Stolen Quote #37

From Bob Richards, a truly adorable man.  Here he's speaking about his wife:

She didn't sit around in High School dreaming that she'd be Mrs. Raving Lunatic.  But she married me and that's what she gets.

Actually, she said no the first time.

Classic!

Bob - passed out from too much Christmas fun.

I'm Dreaming of ...

Nothing.

Christmas is a weird time of year for me.  I mean, I like it, but sometimes I feel very ... unChristmas-y.  Holidays aren't really my thing. 

We do hang up stockings and put up the tree and nativity.  And we read Christmas stories every night in December.  And we listen to Christmas music off and on.  And there's plenty of hot chocolate.  And family.  And wonderfulness.

But I don't spend a lot of time Planning Out Perfectness for the kids.  I don't worry too much about memories they will or won't have.  I don't try to think of the perfect foods or the perfect music or any of that.

I remember last year some time Elijah looked at me and said, "Mom, why do you hate Christmas?"  (This makes me laugh, so you know.)  I told him that I didn't hate Christmas.  Miciah chimed in, too.  "Then why don't you let us put up the Christmas tree until right before Christmas?"  Turns out they had a list of things that, to them, meant that I hated Christmas.

So let's be clear.  I don't hate Christmas.  What I hate is the pressure everyone feels to make Christmas Perfect or Magical or Amazing or whatever.  I reject that part of Christmas.  Why do things HAVE to be done on a specific day?  Why do I HAVE to make those cookies?

And honestly, I like dreaming of nothing.  I like keeping an open mind to what Christmas can mean for me and my family this year. 

Last year we went to Krohn's Conservatory on Christmas Eve day.  We'd never done that before, and it was great.  I bought a poinsettia and realized that I can't live without a poinsettia during the long winter months. Then, for Christmas Eve dinner we were lazy and did fish and rice and homemade bread and during the dinner realized that it was a great way to talk to the kids about the baby Jesus who grew up and performed a few miracles involving fish and bread.  ...  We wouldn't have had any of those experiences if we had been focused on making Christmas Perfect. 

So this year I hope that your Christmas isn't always 100% Perfect.  That's my wish for you.

(Though, if it could be worked out, I'd prefer a little snow.) 

How I Became Mormon

A good friend of mine, Jules Q, asked for important life stories for Christmas, and suggested the story of how one's faith was found or lost.  So I thought I'd put some time into writing that up, and then why not share it on my blog.  So here it is:

How I Became Mormon

I was born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I can remember times of feeling the Spirit even when I was quite young.  But as a teenager, I was around some crappy Mormons doing some crappy things to people.  I thought about what I believed a Mormon should be like:  Open, accepting of others, forgiving, willing to listen.  And I tried to make that match the Mormon teenagers I was seeing.  Sometimes at school someone would say, "Are you a Mormon?" and I would cringe.  "Yes, I'm sorry.  Who do you know?"  I decided that I didn't want to be Mormon if Mormons were crappy people.  I didn't want to have to constantly say, "I'm Mormon but I'm not like them!"

When I moved to California when I was 16 years old, I came with an innocent long-distance relationship to a great non-Mormon guy.  He wasn't religious at all, actually, but he was a pretty decent guy.  He had this one idea, though, that I found intriguing.  His idea was lying.  He lied about things all the time as a sort of shield.  It was a cute pet thing that he did, and I was entranced.  So I decided to try it.  An especially epic lie I told was to a friend who was trying to include me since I was a new move-in.  She had a party and I didn't want to go.  She called and asked me if I was coming to the party that started in about an hour, and I said that I couldn't because I'd fallen off the back deck and broke my leg.  The next day at church she came rushing up to me and was understandably furious when she found out I'd lied.  I, of course, thought it was hilarious.

I became wrapped up in these lies.  I don't remember specifically what led up to it, but I do remember the circumstances of when my Mom called me on it.  We were in the car driving back from the orthodontist's office and I tried to make my calloused lying sound like some awesome grown-up thing.  I don't even remember what my Mom specifically said, but I remember the impact it made.  She nicely but firmly said her piece and then let it go.  My Mom is cool like that.  My conscience started working on me.  I came to the point where I wanted friends and lying is a bad way to gain or maintain friendships.  The idea had failed.

It was in this moment that I realized it had all gone wrong.  I realized I wasn't happy.  At the same time, I hadn't really given Mormonism a good shot because I was so appalled by some of the Mormons I knew growing up.  The teenage set in California was different, though.  I don't know if it was the Missouri / California difference or if I lucked into a great set of Mormon teenagers.  Either way, I realized that the problem I was trying to avoid didn't exist in my new High School.  If someone asked if I was Mormon, I could say with pride, "I am!"  (Not that I did say it with pride.  It took me years and years to stop cringing.)

