God Wants to Treat Us

My last blog post was very important to me. I put before the world cherished thinking about the competing mindsets of Mammon and Consecration. I talked a lot about ways to give away the money that we have. Then, just a few days after posting, I ran across someone else’s blog post about consecration that caused my thinking to evolve (1).

You see, while I still stand by everything I wrote in my last post, I was committing in a subtle error in our I applied the principles therein in my personal life. I was falling into the fallacy of confusing Consecration with the denial of luxuries. I wanted so much to give away everything to God and dedicate my worldly goods to helping others that I felt guilty whenever I indulged in earthly things and, even worse, my heart criticized others who did likewise.

But the blog post (by my friend Nom Joti Kaur) pointed out that the mortal Jesus, our Great Example of how to be in this life, was not an ascetic (a person who “abstains from all forms of indulgence, usually for religious reasons”). She also shares a really cool experience she personally had:

One day, she worshipped in the temple (where Latter-day Saints covenant to keep the Law of Consecration) and was praying there for help with some hard things she was going through. The Spirit told her to get a manicure and a pedicure. It might seem strange to be lead to “selfishly indulge” in such things right after covenanting to give all to the Lord but she points out that God wanted to treat her and it was a good thing to accept that (this is the Reader’s Digest version—I highly recommend reading the full account in her own words).

This made me think of a similar experience I had when Jamie and I were approaching a recent wedding anniversary. We had big plans to live it up, going to our favorite restaurants and thrift store shopping together (something which we really enjoy). I was feeling guilty about the whole thing though because I knew that the money we’d spend that day could be given to the poor or some other worthy cause. I prayed about my concern and the Lord gave me a feeling of peace that said to me, “Enjoy your anniversary plans. They’re a gift from me. Receive them as such with gratitude.”

This allowed the guilt to go away and Jamie and I had a lot of fun and strengthened our love for each other and for being alive. The word “consecration” refers to dedicating someone or something to a sacred purpose. The word comes to us from the ancient practice of throwing offerings over a wall or barrier at the temple—where the offeror couldn’t access them anymore—they were literally “set apart” from the possession of the giver and transferred to God’s space (2).

When I consecrate all that I have and are to God, it is no longer mine. It is to be used for God’s purposes, not my own. But what’s amazing is that God’s purposes can include treating me! This ties into Doctrine & Covenants 59 (which I referenced in my last post). This revelation mentions all sorts of things God puts on the earth which He wants us to enjoy with gratitude.

And that’s the thing, this is the paradigm shift that comes with consecration: I stop thinking, “I earned all this money so I deserve to buy this thing for me,” and instead think, “All of these resources belong to God and He has chosen to treat me with some of them.”

But how do we make this shift? One thing that has helped me is to apply the following exhortation from Nephi to money: “Ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul” (2 Nephi 32:9).

I am trying to talk with God about every purchase I make. Since I’ve consecrated all my money to Him, it makes sense that I would consult with Him every time that money is spent. I am trying to make the best decisions I can about where to allocate money and then take those decisions to Gpo and seek His approval. Even while at the store, when I see something I think I might purchase, I can pray in the moment in my mind and tell the Lord about it. I find that the Lord tends to approve every purchase I choose to make. I think this is because He doesn’t want to command in all things (God rarely micromanages His stewards). But seeking His approval and telling Him why I’m going to buy the thing with His money sure does change how I see purchases!

And when He approves a decision to buy something for me that I’ll enjoy, it does not feel like something I’ve earned but a gift from Him. And that is a beautiful thing.

Footnotes:

(1) I am so grateful that we seekers of truth in mortality have the opportunity to exchange ideas with one another. When done right, this can be the wonder of Sunday School and the wonder of the internet. Each of us has a limited time to learn in mortality and has vastly different personalities and experiences. Thus, each of us will naturally discover different aspects and pieces and perspectives of the Truth. It is wonderful that language allows us to share what we’ve discovered with one another so that we all might profit and get closer and closer to that One Great Whole.

(2) Nibley, Hugh W. “Breakthroughs I would Like to See”. Approaching Zion. vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989).

