There's a difference

Shunning temptation

When asked, ‘what is the most important commandment?,’ Harold B. Lee responded,

“The most important of all the commandments of God is that one that you’re having the most difficulty keeping today. If it’s one of dishonesty, if it’s one of unchastity, if it’s one of falsifying, not telling the truth, today is the day for you to work on that until you’ve been able to conquer that weakness. Then you start on the next one that’s most difficult for you to keep.” Church News, May 5, 1973, p. 3

This is quoted in Elder Ian S. Ardern's article in the February Ensign "Shunning Temptation." I read that yesterday, opened to it as I picked up the magazine and have had to smile as I need its instruction, like, today! Elder Ardern proposes seven lessons from the Savior we can apply to keep us worthy to receive divine revelation; lessons Christ used in response to the temptations in the wilderness as he prepared for His mission (Matthew 4:1-11). Speaking of revelation, here's a sentence from the article I like: "The receipt of revelation depends on our faithfulness, but the clarity of revelation depends on our listening skills." Love that!

Okay, back to temptation... lesson #4 says that from the Joseph Smith Translation we know that Jesus did not go into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil as portrayed in the King James Version, for the righteous seek no temptation. Rather, "Jesus was led up of the Spirit, into the wilderness, to be with God" (JST, Matthew 4:1; emphasis added). The lesson is simple Elder Ardern purports: when we are trying to lose weight, we stay away from the bakery. We should never put ourselves at risk by courting temptation. The road to temptation is clearly signposted, and we ignore the signs at our peril.

Here's the seven lessons:

1. Recognize that Satan is the source of temptation.

2. The Savior immediately dismissed temptation. "We entertain the temptation momentarily for just a glimpse or taste or puff or kiss that is allowed to linger longer than it should, and then the temptation gets stronger and our ability to withstand it gets weaker."

3. Jesus took strength from the scriptures as a means of shunning temptation.

4. (Above.)

5. Satan tempts us at our weakest point. Mortality is our opportunity to make weak things strong. (Quote by President Lee, above.)

6. Jesus was tempted, but he instantly relied on His earlier decision to obey all the commandments of God and could not be persuaded to drift from that decision.

7. Christ was tempted three times in quick succession... the lesson is that Satan will not give up taunting and tempting us; we must be on our guard "against all the fiery darts of the adversary" (D&C 3:8).
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I testify that as we shun temptation and choose the better way, we will feel the loving arm of the Lord bearing us up, and His Spirit will fill our hearts with peace and joy. Elder Ian S. Ardern

What am I thinking?

I like this phrase "we write to figure out what we're thinking," Barbara Abercrombie, "Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life Into Story." I'm always writing in my head. So so much of what I "write" though doesn't get posted or journaled, it just goes away. Who knows into what brainspace thoughts do fade - whole ones that are brilliant - if, once formed, they're not captured. Do you suppose they orbit like space junk? Or rest below our consciousness like dry leaves fallen from branches? I just know I can never get back my thoughts, pluck them whole from the air or unearth them, when I let them get away.

Example

Helps

Chibird.com is one of my favorite places to peek into for short, sweet inspirations. Ah... you know, one of those things you do when you're feeling ready to shift gears. Different than, say, eating a sugar cookie. At 4:30 in the p.m. especially... sigh... when I'm dozy.

Sanctuary

Bear River 
Migratory Bird Refuge

Please oh please oh please take a look at these photos (link) of the refuge. They're photo contest winners from 2013 - breathtaking! Categories included scenic landscape, bird life, recreation education, creative nature, youth, animal behavior and scenic sunset. Here's my own from a few days ago with my little point-and-shoot and a little help from PSE. No close ups... there were few birds in sight the day we went. That's why you might love looking at the contest winners' pics. They're AWESOME.

Lucky me!

Why do I just WANNA eat sugar cookies? Mm, I love Cutler's Cookies especially, here in Bountiful  – any of you who've visited know their glazed-with-a-hint-of-almond and frosted sugar cookies are to die for! I found the recipe I found the recipe! on a blog named "A Bountiful Kitchen." (link). The real deal handed off by Curt (might he be a Cutler?) in a class in North Salt Lake. He shared techniques and the recipe! If you don't wanna  read the recipe, you don't gotta. There's a bit more at the end...

