not name.

When I was accepted for a poetry symposium in Port Townsend, Wash., with some persuasion, my husband agreed. There, just an anonymous one of dozens of poets, living in a sparse single room in an old barracks, I learned to find space to pay a different kind of attention. I had time to focus on details and moments, not generalities. I had time to reexamine, to revise, to reinvent my sense of the world. And it was joyous fun! On the saltwater shores of Puget Sound, I learned to breathe in the "full measure of my creation."

Knowing is a process, not an arrival. Coming home, I struggled with how to be available to the many and the much I love and still be true to myself and to what solitude had offered me. The clarity of what I had learned pushed me to find spaces to be alone. I rented a little studio close to home to go to one day and night a week. I was accepted by writing retreats in Virginia, Illinois and Florida that were sponsored and inexpensive enough that I felt guiltless about going. I accepted offers from friends to visit their unused places. My family adjusted to my absences and learned that spaces in our togetherness made room for more relished time together. And I claimed the space to be all I can be.

Read the full article at the Huffington Post to find out what Emma Lou Thayne has to say about staying up all night!

More about Emma Lou Thayne:
Mormon Literature Database
A Woman of Gentle Strength
Emma Lou Thayne - Alive Again

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Summer Salad

Our Summer Relief Society Activity "A Light in the Darkness" was a good success. We had time to talk and get to know one another better, to relax, to have fun in the pool and to reflect on our gifts, our sisterhood, and being a light to one another.

The food was also terrific! Below is Cheryl's recipe for Cashew Cabbage Salad. If you brought a salad or dessert, please send me your recipe and I'll post it.

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Cashew Cabbage Salad

Step 1
1 head cabbage, sliced thin
1 bag salad greens
1 bunch green onions, sliced

Mix in large bowl and put in refrigerator to keep cold.

Step 2
½ cup slivered almonds
1 cup cashews
1 package Raman noodles, crumbled

Saute in 2-1/2 Tbls. butter, then add between 1/3 to ½ cup brown sugar to pan as needed to coat nut mixture.  Continually stir over medium heat until nuts are a nice golden brown.  Set aside to cool.  After cooled add on top of greens.

Step 3
½ cup sugar
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup oil
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper

Combine sugar and vinegar in a small sauce pan over medium heat to dissolve sugar.  Add salt and pepper.  Remove from heat place in a shaker and add oil.  Chill and shake together to pour over salad just before serving.

( You can put the steps in any order you want.)

Cheryl Wentzel

Are We Easily Guided?

When it comes to setting goals, this world champion isn't horsing around.

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Video: My New Life

Rising above the sea of online video offerings on YouTube is a “Mormon Message” from a mother who has an inspiring story to tell.

Stephanie Nielson, a popular blogger, is a mother of four who was involved in a near-fatal plane crash in 2008. She survived and, along with her husband, is carving out a life that nearly slipped from their grasp.

“I'm just grateful that I am here on this earth and I have the opportunity to be a mother and do the things that I love and enjoy,” says Nielson in the video. “I view my role now as more divine.”



Related articles:
LDS.org Newsroom article
Creative Mormon Women Make It Big on the Internet
NieNie Dialogues - Stephanie's blog
Oprah video and article Mommy Blogger and Mother Warrior

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Article: A Natural Woman

This is perfect reading for Mother's Day! 

Arm yourself with a little truth to stave off the M-day blues...

I’m glad I’m a woman. I’m glad I’m a wife. I’m glad I’m a mother. I’m glad I’m a Mormon. In fact, my Mormon-woman-wife-and-motherness is the core of my personal identity, and I recognize it as the source of my greatest blessings and opportunities for growth in this life. I am not, however, a perfect Mormon-wife-and-mother (gasp!). And any Mormon-wives-and-mothers out there reading this post? Neither are you (double gasp!).

Seriously, we’ve got issues, don’t we? We’re lazy and whiny and angry and lustful and controlling and jealous and aggressive and mean and petty and occasionally even faithless. We yell at our kids. We choose going to the movies over going to the temple. We give our husbands the silent treatment. We walk out of the grocery store in the rain with three kinds clinging to the cart, and when we realize that we forgot to have the cashier scan the 12-pack of Diet Coke, we don’t go back inside and pay for it.

And these examples are just the small things.

I don’t mention all this because I want to revel in our faults or air our dirty laundry. I’m saying it because it’s true, and as the old saying goes, the truth will set you free.