The Bottom Line

God lives. I am utterly convinced that is true. And I’m convinced He speaks and that His messages are timely. One very timely message was given through Joseph Smith in Missouri on August 7, 1831, and is now known as Doctrine and Covenants Section 59.

This revelation was addressed to people who had just moved to, what was to them, the edge of the inhabited world to create the ideal society. They had high hopes for the sort of life they’d build and the Lord gave them instructions on what that life should look like. First (vv. 1-15), He exhorted them to treat each other well and keep the Sabbath, which is an important cornerstone of holy living, then (vv. 16-24), in discussing the blessings of Sabbath observance, He transitioned to beautiful words on how to engage with the resources of the land.

God told them (and all of us who seek the Good Society) to use the land’s resources and live abundantly. He tells us to use animals and plants for food, raiment, shelter, and aesthetic enjoyment but He also puts an important condition on this use—it must be done with gratitude and judgment, without “excess, neither by extortion” (vv. 20-21).

Let’s take a look at that word “extortion”. In the modern and 1828 Webster dictionaries, the definition of the word refers to taking something by force or abuse of power. The Lord is telling us we can’t be taking resources that way. But there’s more. The modern definition also cross-references us to the word “wring”. This is natural because the Latin roots or “extortion” (ex = “out” and tort = “twist”) originate “from the wine and olive presses... meaning to squeeze out the last drop, another way to make a margin of profit—putting the squeeze on, wringing out the last drop” (1).

One can imagine wringing the last drop out of the grapes or wringing a rag and getting every drop out of it until it’s dry. I propose that the Creator is telling us that extortion, wringing every last drop out of the resources He’s provided, is wrong and forbidden. We are to partake of the things of the earth with gratitude and wisdom but never with excess nor extortion, i.e. never taking everything that we could.

And this brings me to the title of this article: “The Bottom Line”. Always expanding one’s bottom line is a natural and normal thing to do in business. It’s a measure of success and something the stock market demands. But in order to continually maximize profits and minimize expenses, one must be continually squeezing out more and more.

This leads to all sorts of behaviors that just aren’t good for the beautiful people, animals, and earth which God created. In order to continuously expand the bottom line, people are asked to work excessive hours for less and less compensation in less and less safe conditions which makes it hard for them to live after the manner of happiness (or live at all) and devote time to their families and the Lord’s work. Animals are treated horribly to produce food that is of lower and lower quality. The earth is plundered for metals and other resources to make gadgets that are built to break or become inadequate in a short time so people will buy the next model, always with the intent not to do what is best for people or Creation or God’s work but to look out for today’s and tomorrow’s bottom line.

Instead, God has taught a more excellent way. He encourages us to live with gratitude and charity, content with having the essentials we need today (see 1 Timothy 6:8; Matthew 6:11; Luke 12:22-34) and focused on giving to others (see Acts 20:35; Luke 18:22; D&C 4:5-6). This might not be the natural way of doing business but the Lord expects much more of us than to be natural (see Mosiah 3:19). He wants us to stop wasting our time and energy on things that aren’t really important (see 2 Nephi 26:31 and 9:51) and devote ourselves to making a better kind of culture, the Good Society: Zion.

This might seem a bold thing to say. I know it is. It is because it goes against our current culture. But the Gospel always leads people to do things that are opposed to what the world’s custom. Jesus said in the Old and New Worlds that we cannot serve God and Mammon (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13; and 3 Nephi 13:24). The word “Mammon” does not just mean general worldliness but refers specifically to everyday business practice. Again from Hugh Nibley, “The Hebrew word for financial activity of any kind is mamonut, and the financier is a mamonai; that is, financing is, quite frankly, in that honest language, the business of Mammon” (2). We can’t live in the Zion way that God wants us to live and abide by the common sense rules of business.

