Midnight Musings

I love late at night when the world has gone to sleep and all I hear are the bleating of the bats as they scour the sky for the every present insects. They are among the freakiest of God's creatures, but you gotta love 'em. They eat the bugs.

This is the time of night when lightning strikes, when ideas that have slumbered in their hulls break forth and start to germinate in the imagination. Some burst forth with vibrant colors and luscious textures, some take their time to wrap it's tendrils around all the elements until a more elegant, sophisticated product emerges. Either way, the element of both are the late night musings when I'm all alone with either my pen to paper or finger tips on keys. Lightning strikes most dramatically when all is dark, when all is well, when all else is asleep.

Quotes

I have been having fun collecting quotes from different places, things and people. I thought I'd share some with you for a smile or for enlightenment.

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A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.

Marshall McLuhan

*****

Be about the work, be happy or go to hell.

Brigham Young

*****

As long as there is a lack of inner discipline that brings calmness of mind, no matter what external facilities or conditions you have, they will never give you the feeling of joy and happiness that you are seeking. On the other hand, if you possess this inner quality of calmness of mind, a degree of stability within, then even if you lack the various external facilities that you would normally consider necessary for happiness, it is still possible to live a happy and joyful life.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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Barbara Termaat Quotes:

Wrapped around the axel.

You look slicker than deer guts on a door knob.

*****

When you have children the days are long but the years are short.

Lonny Smith

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About raising daughters by Brett England:

When you have a boy you worry about a boy. When you have a daughter, you worry about ALL the boys.

*****

It's all very simple.
Or, it's all very complex.
Perhaps it's neither.
Or both.
(forget the author)

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She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.

Mark Twain

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Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.

Albert Einstein

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I have a whole list more but they're at home. I'll do another post soon when I have them all in one place.

Of Two Minds

This mornings dream was a doozie. Okay, a doozie by my standards. I say that because I said something in my dream that confounded me a bit. (Confound, in this case means, confused and yet still profound...I don't know what it really means). I was trying to explain why I was having problems doing something. My reply was "The minds can do that to the body." I've been a big believer that the mind is in control of the body, that if the mind is sick the body is sick too. But mindS? We're talking plural here. There's the statement of being of two minds on one matter, but to have two minds ruling the body seems rather extreme.

But could it be a temporal and eternal mind? Could it be a physical and spiritual mind? Both the yin and yang working in tandem to rule the body. Our body doesn't choose to succumb to temptation, but our body normally does the deed. In that case you have to have a consensus of the physical and spiritual minds to allow the body to step into a temptation. A physical temptation that is. Mental temptations are few and far between, but they do happen. So, are our minds always at work, the ephemeral working on the physical, to establish dominance over the other? It's not like the body really has a chance over the brain. I know a lot of people feel that the body has a will and a mind of it's own because sometimes you just can't "help" yourself, and this is a conversation that is brought up between me and other friends about the baser temptations in life. They argue that once you've engaged the body you can't stop it, you have to give in. My argument is Bull S**t! It's not easy but you don't have to completely succumb to temptation EVER just because it feels too good to stop. That's like saying you can't quit smoking because you're just too addicted to it and it feels like you're going to die if you don't have a smoke. The truth of the matter is, you're going to die if you don't stop smoking. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying it's painless, I am saying that it can be done and the mind can overrule the body's urges.

I guess you can say we are a walking evolutionary paradox. The body, left on it's own will hunt, will mate and will function without meaning. No better or worse for ware than the wolves of the wild that stay in intimate family groups both for protection and for companionship. Our physical mind is what pushes the body to find something higher, to establish and assign meaning to the every day mundane tasks of hunting, eating and building a home. The spiritual mind is the epitome of the three as it provides and eternal compass to the physical mind. We do what we do because of what we want to do in eternity.

GOOOOOAAAAAAL!!! Revisited

Okay, after a nice long night of not really sleeping but not really being awake either, I realize this is bothering more than I am willing to admit. I spent the night in dreams about people living in acronyms and houses the size of monopoly hotels on steroids (and just as red). I knew it was my fault and I had to fix it, but like anything, it has to be done piece by piece. So, the first piece of rebuilding this subdivision of goals is to break things up into different pieces Needs (N) verses Want (W), and Time (T) verses Money (M), and then provide a 1 - 3 priority, 1 being the highest. Maybe then I can get some sleep once I have an idea of what I should be doing now as opposed to trying to do everything now.

Needs should always take priority over wants 99.9% of the time, so here are the highest priority wants that have no monetary requirement or time:

Needs
Read Scriptures Daily
Pray Constantly
Increase vocabulary
Be in bed every night by 10:00pm

Needs with Time (I can do these because I'm not restrained by budget and can be done now)
Priority 1:
Read BOM in Spanish
Get SS02 Finished
Do my callings
Write/Keep up in my journal
Get finances straightened out
Transcribe notes out of Lost Christianities and into the computer
Get notes, dreams, ideas out of the small journals into the computer
Get my Young Woman Personal Progress Requirements met
Get mission Statement written and printed

Priority 2:
Exercise regularly
Create my own religion
Write up process for mission statement for the Ensign

Needs with Money (Will have to budgeted and then put on hold until I can afford it)
Priority 1:
Buy a house

Needs with Money & Time
Priority 1
Get healthy

Wants with Time
Priority 1:
Get up at 5:00-5:30 to work every morning
Become better read
Read lost scriptures

Priority 2:
Write Journal Article for New Era
Create origami Christmas Tree Ornaments
Stay on top of Sunday School Lesson
Learn and regularly practice Yoga
Continue research into Spare Parts
Read every night before bed
Keep up with Psyche Stew
Make a good showing on Tolavta
Write my opinion letter to Feinstein
Be active in a community organization

Priority 3:
clicker train Sammy
Get dream about amnesia chick written into a screenplay
Read more! Stop watching so much TV

Wants with Money
Priority 2:
Go back to School
Go to Italy

Wants with Time and Money requirements
Priority 1:
Start my own company

I'm looking at this an it appears that a lot of what I have slated under these are more of a to-do list than an actual goal list. Goals to me, are life changing efforts, not tasks on a list that when it's marked off you don't have to deal with it any more. The needs with a priority of 1 though, who didn't see that coming? Read and Pray always..Isn't' that something taught from the pulpit on any given Sunday?

