if there's one thing i've learned, it's that I have so much more to learn....

I am 19 years old. I go to a really great university with excellent professors and wonderful classes and I learn a lot of really great stuff. And the crazy thing is, the more I learn, the more I see how much more there is to learn. If that makes sense.

Sometimes when things are going really well, or when I feel like I've grasped a certain concept, I get this attitude like, "Wow, this is great! I have now Learned. I am now Mature. I Understand. I'm practically Finished, like, 60 years ahead of schedule! Must be because I'm part of that chosen generation."

And I think God must really think this is hilarious! I think He sort of laughs and says, "Oh honey. You're nineteen. You're a freshman. You might think you're an Adult, but you are still My Child, and I have so much more in store for you."

And then in His infinite love and wisdom something happens to put me back in my place. To humiliate me, literally! to make me humble. And He shows me how infinitely more there is for me to learn, and how far I have to go.

That's how life is I guess. We learn line upon line, precept upon precept. I have all these thoughts today, and experiences are going to happen tomorrow that will change me and teach me more, and they'll build on each other, and I'm never done! There is always more for me to learn. That's the beautiful thing about it :)

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. 

Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. 

This is a kind of death. ~Anaïs Nin

work stories by julia II

Julia Denise Green is one of my most favorite people in the world. I think she is simply fantastic. ♥ And her work stories are the funniest of my life. So fabulous I must share them here with you :) :) 


work is literally the most awkward thing of my whole life. 
~customers trying to swipe their cards on the thing where they enter the pin. i swipe it on my own machine. you just enter your pin. also, customers grabbing a pen to sign the receipt when they said they wanted debit. you don't have to sign for that....
~me asking "debit or credit" right as they are saying one or the other so i don't actually hear what they say and have to ask them again.
~my interaction with customers. i'm not good at small talk. i hate small talk. "how are you today?" and "wow, it's rainy out!" are so done. therefore, customers are literally running out the door to escape the discomfort i cause them.
‎~when my boss comes to drop off the orders
me: eldon, loni said the computer is being weird. {describes problem}
eldon: well maybe, but the problem is probably just loni.
me: oh yeah. okay... {awkward silence.... and SCENE!}
~me nearly tripping and dying any time i try to dance. that place is a death trap.
what is wrong with me? they surely didn't hire me for my social skills...

to forgive

Growing up, I had forgiveness explained to me a lot of different ways.

One was simply that God asked us to forgive, so we should. This is a good reason. Sometimes we do things just because God said so; we don't need a reason, we just trust Him. But it's not very convincing to me.

So another reason offered is, how can we expect forgiveness if we do not extend it ourselves? Jesus said,

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." {Matt. 6:14-15, NKJV}

In the Parable of the Unjust Servant, Jesus teaches me that I can't expect God to forgive me if I withhold forgiveness from others, and reminds me that I have been forgiven a much greater debt than I can ever imagine. I owe Jesus Christ such a huge debt, and He frankly forgave me. How then can I withhold forgiveness from my fellowman, for such a pitiful debt in comparison? "Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" {Matt. 18:33, NIV} C.S. Lewis wrote,

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgive the inexcusable in you." {“On Forgiveness” from The Weight of Glory}

I have done so many incredibly stupid things in my life, yet still I hope that I will be forgiven. Can I expect that God will forgive me, and not them? If I believe that I can change and be forgiven, then I have to believe that everyone can do the same; that nothing is outside the scope of Christ's infinite Atonement.

work stories by julia

by my favorite girl, Julia Green. I likeloveadore her work stories :) :) 

-awkwardness at work
~shirt was not ready for a customer that i sort of recognized from school last year
~me resuming singing before the door fully closes behind customer so he pops his head back in the door thinking that i said something to him
~tripping on the drawstring of a laundry bag in the back while customer is by front counter
-i think that's it but i feel i had more to tell you
i love you lots and lots more. i hope you enjoyed my day. i think i did.

why it's so hard t

"Normally, when a person tries to read or concentrate on a project or task, the amount of beta waves in the brain increase. 

beta waves

These are the fastest waves in the brain and help keep a person attentive.

