Meditation

I have a morning routine that I like to stick to.  The early morning hours are a time when my mind is clear and I often do my best thinking.  I like to head to my favorite chair and grab my scriptures and my journal and have time for self-reflection.  I like to read a bit and then journal what it means to me. 

 And then when my reading and writing are done, I meditate.  I have a mind that never stops.  I liken it at times to a hamster running on a wheel.  I think sometimes it has a life of its own.  I am reading scriptures for example and find my mind off in another space thinking about some other topic altogether.  And so I spend time trying to empty it of all thoughts, trying to prove to myself that I actually do have some control.  

I believe that when our minds are so full of ourselves, there is no room for God.  So if I can empty my mind, He can come and be with me and speak to me.  I don't know that I have had an remarkable experiences or revelations that changed my life.  But when I get to that "empty space", there is a peace that is so remarkable that I have to say to myself, "It's time to go back to real life now."  And I come back renewed.  I call it my time with the Lord.  And if I can start each day with Him, what else would I need?

Turning to God

There is a universal longing for God.  It reaches across all nations, all peoples.  I have always admired all people of faith.  I wonder if it is universal also that in times of plenty we get pretty self-sure but when times are hard we reach for the Lord.  I am trying to overcome that tendency as by learning to be more grateful and to acknowledge that all I have is a gift from God.  He and I have much to talk about as we try to decide how use my time, my energy and His resources.  Actually even my time and my energy are gifts from Him.  So much to be thankful for.  So many reasons to rejoice daily.

Homesick

There is a longing within me that is universally known among people everywhere and addressed by all religions.  I call it homesickness.  We miss home - our heavenly home from which we came.  We miss our heavenly parents and the love we knew with them.  At times during my life that longing has been acute and always pushes me to want to have divine communion with God.  I have learned that such communion is readily available.  God does hear and answer our prayers.  He lets us know in very real ways that He is there and that He loves us.  Isn’t that amazing!  God knows me and loves me.  God is my loving Heavenly Father.  I am a daughter of a Heavenly Father who loves me and I love Him.  These truths have become the essence of who I am and how I live my life.  I am very grateful to have found them.

There is another aspect to homesickness.  Home was wonderful and beautiful.  We lived with God the Almighty in a place where goodness abounded.  That reality is etched in our memory.  I try to recreate it in the little world I have here on earth.  Most of us do.  Just look at how women around the world work so hard to make their homes a place of beauty.  

But the world we live in is also filled with so much that is bad.  War, famine, terrorism, random evil fill our daily news stories.  And in response, you find so many good people who are doing everything they can to help those in need.  That vision of the way things ought to be is very real in our minds.  We seem to instinctively know that life is supposed to be good and we work very hard to make it so.  Some call this the universal consciousness.  I believe along with Latter-days everywhere that it is just our deepest memory, reminding us of that place where we used to be and for which we will always strive.

Daily Prayer

 

My whole life I have been trying to understand prayer.  As a child I was taught rote prayers.  They were meaningful yet limiting but I was never taught that you would just "talk" to the Lord.  In my mind He was like the Wizard of Oz - so magnificent that you could not address Him like you would a human being.  And so I developed my own litany as I prayed each night.  I prayed the Lord's Prayer, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, and then added the 23rd Psalm, the Beatitudes, and other scriptures I had memorized.  I just wanted to make my communication with deity meaningful.  Then one night when I was teen I knelt and talked to the Lord.  I began by apologizing for talking to Him so casually "but I just need to talk to you." is what I said.  And so I began praying in my own way. 

Over the years I have tried to make this time mean something - this time of talking to Father.  But it was not until I reached a crisis in life that I really prayed.  I don't expect that I am that different from most people.  On a good day my prayers are different that on a bad day.  I am still working at making my prayers better.  I know that I cannot rush my time with the Lord.  And so now I try to think of prayer as the time I get to visit with Him - to actually be with Him.  And I spend a lot more time just listening.  I am just grateful that He always has time for me. 

I Learned to Pray

As a young girl I was taught to recite memorized prayers.  There were dinner prayers such as "God is great, God is good.  Now we thank Him for this food. Amen".  At night I knew "Now I lay me down to sleep. . ."  And of course, I knew the Lord's Prayer.  But there came a time when I wanted more.  I would kneel down at night and recite the prayers I knew and then kept adding more and more because I was just not satisfied.  I would memorize scriptures such as the 23rd Psalm and the Beautitudes and recite them.

Finally one night I just got frustrated and then brave and said something like this "I am so sorry, Father, but I just need to talk to you.  I hope you won't be mad at me."  and then I prayed.

