Come Listen to Living Prophets - April 1

General Conference Weekend.  Watch it on TV or find later on lds.org.  BYU TV will also carry it at:  http://byutv.org/schedule/week  What is General Conference?  Find out here: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/about-general-conference?lang=eng

Good Thoughts to Live By #11 & Oregon Coast Fun With Family

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men: . . . that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life . . . 1 Timothy 2:1-2

Praying for the welfare of friends and family each day, gives me happiness and hope.

A son, I hadn't heard from in some time, nor seen for three years, called the other day just to talk.  He put my little granddaughter on the phone so I could hear her play the guitar and sing.  What joy that simple act of thoughtfulness brought to my heart!  I saw a quote today which said, "Family--where life begins and love never ends."  So true.  No matter how long there is between contact, our family still means everything to us.  Our love doesn't decrease even when we don't see or hear from our loved ones very often.

I had the good fortune of driving to Oregon with my oldest daughter a couple weeks ago to visit my youngest daughter and her husband.  Again, my heart did sing every minute I was able to enjoy with these loving, remarkable women as my friends and daughters.  We had such fun!  We all share a love of the ocean, which may come with the genes, since my mother and grandmother instilled that in me at a very young age while growing up in California.  I spent years fishing at the wharf at Bodega Bay, camping on the beach, and combing the beaches of California and Oregon.  We tried to take the kids out to the coast often, leaving the mountains of Utah behind so they knew there was more to the world to enjoy.  I cannot tell you how many "special" pieces of driftwood, rocks, and shells we've collectively saved over the years.  All of us have unique treasures the ocean coughed up on the beach so we could discover them, wrap them up carefully and carry them home to leave them sitting somewhere on a shelf, in a jar, or in a drawer forever.

Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.
  -Marcus Antoninus


A wise man will take more opportunities than he finds.
  -Francis Bacon

Words cannot express things; speech does not convey the spirit.  Swayed by words, one is lost; blocked by phrases, one is bewildered.
  -Mumon

If there is any absolute, it is never more than this one, you, this instant, in this action.
  -Charles Olson


Please subdue the anguish of your soul.  Nobody is destined only to happiness or to pain.  The wheel of life takes me up and down by turn.
   -Kalidasa, dramatist (c. 4th century)

Wonderful, wonderful! . . . Listening with ears, nothing is heard, hearing with eyes, everything is known.
  -Tozan

Just as a mother protects her child with her own life, in a similar way we should extend and unlimited heat to all beings.

  -Buddhist Teaching

My grandma always said, "Don't turn your back on the ocean!"  I've told my kids the same thing, but they don't listen . . .

If we don’t turn around, we just may get where we’re going.
  -American Indian Saying

Is death the last sleep?  No, it is the last and final awakening.
  -Sir Walter Scott


Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead.  It is going on all the time.  We are in it now.
  -Charlotte Perkins Gilman

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is itself a choice.
  -William James

The path that lies beyond our immediate grasp is infinite.
  -Gregory of Nyssa

Good Thoughts to Live By #10

And lo a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."  Matthew 3:17

I love this picture of the Savior being baptized.  It is called,  To Fulfill All Righteousness, by Liz Lemon Swindle and is found in Favorite Songs for LDS Children, which I received as a birthday present last year.  The books with Christian art in them are my favorites.  The camera flash on the page over Christ's head adds a soft glow that helps me imagine what it may have looked like when the Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove, descended to verify Jesus Christ truly is the Son of God.

Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.
  -Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

I like to think of my most valiant efforts to control everything as a source of God’s greatest amusement and entertainment.
  -Susan


Please do not get caught in that place where you think you know.
  -Zen Saying


Truth is given, not to be contemplated, but to be done.  Life is an action, not a thought.
  -F. W. Robertson


We find great things are made of little things.  And little things go lessening till at last comes God behind them.
  -Robert Browning


Life and death are of supreme importance.  Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.  Each of us should strive to awaken.  Awaken.  Take heed, do not squander your life.
  -Evening Chant


To see into impermanence, to actually see impermanence . . . this is the mind which determines that I must wake up for the benefit of all beings.
  -D#SYMBOL  \f "Symbol"95gen, describing his experience as a small boy


It is eternity now, I am in the midst of it, it is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air.  Nothing has come; it is now.  Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.
  -Richard Jeffries


May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.  May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
  -Edward Abbey


Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
  -Melody Beattie


Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God.
  -Elizabeth Barrett Browning


I learn every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything.
  -Rainer Maria Rilke


I know in my heart that man is good.  That what is right will always eventually triumph, and there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.
  -Ronald Reagan

Good Thoughts to Live By #9

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.  1 John 4:11

I decorated for my Valentine.  He's even got a heart on his eye medicine bottle.

Journeys bring power and love back into you.  If you can’t go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self.  They are like shafts of light, always changing, and you change when you explore them.
  -Jalal Al-Din Rumi


Every day you must say to yourself, “Today I am going to begin.”
  -Jean Pierre De Caussade SJ

This says, "Be My Valentine," though it is hard to read.  He certainly is mine and I appreciate the person he is.  In the quote below, I must say my husband has earned some idle time in his later years.  After 24 years of service in the Air Force, during the Vietnam Era--three tours there), and 19 years of teaching elementary students, plus serving as a bishop in his ward, along with many more thousands upon thousands of volunteer service hours in community and church work, he certainly has been industrious.  His current church calling is teaching ten-year-old children .

To do a great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.

  -Samuel Butler


You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
  -Mahatma Gandi


Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
  -Edwin Hubbel Chapin


Doing you best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
  -Oprah Winfrey


You really can change the world if you care enough.
  -Marian Wright Edelman


The purpose of life is to discover your gift.   The meaning of life is giving your gift away.
  -David Viscott

In this photo is a Thomas Kinkade painting.  He is a highly most loved and accomplished artists.  He is called "The painter of light," and he "gives" his light away to help people see the light, beauty, love, and God's hand in the world.

We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.
  -John F.  Kennedy


Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
  -Plato


No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
  -Aesop


O Lord, give me understanding concerning Thyself, for I cannot understand Thee except by means of Thee.
  -Sufi Prayer


From the moment we cease trying to swim upstream and begin to flow with the current, something changes within us.
  -Arthur Sokoloff


To attend to creation is to attend to God.  To attend to the moment is to attend to eternity.
  -Pirke Avot


A monk was asked, “What do you do there in the monastery?”  He replied, “We fall and get up, we fall and get up, we fall and get up.”
 St. Benedict

Good Thoughts to Live By #8

Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.  2 Thessalonians 2:17

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
  -Christopher Robin


A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.
  -Father James Keller

Celebrate with a treat or a party on Red-Letter Failure Days (these are days when everything goes wrong).
  -Judith Towse-Roberts


The most solid stone in the structure is the lowest one in the foundation.
  -Kahlil Gibran


Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
  -Friedrich Nietzsche

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the sea.
  -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Mississippi River near Nauvoo

Life is a gift; a gift to be opened and shared often, don’t let it collect dust or fall into the wrong hands.
  -Rebecca Spindler


You should let go and make yourself empty and calm.
  -Ying-An

Mississippi River sunset near Nauvoo, Illinois

Good Thoughts to Live By #7 & 2011 Venice Festival

. . . hearken unto me, and open your ears that ye may hear, and your hearts that ye may understand, and your minds that the mysteries of God may be unfolded to your view.  
  Mosiah 2:9

A dear friend we met in England travels the world and takes wonderful photographs.  She shared the 2011 Venice Festival with us via email, so I'm sharing a few of the gorgeous photos she took while there.  Thanks, Eva!