A person with ADHD who tries to concentrate produces slower theta waves, which have the opposite effect."

theta waves

--Matters of the Mind, W. Dean Belnap, M.D 

So telling a person with ADHD to "concentrate harder" is really going to have the opposite effect; sitting down and "focusing" is going to make them more antsy and distracted. They'll need to learn other ways of producing beta waves. 

I don't know if I have ADHD; without any formal training or real knowledge, I'm inclined to believe that a lot of people have it to some degree. This quote intrigued me because sometimes I feel like the more I try to concentrate, the more difficult it becomes. Maybe it has something to do with brain waves!

in.ter.es.ting.

:)

new favorite vocab word

eschatological {gesundheit!}


it means "referring to the last days." 


as in, Isaiah's prophesies can be Messianic {referring to the Messiah} in nature, eschatological in nature, or both! 


:) 


and that is the vocab word of the day.

of Jyana, understanding, and becoming One.

In Hindu belief, one of the ways to escape the eternal wheel of reincarnation is Salvation through the Way of Knowledge, or Jyana. This belief holds that an understanding of the reality that all things are One is the way to salvation.


In order to leave this wheel of perpetual reincarnation, one must understand that Brahman (the One Reality, the Universal Life, the World Soul) and Atman (the Individual Life, the Human Personality) are one and the same. Their scripture records an effort to describe what this means:


A father asks his son Shvetaketu to break open a fig, and then to break open one of the seeds inside. "What do you see there?" he asks. "Nothing at all, sir," his son replies. Then the father says to his son:

"Verily, my dear, that subtle essence which you do not perceive - from that very essence, indeed, my dear, does this great fig tree thus arise. Believe me, my dear, that which is the subtle essence - this whole world has that essence for its Self; that is the Real...; that is the Self; that (subtle essence) art thou, Shvetaketu." Chandogya Upanishad 6:12-14 

Kind of confusing. But I like it for that reason. It makes me think.

desperate times...

Today i walked a mile in the snow to get a mcchicken, fries, and a mcflurry. It had to happen. I was dying. And when we finally got there I was so excited that I was running and jumping and making excitement sounds.

They only have super spicy mcchickens here in this crazy state, which is a tad upsetting, since they light my mouth on fire. Still good though. Just drink lots of water.

Best idea of my life: peanut m&m mcflurry. Why do these things not exist yet? I don't know. But i want them to. So much want.

♥♥♥

infinity means forever

I love my advanced religion class this semester. Today I learned that we will never stop relying on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It is infinite; we never get to check off "apply the Atonement in my life," or be like, "thanks Jesus, that was cool," and move on. We will always be relying on our Savior who ransomed us and provided the way for Eternal Life. He is the reason there is a life after death; the reason I can be reunited with my Father in Heaven and live with Him forever.  I will always be indebted to my Savior for his great Atoning Sacrifice.

"He is my Savior and my Redeemer. Through giving His life in pain and unspeakable suffering, He has reached down to lift me and each of us and all the sons and daughters of God from the abyss of eternal darkness following death. He has provided something better—a sphere of light and understanding, growth and beauty where we may go forward on the road that leads to eternal life. My gratitude knows no bounds. My thanks to my Lord has no conclusion." --Gordon B. Hinckley

I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify Your name forever. ~Ps. 86:12 

When we've been here ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun.

~Amazing Grace 

Poetry and the Mind of God

 Reading for class late one night. Stumbled upon this little gem:

"Scholars are undecided as to whether his [Isaiah's] book is a collection of carefully prepared compositions by the prophet himself, or whether his inspiration was simply so intense that his poetry is an expression of the mind of God." Victor L. Ludlow

Holy cannoli.

That is really, really cool.

how to think; not what to think

I recently read an article called "Diagnosing and Treating the Ophelia Syndrome" by Dr. Thomas Plummer that really intrigued me.  He writes that the "Ophelia Syndrome" occurs when a person is being taught by someone in authority not to think for themselves, but to "think [themselves] a baby" and trust their teacher to tell them what to think. {see Hamlet, Act I sc. iii}


To describe the syndrome in modern terms, Dr. Plummer quotes S. I. Hayakawa: 