It was shortly afterwards that I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The missionaries taught me the proper way to pray.  I was grateful to know at last that I could speak to my Father in Heaven.

Over the years my prayers followed the pattern I was taught.  I addressed the Father, expressed gratitude always before asking for anything, and ended in Jesus' name.  I was content.

But then sorrow came into my life - a long period of difficulty and self-doubt.  During all of this I never concerned myself with form.  I needed the Lord's help desperately to help me find the way back to happiness.  I cried.  I pleaded.  I expressed anger and fears and doubts.  Those prayers were very real and I learned during that time that He listens and loves us.  The form really didn't matter.  My heart mattered and it was reaching out to the one who knew it best.

In memory of that time I wrote "I Learned to Pray".

Self Honesty

As we grow older we want there to be integrity in our lives.  We all make mistakes along the way and wish we could go back and relive certain places.  But we can't and even if we could go back we would still be that same person we were then.  I fear we'd still make the same mistakes.  What we really wish is that the person we are today could go back and relive our life.  But that person is the accumulation of  the experiences we had along the way and yes, of the mistakes we made and learned from.

But if we have faith in Heavenly Father's plan for us and truly believe that our life on earth was to be instructional for our good, then we must accept that the mistakes were to be teaching moments.  They were meant to help us in our progression.  And God is cheering us on.  He does not condemn.  He only wants us to learn and to keep moving forward.

We hear this scripture often; "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."  We don't often go to the next verse though and that verse is important.  "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."

He loves us and sent His Son Jesus Christ so that our sins and errors would not condemn us.  When we repent those experiences become the lessons that change our character and help us ultimately become more like Him.

I personally believe it is good every once in a while to really examine our lives and make sure we are not hiding pieces that we given to us to instruct us.  Hidden places of shame and guilt can cloud our inner being. I was guided into such an examination of my inner life by the book He Did Deliver Me from Bondage.  It was a beautiful experience of communing with God as I looked at my life and talked to Him about the mistakes I had made along the way and the grudges I held and the anger over times I could not reconcile.  Heavenly Father is so loving.  He always welcomes us when we come to Him.  I have felt His love in very real ways as I have opened my heart to Him.

It is a wonderful feeling to know there are no secrets between Him and me.  But it is just as important to have no secrets from yourself.  I wrote this poem one day after such a prayer session when I felt my heart had been completely open.

My Redeemer

I wonder if most women resonate with the story of the Savior and the woman at the well.  I do.  It was such a personal encounter and reflected so many truths about Him.  He cared for this woman even though she was a Samaritan and looked down upon by the Jews of the time.  He knew her life and the things she had done yet He took time to visit with her and to counsel her.  He invited her into His fold as He offered her the living water.  She accepted Him as the Christ. 

It is in these very personal encounters that I have also discovered the Savior.  Before that I used to think of Him as THE Redeemer.  But having experienced His love and help in my own life, I now know that He is indeed MY Redeemer.

From John Chapter 4:

Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.  Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.

(For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? 

Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never ^athirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

My Testimony

 

I must admit that I always wondered at those whose testimonies of the Gospel were so sure that they never had any questions.  I wondered how they could be so sure when I had so many questions, so many doubts.  I have learned a lot about myself over the years.  My head and my heart have been dueling for too long a time.  I now have the courage to follow my heart.  My questions are all in a box waiting until I can ask the Master.  Maybe by then they won't seem so important.

In the meantime, I do know what things strengthen me.  Those are all in this poem.  I try to live by them everyday.  I testify that they do make a difference in our lives if we do them for the right reasons.  When I read and study and pray and serve with the intent to grow closer to the Lord, I find myself feeling his presence in my life.  When I live the Gospel as best as I can, I feel His love.  When I stop trying to tell Him how things should be and instead listen to His guidance, my life goes better.  

Not everyone struggles as I have.  But I want any who do to know, that I no longer struggle.  I am humble enough now to just follow the Savior.  And He has let me know in very real ways that He loves me.

Remember Who You Are

William Wordsworth wrote:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come -
From God, who is our home.

As members of the LDS church, we know that our life began long before the earth was even created.  We are begotten sons and daughters of God and we lived with Him in the eternities before we came to earth.  He is our beginning and our end.  Our fondest desire is to return to Him with all of those we love.  

But sometimes we forget who we are.  In the very deepest part of our being we struggle to believe in ourselves, to know our own infinite worth and divine nature.  Life has a way of doing that to us.  I am always saying that one of the most important things we have to do while we are here is to rediscover who we are. Sometimes in order to do that we just need to let go of everything we think we know and let our spiritual self take the lead.  In our heart of hearts we know.  We just need to remember.