I’ve never seen before . . . but as the days and years passed by, I came to comprehend that joy is in the journeying, not at the journey’s end.   -D. Colgan

You don’t have to act as if you care; you just have to care enough to act.
  -R. Dreyfuss

Turn your losses into a plus.  I think if you approach it right, you can turn every setback you have into an advantage.
  -George Allen


Each time you look up in the sky
Or watch the fluffy clouds drift by,
Or feel the sunshine warm and bright
Or watch the dark turn into light,
Or hear a bluebird gaily sing
Or see the winter turn to spring,
Or stop to pick a daffodil
Or gather violets on some hill,
Or touch a leaf or see a tree–
It’s all God whispering, “This is Me.”
  -Helen Steiner Rice

A person’t worth to a community or a nation is no longer measured by one’s physical assets, but rather by one’s ability to render service to humanity.
  -James Cash Penney


You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die.  Or when.  You can only decide how you’re going to live.  Now.
  -Joan Baez


The only gift is a portion of thyself.
  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
  -George Eliot


If I Had My Child To Raise Over Again


If I had my child to raise all over again,
I’d finger paint more, and point the finger less.
I’d do less correcting, and more connecting.
I’d take my eyes off of my watch, and watch with my eyes.
Would care to know less, and know to care more.
I’d take more hikes, and fly more kites.
I’d stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I’d run through more fields, and gaze at more stars.
I’d do more hugging, and less tugging.
I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.
I’d build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I’d teach less about the love of power,
and more about the power of love.
  -Diane Loomans

Good Thoughts to Live By #6 & Eden's Beauty & The Ugliest Thing in Our Neighborhood--Won't you be my Neighbor?

[he/she who] shall . . . trust in God shall be supported.  Alma 36:3; Alma 38:5  

This is what sits in my front yard to mar the beauty of our surroundings, though it is trying to blend in to the earth the longer it's there.  I would like to blow this thing up.  Seriously.  I even asked the neighbor if he had any dynamite when I was in an especially frustrated and desperate mood.  He actually had some previously, but had gotten rid of it because it had become unstable like me.

Instead of seeing our home first upon arriving at our driveway, people see this pile of junk.  It has been rotting into the ground for 18 years and has tried my patience beyond measure.  My husband is attached to it--must be one of those things only a man can understand.  It is embarrassing to tell people how to find our house:  "Drive down the road until you see this ugly, beat up, yellowish, rusty Ford pickup yard ornament squatting in our front yard--you can't miss it."

Obviously, because I have "nagged" about it being hauled away a few times over the years when I've been ready to tear my hair out, the man of the house has dug in his heels and refuses to see this is important to me.  Very, very important.  I-have-about-reached-the-end-of-my-rope important.  It is also a safety hazard due to the fact it harbors a huge hornet's nest, which is deadly if my oldest daughter should happen to be stung and not have her EpiPen.

I prayed a lot for patience when I was younger and the kids were growing up (when you really, really need it).  That prayer has been answered without a doubt.  Now, why can't my prayer be answered that this monstrosity disappear?  Or, am I missing something here?  Is this actually a thing of beauty?  An antique worth admiring?  A symbol of man's independence from women's judgement or control?

Ah (light bulb goes on), I am starting to get it.  It is all in how one wishes to look at this.  It is actually a work of art in the process of becoming a pile of rust, which cannot reach its destiny until the elements have worked their magic upon it.  Oh.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose.

   -Kahlil Gibran

We see things not as they are, but as we are.

  -Talmud

A giant goldfish?

We advance toward our destiny when we encourage others to reach theirs.
  -Paul Wesselmann

Our next-door neighbor's sign

Remember there is no such thing as a small act of kindness.  Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
  -Scott Adams


In the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
  -Albert Camus

The future belongs to those who see and trust the best things in the worst times.
  -Harold Blake Walker

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.
  -William Arthur Ward

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things . . . I am tempted to think . . . there are no little things.
  -Bruce Barton


You can get everything you want in life, if you just help enough other people get what they want.
  -Zig Ziglar

Let your Life speak.
  -Quaker proverb

We must use time creatively and forever realize that the time is ripe to do right.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

I saw, of course, the cliff,
I saw the turbulent ocean blue;
But everyone else was going that way,
So I thought that I would too.
  -Larry Lemming

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
  -Emerson