Most people don't know the answer to the question, "How are you? How do you feel?" The reason why they don't know is that they are so busy feeling what they are supposed feel, thinking what they are supposed to think, that they never get down to examining their own deepest feelings... With authority figures telling us what to think and how to feel, many of us are busy playing roles, fulfilling other people's expectations. Not many of us ask ourselves, "How do I feel? What do I think?" - and wait for an answer. (S.I. Hayakawa, "What Does It Mean to Be Creative?," Through the Communication Barrier. ed. Arthur Chandler [New York: Harper & Row, 1979], 104-105)

This struck me because I have at times felt like I had to give a certain answer. When people asked me how I was or how school was going, I would automatically say "good!" - even if it wasn't true. I'm supposed to feel good, and I'm supposed to like school, so I would just tell people what they wanted to hear. Or at school, I would just give the answer I knew the teacher was looking for, instead of voicing my honest opinion. It's easier that way, and you usually get a better grade. Teachers tell us the things to know; some would argue that that's their job. 

Dr. Plummer would disagree. He posits that,

"Eventually every discipline enters into the unknown, the uncertain, the theoretical, the hypothetical, where teachers can no longer tell students with certainty what they should think." 

I firmly believe it is more important for me to know how to learn, rather than what to learn. An ability to think and discover for myself will serve me far better than a memorized list of dates, facts, and figures.

MILK♥

I love milk mustaches.
I love drinking milk straight out of the jug.
I love drinking milk instead of nasty utah poison water.
I put extra milk on my cereal so that i can drink it.
I make brownies so that i can have an excuse to drink more milk 
{really, that's why i do it...}
I put milk on my ice cream, because it makes it all crystal-y. 
{milk on ice cream is THE best thing. straight from the clouds of heaven.}

I LOVE MILK.

Bibical Trivia

This blew my mind:

O L D      T E S T A M E N T
1  2  3       1 2  3 4  5  6  7  8  9

How many books in the Old Testament? 39.

How many in the New Testament? 3*9=27
How many in the Bible? 39+27=66.


Also 666 is the Devil's number so... take one off to get the Bible's number? Works for me :)


Furthermore, the Old Testament can be divided into three sections: 

• The Law (Torah), also known as the five books of Moses; 
• The Prophets, (Nevi'im); and
• The Writings (Ketuvim), which is sort of a catch-all category for everything else. 

Together these are called the "TaNaKh," which is just the Hebrew word for their Holy Book.


And also, in each section, there is one book that is far and away the most important, as measured by how frequently it is quoted. Can you guess which they are? :)

• The Law (Torah) - Deuteronomy. Most people would probably guess Genesis or Exodus. However, Deuteronomy {which means "repetition of the Law,"} contains the entire Mosaic Law, including all of the Ten Commandments; plus the all important Shema, which is basically the definitive statement of Jewish identity: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord."
• Prophets (Nevi'im) - Isaiah. Duh. He is quoted everywhere. {Plus I learned this in my Isaiah class so it was kind of a giveaway.}
• Writings (Ketuvim)- Psalms. Fun fact - Jesus Christ quotes the Psalmist more often than he quotes anyone else, even Isaiah. 

Pretty interesting, huh? I thought so :) 

Humility --> Excellence? Yes!

Before reading Henry B. Eyring's speech, "A Child of God," I had never really considered the connection between humility and educational excellence.

In his speech, he posits that great learners:

1. Welcome correction,
2. Keep commitments,
3. Work hard,
4. Help other people, and
5. Expect and overcome resistance. 

He writes that knowing who we are - children of God - will lead to feelings of humility, which will in turn give us the power to become excellent learners.

Each of his suggested habits requires humility to implement into real life:

• It takes humility enough to take criticism without feeling cut down; welcoming correction takes humility and self-knowledge above and beyond what's normally expected.
• If we know that we are children of God, progressing to become more like Him, we will make it a priority to keep our commitments, since He does so perfectly. 
• If we know that we aren't perfect, but also that we are children of the most Intelligent Being in the universe, we will work hard further our education. 
• We will help other people, knowing that they are also children of our Heavenly Father. We will have the humility to realize that they have something to offer us as well. 
• We will know that we will experience difficulties, yet none we can't overcome. 

He concludes with this promise:

The way to grow in the faith that we are the children of our Heavenly Father is to act like it. The time to start is now. And if we act upon it, we will be blessed with a humility that gives us the power to learn and the power to serve and the power to rise up to the privileges that God wants to grant us. 

So, that's what I will do. :)