Meditating on Hope

On Sunday night, I lit some candles in a darkened room, and made my quiet space for pondering and meditating on hope. As I've mentioned before, I need to find something to focus on if I want to think without distraction...I cannot just "empty my mind." I like to use a candle for this purpose, as looking into a candle flame helps keep me centered and mindful.

As I thought about hope, a phrase came to me repeatedly, the "perfect brightness of hope" mentioned in scripture. I also thought about hope as a virtue, large enough to be worthy of combining with faith and love (or charity as the KJV states). It's something significant. We use the word 'hope' in a flip way so often, and yet the true meaning of hope is anything but flippant.
Hope is the belief, anticipation, or expectation of something...but not just of anything. Hope is the expectation of something good. In other words, I think that hope is inherently positive, and might even be a fair synonym for "optimism." It is the expectation that goodness will come to us, the belief that people are good, the trust that God will fulfill his promises. If faith is the belief in things which are not seen, then I think hope (the next virtue in the sequence) is the expectation of goodness which is not yet realized.

I have always been a fairly optimistic person. It is interesting to consider this trait in light of being not just a happy habit, but an actual virtue.
What do you think about hope?

First Sunday of Advent: HOPE

Mormons don't typically celebrate Advent, but I frankly don't know why. Perhaps it was an effort to set ourselves apart from other churches (since Catholics and many Protestants do observe it). When he came home from his mission in Norway, my husband brought an advent wreath, which is a round candleholder which holds 4 candles. Our family has always lit the advent candles, one on the first sunday, two on the second, and so on until Christmas. (This year, since Christmas falls on a sunday, Advent begins earlier than usual.)

In some traditions, each week is marked with a virtue, most commonly (from what I understand) are faith, hope, love, and peace. This year, I am choosing to observe Advent with my own adaptation of that. Each week I am choosing a virtue (not necessarily the traditional ones), and during that week I will study, ponder, and strive to practice that virtue. Since I am in charge of the children's primary at church here, I am also doing our "sharing time" lesson based on the virtue of the week.

This week, the theme is HOPE.

I showed the primary kids this picture, and we talked about prophets foretelling Christ's coming, and about how believers had to have hope that He would come. We talked about us now having hope for His return.

hope

the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best

a person or thing in which expectations are centered

to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.

to believe, desire, or trust

to feel that something desired may happen

As I said, I'll be putting some study, pondering, meditation, and so forth in this week. Theoretically I will write something about my thoughts in a few days. But for now, I invite you to join me in celebrating Advent.

WIPs and FOs

Yeah, I've written a "discussion post" (3-4 paragraphs, with full citations) and also an "application paper" (3-4 pages, full citations) every week, and this week I'm finishing a 10+ page research paper about Benedict Arnold (and my--referenced and cited--reasons for why he did what he did)...and I have 5 kids under 5 full time. We've also had a couple of rounds of sickies in the last couple of weeks, so I suppose that's why I haven't posted anything HERE in a while!
With all that said, in the last month or two I HAVE gotten some other things done. These things--and the excitement and feeling of fulfillment that comes along with completing a project--have been contributing factors in my decision to put grad school on hold. I want to be present with my kids, I want to make things for them (and for me and for my home). Babysitting is not my favorite passtime and never was, but it pays well and if I don't have assignments to worry about then it's not stressful.
In the meantime, here's what I've made lately (if you have ravelry and like to see details about knitty things, I'm putting those links too)
First, the FOs Finished Objects:

Sweater (vest) for Bear. Rav link. The yellow and red yarn came in a box full of leftovers from a friend, I bought the blue to make enough for a sweater...he picked the style, kept changing his mind (asked for buttons then asked for a zipper just after I'd done the last buttonhole) and so on. I had to entirely invent the thing because I couldn't find a pattern at all. When it came down to it, I was thrilled when he wanted it to be a vest instead of a sweater...I was getting tired of the color. I like smaller projects and/or variegated yarn.

Rav link Bear wanted a hat like Wolf's, one that would keep his face warm when he's on the 4-wheeler with the carpool to school (oh yes that's how things are up here! even at -2 degrees folks). This time he asked for yellow, so I redistributed the remaining yarn from the sweater and turned this out in just a couple of weeks. I love how fast hats go.