As Mormon women, we’re all familiar with the lady I like to call the Angel Mother Straight from Heaven (HT Coventry Patmore and Virginia Woolf). When I was a younger mom, the mythology of the Angel Mother filled me with a kind of numb despair. Mormon women are “naturally” inclined to want to stay home and nurture their children (so who’s this mother of two children under two sitting at the window sobbing jealous tears as her husband goes off to grad school?). Mormon women are “naturally” patient (so who’s this lady rampaging through the house when her son can’t find his soccer shoes?). Mormon women are “naturally” spiritual (so who’s this woman lying in bed reading Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale while her husband reads his scriptures?).

Thankfully, as time has passed, this mythology has held less and less sway over the way I see myself, for the simple reason that I’ve lived long enough now, and known enough Mormon women, to realize that none of us is the Angel Mother....

Read the whole article, by Angela, on Segullah. You'll be glad you did.

Thanks to Em for passing this link along to us.

Photo credit

Lesson Recap: Divine Destiny and Exaltation

We are beloved spirit daughters of God, and our lives have meaning, purpose, and direction. As a worldwide sisterhood, we are united in our devotion to Jesus Christ, our Savior and Exemplar. We are women of faith, virtue, vision, and charity who:

• Increase our testimonies of Jesus Christ through prayer and scripture study.
• Seek spiritual strength by following the promptings of the Holy Ghost.
• Dedicate ourselves to strengthening marriages, families, and homes.
• Find nobility in motherhood and joy in womanhood.
• Delight in service and good works.
• Love life and learning.
• Stand for truth and righteousness.
• Sustain the priesthood as the authority of God on earth.
• Rejoice in the blessings of the temple, understand our divine destiny, and strive for exaltation. 

Jill Fairchild taught: You and I have the God-given gift to choose the direction we go...We have been provided divine attributes to guide our destiny. We entered mortality not to float with the moving currents of life, but with the power to think, to reason, and to achieve.

President Monson encourages us:
1. Visualize your objective.
2. Make continuous effort.
3. Do not detour from our determined course.
4. To gain the prize, we must be willing to pay the price.

Remember that the ultimate price was paid by Jesus Christ and He will help us.

A young piano student
A mother, wishing to encourage [her son in his piano practice], “bought tickets for a performance of the great Polish pianist, Paderewski. The night of the concert arrived and the mother and son found their seats near the front of the concert hall. While the mother visited with friends, the boy slipped quietly away.

“Suddenly, it was time for the performance to begin and a single spotlight cut through the darkness of the concert hall to illuminate the grand piano on stage. Only then did the audience notice the little boy on the bench, innocently picking out ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’

“His mother gasped, but before she could move, Paderewski appeared on stage and quickly moved to the keyboard. He whispered to the boy, ‘Don’t quit. Keep playing.’ And then, leaning over, the master reached down with his left hand and began filling in the bass part. Soon his right arm reached around the other side, encircling the child, to add a running obbligato. Together, the old master and the young novice held the crowd mesmerized.

“In our lives, unpolished though we may be, it is the Master who surrounds us and whispers in our ear, time and time again, ‘Don’t quit. Keep playing.’ And as we do, He augments and supplements until a work of amazing beauty is created. He is right there with all of us, telling us over and over, ‘Keep playing.’ ” 7
What It Means to Be a Daughter of God, James E. Faust, Ensign, November 1999

Jill

Lesson Recap: Family the Sweetest Union for Time and Eternity

Joseph Smith Lesson #42

By Marie Tiller, 10.11.09

“The sweetest union and happiness pervaded our house. No jar nor discord disturbed our peace, and tranquility reigned in our midst.”
~Lucy Mack Smith

The ideal
The ideal, the goal we all desire, is eternal marriage in the temple, children born in the covenant and eternal life in God's presence. In today's world our families come in all shapes and sizes and we all fall somewhere along a continuum of progress towards the ideal.

Because we and our family members are not perfect, Marie encouraged us to remove our glasses of judging who's going to "make it" or not. We need to focus on the eternal nature of ourselves and our family, to see them as God sees them, to see their and our potential. We need to pray for strengthened ability to love unconditionally.

