Donna’s Journey

All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. ~Abraham Lincoln

That can be said of all of us. Without a mother to carry us close to their heart for 9 months and give us life, we could never become anything. There can be no exaltation without birth into mortality. For that gift alone we should be ever grateful for the sacrifice of our mothers.

Next comes my grandmother. I remembered her today and thought of all the things she taught my mom that my mom taught me. My grandmother had Rh factor back before they could do anything for it. My mother was her second and last child. I am grateful she took the risk.

Next comes all those women who mothered and nurtured me, far too many to name or count. Some are living, some died before I was born. Some never had children in this life, but they mothered none the less.

I hope your Mother’s Day was full of joy, as you remember your mother.

This morning I went to lds.org and read the archives on mothers.

Roger made a lovely big breakfast for me.

In sacrament meeting I heard the two best talks I have ever heard on mothers day. One by my old home teacher, John, and the other by my new home teacher President Hall. President Hall spoke on Sacred Womanhood. .

I invited my mother in law and daughter in law to join us for Sunday dinner, I wanted to honor them.
My mother-in-law got sick and my husband took her dinner and carnations from me. My sweet daughter in law came with my son and grandsons. We had citrus honey rosemary chicken, rice, and spring salad.

Roger gave me carnations, See’s candy, which was added to the lovely paosterity he has already given me.

I remembered that my first Mother’s day, the first year I was married, I felt my first child move within me for the first time. My second mother’s day that little infant said mama for the first time.

I received a delightful gift from one of Julia’s close friends, kaye, we call her our daughter. So very sweet. We have invited many young women into our home over the years and given them a mother’s love, while they were far away from home in a distant city.

Some mother quotes:

That best academy, a mother’s knee. ~James Russell Lowell

One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. ~George Herbert

The mother’s heart is the child’s school-room. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Or in other words, as Samuel Clemens quoted, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” However, it is not statistics that is my main thought here. Statistics are but a portion of the math picture.

First, let us consider the nature of the beast called statistics. Statistics are as good as the sample considered, the questions asked, and the person who evaluates those statistics. While statistics can be used as a measurement tool that “can” quite helpful, they can also be used to manipulate opinions of those who are not as numerate as they suppose they are. We have a highly trained society, but many are innumerate, even though we teach math in school. Perhaps the problem lies in the way we present and teach math to children that is at the foundation of our national innumeracy, which I feels is at a lower ebb than our national literacy rate.

Math is a living language, not a subject, and intersects or plays a role in almost every subject of interest. Math is something we use everyday. In fact, the Pythagoreans taught that “Everything is number.” That said, we tend to teach math in an abstract way without a foundation of context. We could have two native tongues if raised using both math and our native tongue. For that matter we could have many native tongues: English, Math, Music, Scripture… Oh, but that is beyond the point. The point is math is a language and if our language and experience use math liberally, then when we are well versed in the language, we are ready to learn its grammar and abstract forms of math.

Lack of context and understanding math can come a mere exercise in memorizing patterns and lacks its usefulness. This results in math boredom and the feeling of uselessness. Matters are made worse by endless busy work exercises that have displaced real living math, as the way we teach children math. Void of the context that comes from math being a native tongue and the experiences that would include, math becomes a closed book for many, something to be endured, and to get out of the way. Math in essence becomes dead for them.

Solution: a liberal arts education could remedy that. Study the great mathematicians and the questions they tried to solve and discover the usefulness of math, and gain understanding.

Well, what goes for science goes for history too. There are lots of new views into the past, many of the reports smack of sensationalism. Upon going to original sources, including the writings of individuals and those that were close to them, often a different picture appears than that which is so advertised today.

Why does this happen? I feel it happens because we stopped teaching history from original sources. Children are familiar with “textbook history” and learning what a committee with their fixed world view wants them to know. textbook history is often very distorted, to meet the agenda of those creating them. I would rather learn from the greats than learn from their students!

I would rather read the Federalist and Anti Federalist arguments in their original form, as well as personal letters, and writings of our founders, than study the textbook of the most lauded modern history professor.

When in college 30 years ago I was reading about George Washington and my mind came to rest on
Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert-DuMotier Lafayette, he fascinated me. I read what friend and foe said about his motives and then I came across his own writing. Wow. No wonder George loved him as a son! Some felt he was mercenary but he loved liberty and he came to our aide.

