act or acted upon? It's your choice!

How people treat you is their karma;
how you react is yours.

~Wayne Dyer

Smart Women

Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Human, All Too Human, 1878

The guy is an atheist, but recognized that if you loose Christianity, you loose the ideas too.

Scaffolding and Emulation

Building on His firm foundation requires us to emulate Christ's character. There is no joy nor is there any security in giving Him mere lip service. Emulating Him is the key, and our emerging character is the refined structure of our souls. After all the circumstantial scaffolding comes down, character is what is left.

from Elder Neal A. Maxwell in 2002
Pictured: Oquirrh Mountain Temple in Utah

A Quote From Me

I was giving someone I don't know advice on their blog and I said this to them.

"Never feel bad about doing something
that makes you a better person!"

I realized as I was typing that I need to take my own advice.

Comparing Crosses

Just as no two snowflakes are precisely alike in design, so the configuration of life's challenges differs also. Some of our experiences are not fully shareable with others. Thus, others, try as they may, cannot fully appreciate them. They must trust us, our generalizations and testimonies concerning these experiences. A few of our experiences should not even be shared. But it is useful to ponder the past examples of our partners on the pathway.

In the midst of some of these individualized challenges, however, we may cry out on our small scale as the Savior did on the cross, or as the Prophet did in Liberty Jail. Being in agony, we will pray more earnestly, for cries of agony are not the same as cries of despair.

Our individual experiences may not always be unique, but they are always authentic. God will even take into account our perceptions of, as well as our responses to, our trials. For those of us who do not, for instance, find claustrophobia a challenge, it is difficult to measure the terror that comes to those for whom it is such a challenge. Thus, a friend may seem to struggle unnecessarily long before finally prevailing with regard to a particular principle of the gospel. But for that individual, the struggle was real enough! We need, particularly, to understand with kindness those who are asked o go out to do battle again on a familiar field--on the very battleground where they have already suffered defeat several times. Yet some of our most difficult victories will occur on new terrain--like Joseph's in Egypt--when we do not have the equivalent of a "home court" advantage.

We must remember that, while the Lord reminded the Prophet Joseph Smith that he had not yet suffered as Job, only the Lord can compare crosses!

Neal A. Maxwell

The Liberty Jails of Our Lives

But tonight’s message is that when you have to, you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, let me say that even a little stronger: You can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in the most miserable experiences of your life—in the worst settings, while enduring the most painful injustices, when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced.

Now let’s talk about those propositions for a moment. Every one of us, in one way or another, great or small, dramatic or incidental, is going to spend a little time in Liberty Jail—spiritually speaking. We will face things we do not want to face for reasons that may not have been our fault. Indeed, we may face difficult circumstances for reasons that were absolutely right and proper, reasons that came because we were trying to keep the commandments of the Lord. We may face persecution; we may endure heartache and separation from loved ones; we may be hungry and cold and forlorn. Yes, before our lives are over we may all be given a little taste of what the prophets faced often in their lives. But the lessons of the winter of 1838–39 teach us that every experience can become a redemptive experience if we remain bonded to our Father in Heaven through that difficulty. These difficult lessons teach us that man’s extremity is God’s opportunity, and if we will be humble and faithful, if we will be believing and not curse God for our problems, He can turn the unfair and inhumane and debilitating prisons of our lives into temples—or at least into a circumstance that can bring comfort and revelation, divine companionship and peace.

Jeffery R. Holland

Faith Like Potatoes

Government

My reading of history convinces me
that most bad government

results from too much government.

Thomas Jefferson

Inconvient Truth

I’ve always felt that Mormonism is the real “inconvenient truth”.

From someone named "Kristine".

A God Who is Engaged and Speaks

We believe in a God who is engaged in our lives, who is not silent, not absent, nor, as Elijah said of the god of the priests of Baal, is He "on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened." In this church, even our young Primary children recite, "We believe all that God has revealed, all that he does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God.

In a sense Joseph Smith and his prophetic successors in this Church answer the challenge Ralph Waldo Emerson put to the students of the Harvard Divinity School 170 years ago this coming summer. To that group of the Protestant best and brightest, the great sage of Concord pled that they teach "that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake."