The Law of Moses, albeit a “lower law”, used the letter to train people to do all sorts of things that go against the principle of the bottom line. The Book of Deuteronomy is full of directives that, like modern tithing, prescribe a specific action that people are to do that gets in the way of them advancing their bottom line (3). For example, within the Law of Moses, if you have a vineyard or field, you are not allowed to prevent passerbys by from taking some food nor is the passerby allowed to make a profit by taking more than is needed in the moment (see Deuteronomy 23:24-25). And there’s the law of gleaning (made famous by the story of Ruth) which says that after one’s first pass at harvesting, one cannot go back and get any fruit that was missed—it must be left for the less fortunate (see Deuteronomy 24:19-21). Every seven years, all debts are to be forgiven (see Deuteronomy 15:1-2) and all slaves/servants are to be released and given the resources they need to be successful freemen (see Deuteronomy 15:12-14). None of these practices make good business sense. None of them increase the bottom line. All of them require the practitioner to intentionally do something less economically efficient in order to help others. They are meant to condition the Lord’s people to avoid excess and extortion and practice charity.

Christ fulfilled Moses’ Law and now we’re to live a higher one; higher because it does not so often spell out exactly what to do but prioritizes principles that we must figure out how to apply. These principles include the exhortation against excess and extortion, Jesus’ statements about serving God and Mammon, and the Law of Consecration which allowed Enoch’s people, the Lehites, and the early Christians to live the model lifestyle with all things in common among them. The specifics of how to apply this lifestyle are spelled out in detail in the Doctrine and Covenants (see Sections 42, 48, 51, 54, 56, 63-64, 72, 78, 82, 85, 92, 96, 104, and 119, among others).

I suggest that we who yearn for Zion can do things as individuals, as families, and as professionals to practice neglecting our bottom lines in favor of consecration. We each need to ponder and council and pray to figure out to do this within our own circumstances but here are a few ideas:

• Consider the real cost of things. If we learn that a product which costs less money actually costs a lot in terms of resources plundered or people exploited, we might choose not to purchase it. 
• Similarly, we might choose to spend less time trying to make or save money when that time could be given to helping people and doing the Lord’s work. 
• Make business decisions that, while not good for the organization’s bottom line, are the right thing to do.
• Give more fast offerings, humanitarian donations, and contributions to other worthy causes. When deciding how much to give, consider giving until it hurts. Here are some quotes to consider on this topic.
• Prioritize eternal things by making family time paramount. “We might all ask ourselves: do our children receive our best spiritual, intellectual, and creative efforts, or do they receive our leftover time and talents, after we have given our all to our Church calling or professional pursuits?” (Tad R. Callister).
• Make business decisions that allow ourselves and our employees / coworkers to prioritize family time.
• Study consecration and pray to know how to apply what we learn. Here are a few places to start: 
• https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/reflections-on-a-consecrated-life?lang=eng
• https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/01/to-prepare-a-people?lang=eng
• https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/02/living-the-principles-of-the-law-of-consecration?lang=eng
• https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1114&index=17
• All of this will be hard because Mammon is built to make these things hard to do. Pray and fast for help.

Some who read this might be thinking, “This is all good for people who have plenty but I have very little. I’m a victim of the Mammon machine! I just need to survive!” I get that. That’s a very understandable way to think. King Benjamin says to such:

And again, I say unto the poor, ye who have not and yet have sufficient, that ye remain from day to day; I mean all you who deny the beggar, because ye have not; I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give. And now, if ye say this in your hearts ye remain guiltless, otherwise ye are condemned; and your condemnation is just for ye covet that which ye have not received (Mosiah 4:24-25).

This helps us see that the opposing ways of Mammon and Consecration involve actions for sure but, at their core, they are mindsets. If we shun the mindset of Mammon and embrace that of Consecration, we will be OK and we’ll start finding ways to consecrate. And when we do that, we’re saying to God, “I’m not relying on the money the world says I need to get by. Instead, I’m relying on You.” God does not abandon those who rely on Him. I know that His promises to those who take no thought (3 Nephi 13:28-32), yoke themselves with Him (Matthew 11:30), and seek first the kingdom of God (3 Nephi 13:33) are true. He takes care of those who give everything to Him.

I pray that all of us will pray to know if the principles presented here are true and that we’ll pray to know how we should each apply them. I pray we’ll allow the Lord to hasten the time when you and I can live together in Zion that it might be written of us, “Surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God” (4 Nephi 1:16). I testify that prioritizing the bottom line will never bring happiness and that there is one real Way to joy and that Way is Jesus Christ. As we become His disciples and prioritize what He’s taught us to prioritize, we’ll find ourselves doing things differently than most people and that kind of different, like God’s beautiful Creation, is very good.