I had this idea about making a sort of beret/snood/hairnet thing, (rav link) that I could use to pull my hair back when I didn't feel like doing anything with it, but which could also keep me warm when going out... I'm not sure if this entirely is what I had hoped for it to be, but I think it's pretty regardless. I love the extra room that leaves space to pull it down to my eyebrows and over my ears (it's not as chic looking when I do that, but it is warm). It was a pattern written to be done on a hat loom, and I adapted it for needles, so they featured me on the pattern homepage in ravelry (anyone can see this link). I feel very special now. ☺

Also, on a non-knitting front, I've sewn two new pairs of fleece pants for Bear. The boy grew about 3 inches since spring I think, and all in his legs, his pants were crazy short! I have two more cut out too... (black and green) which I plan to get to hopefully next week before I start focusing on Christmassy things.


And this one is a WIP Work In Progress... (Rav link) A couple of weeks ago I saw a friend's long scarf (long enough to go around 2-3 times) and I thought, yeah, I need to make something like that for me. The coldness here really calls for something over the face, and I like scarves better than toasty hats... I knew I wanted to do it with bulky yarn though, because 6 ft of scarf would take a looooooong time with skinny yarn!
Then literally days later I received a box in the mail from a friend, and she had tucked in a sweater. She had come by it for free, it didn't fit her, she thought I might be able to use it. It was gorgeous, and so soft, but when I put it on it fit about like a potato sack... so I carefully picked out the side seams, and then pulled on the corner and thub-thub-thub-thub-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb-thb... Now I have four HUGE balls of awesome bulky yarn! So then I needed a pattern. I found one I liked, with the thought that perhaps I could finally learn how to do cables (the rav pattern page promised that it was an easy pattern). Sure enough, there were 19 rows of cabling to start it off, and by row 15 I had intuitively grasped how it worked and didn't need to look at the pattern anymore. And then of course my normal nature kicked in, and so rather than knit the middle 5 1/2 feet in plain rows, I did some more crisses and crosses... and then some more, and then a crazy lot, and then fewer, but never stopping...I'm 18" into it and I have no idea what will criss or cross next. Except that I'm pretty sure it will always be symmetrical... I don't know if I know how to let loose THAT much!

Everything is Holy Now

I heard this song recently, and it has struck a resonating chord with me.



(and if you are the sort who doesn't want to watch a 5 minute video, in spite of the powerful message that I promise is in it, the lyrics are the italicized parts throughout this post.)

Of course I have always known that sacredness, and communion with the Divine can be found in nature; that was one of the things that drew me to paganism.Prophets throughout the ages have gone into the wilderness, upon the mountaintops, or into the forests to talk with God. Obviously assorted locations and objects have been deemed holy or sacred by various religions over the centuries too.

When I was a boy, each week

On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

I asked my 11 year old son how much of the world he thought was holy. He thought about it for a few minutes, and said "well, there are a lot of shrines in Japan and stuff, so maybe 0.05%"
I told him about how trees are an ancient symbol of the Feminine Divine. He thought for another minute, and then said "so maybe 10-15%, because they have cut down a lot of trees, plus there are deserts and stuff."
I asked him if he thought God could be in the ocean. If he thought God could be in the mountains. If he thought God could be in the wind.
"Oooh," he said "holiness can be everywhere huh."

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle

Indeed, I believe so.

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one

My son  has been studying biology this year in school. He loves to chatter on to me about mitosis and photosynthesis and the other things he is learning about. I have always found these things impressive, but when they are presented in a textbook they seem mundane...just another vocabulary word to learn for the test. But take a step back and think about what they really are. Indeed, they are miracles.

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

It is not just that we can sense the holiness of Deity when we see that glorious sunset. The sunset itself can be holy. It is not just that we can feel a closeness to Deity when we sit in the forest, listening to the birds and streams and smelling the dirt and pine needles. The birds and water and dirt and pine needles themselves are holy. It is not just feeling a closeness to heaven when we look at a new baby, but the baby himself is holy. In fact it is not just nature and babies and "good people," but we are all holy. We all have a godseed in us, the potential to become like our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. For small times (or lifetimes) we may not live up to that potential, we may not let that holy spark shine, or we may not know how to let it shine (some of us may not even realize that it is there), but that does not change the fact that it is there.
The sunset is holy.
The sea is holy.
The trees are holy.
The animals are holy.
Our children are holy.
We are holy.