The Scriptures

For many, many years I have read the scriptures daily.  I love the stories of Jesus the most but within all of the books of the Bible and the Book of Mormon are certain passages that are special to me.  We all have our favorites.  I am partial to the 23rd Psalm, the Sermon on the Mount, Paul's discourse on charity, Alma's words at the waters of Mormon (and about a hundred others).  However, at a time in my life when I was really searching for some answers, I discovered something.  As I really searched the scriptures and when my heart was open to learn, I began to find my answers right there in those books I had read so many times before.  It was like words just jumped off the page as I read.  Often I had never remembered reading them before.  It was an amazing discovery.   It is one of the nicest gifts the Lord has given to me - to us.  To all of us.  He speaks to us through the words of scripture written long ago and preserved so that we might be so touched.

Home

We seem to have a memory of our pre-mortal life.  It is not a clear vision as when we remember our childhood home or a vacation we took.  It is more ethereal, something that seems just out of reach but you know it is there.  There is a deep knowing that there is a bit of divine in each of us that came here with us when we were born.  Somehow we are tied to God and He to us.  For me it is just strong enough that it constantly reminds me that I am more than what I seem to be and that what I do with my life really matters.  

The Clouds Parted

I love looking up at the skies.  I envy the birds that fly up among the clouds.  I imagine that I could join them and move among those beautiful scenes.  Perhaps it is because the sky is ever changing.  Perhaps it is because it reminds me of heaven. . .

The Journey to Perfection

If there is nothing else we learn in life it is probably just how imperfect we are.  And yet in the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior said "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."  I have come to understand that scripture through the words of Brad Wilcox who made a statement to the effect that we should not just be asking ourselves, "Have I been saved by grace?" but also, "Have I been changed by grace?"

That change comes as we turn to the Savior in all things.  When He is utmost in our hearts, that wonderful "mighty change of heart" which is so well illustrated in the Book of Mormon comes to us personally.  Our time spent in the scriptures and in prayer and in service to others slowly transforms us.  And when we come up against a brick wall of our own weakness we find the Savior all too willing to help us.  Our response of love and gratitude to Him again causes us to change.  And so, knowing all of this, I dare say that I have begun the"Journey to Perfection".

The Perfect Love of Father

In our pre-mortal life we were surrounded by, filled with, and gloried in the perfect love of the Almighty God who is our Heavenly Father.  We know deep in our hearts and souls what that love is.  I see our earthly journey as the search to regain that love.  We try to recreate it in our homes and relationships.  There are so many who try to create it in the societies around us whether in utopian societies or in the beautiful service organizations that fill the globe.  I often have moments of such longing for that perfect love we once knew intimately.

Heavenly Music

I absolutely love music!  There are no ifs, ands, and buts.  It was a great blessing in my life to be able to teach elementary music and have my days filled with this wonderful gift from God.  But even though I have had so much fun with a variety of musical adventures, there is one music that has always stirred my heart and that is sacred music.

As far back as I can remember I have loved church music.  Sacred music invites the Spirit into my life like nothing else does.  It's strains reach deep inside me and fill my own spiritual well. It draws me close to God. I feel so close to Him when  I sit at the piano and play my very favorite sacred pieces.  It is my offering of love to Him and He responds by sharing His love with me.

The Redwoods

When I was in the fifth grade, our music teacher taught us a song named "I know a Green Cathedral".  We memorized it and sang it in a program for our parents.  I have always loved that song.  But as happens with so many songs, it got lost in the recesses of my memory for a  very long time.  Then in 2006, my husband and I were called to the California Santa Rosa Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  We drove all the way to California not knowing what was in store for us.  Soon after arriving the locals began telling us of things we must see and do while we were there.  Seeing the redwoods was on the top of that list.  And so we found ourselves one day at the Muir Redwoods National Monument just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. After a short walk, we found ourselves in the midst of these giants and all at once I knew what that song from so long ago meant.  Here I felt what the composer had been saying as the words and the melody came back to my mind.

I know a green cathedral,
a hallowed forest shrine.  

Where trees in love join hands above
to arch your prayer and mine.

Within its cool depths sacred, 

the priestly cedar sighs.
And the fir and pine lift arms divine
unto the clear blue skies.

 

In my dear green cathedral
there is a quiet seat.
And choir loft in branched croft  

where songs of birds hymn sweet.

And I like to think at evening
when the stars its arches light. 

That my Lord and God 

treads its hallowed sod 

in the cool, calm peace of night.