Kyra Moon

 Me: Nephi's Courage is one of my favorite Primary songs. What is one of your favorites? 5yo: Follow the Prophet . . . because I like learning about atoms. As it turns out, there is a theory called panpsychicism which suggests that even atoms have awareness and thus an ability to obey God. Who knew that when we sing, "Adam served the Lord by following His ways," some kids were learning that atoms do that too?

Tonight I was playing some songs for the kids on the piano and they would guess what I was playing. When I played the theme song for "PJ masks," one of them yelled, "Hey, it's the Skip Intro song!" The intro song has become the skip intro song. Video streaming has redefined the role of music in media.

 I have been thinking about the Parable of the Sower from a different angle this morning. My thoughts aren't all fleshed out but here's what I've got so far. Sometimes, my family sits down together and watches old family videos from when we were kids. It is funny to see that our facial expressions and mannerisms haven't changed too much since then. My dad calls it "continuity of personality."  I think we all have a lot more continuity of personality than we might think. Don't get me wrong -- this is mostly a good thing. We are all still the same wonderful people we were when we were kids. We are all inherently good and creative and curious. But we still all have our quirks. We still have our triggers. And here's the part that might seem hard to believe -- those don't change even when we change our minds. That is, you might have had a political, ideological, or religious shift in your life. You might look back at your former self and think, "Wo...

Raphael came to paint the Nativity scene.

Today, I'm grateful for toilets and running water. If you want to stop reading there, go for it. Because what follows is an assortment of thoughts that have been floating around my brain for a few weeks. Bear with me. To me, one of the most important requirements for civilization is a good wastewater system. When you are living by yourself or with just a few people, you don't need a fancy system. If there's no one else nearby to worry about, you can probably figure out a way to get rid of it that doesn't make you sick. But as soon as you get a lot of people living close to each other, you need a good system or there will be a lot of water-borne illness. So when a city has figured that out, I count that as a huge success, one that will really allow people to get out of poverty because they won't be dying of cholera or dealing with hookworm. (Look up Lowndes County, Alabama. It's a problem there.) When a society can handle something this unpleasant in a sanitary w...

 I once read of someone who believed something but after a lot of prayer and scripture study and temple attendance concluded he was wrong. For me, I began where he ended but after a lot of prayer and scripture study and temple attendance concluded that my original belief (where he ended) was wrong. I'm not here to say whether he's right or I'm right (and we are both allowed to change our minds). But it does make me think that God does care about us knowing truth but He also wants us to have a journey to find it. He wants us to challenge our assumptions and soften our hearts. He wants us to approach Him with curiosity. And of course, some things should be rocks. And I would rather stand on a rock that doesn't move. But if I have to drink unfamiliar water, I'd rather drink water from a moving source than a stagnant source. And I hope that someday we'll all be able to drink the best moving, living Water -- springing forth from an unchanging Rock.

  Note: this is one of my Holy Week posts. And it deals with a lot of heavy pregnancy topics. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent." -Psalms 22:1-2 There were a few weeks when I did everything I could possibly think of to keep the fetus alive last summer. It seems almost silly now, thinking of what I tried to do in hopes that maybe, maybe the swelling in her would go down. First, I refused the X-ray at the dentist because I couldn't bear the thought that the trace radiation would do anything to her. (Perhaps it was good I refused it because it turns out I had two cavities that I would not have wanted to worry about back then.) I then cut out sugar, figuring that  the sugar could possibly be causing inflammation of some kind (while knowing of course that her swelling was because of her body, not mine)...