Everything is holy now

Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done

Obviously this is probably a bit of a paradigm shift for you, it was for me. But to perceive everything as inherently holy, everything as inherently a miracle, that adds a whole new richness to my life and to my spirituality. When holiness and sacredness were things that had to be found, or sought, they seemed "too special," like the china that my Mother in law keeps in the cupboard 363 days a year, and only gets out for Christmas and Easter. But when sacredness surrounds me every day, it does not cheapen the holy, rather it raises my everyday to a higher plane.

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now

Our Samhain

One of the things I love about living in Alaska is the wild meat we're able to hunt and butcher ourselves. It was actually on Mabon that we got a call from a neighbor who had some caribou they had shot but could not fit it all in their freezer, and they asked if we wanted some. So we spent our Mabon evening butchering and freezing caribou.
Since Samhain is a time of giving thanks for the harvest of meat (and showing gratitude for the animals' gift of their lives for our sustenance), I thought it was appropriate to eat some of our caribou tonight.
We had actually had a caribou roast just a few days ago, so instead of cooking another one, I chopped up the leftover meat, added in carrots, potatoes, broccoli, and peas, and poured over the leftover gravy to make a savory caribou pie.

Samhain is also a time to ponder on death, and to remember our loved ones or others who have died. I had planned to make "dead bread" but we had a last minute shuffle (something came up and with very little notice we ended up celebrating a night earlier than planned), so that fell through and it was just the pie.

The boys drawing their pictures
you can see our element candles and the remainder of the caribou pie...

However, we did do something to remember our departed loved ones, and that was to write messages or draw pictures for them, and put them in the fire so that the smoke could carry our love and thoughts to them. My husband wrote to his granddad who passed away this last year. I wrote to my babies who died before I was ever able to meet them. My sons all drew pictures.

Embracing Faith Transition

Thank you Joanna Brooks for putting words to something I have felt often of late.
(This is an excerpt from a piece she wrote for the latest Exponent II magazine, called "Embracing Faith Transition" )

Here are the last few paragraphs.

My faith is not the same faith I had when I was sixteen years old. It isn’t without wrinkles, puckers, and scars. It isn’t perfect now, but really, it wasn’t perfect then either. It is not effortless, and it never has been. If I stood my faith naked before a crowd, some might say it isn’t very pretty. Not pretty at all. But it is my faith. It is hardworking, scarred, and muscular. It has been cut, pierced, torn, and reorganized beyond recognition. It has been fed, and it has fed others.


My faith is strong in the way a survivor’s body is strong. To survive, I let go of some once-precious parts of myself, parts of myself that others may have thought were special and beautiful. But these parts were not healthy any more. They were making me sick. And my survival was more important than holding onto them. They have gone, and my faith has a new silhouette.


My faith has been through some major transitions, and it continues to change. It may not be pretty, but just look how many miles my faith has carried me. I can say: I have lived, I have lived, and my spirit is stronger still.

Of late my faith is changing, is transitioning. I don't know precisely how it all will come out. Part of me has feared to say anything, lest I make others uncomfortable or worried about me, yet honesty and authenticity demand that I speak. Know that I am not doing anything rashly. I am studying with my mind and my heart, seeking the Spirit, searching the scriptures, and trying to follow as I feel led. "A mind, once stretched, can never return to its original dimensions" said Oliver Wendell Holmes, and so too with spirituality and faith. I learn things, I experience things, I understand things in new ways, and I cannot return to the simple faith I had when I was younger. I share my journey with you here both for the sake of honesty, and also because I know that I am not the only one who journeys. I have updated the "My Faith" tab here on the blog. I have added a section at the end for the series of posts which traces my journey. I claim Mormonism as my heritage, my culture, and my center, but I am no longer the vanilla mormon that I was. I'm butter brickle, or strawberry swirl, or cookie dough fudge crunch, or perhaps all of them all mixed up. I'm more complicated than I was--as is appropriate for one who is no longer a child--and my faith is more complicated as well. This is part of why I wrote about being a Big Tent Mormon--because I think that the time is coming--or has come--when it will take a big tent to hold this mormon.

(PS, are you suddenly craving ice cream? Because I totally am. mmmmm.)