Last evening while I was weeding I thought of how many youth like the men and women of Jane Austen. Oh Heaven forbid, she can have them. Charlotte Bronte can have her fictional characters of men, as well. Then I started scanning the men and women of history that I admired and thought, who would I hold up to my children? Martha and George Washington? Vilate and Heber C. Kimball? Elizabeth and Newel Whitney? Sarah and Abraham? Sarai and Lehi? Of course, if you want the counterpart, you must be the counter part. You must know your history and it will change you.

The other thought on the need of knowing history…it is cyclic or a spiral, not linear. History has a ghastly way of repeating its self. By in large because though technology changes, the human nature of the natural man does not. The fool hardy ignore the past or think that the lessons do not apply, because we are smarter. I would rather vote for someone with an understanding of history than someone who is a politician. Politicians have grand ideas and promise the absurd. One with a deep understanding of history knows human nature, knows what has been tried, knows what has worked.
They are not likely to reach for glitzy short term solutions that make a great photo op, unless they are in the process of reeducating the public in the venue they understand the most, to effect long term solutions. An individual that really knows history, has the integrity to govern according to that knowledge, and can communicate that in the way the masses can grasp is a statesman for our times.
This is a precious resource.

We need the study of real history. Most people are ignorant of real history, and therefore are easily manipulated by “experts” with an agenda…

A good reason to return to classic liberal arts education is that real history and original sources are valued, studied, pondered, and the knowledge gained can mean a better future!

My friend Jennifer called this morning and asked me out to lunch for a birthday celebration of my birthday. She told me to think of where I wanted to go. By the time she drove around the lake to my home, I had decided that I wanted to go to the BYU MOA Cafe’. She gave me a lovely card and some milk chocolate covered macadamia nuts as a birthday present, along with the4 wonderful afternoon.

So, off to the Y we went. I love the MOA, it is serene. We had a delicious lunch at the Cafe’.
I had a teriyaki chicken fruit salad with lemon poppy seed dressing.
teriyaki chicken
bacon snips
almonds slices
celery moons
strawberry halves
mandarin orange sections
mixed lettuces
topped with lemon poppy seed dressing.

After lunch we headed for the galleries. First, off to the Minerva Teichert Exhibit. She has always been an inspiration to me. She was a farm wife, with 5 children and managed to live her art and contribute, as a wife, mother, and artist.

We went through the Select Religious Art Exhibit. I love Carl Bloch painting of “Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda” (1883). I love to stand before it. After we took that in, we went to the lower level and viewed the exhibit of the Masterworks of Victorian Art from the Collection of John H. Schaeffer. I lover the English Victorian Art and Pre- Raphaelites work, as much as I love the impressionists of both Europe and the United States.

When we left the museum, each of us expressed our desire to oil paint again. I had switched my focus to stained glass in 1979. As we both spoke, we realized that neither of us had oil painted since 1979. While I had been packing in April I discovered that I had canvases, brushes, and more. They are packed now and await my curiosity upon moving and unpacking. Monticello is rich in history and visual inspiration, there will be no want for subject matter, and inspiration! Just Dreamin!

Happy birthday to me, I am now 53!

It is kind of funny, I had been thinking I was 53 for months, and realized a few weeks ago that I was not 53 yet. So, I guess I am accustom to it by now. I told a friend, and she said she had done that before. Then she added it was probably because we have old spirits. I smiled and said wryly, “Older than dirt.” To which she added that it was a painful truth. Ouch, birthday humor. I am only half way through mortality, according to my schedule:) Healthy ways will prolong days, only if it is in the Lord’s timing.

I was just remarking to my husband that the March of spring was delayed but when it came it kind of bottle necked. It came all at once, very quickly. filberts, then cottonwood, then the hardy almond, then the flowering plum, and the apple trees. Daffodils, blue stars, chervil, spearmint, violets, tulips, chives, and soon the roses and the dianthus. The the mulberry and finally the butterfly bushes will bloom. I told my husband that lilacs usually bloom here for my birthday. Then I remembered that as we drove into the neighborhood last night I noticed that the lilacs were beginning to come on. Oh yeah, just in time for my birthday! I guess the elements really do get it. They know what they are doing, even if we don’t.