Cutler's Famous Sugar Cookies with Butter Cream Frosting or Glaze

Cutler's Cookies, Bountiful Utah

print recipe

1 1/2 cups butter (3 sticks)
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 cups cake flour (for homemade cake flour, try this: http://joythebaker.com/2009/09/how-to-make-cake-flour/)

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until blended well. Add dry ingredients and mix. To make dough easier to work with, chill before rolling. Roll  to about 1/4 inch thick and form (cut) cookies and bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Cookies are done when top is slightly cracked and no longer looks wet. Edges may be slightly browned. Top the cookies with either frosting or glaze, below. Makes about 2 1/2 to 3 dozen, depending on the size of your cookie cutter.

Butter Cream Frosting

1 cup butter

4-5 cups powdered sugar

milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat soft butter and powdered sugar together until smooth. Add a splash of milk and vanilla, blend well. Tint frosting with food color as desired. Decorate with sprinkles immediately after frosting. 

Cutler's Glaze
8 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon almond emulsion* or almond extract
1 teaspoon meringue powder**

Place powdered sugar in a large bowl. Add almond emulsion or almond extract to the powdered sugar, along with water, a little at a time whisking to combine. Continue whisking until smooth. Add just enough water to make a smooth glaze that stays on a knife when the knife is dipped in the glaze. Glaze the cookies by dipping the cookie into the glaze in a bowl and removing quickly when coated. Place cookies on rack or cookie sheet until glaze sets.

Tips:
*almond emulsion is sold at specialty cooking stores (Orson Gygi's in Salt Lake City) or stores where cake decorating supplies are sold.
** Meringue powder is also sold at specialty cooking stores. Cutler's uses meringue powder to create a shiny effect on their glaze. It is optional when making the glaze.
If the glaze starts to get too stiff, add a small amount of water until desired consistency.

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See these right here? These exact ones... I had TWO the other day! Lucky, lucky me!

(You may not tell my sister.)

(Either of them.)

(Hmm, I don't have just two sisters, so... NONE of them.)

New light

Two or three days ago Kent got an e-mail from a friend describing LED lights and fixtures that are all the rage. So much so that the electric company in our county is offering a rebate of almost the full price on every retrofit light kit a consumer will buy and install. Kent studied the information, printing like four pages of models of LED lights that qualify for this rebate, and excitedly has told mom and dad and me the possibilities for saving BIG money and having way brighter lights and way longer light-life. A person lays out a pretty penny at first to purchase all LED lights to replace every incandescent or CFL (compact fluorescent lamp; spiral) pot light or bulb at home or in an office or business building – heaven help you if you're a property manager! – but after submitting the application (online) for the almost-full-price rebate on every light and waiting for the check to come, you're still in the black. And that don't mean in the dark!

These lights are fantastic! It shouldn't surprise you that in no time Kent had calculated how many he'd need to buy at Costco to replace bulbs in several rooms here, two with vaulted ceilings, even a couple for our bathroom... and was home and on the ladder installing these. Round the clock he worked day before yesterday, even through lunch demonstrating the process for dad right over the table. How fun to have first one room then another in our house ablaze! It's daylight in my kitchen with the potlights retrofitted over us. We don't need to turn on the pendants over the island or fixture above the sink even. Heck no... we might need shades in here most mornings and nights.

I've ooohed and aaaahed and Kent's gushed. Really. This is sort of life changing! (But uhm for the worse in our shower... this new light, daylight, is showing layers of soap scum. Ick.)

Here's a story that's kind of about that, I heard it in church last week. In early days on one of the Hawaiian islands families received news they would be getting electric lights. Poles were erected and wires strung, then wires from there to the houses. Oil and gas lamps were cleaned and readied to be put away. The neighbors were anxious! Then came the evening when the switch was pulled, and light illuminated the island beginning at the beach and making its way up the hills. One family high up waited upon their front porch, watching lights dotting the land below... now ascending, coming... and then their own home was lit!

Of course they were amazed. It was fantastic! How could they fast enough take in all they were seeing at a glance! But, look... now the mother saw what she hadn't clearly, what none of them had: Grime. Black soot covered every surface near where oil and gas lamps had burned. Crumbs, dust and lint lay in corners on counters and the floor just out of reach of the mother's regular cleaning. This light, this godsend, was showing the family where work was still needed.