Mother's Necklace

I have a new mother's necklace. (I ordered the beads and made it myself too.) It's different from any other mother's necklace I've ever seen (and, actually, there is a charm for my husband too, so it's more of a "family necklace" I suppose). In any case, I thought I would share:

Dragon ~ Wolf ~ Bear ~ Eagle

Bee

Somewhere in my late teens I started signing my name as "jenni b" because there were always multiple Jennies. Due to the pronunciation, that naturally morphed into "jennibee." After I married, my new last name still started with a B, so "Jennibee" remained. When I opened an etsy shop to sell cloth diapers and other baby things, I settled on the name "lilbees," making myself the mama bee. Readers who have been here more than a few months know that for a couple of years my blog title was "Musings of Mommy Bee."

And so the bee became my inadvertent symbol. I wasn't particularly drawn to bees, didn't even particularly like them, but it's what I ended up with. (My sons are the Wolf, Bear, and Eagle, my husband is the Dragon...and I'm a little Bee...yeah...one of these things is not like the others!)

In the Book of Mormon, the honeybee is called "deseret." Before Utah was a state, the mormon settlers named their territory "Deseret" and their motto was (and still is) "industry." In thinking on that, I concluded that, in spite of my 'totem' not fitting in with the rest of my family's, it did seem appropriate for me. A few months ago I was feeling disgruntled about it though, and decided to do a little reading about bee symbolism and meanings.

Oh wow.

The Bee is a symbol of the Goddess/Feminine Divine and of female warrior energy.
In addition to industry and productivity, it represents achieving the impossible, making or bringing order, royalty, wisdom, celebration, fertility and the honey of life, sweetness of truth, community, concentration, organization, planning and saving, working with the spirits of the deceased, industry, prosperity, purity, birth, death, resurrection and reincarnation, communication with spirit(s), helping earth-bound spirits move on to their proper place, luck, misfortune and Otherworld wisdom.
The bee is connected to *Bridgid, Ra, Vishnu, Krishna, Indra, Aphrodite, Demeter, Cybele, Artemis, Diana, Rhea, Zeus, Dionysus, Pan and Priapus.
(see The Bee Goddess, The Bee, Wyldcat's Animal Guide, and OneSpiritX) (and if you don't know what all those gods/goddess represent, well, you should study up, some of them are pretty cool. I helped you out--see the end of the post)

Recently I listened to an interview at Daughters of Mormonism, and the interviewee was talking about Hugh Nibley's book Abraham in Egypt and a section called "The Deseret Connection." She explained how the book told of the things the bee symbolized in ancient Egypt: power, life, fertility... it was a symbol of the royal line. When Joseph married Asenath, she (as the daughter of a priest and part of the royal house) brought the bee into union with the House of Israel. Most mormons believe we are part of the house of Ephraim, which means that the bee is part of our birthright.

So I've made friends with my bee self. I've decided I like her after all. In fact, she's pretty much awesome. Which is why on my new charm bracelet (filled with symbols which are meaningful to me), there is a bright, shiny, bee.


*Bridgid--threefold goddess of hearth and fire (Celtic)
Ra--the sun god (Egypt)
Vishnu--preserver of the universe (Hindu)
Krishna--an avatar of Vishnu, the embodiment of love and supreme joy (Hindu)
Indra--lord of heaven, god of war, storms, and rainfall (Hindu)
Aphrodite--goddess of love, beauty, and sexual rapture (Greek)
Demeter--goddess of harvest and growing things (Greek)
Cybele/Sybil / Rhea--earth mother goddess/mother of the gods (Phrygian/Roman)
Artemis / Diana--goddess of nature, wild animals, fertility, and childbirth (Greek)

Zeus--king of the gods, god of sky and thunder (Greek)
Dionysus--god of wine, agriculture, fertility, theater, spiritual intoxication, secret rites (Greek)
Pan--god of nature, shepherds and flocks (Greek)
Priapus--god of gardens and fruitfulness (Greek, imported from Asia Minor)

The Next Stage

Eagle is now 23 months old; just weeks away from the age Bear was when I got pregnant with Eagle.
But I'm not pregnant. Yes, I am fertile (it took 22 months this time instead of 20), but we're not trying to get pregnant; actually we are actively preventing pregnancy. Maybe forever.

If you had asked me a year ago (as my husband did), I would have said no way was I ready to be done having kids. Ever since my teens I had been planning on 5 kids at least... Even with my slow start and wider-than-anticipated spacing I was 28 when Eagle was born, so I could certainly have another child or two before 35! But when Eagle was just a couple of weeks old, Hubby said something about how we were outnumbered now (more kids than parents), and he thought maybe we should be done having kids. I figured he was tired and stressed with the newborn, and brushed it off. When he brought it up again a few months later,  I began to think about it.

