Sunday, December 23, 2007

Merry Christmas

I just wanted to let y’all know that I believe in Christmas. I believe in a God who cares about us, not one who has left the building. Sometimes I feel that He is silent, and yet through this whole year of trying to figure out what He wants for me, I’ve never doubted His benevolence. If He hasn’t seen fit to remove my burdens, I have no doubt that He has something else good in mind for me. He constantly shows me His love. I don’t doubt Him.

The God I know and love sent His son as a love letter to the world. I accept the gift and am full of gratitude.

I hope this Christmas you will feel the worth of that gift and the joy of accepting it and being grateful. I wish you all peace.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Old Friends

I have this weird thing about hanging on to people. I hate to let them go out of my life. Even the ones that I have consciously made a decision to let go (OK, ex-boyfriends, really)—I still find myself wondering about them. Where are they? Did they get married? Did they marry well? Do they still love me, a little, deep down? Are they successful?

I feel sadness about the people who used to be in my life but are no longer. Even just passing acquaintances, co-workers, old visiting teachers whose names I can’t remember. I have the world’s biggest Christmas card list because I can’t stand to let go of people.

Why? Why? Is it a shallow attempt at fame? Trying to prove that I have made a splash on the world, that people would miss me if I were gone? Don’t know, don’t know.

Part of all this is that I often re-live scenes from the past. Moments of triumph, sometimes, but often it is the really embarrassing things that haunt me. And just plain old tiny moments that seem fraught with nostalgia now. Walking to class at BYU, for example (it seems like I have the most in number and the most vibrant memories of my college life—why is that?). But all of this reminiscing has led me to sugar-coat some things in retrospect, I’m sure. Like my friendship with B.

B was a junior high and then high school friend. I don’t know what brought us together other than we had the same English class from 7th to 12th grades. By 12th grade, though, we had moved on, found other groups of friends. But in junior high, especially, we were both loners, I guess, and we clung to each other. We shared the same sense of humor. I spent more time picking out the right Christmas gift and card for her than for everyone else put together, because it was so IMPORTANT that I make her laugh. I’ve been thinking about her today because I’ve never forgotten one Christmas card she gave me that said: “Wee fish ewe a mare egrets moose panda hippo gnu year.” We did a project together about advertising. I remember trying to get our pink milky liquid to coat the inside of a beaker which represented a stomach, trying to imitate the animation in the pepto-bismol commercial (“coats, soothes, relieves”).

It’s weird to think of how much time I spent with her and how little I ever really knew her. For example, I’m still not sure if she was LDS or not. Seems a pretty bizarre thing not to know about someone considering we both grew up in Salt Lake. I can’t remember though—was she in seminary with me?

Anyway, I still send her a Christmas card. But I have no idea how she is. I’m sad about that. Wherever you are, B, thanks for putting up with me. I hope your life is good. (I suppose there is the tiniest chance you are reading this, since I put my blog address on my Christmas letters last year. If you are, I'm sorry I never really knew you. I regret that.)

P.S. I have a fantastic recording of New York Voices singing their own arrangement of the Paul Simon tune “Old Friends.” I highly recommend it. I love vocal jazz. When I discovered vocal jazz, it was really like running into an old friend. It was like I had always known and loved it without knowing it existed yet.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Gifts

This month I finished Zenna Henderson’s “Ingathering” stories. I hear that she had an LDS background. Anyone know more about that? Anyway, the main characters in her People stories belong to a race that had to leave their home planet because it was dying. The stories are about the experiences of the refugees who arrive on earth and try to find each other and assimilate to life here. The People are just like humans, EXCEPT that they have Gifts. (They call them “gifts, signs and persuasions.”) Each one of them is born with at least one Gift, and it is exciting for them as they grow to discover which gift they have. (These include things like the ability to calm others, heal them, direct space travel, etc.) And then there are a few Gifts that all of them have (being able to fly/float).

One of the things I enjoyed pondering most about these stories is the way that people treat Gifts when they are confident that each individual’s gift comes from God, and the dispensing of gifts has nothing to do with the worthiness of the receiver. If we truly all acknowledged the source of our gifts, where would be the place for pride? How much more generous would we be towards each other? Sometimes wealthy people are reluctant to share what they have because they worked so hard to get it, and it seems to them that others are not working as hard. But what if they recognized that the ability to work hard, the health to work hard, the emotional strength to persevere—all of those are gifts from God as well?

If I truly believed that any talent I have in writing, for example, came from God and not because I was particularly worthy or special, would I treat my writing differently? Would I spend so much time envying those who are obviously more talented than I? Would I work harder or less hard?

Probably harder, since I would see that God gave me the gift simply to benefit those around me, and not to prove that I was more valuable. But as soon as I saw the gift beginning to make life HARDER for those around me (my family, for example, who might suffer if I neglected them for The Gift), I would repent and cut back on the time I invested in it. Because if it were for the benefit of all, what good would it do to hurt others in the pursuit of its development?

Why is the thought that I MIGHT be talented so precious to me? Because I still secretly hope that giftedness is a sign of blessedness, of having the favor of God. How can I learn to see this differently—to see that yes, it is a gift from God, but it is not a sign of favor, that it has nothing to do with my worth or deservingness?

As soon as I learn to accept it for what it is, I will no longer be ashamed of my weakness, nor proud of my strength. I will not hesitate to use it, publicly, for good, because it does not reflect on me (except as it shows my failure to put time into practicing, I guess). I’m thinking now of the women in my Relief Society who play the piano but refuse to play the hymns for us in our meetings out of bashfulness. How am I refusing to use my gifts out of fear and pride?

Um . . . I just saw that all of the paragraphs in this post end in question marks. Sorry about that. It’s a sign of sloppy writing. (And here I am apologizing for my weakness.) What it’s a sign of is that I don’t care to put in any more time on polishing this particular piece of writing because I am going to go make Christmas presents with my kids now. Currently I think that that’s where God wants me to use my gifts today.

Oh--on a whole nother subject, Wadja think of this?

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