So is the new light over my enclosed shower, ew. I love this radiance in our house even right over the kitchen sink and the shower stall. Good for Kent making our home better. He's spies stuff to do around here like a hawk spies a June bug – and now don't we both see there's more cleaning to do!

'S'okay... I love the clarity, I'm way open to seeing things around me, the familiar, in a new light.

Life goes on

Can you pardon one more excerpt from "Life Goes On?" I finished it today. Fourth book down and now to book five, "A Change of Heart." Before I move on, bit more about the beloved character Pastor Sam Gardner:

My first year of seminary, I met a man who'd retired from there years before. His wife had died and he had nowhere else to go, so he passed his days at the seminary where he'd taught. He set up residence in the student lounge and, in addition to teaching me Ping-Pong, enlightened me on a range of other topics.

I complained to him one day that my faith had died, how I mourned its passing, that I wasn't sure what to believe, and if it were up to me, I'd just as soon return to what I had once believed. He laughed, then asked if I had ever heard of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"Wasn't he in those old detective movies?"

"No, that was Sherlock Holmes. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was on the Supreme Court."

Oh," I said, wondering what a Supreme Court justice had to do with my problem.

"Holmes said that the mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size."

I thought about that for a moment.

"You've been stretched, Sam. Now you have to fill your mind with a grand vision. That's why you're here."

Sam describes his process as a young minister cleaning the attic of his mind to make room for the new; learning to interpret the Bible, how to ask questions, and think theologically... though in his first church (because "some churches don't appreciate grand visions, or higher biblical criticism, or theology, for that matter") he was counseled to stick to the customary, not rock the boat, and above all "not upset a certain Sunday school class, whose members hadn't had a new thought since 1962 and didn't want one." He returns to the cliches of his childhood faith... puts his theology books in storage and basically (he laments) just visits old folks in the nursing home. He kept to this pattern the twelve years he pastored that church and does now with Harmony Friends Meeting.

Says he: "Sixteen years of letting my mind atrophy like a spent balloon, once stretched but now withered." (Awww...)

But now, now, Sam's done a little thinking and changing; gotten up his courage and is preaching what he believes. It mostly falls on the ears of a quirky congregation but he accepts that and they do keep coming to hear the next, and the next good sermon.

"But lately I've been leaving church positively buoyant. It's such an odd sensation I wasn't sure what to make of it. I thought at first it was the cough medicine I'd been taking, which has a tendency to make me loopy-happy, but it finally occurred to me it was something else entirely, a feeling so foreign to me it took a while to name it.

I was optimistic."
-----

Hope this is worth the two minutes it takes to read it... I thought it would buoy you! It does me!

...nor complaining

One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past nor complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the very essence of life. -Anatole France (1844-1924)

Seasons

I'm frequently chatting to myself about the yin and yang of things... particularly the low and high of my own desire and energy and commitment. Of course, the waning and waxing of the moon (I love the moon!) and our shortened and lengthened days. The stuff of life.

Seasons.

Here in the midnight of winter, the middle of February, though you may argue the end of December or the New Year itself is that and I wouldn't fight you, I'm so "less than." I can hardly get up in the morning this month, and I go to bed with the chickens!

I'm woefully indulgent.

Though the days are gathering light and strength and, well, so am I. I say this to myself on a day like today when the sun has just come out from behind clouds.

Valentine's fun

On Valentine's Day Kent and I drove to see Ellie whose 2nd birthday it was. I haven't got a most amazing pic of her (like this one from a post January 17th) (linky) but a few pretty good ones. Dan and I each took pics on my iPad. She was atwitter unwrapping presents and was also being manhandled by her brothers so no kidding the shots are kinda' blurry (even I'm being jostled) as she gets the wrapping off her Dora tambourine and shakes it!



My cute, cute girl!

Then... my husband takes me to eat Mexican food. Stick wi' me, girl! he says as I wonder out loud if there's a great restaurant between here and home. I did, and there is... found on Kent's smartPhone. He spoke right at Google before we left, asking for restaurants on 5600 West. Boing! A queue, a map, reviews, and a fifteen minute drive and we found ourselves at La Fountain in a booth just for us and everything! Nachos and salsa already on the table.