Initially I hated the thought of being done. Only three children? But I have so much to give! I'm pretty good at this mommy thing, I know how to handle lots of kids, shouldn't I give a good home to as many kids as I can? Pregnancy is not that hard for me physically--I don't get that sick and my body doesn't fall apart. Birth isn't hard on me either--in fact it's exhilarating.

And then a friend gave me a piece of very sound wisdom. Some kids need more than others (and I do have a couple of high-needs kids). If a mother has a finite amount of energy (which I think she does!), then no matter how much love she has, it makes sense to go with a family size that is appropriate to her energy. Sometimes that might mean 9 children, and sometimes it might mean 3. As I considered the possibility that I might actually have my quiver full with [only] three children, I began to accept that it was probably true.

So we made the decision to be done with having babies. I admit I made it more mentally than emotionally--part of me keep thinking "we're just done for now, in a few years we'll have another one or two." But I set it in my head and then let it marinate... and it took a while. Some days I would think "ok, I can wait 3 or 4 or 5 years, but I want at least one more" and other days I would think "how nice would it be to have no kids in diapers?!" or "we'll never have to buy a bigger van!"

And then, one day last winter, my sister called and told me she was pregnant. And for the first time, instead of thinking "I wish I were" I thought "I am so glad I'm not." And that was a massive turning point. I had never experienced not wanting to be pregnant in a particular moment. It was weird, and also it helped me realize that maybe I could make this transition.

I don't know precisely what the future holds, but I do know that it does not hold pregnancy for me--not for several years at least, and very probably not ever again. Some days I still struggle with the finality of it, but I also feel confident that this is the right choice for us at this time.

I have an IUD now (because breastfeeding was messing with my charting, and we did not want to allow the possibility of an 'oopsie'). Even though I intellectually knew that I wanted to do this (Hubby and I discussed at length and agreed on this option), it was still hard emotionally. I felt as though I had voluntarily given up my "full bloom" of fertility, as it were, in trade for a forced infertility. Like I had handed in the fullness of my womanhood for premature old age. I appreciate that that probably sounds like hyperbole, but I really felt it keenly. It didn't hit me until I was in the CNM's office getting ready to have the IUD put in, and then I bawled and gushed to her (a veritable stranger) about it. I suppose she doesn't get that very often! I cried much of the day after I came home too. I had not expected to react that way--after all, an IUD can be removed! But the next day I calmed down enough to do a closure ritual for myself, and felt much better for it. It was shortly after this time that I had my epiphany about the three phases of womanhood which I wrote about here.

I may be finishing with one stage of my life, but I still have many stages to live and enjoy. Perhaps I am done with pregnancy and birthing (for myself), but of course motherhood goes on. My children are young, there is much to do with them. As I exit the baby stage, I can enter another stage--a stage I have been thinking about (but putting on hold for six years)--a stage where I can reach out to other women and teach and support them as a doula and a childbirth educator. It's actually pretty exciting.

"...or whether I speak of myself"

I think I ruffled some feathers recently when I said I disagreed with something that an apostle had said over the pulpit at general conference.

Allow me to clarify.


When I said I am a Big Tent Mormon, I was not saying that the church can't set standards for membership, or that temples should be opened to the public, or that policies should be changed. What I did say was that I think the title of Mormon should be self-selected, and that we should accept it for those (all those) who select it.

All of us--including leaders at every level--are human, and potentially make mistakes. We have been counseled again and again to seek personal confirmation on the things our leaders tell us. In the early days of the restored church there were disagreements, even heated arguments between various members and leaders. Ultimately, we have been given a simple method for determining if something--anything--is from God, or simply the teaching of a man.

study ~ measure it against the gospel as found in the scriptures
ponder ~ think it through logically, determine if it makes sense, and fits in with other things you know to be true
pray ~ ask for a personal verification of the validity (or falsity) of the matter

If it does not measure up, then it is opinion, not gospel.

"Scriptures are like packets of light 

that illuminate our minds 

and give place to guidance and inspiration from on high. 

They can become the key

to open the channel to communion 

with [Heaven]."

--Richard G Scott

I cannot guarantee that everyone will find the same answers. But I can guarantee that this process will bring valid answers. I generally believe in the good intentions of people. I generally give the benefit of the doubt when something sounds off to me. And then I go through the process. But I will always claim the right to differentiate between Truth and opinion, and I do not hold myself subject to the latter.