practice yielding

From my good friend and taekwondo master:  
Justin Zeleski

5 hours ago · 

• today in Sunday school we were studying the subject of trials. (see D&C 121 and 122) I shared this thought and then and thought I'd do so here too.
  
  The best fighters don't jump away from a blow, they know how to deflect it with as little resistance and pain as possible and then react in such a way as to turn a blow into an advantage. My friend Raymond Brown showed me how in Tai Chi by giving into a attack and yielding to it (not resisting) you can minimize the pain involved.
  
  When facing a trial we can apply these same lessons. We must resist the urge to jump away or fight back. We must learn to yield and flow with the attack so that we can position ourselves in a place where we can create an opportunity and overcome them. God gives us so many trials so that we can practice turning our will to Him (practicing yielding) so that when the big blows come, we will not be harmed but will react in the way he, the Master, would. In this way, each trial is a lesson to learn and apply the skills we're working on. Just as there is only one way to learn to block a punch (actually block a punch) there is only one way to really learn how to block a trial...we must face them.
  
  I share this in the name of Jesus Christ...Amen.

  Doctrine and Covenants 121

  www.lds.org

  Prayer and prophecies written by Joseph Smith the Prophet in an epistle to the Church while he was a prisoner in the jail at Liberty, Missouri, dated March 20, 1839. The Prophet and several companions

  had been months in prison. Their petitions and appeals directed to the executive officers and the j...

  
  

  
  

  (Doctrine and Covenants 121 is truly one of if not the most favoriate piece of Scripture.)

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Untested Friendships are Acquaintances

Untested Friendships are Acquaintances

Thank you June Tomkin.  As a missionary in a new area, I made a rash commitment to be at your apartment   I took the first (and incorrect) bus, found out I was only off by a block and (such luck!) it was a big park!  Well...the map said a park. It was actually a jungle/swamp that I doggedly pushed us though (sorry elder holst).  We arrived a muddy wet mess and over two hours late.

And June laughed, feed us, and made it a moment link us together.  I learned to accept help and to use it to make friends.

Don't get embarrassed; get friends.  The best ones will shine in the wet, muddy times.

Patterns

In facts, the Traps we get into are re-enactments of patterns from our childhoods.  This means that as we were growing up in  our families, each of us was exposed to certain rules about living, getting our needs met and interacting with each other.  We learned about men from the men in our families. We learned about women from the women in out families. And we learned about ourselves from the way we were treated in our families.

If we were ignored, we will grow up to ignore ourselves and our needs as adults.  If we were hurt, we will hurt ourselves as adults.  If we were physically or emotionally seduced as children, we will grow up and become wither seducers or victims or both.

We re-enact and repeat the patterns of loving that were formed for us when we were children.  We emphasize patterns here because this is the biggest Trap of all for so many of us.   I look at the specific details  of my adult life and say to myself, "My life is much healthier that Dad's.  Dad was an alcoholic, but I don't drink at all!"

But often the pattern is the same.  While I may not drink at all, I may work compulsively  exercise compulsively or avoid intimacy by watching too much television.  I may be critical, perfectionistic and terrified of having my feelings, just like Dad was.  But because I don't drink at all, I believe that my life is very different from Dad's even though I have re-enacted my family of origin right down to the last detail except the drinking.  Keep this principle in mind as you read this book.

----An Adult Child's Cuide to What's "Normal" by Friel and Friel, p. 12

Martin Luther and Music

"Next to theology, I give a place to music: for thereby all anger is forgotten, the devil is driven away, and melancholy, and many tribulations, and evil thoughts are expelled.  It is the best solace for a desponding mind."

Martin Luther as quoted on December 21, 1824 Wayne Sentinel in Palmyra, New York.

The meaning of life from the Fairy Queen

I am reluctant to destroy this shrine...Sometimes we do what we must.

Live a fruitful life.  Resist evil. Give more than you take.  Help others do likewise.  The rest will take care of itself.  Step away from the Shrine.

----Fablehaven, book 3 page 412

Joy of a Bird

Joy of a  Bird

"To be a bird is to be alive more intensely than any other living creature, man included...they live in a world that is always the present, mostly full of joys."

The God who Weeps

I'm amazed at how pondering the tao still widens my view.

"If vulnerability and pain are the price of love, then joy is its reward.  That was the lesson Adam and Eve learn in the Garden, but the principle was rotted in the heavens.  As surely as the dark gives meaning to the dawn, so does pain give meaning to pleasure, and sorrow to joy.    The lesson of Creation is that the world.  It is in separating the light from the darkness, that God's work of the first day is complete...And He pronounces His work complete, only when He separates the man and woman, then draws them back together in a relation ship of mutuality that gives vitality and fruitfulness to what is human.  All that exists in ou r world of meaning must exist in paired opposition.
      In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not separate orchards.   Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other...God's power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.

---The God who Weeps, pg 33-34