holds upon happiness

“What beautiful hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.”

“And how might you learn? By accident or argument?”

“Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I saw them the other day in Milsom Street; I am naturally indifferent about flowers.”

“But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible."

--Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

Some things that I love doing are . . .

Having tea time with my roommate Michelle and anyone else who decides to join us.

Cleaning a room.

Eating chocolate. Or ice cream. Or guacamole with lime chips. Or salsa with lime chips. Or Thai food. Food brings me lots and lots of happiness.

Teaching at BYU.

Meeting with students to discuss their concerns about class and life.

Reading. I've long loved reading novels, but recent years have taught me to love reading poetry, compositional and rheotrical theory, nonfiction, and the news (especially opinion pieces).

Listening to NPR, the Mormon Channel, and other podcasts.

Sitting outside in the hour before sunset.

Being awake in the still of the early morning.

Talking with my family.

Sitting in the Celestial Room of any temple.

Emailing and receiving emails from my family (oh those delightful family email chains . . . ).

Visiting cemeteries. (I learned this one over the summer while visiting cemeteries in Massachusetts, Europe, and small Utah towns. Thanks, Sam.)

Writing journal entries, lists, thank you notes, blog posts, and, yes, even assignment sheets.

Getting absorbed in a meaningful conversation.

Laughing with good friends.

Listening in on strangers' conversations.

Browsing through books in a bookstore, touching the spines and feeling the pages, hmmming and smiling over the excerpts I read.

To me, each of these things is about an experience of calm. All of them cause me to slow down and reflect on how rich and good my life actually is and how kind and wonderful the people are around me really are and how numerous and personal my gifts from God have been. And maybe that's what happiness is? The experience of stopping to see the reality of the good God has woven into your life?

This e. e. cummings' poem captures my gratitude for these experiences well:

i thank You God for most this amazing 

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees 

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything 

which is natural which is infinite which is yes 

Yes.

what changes us

"Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in—a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. 

CHRIST DOES."

Today, I read a sermon called "The Greatest Thing in the World," written by Henry Drummond and published first, I think, in 1891. Although the whole sermon is worth reading, I was most struck by the quote above. In recent months, I've been spending a lot of time trying to get things done by will power alone. I make all kinds of determinations about what I'm going to accomplish and what habits I'm going to change and how I'm going to have a good attitude about it all and . . . nothing changes. I determine and determine and I don't make much progress. I think my problem comes in not recognizing the truth expressed above.

This quote from the sermon comes in a section on how maintaining a good temper is part of love. Immediately before this quote, Drummond describes the dangers of doing right and feeling wrong: "[Temper]," he writes, "is the intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped involuntarily when off one's guard; in a word, the lightning form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins. A want of patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, are all instantaneously symbolized in one flash of Temper."

I think this something I'm afraid of--that my outward attempts at goodness aren't penetrating what's inside. That I'm not changing because there is rottenness underneath--and you can't just cover it up. You've got to root it out.

It's not enough to just try to make our outward actions match our ideals--our hearts have to be right on the inside. Drummond's description of the rottenness bubbling underneath reminds me of C. Terry Warner's ideas in Bonds That Make Us Free. Often, we act (self-)righteously and congratulate ourselves on our good behavior and long-suffering when inside our hearts we are at war with those around us. I recognize my own tendencies to fall into this trap of self-justification. The only thing is that recognition alone doesn't solve the problem.

I recognize where I go wrong, and then I become overwhelmed by the sheer number of things I need to fix about myself. Drummond's sermon could have sent me spiraling back into a cycle of guilt and frustration, but the quote at the top of this page prevents that from happening. "Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. CHRIST DOES." I recognize the wrong inside me and that leads me to want to change, but the key here is that I can't change myself. The burden of guilt and feeling of being convicted that I sometimes feel lifts when I accept this truth: "Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. CHRIST DOES."

This is why all my best resolutions over the past few months have failed: I've been trying to change things about me while utilizing only my own will power. Reading Drummond's sermon today showed me that I can make determinations all I like, but until I turn the process of change over to Christ, I won't make any progress. I have to be willing, but my will-power won't change me. I have to give Him time, but time won't change me.

Christ will change me.

