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Friday, April 5, 2013

Jumbles of Thought

It's a copy and paste game with my files right now...which means a lot of waiting around.

So, I'm looking around me and finding old notebooks and opening them.  I keep notebooks like some people keep purses; everything goes in them.  Personal thoughts, school notes, beginnings of short stories, scriptures - you get the idea.  Opening one of my notebooks is like opening up my life for the few months I carried it around.  It's probably gibberish for most people who glance through it.  However, for me, I am immediately transported to where I was during that time.  I know what I was struggling with, rejoicing in, thinking about and focusing on.

Here are a few things that I found that I thought might be worth sharing:

From my "Japan" notebook - written while in a lecture from a woman who was born without hands and still managed to obtain an education and get married and raise children:
"There is something so beautiful about the tenacity of the human spirit to change one's circumstances, one's prospects and one's life.  There is something absolutely miraculous in the power of love to motivate ourselves  and others around us to change themselves and their lives."

From my "Japan" notebook - an excerpt of a story I started on the bus and never finished:
"My mother had a weakness for sleeping people; she could never pass a sleeping person without feeling the need to take care of them.  People who fell asleep on the couch in our house would often wake up with a blanket tucked around them, or to a cool fan blowing on them, depending on the weather.  Strangers in the park or in buildings might wake up to find a treat she would purchase at a nearby convenience store.  I always wondered what other people thought of my mother's interesting habit..."

I call it the "Korean" notebook because hangul accompanies these pictures throughout

From my "Korean" notebook - written in a church meeting:
"If I were to fail out of my PhD...then the Atonement is still real."

From my "Korean" notebook -
"Dear Makoto,
  Thank you for making a difference.
     For believing that you can make a difference.
        For inspiring others to believe they can as well."

The pictures in my "Korean" notebook are so cute

From my "Japan" notebook - from a Mormonism panel given at UVa
Fiona Givens: "Mortality is educative, not punitive."

From my "Japan notebook" - from notes on a talk I was working on but never gave
"After Christ died in Jerusalem, the American continent suffered great upheaval - earthquakes, fires, whirlwinds and tempests - followed by utter darkness for three days.  In the midst of that darkness, those who survived the destruction, heard a voice.  That voice was the voice of Jesus Christ and he pleaded with them, "Will ye not now return to me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?"  (3 Nephi 9:13)  Think a a moment about that situation.  Cities have fallen into the sea, been covered up by mountains, been swallowed up in the earth.  I'm sure many of those survivors sustained injuries, large and small.  The earth was broken up and the scriptures say, "insomuch that the [earth was] found in broken fragments and in seams and in cracks."  (3 Nephi 8:18)  All of the physical damage can be used as an analogy to show the emotional and spiritual damage these survivors suffered as well.  Broken earth is a terrifying reminder of damage but so also are broken families, home, relationships and hearts.  Physical injuries must be attended to but so are the internal emotional wounds inflicted by others or even ourselves through destructive choices or habits or trials.  When Christ, the Master Physician asked to heal them, to what was he referring?  Well, everything.  All of it.  He wants to heal all of our injuries, all of our wounds, all of our sufferings."

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