Pretty smartGuy, right?



Aw, no selfie tonight. I looked way tired. (I was! I put the boys and Ellie-belle up on my feet a half dozen times like I do when I visit - makes us all happy - and it slap wore me out! I'm a grandma for heaven's sake. Too fun!)

In formation

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.” Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness

Wendell Berry's quote finishes: “It is a journey we can make only by the acceptance of mystery and of mystification—by yielding to the condition that what we have expected is not there.”

This that I'm going to say next may not go with that ending exactly but well here it is... I sat with mom and dad and Kent at breakfast yesterday and scooted close to mom to help with her cereal. I talked in my lowest voice close in her ear, whispering, literally, instructions for pulling close to her plate, picking up her spoon, bringing it to her mouth; later, blowing her nose into a napkin I'd put in her hand for that (here, blow your nose so quietly didn't work so I took the tissue to her nose and while she blew from her mouth into it, puff, puff, I wiped). I moved slowly and carefully near her, spoke so softly she might have to strain to hear, but her hearing's acute. It just seemed that way.

Dad commented that the aide from last night is naturally loud, and mom balks at that. She did last night, shushing her, and dad himself asked the aide to talk softer. I said back that, too, there's usually a "flurry" associated with a loud person. (I may talk - I AM such. Loud. Flurrious! There's a word, I just made it up.) I finished by saying - calmly, deliberately, carefully, so softly dad had to practically strain to hear me - that when you two (indicating mom along with him) are done with us whenever that is you will all have taught me to be s o f t ,  s l o w ,  and  c a l m. I made s o o t h i n g motions with my hands in the air about me and smiled.

Dad rolled his eyes.

No... I believe it. As the months and years will pass living with my parents - even it's happening now - I will change. I AM changing. I speak in a whisper to gather mother's attention; pay respect and offer deference. Let her know I'm not in charge, she may be. I keep my phone ringer on vibrate when they're in the room - a low ring, even, takes mom and dad by surprise. I lay utensils and dishware on the kitchen counter and glass-top table with subtlety, no clinking, no banging. No flurry. Kent's had to ask me to quit letting cupboard doors slam, the microwave door and drawers and the refrigerator doors... even he's going to have me patient and deliberate and soft - in line - in readiness for old age.

I'm in formation, as the leaf-cutter ants above, in my "journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful..." No kidding it is a journey I can make "by yielding to the condition that what we have expected is not there." But a journey by which I am "learning to be at home."

My life is not my own. It is a mystery at every turn, though I am in formation.

Good stuff

Remember how in February 2011 I was reading "Life Goes On" (link) by Philip Gulley? Here I am this month and last cycling through the Harmony series and, again, oh again, this same novel is a treat! That post then ↑ expresses it: "I'm giggling my way through "Life Goes On" and, well, sighing in all the right places.

I've posted about Sam the Quaker minister in the last few weeks, yes. Here's what he says near the end of a chapter the evening of the Fourth of July. After he's pulled a replica of the Harmony Meeting church on a hay wagon attached to his father's tractor in the parade earlier. It draped with, "I will make this town a curse for all the nations of the earth," which scripture the cuss Dale Hinshaw (link, remember this post from January?) – as only he can – has picked for the banner. (Gee.)



After convincing his eleven year-old, Levi, to dress in his Sunday best and ride inside the church on the wagon and throw out salvation fliers of which Dale Hinshaw is the author to the crowd. (Aw...) After the fire department's tanker has passed in front of the hardware store and the engine backfired and a bystander's pet ferret has jumped from his arms and sprinted among the Shriners, dodged Clevis Nagle on his bicycle, scattered the Little League teams, and frozen in the street as Sam's father's 1939 Farmall Model M tractor with its original steel front wheel bears down. Sam swerves to miss it and the church slides from the float and lands upside down on the street.

With Levi inside lodged in the steeple, unhurt but mortified. (Sigh.)

"I'm never going to be in the parade again," Levi told me that night, after the fireworks.

"I said the same thing when I was your age."

"Then how come you were in the parade today?" he asked.

I thought for a moment. "Because Asa Peacock asked for my help, and he's my friend."

"Is Dale your friend?"