So what was I to do?  It was a critical moment.  ...  I started doing something that changed my life.

I had to decided FOR GOOD if I was Mormon or not.  I didn't have a testimony - I had no real conviction.  I hoped it was true.  I wanted it to be true.  But I didn't know if it was or not.  My hang-ups were all the little things.  I didn't know about this living prophets thing, for instance.  They sometimes said silly things because they are old men who are out of touch with reality.  I decided to take something trivial and test it.  I remembered Alma's talk about experimenting upon the word.  I picked the stupidest thing I could think of:  Rated R movies.  We're counseled to avoid them, but this didn't seem to me to be something that could really impact my life for the better or worse.  It was sort of a challenge to God, and a challenge to Alma.  "Alright, then.  If this is true, and if I can find out by experimenting upon the word, then Rated R movies.  Let's start there."  The only way to really experiment upon the word, though, is to live it.  So I did.  I started avoiding Rated R movies.  Mind you, I didn't watch that many Rated R movies before, so it wasn't super hard to avoid them.  But you know what, after some time had passed, I gained a testimony of that principle, just like Alma promised.  Avoiding Rated R movies really did make my life better.  It made me happier.

So I started looking around for more ideas!  One of the best places to look was the people in my life.  I looked at every single person I knew and sifted through who was happy and who was not.  It was a grand experiment (if you've never tried it, you should!).  I would say to myself, "They're not happy.  Why not?"  or "They're happy.  What's their secret?"  I came up with a good list of things to avoid and a good list of things to do and then started applying those things one-by-one into my life, keeping with the experimenting upon the word principle.  If it's good and right, then it will make you happy.  If it's not, it won't.  The list, not shockingly, ended up correlating with the typical Mormon answers, both of things to avoid and things to do.  I'd always known those things, but I didn't know I was supposed to do them because it would make me happy!  What a great plan!

And that's how and when I truly became Mormon. 

Life hasn't been a continual happy moment since then, of course, and there have been plenty of things that have tried and tested my faith, not the least of which being crappy life choices on my part.  It's amazing how typically my unhappiness is triggered by me.  But, still, since that day when I started experimenting on the word, I have known the Church is true, piece by piece.  There have been times when I've been angry with the Lord, when I've wanted to step away.  But I can't.  I know it's true.  Once during a temple recommend interview the Stake Presidency member asked me how my relationship with Christ was doing.  This isn't a standard question, more of a bonus question.  At that time things were crazy and I wasn't focusing very strongly on my relationship with Christ.  I smiled and gave some weak sauce answer.  But then I said, "Jim, I know this church is true.  For all my shortcomings, for all the times I get frustrated, I could never walk away.  I know it's true.  I asked and He told me.  How can people just walk away?"  With something of a heavy heart he said, "I don't know."  But I could tell, by how Jim looked at me after that, that he knew I would be alright.  I know the Church is true.  I have my anchor.

Bengals or Steelers? - What Flags are You Flying?

(No, this isn't a post about football.  Though if you must know, the Bengals are lousy and I think that Cincinnatians are seriously out of touch with reality.  Moving on.)

Yesterday I saw a car on the road in front of me with those flags on the sides of the car.  You know, the funny ones that stick out the tops of the windows and blow in the wind.  (It's a car fashion that I don't understand.)  The flags showed the Pittsburgh Steelers' name and logo.  And I thought, "Wow.  He's brave."

Cincinnatians hate the Steelers.  I think it's a Cincinnati Rule:  To live here you must irrationally worship the Bengals and unquestioningly despise the Steelers.  The history on this is fascinating, and dates back over 700 years.  Which means that the younger set doesn't really get it.  Still, even I know that you don't drive around Cicinnati with Steelers flags hanging on your car.

Sure enough, at the next stop light, some college-age kids were crossing the street and took the opportunity to tell the driver of the Steelers Car exactly what they thought of his Steeler Pride.

I kinda chuckled about it all and then thought about the profession that I'm aspiring towards (ASL interpreter, in case you forgot).  Interpreting requires not only competence but several other things that I am not especially great at, among them:


Tact, Professionalism, and Impartiality

1 - Tact.  That's something like a joke, right?  Tact is CLEARLY something I lack.  However, I'm getting better at it, and I'm noticing that as I get older, people tend to think that I DO have tact.  That's a neat trick, right?  Turns out it's something that I'm gaining, almost despite myself, as I age.

