. . . only a breath away

Mostly things are still pretty miserable with us financially right now. Yes, things could always be much much worse, and we're trying to be grateful that they aren't. However, this has been going on so long and everything still feels so hopeless that we're having to work really hard to choose faith right now.

Shortly after Rob was laid off, my dear friend Keelee sent me this quote:
"...I had lived long enough to know that nothing lasts forever, and men torture themselves who believe that it will. The only thing that does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring." Louis L'Amour Galloway

Thanks, Susan B, for giving me a chance to review it. :] I feel better already.

Truth, Justice, AND Mercy: The Taming of the Shrew

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: Proverbs 3:3

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. Revelations 3:20

If I could be any fictional heroine, I would be Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. She has the best lines for every situation from proposals to prideful elders, and, of course, she marries the richest most successful man in the book. Spending more time with Shylock of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, however, I began to see a bit more of myself than I was happy with.

I’m pretty passionate about truth. I love finding new truth and new freedom. But reading The Merchant of Venice taught me where truth can lead if it isn’t bound together in the heart along with mercy. Both Elizabeth and Shylock revel in unjust thoughts at times.

Not a day went by without a solitary walk in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.182

If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.A3 S1

However, while Elizabeth’s heart also loves mercy, Shylock’s heart is fixed solely on justice.

But the misfortune of speaking with bitterness is a most natural consequence of the prejudices I had been encouraging.193

Ill not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool, To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield To Christian intercessors.A3 S3

But does my heart love mercy? Do I really wish to end a “quarrel about the past” and then to “be always of one mind?” as Elizabeth did with Wickham?281 Undoubtedly, I feel a strong inclination to say with Shylock, “I crave the law.”A4 S1 Furthermore, it seems at times an impossible thing to respond as Antonio did, “I do oppose My patience to his fury; and am arm’d To suffer, with a quietness of spirit, The very tyranny and rage of his.”A4 S1 Surely, though, “In the course of justice, none of us should see salvation: we do pray for mercy.”A4 S1 And it has been granted.

“TO every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:” Ecclesiastes 3:1 My blind fury and frustration can give way to peace and wisdom. The shrew can be tamed. I must simply open the door and let Him in.

More Quotes:

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”A4 S1

“Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven.” D&C 121:45

“Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face.” Psalm 89:14

All Pride and Prejudice references are from the Bantam Classic March 2003 edition.

Mormons at our Giveaway

Great Giveaway
Six months ago my husband was laid off from his job. New work has not come easily and our financial situation has remained very tough. During this time we have learned new lessons about receiving help from others. For the most part, this help has come from close friends, family, and systems set up within the LDS church for families in need. At the invitation of our dear friends, however, last Saturday my family drove to the parking lot of the First Assembly of God in Mesa just a few miles from our home for their “Great Giveaway”, a “totally free event for those in need in our community.” Receiving such help is never easy, but we were undoubtedly outside of our comfort zone in accepting help from a neighboring Christian faith.

Baptists at our Barbecue
One of our favorite movies is Baptists at our Barbecue. While depicting the comical side of LDS culture, the focus of this story is the struggle of a community to heal itself from a serious religious division between the Baptists and the Mormons living in the small rural town of Longfellow (or Longwinded, to its residents). In an attempt to heal the community two new members of the Mormon church’s leadership and newcomers to the town suggest that the Mormon branch host a community barbeque. The response? “But none of the Baptists are actually going to show, right?” asks one concerned Mormon. The community of Longwinded does come together, enjoying food, sports and a talent show, and they begin to heal. When Mormon member Sister Wingate hears the mountains humming to her, Baptists and Mormons alike go together to the mountains to hear. Another newcomer to the town incredulously asks, Tartan, one of the new Mormon leaders, “You actually think it’s from heaven?” To which Tartan responds, “Who cares? Look at everyone!” He is watching a miracle taking place. Personal religious conflict melts into hugs and forgiveness. The community, though still separate in their faiths, now comes together to serve each other. Tartan reflects, “It was as if everyone had just been waiting for a sign from God to finally get along.”