"I wouldn't want to go on vacation with him," I said, "but I don't wish him any harm."

"Is it always like this in the church?" Levi asked, after a while. (He he!)

"Always like what?"

"You have to be with people you don't like."

"Sometimes it's like that. But there are also a lot of wonderful people."

"I'm still not going to ride on the church float ever again," he said.

"Fair enough, sport."

Says he: "I lay in bed that night thinking how nothing ever changes. I'm forty-two years old and still having to do things I don't want to do. I suppose it's the price of loving people. My son thinks he'll somehow avoid these obligations, which is a common misperception among the young. In time, of course, he'll learn otherwise, that maturity isn't about doing what pleases us, but bearing with good humor that which annoys us to no end."

"I forget this myself sometimes, so it's good to be reminded, lest in my arrogance I despise the Dales of the world for not marching to my tune. When I was a child, my father would advise me not to take myself so seriously. I wondered if I should wake my son to pass this truth along, then decided against it. There are some lessons we have to learn on our own, lessons whose truths aren't accepted until the soul is ready to hear them."

Note to self

Today,

because it's Valentine's Day,

because I love you, and

because I can...

I'm sharing the love! !(Are you?)

It'll come by what I do, maybe what I cook, a phone call or text - Hello! - a mighty hug, or face to face... 

Mwha! Hugs and kisses, loves and best wishes to you and you and you! 

Today I include myself.

Note to self... (time to indulge a little)

I. Love. You (me)!

Too.

Out west

Laura and I got out west of the city and walked and walked and walked the other day. Temps were warm enough we didn't even have to wear hats or mittens like we've donned the past two months when we can make it outside to walk. Silly us, we own almost-matching Columbia jackets - yeah, she bought a red one this year with a hoodie and I wear a Christmas-green one Erin gave me last Christmas, and boy aren't we Merry and Bright walking these country roads! We did have cold noses and red cheeks and tingly fingertips a bit. It's verily winter!

I took my first pictures using my new phone. Wow! Hooray!

Never forget

“Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (2 Kings 6:16-17).

God grant me

Yes

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr

Ward Conference

At our ward conference yesterday our stake president spoke about afflictions and blessings. He'd gone to the Topical Guide in the scriptures this past month and read through references in all our standard works for "afflictions." These all, he pointed out to us speaking from the pulpit, invite us to turn toward God. One of the last references found in D&C 121 speaks of these being for our experience.

Likewise (he pointed out), "blessings" (in the TG) has us turning toward God.

Turn to God, he admonishes. In our afflictions and in our blessings.

Chocolate Chip Cookies With Bacon Fat

I so made these today. They're delish. I cannot moralize how good-for-you or bad-for-you these are/might be... they just taste awesome! Now before you roll your eyes or go, "Ewwwww!" hear me: You substitute rendered bacon grease in place of some of the butter/oil in a traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe. This gives the cookies an ever-so-slight salty taste that goes amazingly with dark chocolate chips. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips AND dark... and did leave out the nuts and sea salt for sprinkling.

Chocolate Chip Cookies With Bacon Fat

from Chef Ross Sveback

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup rendered bacon grease
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 tsp. maple flavoring
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)
• Sea salt for sprinkling on top (optional)

Instructions

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream bacon grease, butter, and brown sugar together, scraping bowl if necessary to combine.

2. Add eggs, vanilla bean paste or extract, baking powder, baking soda, and salt -- mix on medium low to combine.

3. Add flour and stir to incorporate -- scraping bottom of bowl to ensure all the flour is mixed together.

4. Add chocolate chips and nuts, then stir again. Let dough rest for a half hour.

5. Scoop spoon-sized balls of dough onto baking sheets.

6. Bake for 16 minutes at 350, turning pans or rotating them bottom to top if necessary depending on your oven halfway through the baking time.

7. Remove from oven and allow to cool on a rack until you are ready to eat them.

Steppin' up

Journal entry two nights ago...
After dinner after we got the kitchen cleaned I donned exercise clothes and a jacket and my green purse J and left to buy exercise capris, then headed to the rec center. To step aerobics class. Agh, for the first time. I called Laura and said come. Come! She was tired and doesn't know step exercises (like I don’t) and knew she might not make it through if it's too vigorous but did say she'd try, and we met at the rec close to seven o'clock.

