:Naiahdot

Niff said to, and so I am.

I have no internet conection at home right now beyond my iPhone, and so this’ll be sketchy at best at first, but I have enough words in my head to put the Library of Congress to shame. It’s time to start outsourcing some of the load again.

Right now, though, it is 12:30 a.m. and I have no clear intention about which to write and am foggy enough so as to be unlikely to come up with one in the next 10-15 seconds, and so I leave you with just a little…

Coming Soon
Naiahdot 3.0

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Actively engaged:

• •Taekwondo: Ancient Wisdom for the Modern Warrior
• •Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child (Initially recommended to me by our pediatrician, this book has become very much the essential outline for how we interface with our kids. It has given us a profound new paradigm for modes of interaction which has increased our children’s security and overall sense of well-being as well as our ability as parents to effectively maintain loving discipline. I can’t recommend it enough for those with or contemplating having children. As is the case with many of the parenting books that I recommend, I learned as much if not more about myself as I did about my child. A book of easily accessible, readily applicable, and much-needed wisdom.)
• •The Infinite Atonement (I find myself only able to read between one sub-section and one chapter of this most excellent book a day. If I try to do more, I am left distracted from the current section by thoughts still spinning from the previous one. While I crave the sense of accomplishment that comes from flying right through a book to call it done and read, I am finding this savorful reading experience most rewarding.)
• •The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow

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I actually received a letter today that began that way. It’s my first official acceptance letter from a publisher, and it’s a special one. I sold an article to the Ensign. It seems so wonderful and strange to type that; I still can’t believe it. It hasn’t been scheduled for a particular issue yet, and it’s hard to be patient. I can’t wait to hold it in my hands on shiny paper all part of a ‘real magazine,’ not even considering that it’s that magazine. On the one hand, I’m proud of myself for finally making it to print, but on the other I’m just overwhelmingly humbled, like I get vaguely sick to my stomach when I think about it too long kind of humbled, like that I can’t believe I did it kind of humbled. Well, come to think of it, I didn’t really do it; at least, I didn’t initially mean to do it.
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I’ve just begun reading The Infinite Atonement, by Tad R. Callister. Before I fully dive in to what Robert L. Millet has, in the forward, called “one of the most complete treatments of the Atonement that I know of anywhere,” I wanted to stop for a moment (yup, right at the end of the forward) and capture a quick snapshot of my personal understanding of this profound gift at this point.
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When I first got my hearing aids, I was completely overwhlemed at just how quickly wearing them would overstimulate my mind. Time and again over the first few weeks of wearing them, I simply had to reach up and shut them off; I coudn’t take it. It was too much mental input. My mind just was not used to having to sort through and understand that much sound. I used to have normal hearing, and I had assumed that the hearing aids would effortlessly make everything sound like it used to. What I didn’t realize is that there’s two layers to hearing; there’s the sound waves themselves, the eardrum vibrating, which the hearing aids can help with, but there’s also the mental processing of the sound. For those first couple of weeks I was like a baby just learning to use her own senses again. Every few minutes I’d pipe up and ask my kids, my husband, or whoever else happened to be around “What’s that sound?” The vibrations were making it to me, and I was certainly aware that a sound was being made, but I just didn’t know what it was. Whether it was the fridge, a truck passing by on the street, or the hard drive of my laptop, I had to turn to someone to explain to me what the input I was receiving meant.

If only I could do that now.

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The blog entry that I was typing on my pocket pc in the car on the way home:

This past week has been a trip—in both the figurative and literal senses.  We took off for a somewhat impromptu visit to Utah, ostensibly to hang out with friends, and ended up stumbling onto what might just turn out to be a whole new path in life.  I still can’t quite wrap my head around it all.  Forgive me, but it wouldn’t be prudent to run through the specifics at this point.  I can say, though, that it has strengthened my testimony–profoundly.  I even joked to Michelle that the Lord’s hand has been so evident in it all that He was kind of taking an element of faith out of it for us. What is faith, but the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen? What does it become where there is so little left unseen? I suppose in a situation like this, faith comes in the attribution of the readily-visible seemingly charmed events to their proper Source.