The promise
The doctrine of the “new and everlasting covenant of eternal marriage” was first taught by Joseph Smith to a few close friends on May 1843 and is now found in D&C 132. It holds the promise of marriage being in full force in the next life, if done by the proper authority and sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise. It promises glory, exaltation, and continuation of seed. “Then shall they be gods.” D&C 132:19-21

Though this may sound overwhelming, then as now, the knowledge was a great blessing to Saints and can be to us.

For Elder Parley P. Pratt of the Quorum of the Twelve, a knowledge of this doctrine deepened his love for his family:

It was Joseph Smith who taught me how to prize the endearing relationships of father and mother, husband and wife; of brother and sister, son and daughter. It was from him that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity; and that the refined sympathies and affections which endeared us to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal love. It was from him that I learned that we might cultivate these affections, and grow and increase in the same to all eternity; while the result of our endless union would be an offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, or the sands of the sea shore. … I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feeling, which would lift my soul from the transitory things of this grovelling sphere and expand it as the ocean. … In short, I could now love with the spirit and with the understanding also.

The practice
Honoring our parents, loving our brothers and sisters, teaching and caring for our children are all important in God's plan, though sometimes not easy. If we struggle with some relationships, we can choose to change our perspective, to see others as God does, and to learn to love or show our love better.

Remember with gratitude parents who gave us life and cared for us:

When we reflect with what care, and with what unremitting diligence our parents have striven to watch over us, and how many hours of sorrow and anxiety they have spent, over our cradles and bed-sides, in times of sickness, how careful we ought to be of their feelings in their old age! It cannot be a source of sweet reflection to us, to say or do anything that will bring their gray hairs down with sorrow to the grave.

Love among brothers and sisters can be sweet and enduring:

I could pray in my heart that all my brethren were like unto my beloved brother Hyrum, who possesses the mildness of a lamb, and the integrity of a Job, and in short, the meekness and humility of Christ; and I love him with that love that is stronger than death.

Parents who love, support, and pray for their children bring immeasurable blessings into their children’s lives:

I have seen an open vision in which I saw Mother on her knees under an apple tree praying for us, and she is even now asking in tears for God to spare our lives that she may behold us again in the flesh. And the Spirit testifies to me that her prayers and ours shall be heard. And from that moment we were healed and went on our way rejoicing.

Sisters, as we heard in Conference last weekend, let us try a little harder to be consistent in our expressions of love to our family, our parents, our siblings, our children and even our ward family.

Ellen

A Return to Virtue, Lesson Summary

Elaine S. Dalton, October Conference 2008 - A Return to Virtue

Taught by Elizabeth Latey

You must never under estimate the power of your righteous influence.

Sister Dalton asks us, "Could it be that we have been slowly desensitized into thinking that high moral standards are old-fashioned and not relevant or important in today's society?

"Could it be that first we tolerate, then accept, and eventually embrace the vice that surrounds us?

"Could it be that we have been deceived by false role models and persuasive media messages that cause us to forget our divine identity?

"What could be more deceptive than to entice the youth of this noble generation to do nothing or to be busy ever-texting but never coming to a knowledge of the truth?

"What could be more deceptive than to entice women, young and old, you and me, to be so involved in ourselves, our looks, our clothes, our body shape and size that we lose sight of our divine identity and our ability to change the world through our virtuous influence?"

What has desensitized us? Influences such as the media, magazine images on the grocery shelves, dolls on the market, even Disney heroines.

A virtuous women's price is far above rubies. ~Proverbs 31: 10-31.

Let's return to these virtuous ways found in the scripture above. A woman of virtue is dependable, trustworthy, selfless, industrious, charitable, clean, knowledgeable, strong (as in girding our loins with the armor of righteousness), kind, a wise steward, and repentent.

Sister Dalton: "Virtue is a prerequisite to entering the Lord’s holy temples and to receiving the Spirit’s guidance. Virtue 'is a pattern of thought and behavior based on high moral standards.' It encompasses chastity and moral purity. Virtue begins in the heart and in the mind. It is nurtured in the home. It is the accumulation of thousands of small decisions and actions."

Elizabeth shared with us symbols that remind her to be virtuous...a beautiful painting of a woman in white—at peace with herself, a small oil lamp that's filled by many small drops over time, a statue of a woman kneeling with a child in her arms to remind us of what's important, and an orchid–beautiful, fragile-looking, but able to grow and thrive anywhere.

Thanks Elizabeth for sharing your testimony and your love of the gospel with us.