We had to ask for help from the regulars who showed us what to put in place to make our steps. One layer only. Then Kristi (the instructor, I know her from my ward) entered and got miked and welcomed us. “Any newcomers?” She recognized me in the back and smiled broadly and I pointed to Laura and she gave a thumbs up, welcoming us each. She got the music going and us into warm ups. Basic steps, up-down, up-down, which were easy, and moved us quickly to Repeaters, Two-steps, L-steps, V-steps with half-Vs, lunges, Grapevine and Mambo Cha-Cha.

Oh. My. Gosh.

The first half hour... oh my gosh and Laura stepped all the way out the door! Bye! She was apologetic, yep, and I was happy we've braved this together, being new and soon out of energy. I kept going with the routines Kristi showed us (well me cause the others know the steps) and doggedly mis-stepped through the next half hour. Like they teach you in school choir from sixth grade on: If you're going to make a mistake make it LOUD!, I DID clear to the end, and at the last I was energized even if I WAS ridiculous.

I thanked Kristi and she said I did amazing... aw, it's crazy to feel clumsy. Just, just getting it, and class was done. And, um, that my brain and body lasted is the success!

This is what you shall do

Don't ask me why I think this illustration goes with this prose below. To me it does. Some bloggers posting this from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass have placed rather thought-provoking images beside it. I've seen. This, well, makes me happy. 

Part of being on my blog each day (or whenever I can) is for making me happy! My own self. I hold my breath a bit or give a sigh as I reread, then re-experience what I first did when I posted crafted. Or I skim and may wonder why what I posted was all so important, aw. As I stay and explore and review, my own happiness is a big deal. Or I wouldn't write. 

This, ↓ all of it, today, seems just right.

This is what you shall do...

Love the earth and the sun and the animals, 

despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

stand up for the stupid and crazy, 

devote your income and labor to others, 

hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, 

have patience and indulgence toward the people,  

...go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, 

and with the young and with the mothers of families, 

read these leaves in the open air 

every season of every year of your life,

re-examine all you have been told at school 

or church or in any book. 

dismiss whatever insults your own soul; 

and your very flesh shall be a great poem...

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Love it. Love. IT!

I'm a day late and a dollar short blogging, acckkk! It's the 5th already – Happy Birthday, Scott! – and the hurrier I go the behinder I get, right? It's been one of those weeks where I posted "Sunday Mourning" and looked again and whew three days gone by. Nothin'. (It's not like I have nothin' to say, just no uninterrupted time to organize it!) (May be good, eh?)

Here's when I slap up posters days in a row that make me smile. This one especially does!

Yeah

Bloom

Sunday mourning

It's been a sad Sunday. We received news that Jared Bangerter, a young man in our ward, died of cardiac arrest yesterday morning. He's had heart ailments his whole life, hasn't been expected to live to as old as he was, just under thirty. Be through school and work successfully; or married with a four month-old daughter.

Come to find out when I texted Scott asking if he knew him (I had the feeling I should ask), he's one of Scott's friends from elementary school and junior high! Back in the day Jared himself came and went to and from my house with Scott and pals; Scott reminds me I drove him to Jared's house frequently during junior high; he worked with Jared and his dad roofing. That escaped me this past year attending church with the Bangerters, meeting Rachel his wife and watching her come through her pregnancy and birth of their daughter. Only today, too late to have reacquainted myself, do I realize I've known Jared all along.

But none of that is the point. Today is the second day Rachel and her baby are doing without husband and father. She and Jared's mother and father and large family will mourn deeply. One person passing out of this world leaves a gaping wound early on... so many at church were stunned and saddened.