So, happy birthday to me.

This evening my husband and I drove around the edge of the lake to the other side, to visit our dear friends Steve and Jennifer. We always discuss a broad range of ideas. First we discussed family and the things going on in our lives. Soon we were talking about science and she said, “I believe in science so far as it is translated correctly.”

Science information is effected by many things:

1) The questions you ask. You may have the right answer to your question but did you ask the right question?

2) Worldview is a lens that distorts both the questions that we ask, the conclusions we will accept, and how we interpret our data.

3) Today’s knowledge may prove to be wrong conclusions in 10 years, because we do not have the measuring instruments that we will have in 10 years. Conclusions can be limited by our data collection.

4) The theoretical is more fuzzy, circular, and soft than art is so arrogantly puts down. Nothing reveals this more than dating methods, that go round and round like some dizzy dance. Carbon, backed by tree rings, backed by rocks, backed by carbon and around and round we go. At some point there is no way to actually verify through any testable measurement and they take their educated guess on faith.

5) One scientist will admit something is theoretical, another will define the theoretical as if it were a foregone conclusion. Both will concede that all assumptions may be challenged. However, professional arrogance, is what often stifles those challenges. As if credentials mean we should never question their professional expertise, and we should not think but blindly accept their pronouncements.

In the end, science has become more political than science. A new form of “Political Science?”

Science has become what it tried to replace. A priesthood of experts, whom speak for the creation, and who should be followed blindly.

Hogwash!

I feel science can be valuable and I do believe in it so long as it is translated correctly.

Ah! That is one of the great things about Artes Liberalis, or a classic Liberal Arts Education, you come to understand the value and limits of science, and you come to recognize pseudo science parading as science.

Ah, what fine weather for hiking. We took a hike up to Bridal Veil Falls this afternoon. Mary and I played at the bottom of the falls while James and Jeremy took a hike mid way up the falls. Dad took pictures. Mary is already talking about hiking and doing brunch or lunch up the canyon for my birthday tomorrow. Life is good!

On the day my daughter had her wedding reception we cleaned up the reception quickly so I could attend a fireside at our chapel. The speaker does not do Sunday firesides, his name is Joseph Fielding McConkie, a powerful gospel scholar, and son of Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, and grandson of the prophet Joseph Fielding Smith. Brother McConkie performed the sealing I attended last year. I was moved by his words then. Last summer I attended a class at BYU Education Week presented by him, so I wanted to go to the fireside.

I arrived about 15 minutes into the fireside. I did not miss much, as we usually begin with hymn, prayer, and an introduction. He had been a mission President in Scotland and shared from experiences there and some differences between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, with its Book of Mormon and Revelation, and Christianity.
[my two cents in brackets]

This is not word for word, but from notes of ideas that stuck out to me.

1. We have a Christ that Speaks.
God speaks today.

We do not believe in sufficiency (of scripture) nor that God lost His voice. Critics of the Church of Jesus Christ refuse to let God speak.

[ I say that if God is truly the same, yesterday, today and always, then if he spoke by prophets in days of old, He speaks by them today. If they claim God speaks no more, then it is by revelation, oh, but they believe God ceases to speak. Ah, perhaps it is because they presume to speak for Him, but he does not speak to them?].

Every Principle has to be revelation or it is not doctrine.

II Nephi 28:27-30

Those who believe in sufficiency lose understanding– they do not see the important things– they read with a blind eye.

Those who seal the Heavens have no priesthood or authority, they are not even on speaking terms.

There is no such thing as priesthood or to speak in God’s name without authority and revelation.

“Behold, he created Adam, and by Adam came the fall of man…and because of Jesus Christ came the redemption of man.” Mormon 9:12

There are over 400 angelic visits in the Bible.
We have a prophet. We have apostles.
I believe in the Bible.

He had this discussion with a minister that was doubting…
If Adam is a myth [as many non LDS Biblical scholars and ministers profess and believe],
then the fall is a myth,
If the fall is a myth,
then the atonement is a myth.
If the atonement is a myth, then Christ is a myth.
Easter is coming, so what are you going to teach your congregation about Christ?

