Musings on Life and Living

Again, I know that this post isn't actually going up on the Sunday before Christmas. In fact, it is going up the day before (Christmas Eve). I decided it would be better to space out the last three posts in the series but actually get them done instead of posting them back to back and having nobody read them or have time to really think about the message.

My friend Sarah Doremus has recently started blogging again and has been doing a guest series of ways to "make Christmas merry." I have been enjoying this series and then I saw her post that her husband, my friend Lucas, wrote about the difference between happiness and joyfulness . This is something that has run across my mind from time to time but really crystalised while reading his thoughts. Happiness is a good thing. Really, it is. Happiness has been the topic of books, movies, essays, and philosophical treatises for ages. (While not for all of the above, but folks have been discussing happiness for a really long time.) I like being happy. It makes me, well, happy! So, what is happiness? To this I turn to one of my favourite resources: the Online Etymology Dictionary . According to this collection, the word "happiness" has been used to describe a "pleasant and contented mental state" since the 1590s. So then I decided to dig back furthe

Okay, I somehow completely lost track of time and my posts for Advent completely failed to go up on time. I started to write this post on the second Sunday of Advent and then didn't finish and didn't post it. Then I completely missed the third Sunday. Today is actually the fourth Sunday, but I am going to get two and three written before I get around to four. I'll do better next year! The second Sunday of Advent is focused on love. There are many different kinds of love. My native language, English, doesn't do a good job of expressing this. We use the word love to describe several different things and several different relationships. For example, I love my wife. I love my sisters. I love my female friends. Even though the objects of this love are all women, the relationships with them are considerably different. I also love books, bacon, and chocolate. Again, a very different relationship. And, of course, I love my Father in Heaven and my Saviour, Jesus Christ.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there are many Christian traditions that have, for various and sundry reasons, not become a part of the LDS tradition. Some are because of the 19th Century frontier Protestant roots that many of the early Latter-day Saints came from. Others are because our church does not agree with or embrace those traditions. And some are just because the Latter-day Saints moved to the Intermountain West in the mid-1800s and developed their own traditions separate from the greater Christian community in the eastern United States. One tradition that I have been pondering for the past several years is that of Advent. A professor of religion at Brigham Young University, Eric D. Huntsman, is a man I have never met yet have heard so much about from friends of mine who attended BYU. Several years ago,  he began observing Advent with his family , incorporating LDS scriptures and stories into a month-long celebration of the birth of Christ.

When I started doing my student teaching in Champaign in 2006, I started listening to the radio as I drove to my assignments in the morning. I bounced around from station to station, looking for a morning show that I enjoyed. I eventually settled on Mix 94.5 and discovered t he morning show hosted by Kevin Lambert and Sarah Addison. I have listened to their show almost religiously ever since. Kevin and Sarah kept me company as I drove the 35 miles to Paxton each morning during the Spring 2008 semester before I graduated. After graduating, I continued to listen to their morning show. I often keep my radio tuned to the station and I listen to the other radio personalities but, in all honesty, it has been Kevin and Sarah that have kept me on the station. I have caught up on news headlines, sports scores, celebrity gossip, weird news, stupid things people have done, local weather and traffic conditions, and random topics. I have enjoyed their easy banter, their obvious friendship, a

For almost three years now, I have had the immense privilege of teaching the 9-, 10-, and 11-year-old Sunday School classes in my church. Due to people moving and other changes, our Primary President, asked me to switch to co-teaching the 6 and 7-year-olds' class. I openly admit that this was a very hard thing to be asked to do. I didn't want to do it. I have built such remarkable relationships with the budding young men and young women in my class and with their parents and I was worried about what would happen to my students who don't always deal well with change. All the way up until 10:30 this morning, half an hour before church started, I was angry at the change, angry that I was being asked to leave these children in the hands of another set of teachers when I had just a handful of weeks left before the year was up. Then something remarkable happened. Our choir was rehearsing for our performance of "Prayer of Thanksgiving" (also known as "We Gather T

I was at our Boy Scout District Roundtable meeting tonight and spent about an hour or so afterwards  talking with some scout leaders tonight and realised something very important: humility.  If you have just two boys and they are both relatively young Scouts, it doesn't matter if your troop has been around for 90 years and your leaders have all the training they can possibly get; you still need to have the humility to ask some experienced Scouts (not Scouters) to come in and mentor them.  I was amazed to hear a fellow Scouter complain about dwindling numbers and lack of enthusiasm and then complete toss aside my suggestion that the council find experienced Scouts to serve as mentors to the smaller units. I focused on mentors because they have experienced leaders. What they need are boys in their peer group who can show them the way in a way that those who are not cannot. But instead of considering my advice, she insisted they weren't small because they are the oldest troop

