One song one poem

Sunrise at Camas Prairie Centennial Park and Red Sky.

 Credit: Charles Knowles License: Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).


It's Spring and with the rebirth of the earth, I find
great peace in this poem and in the song which I have shared at the end of this post.

Camas Lilies
by Lynn Ungar

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the native ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers' hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?

And you—what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down—
papers, plans, appointments, everything—
leaving only a note: "Gone
to the fields to be lovely. Be back
when I'm through blooming."

Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

Here is a link to a beautiful vocal 
rendition of a song called: "Consider The Lilies of the Field" 

One

As of late,  I have been learning and experiencing being alone, being "one" with myself.

It sounds strange, and it is foreign to me that I have this time in my life where I am "just me".

Here are some of the things I have done in my "loneness:

• Walk my neighborhood
• Walk in nature (hiking)
• See a movie (went and saw Son of God)
• Went to a play in SLC called 3
• Went to dinner (several times)
• spent an evening at a political Caucasus
• reading magazines at the library
• weeding the garden

As I get older I'm more and more comfortable being alone.

Here is Barbara Streisand singing a song that has 

always had meaning to me, I do think that People need People.

*Notice that this was on some TV show in 1965, 

she has this huge orchestra playing for her.

In conclusion of one....I like what Clare Daines said;

I have a huge, active imagination, and I think I'm really scared of being alone; because if I'm left to my own devices, I'll just turn into a madwoman.

Using Hands to Create

My blog searching usally gives me insight into the way others live their lives, their creativness in sharing their talents, it helps inspire me.

I applaud those that really give beauty to others and their living environments.

I can across this wonderful video titled:

"RENATE HILLER-"ON HANDWORK"

Trent Gillis Senior Editor for “On Being” wrote this about Renate;

Using our hands grounds us — in work and in relationship. As we create something, hopefully beautiful, with our hands, we are transforming our moral and social senses. We evolve; we change. We notice things that we passed over the day before: the curve in a sidewalk to make way for a tree in the boulevard, the purl of a scarf, the transition of a capital that greets the ceiling. We observe the mundane and see it anew. The process of creating through the hands becomes a spiritual practice.

Ms. Heller strings together so many “threads” that help me think about raising children; about living a fuller, more physically experiential work life (yes, even about writing marginalia in a script rather than using the track changes option in Word); about hearing differently the many stories from folks who write in to the program, especially the passionate accounts of people and their gardens.

There’s something so honest and pure about her thought — that we gain a deeper, more meaningful relationship with our own humanity and our greater world by using our hands.

~~~~ 

If I had children still living at home, I would sit them down 

and have them listen to the message that Renate shares in this video.

It is a message for our time.

Doubt or Faith

Last year and this year I have had to come to terms with some of my

 religious belief, namely how Women in my (Latter-Day Saint, Mormon religion) 

are viewed as equals by the authorities and ecclesiastical  members of

 the church which are, all Men holding the highest

 leadership positions in the Church.

I have always be a questioning person, ie: 

-Why does God allow this (tragedy, senseless thing to happen...)

-When will there be the opportunity to be an equal (among men) in God's world,
in God's church?

-Why do we not talk of a Heavenly Mother and worship her?

Why do just men hold the priesthood? (a power from God to act in his name).

I get that God and Heavenly Mother created us in their image and we do have gender specific traits.

What I don't get is.. why through the generations of time, women have been excluded.

I'm not convinced that our Heavenly parents commanded it to be this way.

As I search for answers and have prayed, I have felt peace with 

some of the answer and non-answers I have felt spiritually. 

If you have read this far in my post, you are probably asking yourself;

 "why is she posting this?"

I am posting this because it's therapeutic for me, it is letting you know

 that I struggle to know the meaning of life and its complexities.

I have felt peace and inner struggle at the same time in my doubting,

 but I would not want to change this, it has opened my eyes

 to many things that have not be right with how I view my religious belief's.

This statement below really made me think about my faith and my doubts

It was a talk given to a BYU forum by Terryl Givens
that gave me hope for my doubt.

We need rethink the relation-ship between doubt and faith.

 In a 2005 BYU Forum ad dress, Terryl Givens defined faith in a radical new way: as a choice, one made when legitimate evidence supports each side of possibility. 

While some people, Givens believes, are simply born with 

faith or a gift for faith, more often faith is an acquired trait. 

And “among those who vigorously pursue the life of the mind in particular, who are

 committed to the scholarly pursuit of knowledge and rational inquiry, faith is as

 often a casualty as it is a product.”1 

In this setting, life becomes, as Givens maintains, 

a test of our own willful decision to choose faith over doubt. 

As Givens continues:

I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief, 

in order to render the choice more truly a choice, and therefore the more deliberate, and

 laden with personal vulnerability and investment. 

The option to believe must appear on one’s personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension.

 One is, it would seem, always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial. 

We are acted upon, in other words, by appeals to our personal 

values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites and our ego.

 What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection 

of who we are and what we love. 

That is why faith, the choice to believe, is in the final analysis an action

 that is positively laden with moral significance.

Is this a part of life to doubt?