Christian Courage
Comedy can be a powerful tool to help us understand problems in our society. The chasms of difference between Mormons and neighboring Christian faiths are very real and have a long history. LDS claims to the very title of a Christian Church causes much of the contention because of fundamental doctrinal differences. Do we diminish our goal of standing for truth and righteousness by finding peace in ourselves with what we claim as another’s erroneous religious
understandings in the name of bridging the chasm between us? I proclaim that the answer is no. The key is not to perceive misunderstandings or doctrinal differences as a challenge to our faith. Rather, as Elder Robert D. Hales explains, “True disciples of Christ see opportunity in the midst of opposition,”* an opportunity to answer with boldness, concern, and love, not with overbearance, for personal vindication or in judgment. And “sometimes true disciples must show Christian courage by saying nothing at all” because I believe that only then can bridge building be the focus. President Henry B Eyring claimed that, “God will help us see a difference in someone else not as a source of irritation but as a contribution. The Lord can help you see and value what another person brings which you lack. More than once the Lord has helped me see His kindness in giving me association with someone whose difference from me was just the help I needed. That has been the Lord’s way of adding something I lacked to serve Him better.”†

Unity
During these days of trial and struggle we are being “prepared as a people for our glorious destiny”‡ as servants of a king. Part of that preparation requires unity. “The miracle of unity is being granted to us as we pray and work for it in the Lord’s way.”§ When our family chose to attend the Great Giveaway, we did so in the spirit of reaching that goal. We needed help. They offered it. We accepted. We went and found a few items to help us out, and we stayed to enjoy some of their youth worship. Along the way we connected with our friends and others of this neighboring faith. We saw lots of differences in our religions, but we also saw lots of similarities. And we saw Goodness, and we were blessed. Sister Wingate is right when she said, after the healing had taken place, “We are all eternally bound together.” When we reach out to participate in service with others in our community we follow the 13th Article of the Mormon Faith where it says, “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” Furthermore, as Tartan promises in the movie, “If we do this, our burdens will be made light. I promise.”

Thank you, Mesa First. Thank you for lightening some of our burdens. We hope yours have been lightened too as a result of your service.

Love,
The Rob & Verena Beckstrand Family

* October 2008 LDS General Conference
† IBID
‡ Pres. Henry Be Eyring October 2008 LDS General Conference
§ Pres. Henry Be Eyring October 2008 LDS General Conference

Effective and Efficient, Cute and Inspirational

My friend Keelee is always reminding me that Steven Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People tells us to be EFFECTIVE with people and EFFICIENT with tasks.

This is me being effective with Merisa on a Saturday morning.

She's coloring with pens from my studying pencil holder. I'm not being very efficient at getting my journal writing done. She is cute, though, isn't she?

I did eventually efficiently finish my journal writing at the dining room table, in between times of being effective with Merisa, who also liked spending time with me at the dining room table.

Still cute, hunh?

While I write in my journal usually just once a week, this effective/efficient process is repeated many times during the week as I pursue my studies as assigned by my mentor and as the director of a Statesmanship Mentor Circle. Here's my thoughts on how my children fit into those studies:

Never settle for less than a classic. The world starves for classics. Only man’s greatest creations will fill the world’s hunger. It hungers for news of God’s impressions and man’s reasoning thereon. Man starves himself who ignores the past and the future. The future holds the seeds of tomorrow’s classics. Conversations with ‘hat’ and ‘cat’ and ‘mat’ are complex theorems. Buildings of block and brick and stick are rocket science. Eight plus seven is the solution to societal ills. Play ground feats will bring peace to nations. Watch and learn.

[My own meditation after reading those of Marcus Aurelius.]

Must Be an Age Thing . . .

I don't know what it is about age, but the struggle to repent when we find ourselves on the wrong path or simply facing a new path that we don't know how to navigate very well is only getting harder. This has been a tough week for me. I'm feeling the stress of lots of new changes in my life. I haven't handled them very well sometimes, and I found myself pleading often for God's love to enter my heart.

This morning before church wasn't much better than the rest of the week. If I didn't have a testimony that Church is for the sinner not the saint, I would have stayed home. That testimony is only stronger now. Since I print the Sacrament bulletin, I knew what the Sacrament hymn was. A very familiar hymn to many members, I wasn't prepared for the love that would fill my heart to overflowing as we sang this before partaking of the Sacrament today.

193 I Stand All Amazed (click on the link to hear it now)
1. I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me,
Confused at the grace that so fully he proffers me.
I tremble to know that for me he was crucified,
That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died.

[Chorus] Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me
Enough to die for me! Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!

2. I marvel that he would descend from his throne divine
To rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine,
That he should extend his great love unto such as I,
Sufficient to own, to redeem, and to justify.

[Chorus] Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me
Enough to die for me! Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!

3. I think of his hands pierced and bleeding to pay the debt!
Such mercy, such love and devotion can I forget?
No, no, I will praise and adore at the mercy seat,
Until at the glorified throne I kneel at his feet.

[Chorus] Oh, it is wonderful that he should care for me
Enough to die for me! Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful to me!

Text and music: Charles H. Gabriel, 1856-1932

Sometimes God allows us to struggle alone for a while, but His love and His grace are nevertheless real. I'm so grateful I hung in there this week and continued knocking until He answered. He continues answering my prayers and giving a rebellious soul His wonderful peace.