2 - Professionalism.  Let's just take how I dress.  ...  Yep.  What else is there to say?
Okay, okay, a little more.  I normally dress in jeans and a T-shirt / sweat shirt combo.  Not exactly professional, but changed easily enough.  The hardest part of this, though, is that the standard interpreter get-up is a dark, solid-colored top, no writing or patterns.  So: black, dark navy, maroon, olive green.  Guess which colors I actually own?  None of those.  Guess which colors I LIKE to wear?  None of those.

3 - Impartiality.  I'm actively working on this one.  It's easier for me in sign language to keep my opinions to myself.  For instance, I listened quietly and respectfully yesterday as someone told me that the dinosaurs were killed off by Noah's flood.  I was impressed with my response, but more than that I was amazed at how easy it was to just accept what he was saying instead of feeling the need to tell him that such theories are bogus.

These changes have really made me re-think who I am, what I believe, and crucially, what I then say and do about who I am and what I believe.  In other words, what are my flags?  And I've realized some pretty amazing things about myself that I never knew before:
1 - Tact isn't that hard.  It requires saying less quantitatively, but more qualitatively.  Be genuine.  Care about people.  The end.
2 - There's probably more than one reason I was supposed to wait a decade before finding this profession.  I wouldn't have been able to stand the dress code when I was 20.  Now, at 30, it seems like a teeny tiny obstacle.  Do I want to do this?  Yes?  Then boring black shirts it is.
3 - Being as impartial as possible is liberating, and I like it a lot.  Not in a "I'm trying to hide who I am" kind of way.  ... Well, here.  Back to the Steelers flag.

The man with the Steelers flag was shouting a message to everyone he passed on the street.  "I AM A STEELERS FAN!"  But you don't have to have a flag to send a message.  The car itself sends a message.  Our clothes send a message.  Our house.  Our facial expressions certainly do.  Our attitude.  We're a big, complicated ball of intertwined messages.  The most important messages we send, though, are the ones that have nothing to do with anything physical.  They're about what's inside of us.

With this interpreting gig, I've started wondering about what flags I have, which I can get rid of, and which I should hold on to.  All I'll be left with, when I can't state my personal opinion, I can't dress how I want, and I need to be professional even if I want to scream, are those internal flags.  Those 3 things all go against what Hippie Tamra previously preached, you know?  "Be who you are, no matter what."  But take those things away and I'm left with ... what?

Some flags were easy to lay aside.  Soccer - fun, but not crucial.  Being lazy - also fun, but not always practical.  Some were harder, like I talked about.  I want to be TAMRA.  Tamra dresses in bright clothes.  Tamra shows how she feels, even if she's feeling lousy.  No need to put on a show for anyone.  But I won't be able to do that as an interpreter.  I have to be a chameleon of sorts.  How can I still be Tamra without all those things I've been relying on?  And who is Tamra, anyway, without those flags?

Really, when it came down to it, the only flag that I had left was Christ.  Being Christian.  Being Mormon.  Those things mean a lot to me.  My family.  My outlook on life.  It's all under that one Christ banner.  Not that I'm not flying other flags, and I'm not perfect at the Christ flag, either.  But it was the only flag that didn't fail at some point.  The only flag that, in the end, really SHOULD be flying.  Tamra doesn't need her own flags.  Tamra would lay them all down for the honor of carrying His flag.

So go ahead.  Try it.  It's a great purging experience.  Strip it all away, layer by layer, putting aside the flags that you no longer need.  You don't have to reject those things (I still play soccer and I still love science), but find It.  At the very end, there's something there, that last Flag.  That's your anchor.  And then you can build your life around that Flag. 

It's a good perspective.

Stolen Quote #36

A word play joke from the Tankster.

What starts with a T and ends with a T and has people in it?

...

A tent!

Clever, no?

Mormon History Insights in the Best Places

I have been finding that one of the best ways to understand Church history is to put people, places, and actions in historical context.  One of the best ways to do that is, of course, to read up on non-Church history from the same time period. 

This was the era of the Underground Railroad.  There were people fighting hard for what they believed in against a sea of hatred.  Those people were called abolitionists.  Or Mormons.  Take your pick.

Mobs were cool for everyone, not just Mormon-haters.  Destroying a printing press seemed like a decent way to show the public's opinion of what someone was printing.  An unjust destroying of a printing press didn't mean that Mormons were around.  It meant that it was the 1830's.  (Elijah Lovejoy's story is WAY more heart-breaking than any Mormon printing press sob story.)

I guess what I'm saying is that Mormons don't have the corner on 1800's suffering.  It was nearly universal.  The more I learn about 1800's America, the more I'm convinced that we're insanely lucky to live now instead of then. 