Speaking of grief... I listened in the hallway at church to a woman tell me her almost forty year-old sister has been placed with Hospice this month. This sister has had cerebral palsy and epilepsy all her life and has been hospitalized and revived countless times. Their mother has the full burden of her care. This mother has been divorced and remarried, and the second husband and children from this marriage, grown now, are disengaged from any care of my friend's sister; or the mother. She goes it alone. She is heartbroken over leaving her

daughter with a Do Not Resuscitate order now in case of emergency;my friend is heartbroken for her mother and for herself and for her sister; the hard, hard things each are facing. I listened later in the same hallway to a man tell me of the plight he and his family face as his wife is stranded in Guatemala. He is Peruvian and she is Guatemalan and as he and their children moved from Peru to the States last summer, she could not come. A visa has been denied. The children are young and need her; Henry is learning English and, while here with his own aged parents and two of his siblings who have families too and live close by and are supportive, is anxious - desperate now - to be with his wife and have the family together. It's been longer than any of them might've imagined bringing his wife legally into the States. It hasn't happened yet. The exquisite pain in his eyes and face as he talked with me, partly Spanish, partly English, has moved me. He ended expressing faith in God that all will work out; he is consoled by his knowledge that God is in the details of their lives. He perhaps very much needed to talk.

Relief Society meeting the last hour was wonderful. The teacher who taught is a widow (though not old) and took time after the Joseph Fielding Smith lesson to  review with all of us (the room was packed) what to do and not do in comforting the bereaved. I'll continue to listen to promptings and this good sister's invitation to just be there to best mourn with those that mourn.

God is good

Through the whole book "Just Shy of Harmony," second in the series about a small-town cluster gaggle of quirky characters, Sam, the Quaker pastor, loses his belief in God. One of the members of Harmony Friends Meeting, Sally Flemming, has had a bone marrow transplant against her recent diagnosis of leukemia and is herself waning. As Sam gathers back his faith and begins again to preach from the pulpit and minister to his flock he receives this impression from the Lord: I will give you a miracle." A voice, in fact repeated three times, in the the quiet of Easter Sunday.

Concurrently Bea Majors, the organist, has been ardently following television evangelist Johnny LaCosta; sending him money, clothing, and prayer requests for a healing for Sally. One night it happens! La Costa mentions Sally by name across television land, pronouncing her HEALED! "Her bone marrow is well. Her blood is being restored. She will LIVE."

Bea announces Sally's healing by Reverend Johnny LaCosta to the congregation (through the grapevine of women of the Friendly Circle) and Sam becomes last to know. He's unbelieving; aghast; half mad at last when he drives to the hospital to find Sally up and walking about, feeling her normal self and bright as sunshine.

(There's more...) Wayne, Sally's husband, says, "Sam, Sally's healed. God healed her. Bea called and told us about that faith healer she watches and what he said on TV last night. And that ain't all of it. This past Sunday morning, I was sitting here in my chair and I heard a voice saying I'd see a miracle. That's all the voice said - You will see a miracle. It said it three times, just as clear as you're hearing my voice.

Sam reached for a chair to steady himself. Oh, Lord, why would you use Johnny LaCosta? Of all the people you could have used, why did you use him?

Sam visits with his good friend Miriam Hodge (about the only, well, sane member of Harmony Friends Meeting, he he) who says, "If God chose to heal Sally through this television preacher, shouldn't we be grateful? Would you have liked it better if God hadn't healed her?"

"Of course not."

"Then let's give thanks, Sam. It appears we might have a healing on our hands." She smiled.

Sam smiled back. "I still think he's a bozo."

"So do I. But apparently God uses bozos too. Besides, Sam, Johnny La Costa wasn't the only one praying for Sally. We had this church praying twenty-four hours a day. The Catholics were praying, and the Baptists. Fern and Bea and the Friendly Women and even Dale were praying for her all along. And let's not forget that a lot of doctors were working to make Sally better."

"We'll never know, Sam, will we?"

"I guess not."

"Which means we shouldn't despise the prayers of any one person, should we?"

Sam didn't say anything.
-----

He sat at the folding table in the basement, pondering what Miriam had said. How he'd been discouraged when God didn't seem to be working, then when God did do something it made him mad. It occurred to Sam that he wasn't an easy man to please. He rose from his chair, rinsed his coffee cup out in the kitchen sink, turned off the church lights, and walked down Main Street toward home.

Over at the Legal Grounds [coffee shop], Deena Morrison was turning the sign from Yes, We're Open to Sorry, We're Closed. She waved through the glass at Sam as he passed. He smiled and waved back.

She cracked open the door. "Have you heard the news about Sally?"

"Yes."

"Isn't God good," Deena said. It was a declaration, not a question.

Sam smiled and nodded his head in agreement.

God is good, he thought. Bewildering, but good.