[CHRIST IS NOT A MYTH!]

Their creeds are non-biblical and trace back to Plato–the God without body parts or passions. [If God has no passions, how come the scripture speak of him "hating" sin and "loving" His children? Are not love and hate passions? How could Jacob and Moses have spoken with God Face to Face, if God has no Face? If a theologian invents an answer or plausible explanation that is not there, that is not revelation. Sometimes theologians explain things away that they do not understand, because they only have a portion, and no revelation. Genesis 32:30, Exodus 33:11, Numbers 14:14, Deuteronomy 5:4, 34:10...

The traditional Greco-Roman classical education of many Christian theologians has corrupted the original view of God by a Greek sieve of philosophical Greek understanding. In my estimation, this goes back to the Jews in Jerusalem, before the early Christians that sent their children to the Greek Gymnasium to be trained in Heathen ideas, and be more acceptable to their non Jewish neighbors. Remember that many of the early Christians were in fact Jews. Many constantly plaguing the early apostles with how they felt the church should look and be run, they were called Judaizers. The Jews of Christ's had embraced the corrupting world view of the Greeks, and I feel that has something to do with why most rejected Christ as their Messiah; he was anthropomorphic and did not fit their view of a Platonic God. That God the Father and Christ were two separate beings. was certainly what Stephen testified to and was stoned for. Christ ate fish and honeycomb after his resurrection with his disciples. He even visited them in the secret room and let them handle Him and feel Him, so they would have no doubt. Man was created in the image of God, not the other way around, and resurrected beings each do have a body. Hence, the graves that opened and yieded their dead after Christ's resurrection. . When the medieval church merged with secular education they turned to Greco-Roman Classical writings, rather than the Hebrew classical thought. The medieval churchmen had their view of God was corrupted too, by their heavy reliance on Greek and Latin in their training for the ministry.]

2. The Doctrine of Divine Sonship

I Nephi 11 Knowledge of the Son of God
Alma 32 + 33 Planting and Nourishing the Seed. The seed is the knowledge of the Son of God.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The modern translations have have changed only begotten to read only son or one and only. The word literally means “only begotten–only son.”

[ I am glad I had a professor that insisted that we use the KJV and any two other translations of the Bible it helps one see archaic phrasing. In light of what they have done to John 3:16, I grow distrustful of new translations. Of course, we are reading modern English translations that come through man's interpretations, based on man's worldview. These are not original texts or the original language. Even with Hebrew, Greek, and Latin at our finger tips, we only have transcriptions that are of a late date, far for the time they were originally recorded. There is no such thing as a word for word translation from Hebrew to English. Hebrew words have more than one meaning. None the less, I am endeavoring to learn these languages. Yet, without revelation, all we have is the arm of flesh to pick and choose what will be translated into English.

If God worked by revelation, angels, prophets, and apostles in times of old, He does today].

3. The Doctrine of Revelation

The Bible does not define resurrection. It is not in the Old Testament.

Alma 11:45 45 Now, behold, I have spoken unto you concerning the death of the mortal body, and also concerning the resurrection of the mortal body. I say unto you that this mortal body is raised to an immortal body, that is from death, even from the first death unto life, that they can die no more; their spirits uniting with their bodies, never to be divided; thus the whole becoming spiritual and immortal, that they can no more see corruption.

In Matthew 3 Christ was baptized. [if he was sinless, then why?]
The Book of Mormon tells us why. “II Nephi 31 : 5 And now, if the Lamb of God, he being holy, should have need to be baptized by water, to fulfil all righteousness, O then, how much more need have we, being unholy, to be baptized, yea, even by water!
6 And now, I would ask of you, my beloved brethren, wherein the Lamb of God did fulfil all righteousness in being baptized by water?
7 Know ye not that he was holy? But notwithstanding he being holy, he showeth unto the children of men that, according to the flesh he humbleth himself before the Father, and witnesseth unto the Father that he would be obedient unto him in keeping his commandments.”
He could not say come follow me, if he did not lead the way, even with baptism.

His religion was a “Do It” religion, get up and follow me!