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Footnotes:

1. Nibley, Hugh W. “Work We Must, but the Lunch is Free”. Approaching Zion. vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989), 203–51. I highly recommend reading the entire article and the entire book. I think I can honestly say that, outside the scriptures, this book has had a more positive effect on my family’s lifestyle than other book I have read.
2. Nibley, Hugh W. “Our Glory or Our Condemnation”. Approaching Zion. vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989), 20-21.
3. Once again, I discovered this concept by reading Hugh Nibley: “How to Get Rich”. Approaching Zion. vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989).

Reflections on Our Eleventh Anniversary!

Today, Jamie and I celebrate 11 years of being married! I love her so freaking much. Just last week, my marriage came up naturally in a conversation with two of my students and I got emotional (i.e. I teared up in front of them) because I felt so fiercely how much I care about Jamie and how grateful I am to have experienced this journey together.

That said, our marriage wasn’t always so great. The first year was really hard! Let me explain:

First, you need to know that Jamie and I did not officially date very long at all. We had been friends as LDS missionaries and then as emailing buddies (living in different states) for about a year-and-a-half. We finally started to date while hanging out over a Christmas break from our respective universities. We dated four days before getting engaged and then were married four months later.

So, while we had been friends for a while, we didn’t date very long before getting married. I have no regrets about this choice (and there is even research which shows that time spent time is not a predictor of whether a marriage will last or not), it did come with consequences. After we got married, there were surprises. There were plenty of times when I thought that I didn’t sign up for being married to this or that aspect of my new wife.

On top of that, my personality loves possibility! And when my possibilities get limited, I often struggle with feeling confined. Making choices is hard for me because rather than focus on the good that comes from my choice, I tend to worry about missing out on all the possibilities that would have come with the other choices I could have made. This tendency was a real problem for enjoying the first year of marriage. Rather than focus on the goodness of choosing to marry Jamie, I often worried about how I was stuck with one choice and wondered about how the possibilities of marrying other people were now limited.

(BTW, I’m not proud that I felt this way. I feel very vulnerable sharing that truth but I think it is good to be vulnerable and I hope sharing this will help others.)

So, I spent the first year of marriage unhappy in many ways. You need not suppose that I was unhappy all the time. Jamie and I had lots of great experiences and growth together but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the concerns listed above continually bothered me and put a shadow over the first year of marriage.

I kept at marriage though simply because I believe in marriage. I believe that marriage is not just a legal contract but a covenant with God to stay with and love and honor my wife. So, out of love for God, I kept at the marriage in spite of my concerns. Then, some time into my second year of marriage, I had an important experience.

I decided I didn’t want to be unhappy in marriage anymore. I wanted to figure out a resolution for the doubts I was having. So, I began reading The Book of Mormon from beginning to end and highlighting every verse that taught me anything that could help me figure this out. One morning, I was reading in the book (I don’t remember where to be honest) and a thought hit me like lighting. It went something like this:

You didn’t get married to make yourself happy. You got married to make her happy.

That thought was the first marriage breakthrough and changed everything. It enabled me to forget about all the other possibilities and could have pursued, fully embrace my choice to marry Jamie, and dedicate myself to making her happy, not worrying about my own happiness. That day, I chose to change my perspective and look for ways to increase her happiness. Of course, I haven’t been perfect at always being unselfish ever since but I have worked hard to focus on putting her wants and needs before my own and really honoring the covenant I made at marriage to dedicate my life to Jamie’s happiness.

As I’ve followed through on those intentions over the ten-ish years since that breakthrough, I’ve discovered a profound, sublime, quiet satisfaction and joy in marriage. I love being married to Jamie so much and love her so much not so much because of any one moment but because I’ve made so many little sacrifices for her over the years.

Now, I must say here that I am lucky and blessed to have married someone who does not at all take advantage of my decision to put her before myself. She reciprocates it. I don’t think this principle works unless both partners in the relationship are trying to apply it. If one person is perpetually forgetting themselves to dedicate their actions to the other’s happiness and the other person never does so, it can become one sided and even abusive. This goes back to a blog post I wrote recently about the role of loving oneself which you can read by clicking here.