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I have cross-published this piece here and on A Prayer of Faith, from Blogger of Jared, where it is part of the current “Life of Christ” theme going on there now where there have been several excellent submissions. I highly recommend that you check it out.

Looking at the Life of Christ as reported in the four Gospels of the New Testament, we see that his behavior towards and teachings about women were profoundly, revolutionarily loving in a way that we, in our current state of gender equality (relatively speaking) might take for granted, to the point that we are in danger of losing their impact. Christ’s respectful treatment of women was socially radical to say the least, which lends added strength to the messages inherent in those moments.

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So, late Wednesday evening, I realized something important—I didn’t actually *want* to cook Thanksgiving dinner. I did it last year for the first time, and it was a ton of work and stress, and really, it did little to engender feelings of gratitude in me, or my family. It was just a meal put down in front of them. They hadn’t been part of making it, and so they felt little ownership of it, or sense of participation in it. It was kind of flat. I’m not a big fan of get-togethers that *should* be meaningful slipping into a production-put-on-for-the-guests kind of mode. There’s something undeniably plastic, desperately shallow, and unforgivably stepford in it all.

Holidays are a teaching opportunity, whether we realize it or not, and that is not what I want to teach my children. Such values are purely of the world, rooted in hollow, temporal pride. Time is our most precious commodity in this life, and what we spend it on before our children’s eyes teaches them more than any lecture ever could. (more…)

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He’s dead. He has been for a month now. I’m only just now feeling it, just now really crying.

On September 5, I had a lump removed from my breast, and as much as I told everyone that I was sure it was nothing, I feared. Any mother, excuse me, anyone would. Last wednesday, I had yet another surgery on a different part of my body to remove some tissue. This time, I didn’t bother with the façade. I’m a chess-player’s daughter, and I played this one out to every conceivable endgame, and it showed. Maybe being deeper in the body, the fear rooted deeeper into my soul; I don’t know. I was lost to the world, locked across the board from a spectre of an opponent, and play as I might, I found myself knocking my king over again and again. (more…)

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From an email I just wrote:

“Feminists often cite Eliza R Snow, but if you ask me, they take her out of context. Frankly, she’s the real feminist. It’s a gripe that’s been kicking around in the back of my mind. It’s as if the feminists today don’t trust in the absolute of their own equality, to the point that anything that smacks of a taste of a shadow of a reflection of female oppression is a threat, a thing to be feared. This includes, unfortunately, ideas like the fact that men have stewardship of the priesthood and women have stewardship of the home. Oppression is not inherent in such a difference. ERS certainly saw none. As a woman married to two prophets (sealed to JS and then married for time to BY), she was a pillar of steadfast faith and sustaining of the priesthood–she is undoubtedly furious at the things today’s LDS feminists do in her name. She embraced being a woman in the gospel, with no call to change the gospel to suit what she thought was fair in a worldly construct. She saw the strength in the woman’s part, and she utilized it beautifully writing amazing poetry, creating publications and organizations to uplift amd edify the sisters. That is real feminism–not the compartmentalizing, homogenizing nonsense that goes by the name which in the end does little more than divorce sisters from their own true power in the name of some wordly construct called ‘fair.’ Is it un-fair that I am only 5’4″ when my mother is 5’10″? Of course not; I am petite, and have always loved my diminutive stature. Is it un-fair that some like myself are verbally inclined while others are gifted with more physical thinking? No, I make the most of my words, and they build great art. We make the most of our individual gifts. Different is not inequal, end of story. Eliza knew that and lived it. She took her difference and made great great things with it. She was heralded as a prophetess for it.”

This idea has been bothering me lately. (more…)

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