Joseph Smith said, “If a man gets the fulness of the priesthood of God, he has to get it the same way that Jesus Christ obtained it, and that was by keeping the commandments and by obeying all the ordinances of the house of the Lord.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 308).”

4. The Doctrine of Gathering

We gather Israel through the waters of baptism. They are gathered to the true church and then they are entitled to the lands of their inheritance. [I Nephi 19-14-17]

5. The Law of Witnesses
“II Nephi 29:7 Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all men, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the heavens above and in the earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth?”

God never intended the bible to be his last or only word.

II Nephi 3 Joseph the seer.

II Nephi 21 Unless they get their testimony through Joseph Smith they will be cut off. [It is through Joseph Smith that the marvelous work was brought forth and is available to us today].

Christ
l
Peter, James, and John
l
The Joseph Smith
l
Three Witnesses
l
l
us
Without this we will be left without root or branch.

The Lord leads people to prepared missionaries. [ kind of like what Bro. Davis said yesterday, when the solution is ready the problem/challenge comes. So, the way I see it is when He has a prepared missionary, He can use them to do His work. We must always be ready to give an answer I Peter 3:
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give ban answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you...].

Yesterday was testimony meeting.

I was particularly remember by three testimonies quite vividly.

Bro. Davis was visiting and shared the struggle of brining his siblings together in united them, at the behest of his mother. He said that his father had once stated it was hard to lead a family of eight chiefs, each with their own opinion of how things should be. He said that he pondered the challenge and felt the task, he knelt and prayed “Father this is a mess, help me see what can be done.” He said the answers came so fast, he did not have time to write them, only take notice of their order. Then he pointed out that “if the problem is here, the solution is already in place, all we need to do is prayerfully to seek to have our eyes open to it and study the scriptures, because that is where God often speaks to us.

Bro. Hall ended his testimony with the thought that the future for the church will be overwhelming for us, I hope we are preparing our children for it.

Sis. Gubler spoke of the conference talk that spoke of looking for the Lord’s hand in our lives everyday and recording it.

I bore my rejoiceamony. I had read:

Verily, this is fasting and prayer, or in other words, rejoicing and prayer.”
Doctrine and Covenants 59: 14

I pondered that in the context of just finishing reading Pollyanna to my daughter. So, fasting is rejoicing, and I ask, am I rejoicing? In Pollyanna, her father was a minister and overwhelmed at all that was going on in his congregation, until he found the rejoicing texts. He felt that rejoicing was pretty important if God commanded it over 800 times. The canon of scripture is not closed, God still speaks to man today. So I looked to see how many verses speak of rejoicing and found over a thousand. So I did begin my journey to seek those words out and I am posting them to my blog Rejoicing Texts. So I shared my rejoiceamony yesterday as I contemplated Doctrine and Covenants 59: 14.

I rejoice that God had a Divine plan for man, and for me in particular, to have joy like He has and be able to be again with Him someday.

I rejoice that His Son willingly laid down his life for me, and everyone that the Father’s Plan could move forward.

I rejoice in temples that help us on the straight and narrow path and help us.

I rejoice that I am married to a righteous man in Zion and that we can move along that path together, along with our family.

I rejoice that I have scriptures that I might learn more fully His ways.

I rejoice in having a prophet, apostles, stake presidents, and bishops.

I rejoice in my trials as they have made me more intimately acquainted with God. As Paul says, I count it all good.

I rejoice in all that God has blessed me. Now I will continue my Rejoicing Texts, a verse at a time.

Ok, admittedly, my journey to Zion has been side tracked, looks like I have been sitting on the other side of the river and I need to get moving! I do not intend to sit parked at the beginning of my journey. SO, it is time to get moving. Record keeping is part of the discipline of the journey. So I need to print off a log. Grad classes are done, the wedding, reception, and open house or done, I have my handouts for UHEA done. It is breathe time, time to to evaluate, time to settle into new rhythms, just as the seasons change. Yes, I still have a thesis to polish, but inch by inch it is a cinch. I definitely do not want to bottle neck that and have it take center stage to my life. So, I will write prayerfully write a little each day.

Now the weather is good and I need to restart my journey to Zion. Julia cannot walk with me, as she is still in a boot cast. However, I contacted my walking partner, Candace and she will walk with me. I may complete my journey yet! Here I go…