I testify that the heaven are opened. I testify that Joseph Smith was and is a prophet of God, that the Book of Mormon is truly another testament of Jesus Christ. I testify that Thomas S. Monson is God's prophet, a modern apostle with the keys of the kingdom in his hands, a man upon whom I personally have seen the mantle fall. I testify that the presence of such authorized ministry of Christ has been on the earth. I testify that such a ministry is on the earth again, and it is found in this, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Jeffrey R. Holland, Ensign May 2008

A Few Scriptures

We did wait in these difficult circumstances for the space of many months. Alma 58:7

Ye are the children of the prophets. Ye are of the house of Israel, ye are of the covenant which the Father has made with your fathers,.... 3 Nephi 20:25

.....canst thou be humble and meek and conduct thyself wisely before me? Yea, come unto me thy Savior. Amen.

Doctrine and Covenants 19:41

Swim or Stand

In matters of style,
swim with the current;
in matters of principle,
stand like a rock.

Thomas Jefferson

God Sees Not As Man Sees

The Saints should always remember that God sees not as man sees; that he does not willingly afflict his children, and that if he requires them to endure present privation and trial, it is that they may escape great tribulations which would otherwise inevitably overtake them. If He deprives them of any present blessing, it is that he may bestow upon them great and more glorious ones
by-and-by.

George Q. Cannon (1827-1901) Beneficial Results of Continued Obedience to the Teachings of God's Servants, Millennial Star, Oct 3, 1863, 634

Help From Both Sides of the Veil.

In the gospel of Jesus Christ you have help from both sides of the veil and you must never forget that. When disappointment and discouragement strike, and they will, you remember and never forget that if our eyes could be opened we would see horses and chariots of fire as far as the eye can see riding at reckless speed to come to our protection.

Jeffrey R. Holland

Lessons of Patience and Waiting

Everywhere in nature we are taught the lessons of patience and waiting. We want things a long time before we get them, and the fact that we want them a long time makes them all the more precious when they come.
~Joseph F. Smith

The Book Of My Life

No matter how bleak the chapter of our lives may look today, because of the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we may hope and be assured that the ending of the book of our lives will exceed our grandest expectations. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” 1 Chorinthians 2:9 Elder Uchtdorf, Oct 2008

The Influence of Mother

A mother has far greater influence on her children than anyone else, and she must realize that every word she speaks, every act, every response, her attitude, even her appearance and manner of dress affect the lives of her children and the whole family. It is while the child is in the home that he gains from his mother the contribution he will make to society."

N. Eldon Tanner

Man Made Rules VS God Rules

"Man-made rules have now legalized that which has been forbidden by God from the dawn of time! Human reasoning has twisted and transformed absolute truth into sound-bite slogans that promote a practice that is consummately wrong."(Abortion: An Assault on the Defenseless)

Russell M. Ballard, Oct '08

Sunday Will Come

"Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays. But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come. No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, in this life or the next, Sunday will come."--Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin

Authority

Many years ago a learned man, a member of the Roman Catholic Church came to Utah and spoke from the stand of the SL Tabernacle. I became well acquainted with him and we conversed freely and frankly. A great Scholar, with perhaps a dozen languages at this tongues end, he seemed to know all about theology, law, literature, science and philosophy. One day he said to me: "you Mormons are all ignoramuses. You don't even know the strength of your own position. It is so strong that there is only one other tenable in the whole Christian world, and this is the position of the Catholic Church. The issue is between Catholicism and Mormonism. If we are right, you are wrong; if you are right, we are wrong; and that's all there is to it. The Protestants haven't a leg to stand on. For, if we are wrong, they are wrong with us since they were a part of us and went out from us; while is we are right, they are apostates who we cut off long ago. If we have the apostolic succession from St. Peter, as we claim, there is no need of Joseph Smith and Mormonism; but if we have not that succession, then such a man as Joseph Smith was necessary, and Mormonism attitude is the only consistent one. It is either the perpetuation of the gospel from Ancient times, or the restoration of the gospel in the latter day.”

(LeGrand Richards, a Marvelous Work and a Wonder, p 3-4) Quotes in General Conference April 1972 by LeGrand Richards

Doing What's Right

There is always some peace in having submitted to the right. Don't spoil it by worrying about the results, if you can help it. It is not your business to succeed (no one can be sure of that) but to do right: when you have done so, the rest lies with God...

C.S. Lewis, Yours, Jack, p. 45

Respect and Marriage

"Treat your wife always with respect; it will procure respect to you, not from her only, but from all that observe it."

-Benjamin Franklin- 1768

The Beginning

I like quotes that teach and inspire.
I've seen someone else create a blog specifically for quotes.
I'm stealing her idea and doing it too.
I want a place to find them when I want them.
This is the place.