I find that thought so comforting and relieving. I can leave it up to Him to do His work of changing, and I can stop worrying so much about myself.

Forgetting to worry about myself in turn allows me to focus my attention outward: towards God and those around me. An outward focus leads me to love and this thing, love, Drummond concludes, is the greatest thing in the world. It's Christ's ability to change us that opens in us the capacity for love, the most Godlike quality of all. Said another way, it's the capacity for love, given to us by Christ, that changes us.

End of the road?

When I was about fifteen, I planned out my life. I would study English Teaching in college, serve a mission, and go to graduate school. And then . . . ? I'd just figure out the next step.

Aside from changing my undergraduate major from English Teaching to English just after my mission, I've stuck to the plan. But, here I am, nearly at the end, and not quite sure what comes next.

So what do you do when your teenage wisdom runs out of steam? I feel a little lost, here at the end of the things I knew for sure I would do. I can now move anywhere and do anything that a Master's degree in English qualifies me for (which is, shockingly and surprisingly, very little). What now?

Suggestions?

Solitude

"Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day. How revolutionary that sounds and how impossible of attainment. . . .

"Actually these are among the most important times in one's life--when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships."

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea, pp. 48, 50

Good things to come

This video comes from one of my favorite talks by Elder Holland. My trainer gave me a copy of it on my mission, and I read it often. Enjoy.

Identity crisis

Recently, I've come to a stark and disturbing realization about myself.

It's rather surreal when you discover that the person you thought you've always been is not actually the person who you are, and that the person who you actually are is a person you don't really like and might even disdain and definitely wouldn't room with if given the option.

If that was a little foggy for you, perhaps this highly legitimate psychological diagram will help:

You see, I've always identified myself as someone who squeezes from the bottom of the toothpaste tube. I've held this delusion about myself to the point that I've often become irritated with siblings/roommates whom I assumed were squeezing my toothpaste from the top and thus indirectly ruining my life--or, at the very least, my morning routine.

Squeezing from the top is illogical and annoying (hence it's an indication of a stubborn, slow-witted personality). There's no way around this fact, even though there are hoards of people on Facebook trying to convince themselves otherwise.

Imagine my horror, then, when I noticed one morning that my toothpaste tube (which I don't currently share with anyone) was squeezed real tight right around the neck. At first, I refused to believe the evidence, but the next morning, when I caught myself actually squeezing the toothpaste from the top, I had to accept the truth.

I belong in that odd Facebook group full of people in denial. I am part of that stubborn, slow-witted demographic. I am not thrifty or logical as I so long believed. And the fact that I'm 25 and only just discovering this simply serves to confirm the sad truth about my dim wits.

Yes, I squeeze my toothpaste from the top. The only time I squeeze from the bottom is when I have to because weeks of squeezing from the top have trapped all the toothpaste at the bottom. Once I let the toothpaste escape from where I've consigned it to, I start squeezing from the top all over again.

I don't even know who I am anymore.

Hannah . . . and waiting

Do you remember that really awkward EFY song from a few years ago (2007, I think)? The one called "And Waiting"? The one containing the tragic story of a fifteen-year-old girl who actually has to turn down a date to the senior prom because she's waiting till she turns sixteen to date like all good Mormon girls should? And the one with the story about the missionary waiting for his call? And how the girl and the missionary eventually get married and are so happy for "staying clean and waiting"?

(Disclaimer: My excuse for knowing about this song is that I was a missionary when it came out and the bishop's son went to EFY and gave us his CD. And when you're a missionary, you listen to EFY. The end.)

Well, this post isn't about that song. But it is about waiting. And it's kind of a serious post, so it seemed appropriate to start out with something that takes itself seriously--like a really cheesy EFY song.

Although some people have yet to realize this, there are actually more painful tests of faith than waiting for a mission call or a date. One such test, I think, is the wait to have a child--the trial of Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth in the Bible.

Yesterday in Sunday School, we read the story of Hannah almost in its entirety aloud together. It hit me in a way it never has before. I grew up on the story (my brother is named Samuel after Hannah's son, after all), but somehow, until yesterday, the details of Hannah's pain had escaped me.