But in a situation where both partners forget themselves in service to the other person, trusting that the other person will serve them back, real unity and sublime joy grow. It is a wonderful thing I recommend to all. And I never would have discovered it had not my reverence for the principle of marriage moved me to stick with it through that hard year. I know many people who don’t like the idea of marriage for various reasons but I am so grateful for a covenant that moves people to stay together and figure things out so that can get through hard stuff and discover unspeakable joy at the end of the tunnel.

The Miracle of Loving Oneself

I am a big advocate for the concept of forgetting oneself and serving others. I have learned from personal experience that I am happiest when I’m other-minded. Focusing on the happiness of others has helped me overcome depression and minimize stress. My soul resonates with the exhortation of Jesus: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”.

But here’s the thing about the wording of that mandate. It says one must love one’s neighbor as oneself, no more than oneself. When I noticed this, it threw me off because I’ve been such an advocate of forgetting oneself to be other-minded. But it makes sense because my experience has also taught me that I can only love others to the degree and capacity with which I love myself.

Let me illustrate how important this is by pointing out three disastrous scenarios that come about because people try to love others without loving themselves:

Exhaustion: Too many of us try to help others without taking care of ourselves and end up getting burnt out. It’s like writing checks from an account without any money in it. The checks are impotent. Similarly, the love we try to give others is impotent if it is not backed by a full account of healthy love for ourselves. We become exhausted and are less helpful to other people because we don’t have enough self to give.

Abuse: Many abusers use the principle of “forget yourself and love your partner” to guilt the other person into sticking around and suffering the abusive relationship. This manipulation works because the promotion of “selflessness” is not being tempered with the idea of loving oneself. Thus, the beautiful principle of other-mindedness is mutated into something ugly and evil that allows the abuser to selfishly hurt others.

Incompleteness: As a high school teacher, I worry that some of the teenagers I observe enter in romantic relationships to try to complete themselves and it just doesn’t work. They end up being an emotional drain on the other person (and it’s really weird when both people are emotionally draining each other). I think it is better to be happy with ourselves and have developed a secure sense of self to the point that we have something to give to a partner rather than try to use romantic relationships to complete ourselves. For a beautiful sermon on this topic, check out Shel Silverstein’s “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O”. It’s great.

Now, I want to be really clear here that I’m not advocating for selfishness—I’m advocating for a healthy, confident love of oneself that is both a prerequisite for and a product of selflessness. And I know I just stated a contradiction. If it’s the product of selflessness, how can it also be a prerequisite for it? Does that mean we’re stuck in the plight of the young person who needs work experience to get a job but needs a job to get work experience?

Love is a transcendent principle. In fact, it is perhaps the most transcendent principle I have ever engaged with. And transcendent principles are usually rife with contradictions because they exist on a higher, spiritual plane and our intellects are limited to linear, one-thing-at-a-time processes. To a one-dimensional line, a two-dimensional circle is quite the extraordinary thing, rife with “contradictions” that defy the rules of the plane on which it exists—and imagine how both the line and the circle feel about a sphere! For us mortals existing in a one-dimensional world, so to speak, two or three-dimensional love is quite the miracle and quite the contradiction so it’s going to be hard to define and nail down at times.

But I know from experience that if we will engage with love for others and for ourselves, we will discover a completeness of love that will raise us to higher places and fill us with joy. And when we practice love for others, it will help us feel greater love for ourselves just as when we practice true love for ourselves, we’ll feel more able and willing to show love to others. If we try to love ourselves without loving others, we will probably end up in a selfish place. But, similarly, if we try to love others without loving ourselves, we’ll engage with a hollow fragment of love that will, ultimately, leave us burnt out, broken, or unsatisfied.

Christmas Update

At the beginning of December, I posted this post on our family Christmas traditions. I said I’d be posting more posts about how our traditions are going but honestly have not made time for it because I’ve been enjoying Christmas time so much! This one will probably be the only one I do before Christmas.