Sweet Clara Schumann

Since I have begun blogging, I had to check this book out again about Clara Schumann. Susanna Reich tells a beautiful story of Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso that I couldn't miss posting something about her in my blog. Her story really touched me and left me feeling drawn to her somehow.

I first learned of Clara from the library's copy of Beethoven's Wig, a wonderful compilation with amusing lyrics for classical music. My favorite song on the first CD is "Harmony".

Sweet Clara Schumann played the piano well
And when she played her music cast a magic spell
Her husband Robert wrote the melody
The Schumanns were a family joined in harmony
They'd sing and play
Together every day
Together they made music merrily
The Schumanns were a family joined in harmony


They had some children in their happy home
So they would never ever have to play alone
When mom and daddy played their happy song
The children tapped their tippy toes and sang along
They played their song
The kids all sang along
Together they made music merrily
The Schumanns were a family joined in harmony

OK so Clara was a concert pianist and composer and Robert a composer (in case anyone didn't know). Clara performed in her first concerts in the spring of 1830 (March 6-April 7, according to the book). She continues performing until 1891, 4 years before her death. Based on my admiration for her, I like to think that she was Heavenly Father's herald for the Restoration of His church again on the earth.Some favorite quotes from the book:
"Work is always the best diversion from pain." Clara

Reich tells us that Clara "immersed herself in her work and found in music the comfort she needed."

New Music Journal from 1865:
"There are many virtuosos who are not inferior to her in technique or general interpretation, but she distinguishes herself from all the rest through her high level of musicality, which gives her performances the stamp of a divine summons."

Yes, sweet Clara Schumann must have been

divine.

“INVITATION TO THE PAIN OF LEARNING”: my thoughts

at the brink
Just over two years after stepping up my education with HAPE Group and 7 years after finally learning was education was really all about in Oliver DeMille’s A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century, I stand at the brink of my mentored education.

Advanced friendship had pulled me through wonderful classics in HAPE Group, but in August of 2008 we found it time to part ways, each to their own avenue of getting the education they needed. It took me four more months to prepare for and then really find my own new path.

By being mentored in my education I hope to: maximize my study time and feel confident that I'm getting the best education possible, more effectively meet my need to learn, fill in the gaps of my education, apply and realign my existing knowledge with correct/higher educational principles, experience a new level of educational training (a mentor), improve my writing along with all of these goals, gain a better sense of my mission and guidance in building my second tower.

With the education gained via the mentoring experience, I hope to: more fully experience Leadership Education so that I can lead others along that path, better understand educational theories so I can lead others to true educational principles, increase my impact on the world, help anyone in any educational situation to be inspired and do the hard work necessary to get a great education, understand the mentor process so that I can help others mentor, spread the impact of the 5 environments of learning, improve my ability to help my children.

now
The process begins with reading and responding to Mortimer Adler’s 1941 article, “Invitation to the Pain of Learning”. While I have continued my studies during the last few months since HAPE Group ended, my first response was complete joy. To follow the analogy of the teacher who told his student to come to him when he wanted knowledge as much as he wanted air, I was finally breathing again. At least a little.

I know I'm ready to be mentored. I just do. The past four months have proved it to me. I'm so relieved and excited and ready to use some mental muscles that I haven't been able to use for a while and in a new and more intense fashion than before.

Adler, et al
As I read Adler’s essay I love it, and I'm also thinking of everything else I've learned about education and trying to see how it all fits together.

When I think of the pain of learning, I also think of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Finding Flow. Pain, but pain with a purpose. Pain that is just the right amount and permeated by meaning.

When I think of pain in education, I also think of my neighbor who must spend several hours each afternoon helping her children with their home work of gaining information. Then I think of How Schools Work: A Sociological Analysis of Education by K B DeMarrais (???) and the rite of passage. Certainly school isn’t always easy. In our society it has become a difficult thing that everyone just does. Whether or not it has meaning or merit beyond that, is certainly debatable. The difference I see is the goal; gain sterile, useless information? Or gain knowledge and wisdom in order to be transformed? Both have their prices in our society, both in the lack and the gain.

Recently, when I think of getting education at almost no expense or by “capillary attraction”, I think of John Holt’s How Children Learn. I don’t need fancy curriculum because my children already know how to learn. They just need a few simple tools and some inspiration. The kind of expenses required for Scholar Phase, however, is less known to me in many ways. Regularly and continually working over my head is still strange to me.

right now
After the joy of returning to scholarly studies, my review of Adler’s article while writing this short essay has humbled me some. I have tasted the discipline of Scholar Phase, but I have not yet feasted.