First off, she is barren and is one of two plural wives in a culture where a woman's greatest contribution was the ability to bear children. The other wife, Peninnah, has many children and she mocks Hannah's barrenness "year by year" (1 Sam. 1:7)--to the point that Hannah weeps, doesn't eat, and is essentially inconsolable. When her husband asks, "Am I not better to thee than ten sons?" (verse 8), Hannah's unspoken answer is simply no. I'm sure she appreciated the blessing of a good husband, but even that blessing didn't make up for lacking what she wanted so intensely. Verse 9 reads: "And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore."

This isn't the kind of spiritual desperation we typically talk about in Sunday School--which is unfortunate, in my opinion. Mostly, we focus on counting our blessings and being positive and covering up uncertainties. Some of these things are important, of course, but I believe it's also important to understand what to do in those times when we, like Hannah, feel inconsolable, despite our many blessings.

At times, I think each of us feels like Hannah--wondering if the Lord has forgotten us. On the surface, these type of feelings seem like doubts and some would say greater faith is the answer. In reality, I think these deep spiritual questions are the real tests that every person of faith will face at some point. If we never have a reason to question our faith in God, what good would it be to us? Hannah feels abandoned and that her prayers are unheard, and yet . . . she keeps praying. She hangs in there. She passes her test. The real test of faith comes when after years of righteous living and praying, we are often expected to continue to "hang in there" for a time without the reassurances and answers and blessings we feel we need.

A theme I'm fascinated with lately in gospel study is the concept of unanswered prayers. Why is it that God doesn't always grant good, even holy desires to His children?

I can't say that I have answers to this question, but Hannah's story certainly gives me insight into it. I was recently reading a great devotional talk about how the things in life that we think are taking us off course are actually the things leading us towards God's purpose for us in our lives (e.g. Joseph's time in Egypt and prison was less than fun until he realized that it led him to saving everyone else, including his own family, from starvation).

Hannah's long wait for a son led her finally to vow to give her son (if she had one) to God. Ironically, in order to have the blessing she wanted, she had to be immediately willing to give it up--to not have it. And her desperation and pain led her to that willingness and submission. As an adult, the prophet Samuel played a key role in Israelite history. If Hannah had been blessed with children as soon as she wanted them, would she have been willing to give up this son who needed to be given up in order to fulfill his mission?

My guess? Probably not. Peninnah had plenty of children, but (from all appearances) she showed no interest in serving God.

So, ultimately, all this waiting is not just waiting. It's the pathway to becoming who we want to be and, more importantly, who the Lord intends for us to be.

As President Uchtdorf said,

"There is an important concept here: patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can—working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!"

Skyping as a tool for parenting

Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet enables intimacy | Video on TED.com

Watch the video.

So, obviously (as you can tell from this and the last post), I just started exploring TED.com this evening. It is a website that collects talks and speeches from interesting thinkers all over the world. The topics are widely varied. This woman, Stefana Broadbent, explores how the Internet and texting/cell phones are merging the public sphere and private sphere. In the past, when you went to work, you had little to no contact with family and friends during the time you were at work. Now, you can be in constant contact with others through instant messaging, texting, skyping, etc. Our generation is always connected.

On the one hand, this could lead to closer relationships because we are in better contact with people more often (even people who live far away). On the other hand, this could lead to several problems. Aside from the question of decreased productivity at work, one wonders if we are becoming too connected.

After watching this video, I wonder: what does this connectivity do to individuals and our ability to be alone with ourselves?

But now it's too late for me to know what I'm trying to say. So I'll leave that question hanging for someone else to answer.

Why you should be an idealist

Viktor Frankl: Why to believe in others | Video on TED.com

Believing in others more than they deserve makes them better than they are.

Good talk

"Remember Lot's Wife" by Elder Holland re-aired today on Channel 11. You can read, watch, or listen here.

Fairy tales

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf gave a really great talk in the Young Women's session of General Conference about once-upon-a-times and happily-ever-afters. I recommend watching it.

A particularly good insight from President Uchtdorf (or, as my niece would say, Presnent Uchdort)--

"It is your reaction to adversity, not the adversity itself, that determines how your life story will develop."

Parking woes

I have had some difficult and trying experiences with BYU parking the past two days. But rather than complain about them, I am going to follow the advice given to Thumper, the bunny: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.