Our daily Christmas Devotionals have brought the Christmas spirit into our home and family more quickly and more powerfully than any year before! Every time someone asks me how I'm doing, I enthusiastically say I'm doing great and that I love this time of year. I find myself telling everyone how awesome our Christmas Devotionals are! I hope I don't come off as bragging—I just want to share it because it's making us so happy. It has been so wonderful to sing worshipful Christmas hymns each day and read scriptures together each day and set goals to serve people each day! I’ve learned that singing sacred music before reading scriptures really helps us kids get into scripture study more.

Also, our Church is doing this amazing Advent social media campaign called #LightTheWorld. It complements our Christmas Devotionals so well because each day there is a video that highlights something Christ did and how we can do it too in our own way! We’ve added these 30 second videos to our daily devotionals and have used the theme of each one to inform the gift we give the Savior that day.

The greatest blessing that has come of this is watching our kids get excited about doing good things. When the daily theme was “Heal the Sick”, one of our children chose to take all of the money in his little bank and give it to Primary Children’s hospital. When the theme was “Clothe the Naked”, one of them went and got some clothes and wanted to give them to people who don’t have clothes. One child likes to hold the baby Jesus from the nativity while we sing the daily Christmas hymn and always says, “I help Jesus” when we ask what gift we’ll give to the Savior each day. Seeing them do these things is such a blessing because they are doing them of their own accord.

Through all of this, I am reflecting a lot on Ebenezer Scrooge and how Dickens said that he learned to keep Christmas all year long. I wonder if there are aspects of our Christmas Devotionals that we should do even after Christmas is over. I don’t want them to become cliché or too normal for our kids so I think we’ll definitely have some aspects of the devotionals that are unique to December but maybe we can sing before scripture study all year long and maybe we can set and report on goals with scripture study somehow the rest of the year.

How have your Christmas traditions gone this year? What do you think it means to keep Christmas all year long?

Christmas Traditions

The Christmas season is such a magical time. There is something special in the air that makes me feel wonderful. But, of course, it isn’t special just because the calendar says December. There isn’t some arbitrary special feeling that comes upon people once a year because of the earth’s position in relation to the sun. It’s special because of how we as individuals, families, and a society act and think differently at this time of year.

That said, during our first three years of marriage, Jamie and I had to fight each year to “feel the Christmas magic”. It would get to be halfway into December and we’d realize that we felt terribly normal. We yearned to feel that special something during Christmas. Each year, we’d pray for help to feel the Christmas spirit and then we’d be lead to serve someone in need and worship Christ in some special way and then that special Christmas feeling would come.

After a few years of this, we learned our lesson and decided it was time to institutionalize some family Christmas traditions focused on service and on Christ. We began what we call our “Christmas Devotionals”. We made 30+ tree ornaments that each have a Christmas hymn on them as well as a scripture. The scriptures are segments of the Christmas story in the New Testament or prophesies from the Old Testament or Book of Mormon about Christ (you can read the list of scriptures and hymns we use here). We also bought an inexpensive notebook we use as a Christmas diary.

Each year, soon after Thanksgiving, we decorate our home for Christmas. We put up the Christmas tree but intentionally leave it just a little sparse with ornaments. Then, each evening until Christmas, one of the kids picks one of the special ornaments we made. We sing the Christmas hymn on it and read the scripture. Then, we get out the Christmas diary and each write down one thing we’ll do the next day to give a gift to the Savior. The gift is often in the form of helping others in some way. The next night, as we do the devotional, we talk about how it went giving those gifts and write down new ones.

We’ve learned from experience that the actions we do to give gifts to Jesus is the key to the whole thing bringing the Christmas spirit. One year, we decided to just do the hymn and scripture and skip writing down the gift. We wanted to speed up the process to accommodate small children. But we found that, without the commitment to action, we didn’t feel the magic of the season like we wanted. To go from hollow to holy, we had to not only sing and read scripture but also give of ourselves.

Other traditions have also helped us focus on Christ at this time of year. For example, we try to involve our chidren each year in giving gifts to a family in need. Jamie and I have a tradition of saying we’ll read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol each year. We have a tradition of not doing so each year—but this year will be different….

Personal traditions are great too! I like to dedicate my December personal scripture study to reading one of the New Testament Gospels or the “Fifth Gospel” in the Book of Mormon (which tells the story of Christ’s post-resurrection visit to the Americas). I rotate through one Gospel each year. I enjoy reflecting on Christ’s life, example, and sacrifice each December to remind me why His birth matters so much. Now that I’m blogging more, I’ve decided to try out a new tradition. For the month of December, I’ve revamped my blog to add some Christmas cheer and I’ll be posting short reports on special experiences we have as we go about our Christmas traditions.

