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

Wisdom from my Missionary Trainer

Words of wisdom from my greenie (a new mormon missionary) days.
"Commandment #11: Don't be a Prick!"
"The covenants we take in the temple are serious, everything else is a joke."

I also enjoyed Michael Thoming's recent post about war.

I offer my prayers for the security and safe return of all those who serve in our armed forces. These brave men and women deserve our support as they put their lives in jeopardy to satisfy the demands of the warlike people that we have become.

In 1976 Spencer W. Kimball said:
"We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching:

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:44–45.)"

the full text of his remarks can be found here -http://www.lds.org/ensign/1976/06/the-false-gods-we-worship?lang=eng

It is not their wickedness, but their "misery", not the disobedience, but their "suffering," that elicits the God of Heaven's tears.  Not until Gethsemane and Golgotha does the scriptural redord reveal so unflinchingly the costly investment of God's love in His people, the price at which He placed His heart upon them.  There could be nothing in this universe, or in any possible universe, more perfectly good, absolutely beautiful, worthy of adoration, and deserving of emulation, than this God of love and kindness and vulnerability   That is why a gesture of belief in His direction, a decision to acknowledge His virtues as the paramount qualities of a divided universe  is a response to the best in us, the best and noblest of which the human soul is capable.  A God without body or parts is conceivable.  But a God without passions would engender in our hearts neither love nor interest.  In the vision of Enoch, we fine ourselves drawn to a God who prevents all the pai He can, assumes all the suffering He can, and weeps over the misery He can neither prevent nor assume.

---The God who Weeps