Living After the Manner of Happiness

  photo by Olisaknit, Etsy  (https://www.etsy.com : accessed 24 January 2022) I awoke with a heavy heart following events of the past couple of days, and this blog post I wrote last year came back to mind. Here we are nearly a year later, and it often feels like the divisiveness has only continued to escalate. So many I care about are feeling hurt and pain. Pondering on this, the words of a song came to mind this morning. It’s like a symphony Just keep listening And pretty soon you’ll start To figure out your part Everyone plays a piece And there are melodies In each one of us Oh, it’s glorious 1   Music speaks to my soul, and I love the symphony analogy used in this chorus. The word symphony derives from the Greek word symphonia, which means agreement or harmonious sound. 2 The whole point of a symphony is bringing various musicians and instruments together to create something beautiful. There are times when small solos enhance the piece, but generally, the best symph...

Artwork by Katie Lee I heard the panic as soon as I answered the phone. I jumped in my car and reached them a few minutes later. Still visibly shaking, they recounted their experience. Three mornings a week, these sisters met with a lady I will call Sally. Sally had heard the missionary lessons from at least eight sets of missionaries over the years, and these sisters were the most recent to teach her. They began by teaching her the lessons, but she asked if they could read the Book of Mormon together instead. She eventually asked if they could move their meetings from the church building to her home, so their meeting location changed without anyone else knowing. Unbeknownst to these sisters, all kinds of questionable activity riddled Sally’s neighborhood. Following their meeting with Sally that morning, the police stopped these cute sisters, invited them to get out of their car, and asked to search their vehicle. In their innocence, they did not realize what was going on and asked the...

  Years ago, I belonged to a very diverse book group. We all came from different walks of life. Some were young, and others were well beyond retirement, with a few sprinkled in between. We all belonged to different churches. Our eclectic group had just two things in common: we were all active in our chosen religion, and we loved to read. Our book chats often bled into religious discussions, and I learned so much about my own beliefs because they were willing to share theirs. I always walked away from our time together with my perspective expanded and with something to ponder. I was part of this group the first two years I taught seminary, and they often asked about my class when I saw them. The New Testament was the course of study in my first year. Our book group met the week I taught 1 Corinthians 15, so I asked what verses 40-41 meant to them at one point during our discussion. 40 There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and ...

Gentle Healer by Greg Olsen I cannot explain how, but I found myself carried away to another place as soon as the dramatic organ started playing. What transpired those few minutes as I listened to the Tabernacle Choir sing “O Divine Redeemer” can only be described as sacred. This sacred tutoring continued during the thirty-minute drive home from that seminary inservice meeting. I had heard the song plenty of times before, but this time was very different. Little did I know how often I would return to this experience in the coming months.  The following week we received some news that made me stop and consider the days ahead. Life as I knew it was changing, and I wondered how we would get through this experience as a family. The next year was messy . . . really messy. Over and over again I found myself knocked to my knees with nowhere else to turn. Perhaps you have been there before. Maybe you are there right now.  Each time I prayed, I felt prompted to listen to this hymn agai...

“Can I introduce you to my daughter,” he asked, taking me by the hand. A recent convert, this young African man felt unsure of his ability when he accepted the call to teach seminary in his branch. As the only person he knew who attended seminary, this man reached out to my son for help and guidance. Knowing I was also teaching seminary, my son encouraged his African friend to email me his questions. Thus, we began our year-long adventure teaching seminary together – him on the west coast of Africa and me on the east coast of the United States. We stopped at the school where he taught that day in late May. He asked his wife to come to the school during his lunch break to meet us as well. Handing me his daughter, he said, “This is Emma. Like Emma Smith.” He had not even known who Emma Smith was at the beginning of the seminary year but had grown to love her as he studied and taught the Doctrine and Covenants. “I want her to grow to have the faith and courage of Emma,” he continue...

At the heart of just about every general education program is a humanities class. Almost every college student takes one, and it was my turn two years ago. As its name implies, humanities classes help us understand what it is to be human – human intellect, artistic creativity, and the record of human experiences as seen in the arts. It was one of my favorite classes in my educational journey. One of our first lessons was about music – specifically harmony.  A quick review for those who may not have had a music theory class recently: harmony, in short, is playing or singing more than one pitch simultaneously. Groups like Pentatonix, The Nylons, or BYU’s Vocal Point come to mind. When we think of harmony in music, we usually associate it with what is known as consonant harmony – stable and pleasant. There is also a different kind of harmony known as dissonant harmony - when the notes can sound harsh and unpleasant and feel very unstable. Think about the music accompanying the showe...