Of course, it’s good to have Christmas traditions that are just fun too! We like to give gifts of course. We watch Home Alone together each year along with the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Every year, I like to welcome in the season by posting the funny parody video on Facebook. Fun and joy and laughter are part of the magic of Christmas along with service and Christ. But we’ve found that putting Christ (which includes serving Him and His children) at the heart of our festivities animates and quickens all the other pleasantries of the season.*

I hope this blog post will start a helpful thread of sharing tradition ideas with one another. So, please comment: what Christmas or Holiday traditions do you have? How do they help you feel the magic of the season?

*This makes me think of a prophetic quote given in a 1988 Christmas address, “...men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life” (Ezra Taft Benson, “Gifts and Expectations”, Ensign, December 1988). I highly recommend reading the entire article.

Living in the Now

Jamie and I have big plans for the future. When we sold our house over a year ago, we intentionally chose to rent next so that we could keep ourselves flexible to move on to the next big thing when all lines up correctly. We plan on moving closer to our family for the first time in our marriage, securing a good amount of land where we can produce as much of our own food as possible, and creating a lifestyle where neither of us works more than 20 hours/week so we can make family time and service to our community the center of our lives. We are so excited for these plans! A day does not go by that we do not make mention in our home of the magical “some day” when we’ll have the life we’re working for.

But the way I think about that future changed this week (and no, I’m not talking about the presidential election). I received a blessing this week—let me explain what that is: in our church, when we’re sick or going through a hard time, we follow the Biblical counsel in James 5:14-15 and call on our brothers in the faith to come and give a “blessing”. The person or people giving the blessing put their hands on the recipient, invoke the Savior’s name, and listen to the Holy Spirit to know what blessings to promise the person and what words of counsel or comfort to say. I’ve received and given many blessings in my life. It has been a beautiful way to increase a sense of community and also get help when I needed it. Countless times, blessings have helped me make positive and needed tweaks in life. In fact, the big goals our family has for the future came as a result of blessings Jamie and I received.

On Monday, a good friend and I gave each other blessings. Both of us were feeling anxious for the future. I was yearning for our goals to come more quickly and he was worried about the future of his love life. The blessing he gave me told me that God is pleased with the goals that I have and He smiles upon my enthusiasm toward reaching them but that He also wants me to focus more on the present. I was told that the experiences and relationships I enjoy while living in our current apartment will become precious memories but that I will miss out on that if I don’t live fully in the moment.

So, I’ve been trying to make mental course corrections this week. I’ve been thinking of teachings of Jesus such as “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” And how He taught His disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” rather than pray for tomorrow’s bread. I’ve also been thinking about gratitude and some of the teachings of Buddhism. I love how Buddhists recognize that everything will decay and pass away but rather than be pessimistic about this, they use it as a reason to be profoundly grateful that things do exist as they do now. This attitude can help one live with wonder in the moment.

This doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on planning or saying, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” I still believe that “if ye are prepared ye shall not fear” and still hold on to the goals we have for the future. But I was worrying too much about if we were doing enough to prepare for those goals. That worry was fear and it wasn’t helpful. We will steadily do what we need to do to reach our goals but we won’t worry about it. We’ll enjoy now and make memories now.

All of this makes me think about what Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday night about the election. If you haven’t watched it, then head on over and check it out. It’s great! He talks about how maybe the internet has created a world where we’re all politicking too much and we’re not really living. He’s not saying that we shouldn’t do our due part to be informed, vote, and influence policy in good directions but he is saying that we need to spend the majority of our time living. We need to live now.

So, I’m trying to make “live in the moment” more than a cliché. I’m not yet sure how to do that entirely. And would very much appreciate any advice from any of you. In the meantime, I went with my kids to the park the other night. We ran on the sidewalk that encircles the park over and over again, jumping over each crack. We all laughed and, in that moment, there was nothing in the world other than us, laughter, and connection. It was pretty great. We were alive.