In May of 2012, after talking with friends and then discussing it between us, Gretch and I decided to "go public" with our infertility. We had been learning a lot about ourselves and about this issue and had two good friends who had encouraged us to become advocates for awareness and for ourselves. We decided that we would be open and honest in discussing our infertility, the various treatments and procedures we would undergo, and how the issues were impacting us, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the process of doing so, we have learned that many of our friends are also infertile for a wide variety of reasons and we have become the friends that others turn to when they have questions. Both of us have repeated expressed our willingness to do so and appreciate all those who have come to us with questions. As part of my quest to be an advocate for infertility awareness and understand, I have, from time to time, shared blog posts related to what we have gone throug

I teach a group of three 11-year-old boys in my Sunday School class. There is another teacher who usually has three girls and one boy between the ages of 9 and 11. When the one boy is gone, I usually bring my three boys in with Derek's class and we take turns teaching. Our course of study this year is the Old Testament but we had both decided to do something different this week in recognition of Easter. It turned out to be a week that we combined our classes, and it was my turn to teach the whole group. I started the lesson by sharing a video that showed some of the last moments of the Saviour's life. It was produced by my church and published on their BibleVideos.org site. This video is called "My Kingdom Is Not of This World." I asked the children to think about why Jesus came to earth. They shared some of their thoughts: he came to teach us, to show us the way back to God, to atone for our sins, to die for us. Then I asked them to think about why the

First, a story.  I didn't learn how to swim until I was 15 years old. There were several reasons for this, although I don't think I ever articulated them as I grew up. Most of the time it was simple a matter of me saying "I don't know how to swim" and leaving it at that. Now that I am older, I can point out that I really don't like swimming. When I get into a pool, even a wonderfully heated one, my body temperature plummets and my lips turn blue in about 20-30 minutes. I will still go swimming every now and then, usually to make Gretch happy (because she loves swimming) but personally, I could never go swimming again and probably be perfectly content. The reason I finally decided it was time to learn how to swim was that I wanted to become an Eagle Scout. In the Boy Scouts of America, the Eagle is the highest rank a youth can achieve. My three oldest brothers didn't earn it, but the next two did and I wanted desperately to be the third in my family

I watch the Super Bowl, but not particularly for the game. I don't really care for American football. I do enjoy watching athletic championships, though, so the Super Bowl usually catches my radar. But I really watch the game for the commercials between. The game is perfectly poised at the start of the year to establish the start of the advertising calendar. Super Bowl commercials are remembered for weeks, months, sometimes even years. One of the commercials aired last night was for Coca-Cola. I almost always enjoy their advertisements, even if I don't actually like their original beverage. (Cherry Coke, on the other hand, is my poison of choice thanks to years of working in Dining Services with free access during shifts!) Anyway, this particularly ad was no exception. In case you missed it because you a) don't watch television, b) don't watch the Super Bowl, and/or c) don't follow trending topics in the media, here's a video of it: This delightful

Gretch and I went to my high school's Operation Snowball event this weekend. It is something I have done nearly every single year since 1998 (excepting only the two years that I was serving a mission in California), so this was my fifteenth such event at Washington Community High School. Gretch started going in 2008, shortly after we'd started dating, and has been six times now. (She didn't go last year due to medical circumstances.) The theme for Washington's Snowball this year was "Under Pressure" and thus it has been on my thoughts a lot the past few days. It seemed particularly appropriate for these students whose lives have been under immense pressure over the past couple of months. You may be aware that there was a massive tornado that blew through a few communities in central Illinois this past November. What you may not realise is that the community that was hit the hardest was Washington. The town is still struggling to recover and rebuild, but th

I enjoy going to restaurants. I don't get to go as much as I would like, due to financial priorities, but whenever I do, I usually try to provide positive feedback to places that have impressed me and send respectful messages when something is not quite up to par. I have recently had to do this twice with two very different stores. I thought I would share one of them on here, mostly so I can keep a record, but also so I can point out how very reasonable some stores have been about responding to our needs! It was the Burger King here in Savoy. I went there about two weeks ago to pick up some food Gretch was craving while recovering from a nasty cold. Even though the weather was truly frightful, I ventured out and ordered some inexpensive bacon cheeseburgers from the Value Menu. After paying, I realised that the price I was charged was higher than the menu board had listed, so I went online and sent a message through the corporate office: I went to the Savoy Burger King this a