Newest nugget I've found for helping to put Church history and the peculiar Church language into context comes from Forbidden Signs.  It's a Sign Language book.  See if some of this mid-to-late-1800's talk doesn't strike you as familiar:

"Manualists [or people who advocated for ASL in the classroom, as opposed to oralists who advocated for voicing only] referred to deaf people as members of a "peculiar class" and spoke of sign language as a "peculiar language."  What they meant--what the word had meant for their generation--was that deaf people and sign language were out of the ordinary, remarkable, perhaps unique.  They might also say that sign language was "peculiarly fitted for devotion," meaning that it was particularly so, or discuss the "peculiarities" of a system of teaching, meaning its distinctive aspects.  "Peculiarity" did not carry negative connotations."

Manualists, who had worked so hard to see the Deaf taught in the way they thought was best, were appalled at the new generation of teachers taking that all away.  They saw their treasured high moral standards being eroded by a younger, more superficial, generation.  They saw "a shift from a culture that looked backward to origins to one that looked forward to an every higher ascent; from one that looked within to a core to one that looked outward to behavior; from a culture that valued character to one that valued personality; from a culture that sough essences to one that increasingly gazed upon surfaces."

Wow.  I think the history lesson from that last part is that older generations like to pretend that they are or were moral and upright, and up and coming generations aren't and won't ever be.  For some reason this makes us feel better. 

Huzzah for history!

He Wasn't Amazing

(Word of warning.  If you own an iPhone and are addicted to it, then you probably won't want to read this post.)

It's getting on my nerves.  Steve Jobs wasn't amazing.  He didn't change my life (well, ... we'll get to that point).

I'll come clean and say that I own and use 2 Apple products.  1 - iTunes, which is free if you didn't already know.  Over the course of the last decade I have purchased a little over $200 worth of songs, roughly $1 at a time.  That isn't wishful thinking, I really have only purchased about 200 songs in the last 10 years.  2 - As a birthday gift a few years ago, my fabulous brother gave me an iPod.  And I love it. No doubt.  But did it change my life?

Let's examine what iTunes and my iPod have given me.  I can now listen to any song on my personal database any time I want.  ...  Which means that I can now listen to music, with headphones, while folding laundry downstairs (since my computer is upstairs).  Or while I'm mowing the lawn.  I also can listen to music in the car.  My music.

Wait a minute, though.  I could do those things before.  Remember CD's and CD players?  Even if the iPod is more convenient, can I really say that listening to music a little easier is life-changing?  No.  It's only a smidgen more convenient.

So Steve Jobs didn't change my life with the Apple products that I personally own.

But let's talk about the Apple products that other people own.  (iPhone users:  Since you're still reading, because you can't accept the fact that you have an iPhone addiction, you really should just stop reading now.)

Here I'm willing to concede that Steve Jobs' Apple has given us products that have changed my life, but not for the better.  Now I just have to tolerate iPhone-addicted people who tell me that they're not addicted, but they still can't put their phone down, and wouldn't it be great if I owned one, too!  Look at all the things it can do!

I'm sorry, but from the outside, you guys look crazy.  Actual quotes from iPhone users:
"My whole family owns iPhones, and sometimes we'll get together and I'll look around the room and everyone's texting instead of talking to each other."

"I don't have a husband, so I have an iPhone."

That one's my personal favorite, cause it really brings home just how far our society has "come."  (Read that line as you will.)

Not that other smart phone addicts are immune from the insanity.  But since we're suddenly giving Steve Jobs credit for the entire Smart Phone Era, then I think it's okay to include all smart-phone-addicted people.

During my church's April General Conference, when I was listening to the talks over the internet while in the comfort of someone's living room, a speaker said something about how there were probably people out there right that moment who were texting instead of listening to his talk.  2 of the 5 people in the room suddenly looked up sheepishly and put their phones down.  1 of those 2 people was texting again 10 minutes later.

Guess how many people in the room owned smart phones?  2.

This is an advance?  The fact that I go out to eat with someone I love and I have to pause every 15 minutes while they check someone else's FB status, this is amazing?  The fact that now people can play Angry Birds while waiting in the lobby of the doctor's office, this is awesome?  (I often tell my children that they need to learn the art of Waiting.  I believe it's becoming a lost art.)  iPhone users show me what cool things their phone can do, and my (internal) response is, "Yes, but look what it CREATES!"  Maybe these people don't look in the mirror.

No, I'm not just cheap and bitter that I can't afford an iPhone.  I'm proud of the fact that I own the same phone that I did 3 years ago.  Sometimes I show it to people and say, "Look what my phone can do:  Make phone calls."  The biggest reason I have to not purchase a smart phone (other than the ridiculous data plan price)?  The people who use smart phones.

So if what Steve Jobs and Apple have given us is amazing, I want no part of it.  And while it might be life-changing, that's not a life I want.

(You can find my no-rants-allowed family-friendly blog here.)