Untapped Potential

After having a fresh taste of the "yellow" sunshine, we've all been missing "the George" these past few days. Abe has been beating on Fred more than usual and yesterday the little girls were complaining that now they had no one "to throw [them] around". They were pleading for Fred to swing them all over the yard (which he finally did) and I think he was silently pleading for Jordan to come home again to get him off the physical exertion hook. =) I can just smile at it all because no one is begging me for anything to fill the Jordan hole because "fun" doesn't register in my vocabulary. =)

My Mom and Dad came over Friday evening and spent the night because they had a temple shift that day and my Mom had a hearing aid appointment Saturday morning. It was nice to be able to visit with them in our home. While they were here, my Dad was looking out our sliding door and apparently commenting on the plants in our garden. They are big, but nothing compared to the behemoth window climbers inside his mountain home. I was in the other room and didn't hear much of the conversation  but I did hear Fred mention that nothing was growing...and then share an absurd watering method that I was apparently using. I was dumbfounded... almost. =) It's humorous the things we sometimes assume or get confused.  ("We're going to Disneyland?"). =)  I picked a dozen cucumbers and 5 yellow squash, just the past few days, out of that "barren" garden (which we ALL ate at dinner and for snacks) and the green tomatoes are so heavily laden that the plants are weighted down over their garden boxes. I guess that goes to show who is really taking care of the garden! =) I sent my Dad (and my husband) out to take a look for themselves, so even my darling man, who is ever busy providing financially for our family, and so is, unfortunately, a little detached from the gardening, can both be eye witnesses that the garden is bulging with produce, the grapes are hanging in abundant clusters, the peaches are swelling and even the strawberries are preparing to put on another crop =) Harvest time is upon us!

Fred and I were able to go to the temple on Saturday. In our city they are using a new film for instruction and I was so awed by how much I took away from that experience to ponder. Of course the words were still, verbatim, what I have been listening to for the last 23 years but the lessons learned were so much more penetrating, just like it often is when reading the same words, over and over, in the scriptures, and then at a crucial point in our lives it will suddenly become profound or take on a completely different meaning. Because I am drawn to security and consistency, change in anything "routine" in my life puts me on "high alert" and I become more observant, but my experience was an important reminder to me how much can be communicated by any "teacher", in any capacity, with voice inflection or subtle body language, to make meaning so incredibly more poignant and even sometimes completely altered. Like any lesson in our church, or in life, we can sit in our chair and just listen or we can actually hear and ponder and learn--it's up to us, but sometimes change is the catalyst that jogs us out of our methodical mentality and helps us see things with fresh perspective. It is also an important concept to remember in reverse--that our inflections, our body language can impact others so profoundly. because they have a language all their own. It was an enlightening, eye-opening, spiritual experience and Fred and I, both, find ourselves thinking on it still. Such insights are available to each of us at any time, and in any place, because there is so much that the Spirit can teach us, inside a temple or out in the world, about our purpose here, about ourselves, about others if we just have "eyes to see and ears to hear".

I sometimes read articles from the Deseret News online. A brief insert, this month, popped up just mentioning that the church had "updated"  the temple instruction video and that it was being used in select areas. I found it after the fact, so I didn't pay much attention, but what did catch my eye was the long list of comments attached to the article, many by those not of our faith, wanting to know what all the "secretiveness" was about--some "demanding" that the instruction be made public, sure that we were "hiding" something. I guess in this day and age of information overload, people think that everyone has the right to all "knowledge". I guess in a sense we all do, but ironically, there is really very little that we learn in the temple that isn't already "available" to the entire world through the scriptures. There are no secrets, just sacredness, but without being adequately spiritually prepared it would feel to the world akin to what I would feel being thrown into a complex analysis mathematics course (and most math is a snoring and simultaneously overwhelming experience to me). =) There are no secrets in academic courses, but there are mandatory prerequisites  and pure curiosity can not replace that preparatory learning. I barely made it through the most basic math class available, during my college years, and I loathed every moment of it. I had a kind brother-in-law who tried to tutor me, unsuccessfully because I was uninterested and thought the information had no useful application in my life.  I couldn't grasp the concepts because they seemed ridiculous, unimportant and inapplicable. To this day, I still make light of anything remotely connected to anything "higher" than basic math.  That attitude is intellectually damning, I realize, and surely must be frustrating, even offensive to a mathematician because they can see the vast, untapped potential, which I cannot see because I don't understand and am honestly not highly motivated to understand. Those attitudes are exactly why temple instruction is kept sacred, and from the world. There is, however, a stark difference. Because I have not adequately prepared myself, one second in an advanced math class would  instantly make me aware that I was in over my head and completely lost. Whereas, one hour into spiritual instruction inside a temple and "the world", unprepared, would be bored with what they would regard as remedial information--useless and uninteresting. Yet the potential for learning, wisdom and application is just as advanced--much more so, because it is all encompassing...and yes, I know, that includes mathematics.  Just another of my random thoughts.

Speaking of random, I ran across a funny commercial (Mikayla's suggestion) and a beautifully insightful blog post (Jay Hill's suggestion) this week, if anyone is in the mood for humor or grace.

German Coastguard--Sinking
The True Story of a Seven Year Marriage

Quote of the week:(taken from a fantastic talk that Lori suggested I read)
"Our Identity and Our Destiny"

"When Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, they traded their innocence, meaning a lack of knowledge of good and evil, for the prospect of perfection—that was the deal. Innocence and perfection are not the same." --Tad R. Callister
(I so need to remember this--Sometimes I think the time I spend "sheltering" myself and my family gets off balance with the time I spend helping us progress.)

My lovely little ladies--working on a Faith in God goal on Sunday.