GOOOOOAAAAAAL!!

I'm one of those people that continually kick myself when I don't reach my goals. I'm very goal oriented in a lot of ways, yet I'm very procrastinating when I'm not trying to push myself further and harder and longer than before. And what's worse about goals with me is once I achieve them, I forget that I've achieved ANYTHING and feel horrible about myself. I normally have to sit down with myself and go over a list of accomplishments that I've achieved as opposed to the list of the things that I haven't. Of late, I've just feel horribly overwhelmed because I'm not getting anything done. So, I decided to make a list of the things that I want to accomplish in a reasonable amount of time, which I know means to most people reasonable, but it gets twisted in my head as RIGHT NOW! Here is the list I came up with in no particular order....

- Read the Book of Mormon in Spanish
- Get Soul Searching 2 Finished (a novel I'm working on)
- Go back to school
- Write Journal Article for New Era
- Go to Italy
- Buy a house
- Clicker train Sammy
- Read scriptures daily
- Create origami Christmas Tree ornaments
- Start my own company
- Do my callings (Canning specialist & Visiting Teaching)
- Stay on top of Sunday School Lesson
- Write/Keep up in my journal
- Exercise regularly
- Take the trolley to work more
- Learn and regularly practice Yoga. (By learn I mean teach myself)
- Get finances straightened out
- Get SANE!! or stop referring to myself as crazy
- Start/Continue research into Spare Parts (another novel)
- Get the dream about the amnesia chick written into a screen play
- Get up at 5:00-5:30 to work every morning
- In bed every night by 10:00pm
- Read every night before bed
- Read more! Stop watching so much TV
- Become less of a B**** when it comes to certain people
- Get healthy
- Be perfect in all things
- Keep up with Psyche Stew
- Make a good showing on Tolavta
- Increase vocabulary
- Become better read
- Transcribe notes out of Lost Christianities and into the computer
- Read Lost Scriptures
- Create my own religion (for writing purposes only)
- Get notes, dreams, ideas out of the small journals into the computer.
- Be a better person
- Pray all the time
- Get my Young Women's Personal Progress requirements met.
- Write my opinion letter to Feinstein
- Be active in a community organization (ASPCA is the current choice)
- Get mission statement written and then printed
- Write up the process for creating a mission statement for the Ensign

Is it any wonder I'm not getting anything done. I spend my time when I should be working on making money on things that require money to accomplish. I need to think this through a little more and stop requiring so much of myself. But mostly I need to realize that I'm not a bad person for not getting everything on my list done.

Questioning

If your mother says your beautiful, is that the same as having a "good personality"?

If the program you're working with refuses to load your head shot because it's too large, is it saying you're fat?

In the game of life, how many "just friends" does one have to go through before they realize that a full brain beats a pair, no matter how big they are?

Is it better to be a ministering angel in the eternities then in a temporal marriage here on earth?

The Other Side of Service

Doing good is it's own reward. Do unto others. Charity is the pure love of Christ. Idle hands are the devils playground. These pithy sayings are jack-hammered into our heads from birth. And if you have a mother that was a believer in them, you were indoctrinated while still enfolded in the womb. What we aren't told about is the other side of service. Being served. How often I have restrained myself from asking for help because I would appear "weak". How I would go without food, or PG&E because I was too "proud" to ask. This isn't about asking the church for help, this is asking for help with ANYTHING. I wouldn't even ask for help from my family for fear of getting harassed, teased or having some perjorative title hanging over my head at all the family functions. I'm not making this up. For example, one time I borrowed $200 for whatever reason and I was invited to stay for dinner. My brother-in-law remarked "Man, that's one expensive dinner." Implying that not only were they giving me money but in essence, they were paying me to eat it and it was SO EXPENSIVE. I try not to even ask any more, and even when I do, they can't afford it. I never ask why. I was raised to not ask for help, not to rely on anyone, yet also raised to believe that family will always be there for you. Just one of the many paradoxes that sculpt my mindscape.

I had no other choice but to go to the Bishop and get help for the family. I was unemployed, my sister was barely employed and my Mom had, once again, dropped her basket (to coin a phrase). I was sitting with the bishop, trying to explain what we were going through, that I wasn't weak, that I'm not stupid and that things just happened and though I didn't prepare like I was supposed to, I was in a bad place. He just smiled and told me it was okay, and that it was even more okay to ask. See, everyone has the giving side of service down to be on the other side of service and allow others to serve you is something we all have to learn as well. Unless we are humble enough to accept help from those offered, provide the service opportunity for friends and family we will never learn to be humble enough to accept the loving service from our Lord and Savior. He has provided us with the greatest of gifts and unless we accept it through taking covenants, through prayer and fasting and through both sides of service we will never truly have the fullness of that gift in our lives. To put it simply, Christ has purchased our eternal abode and by humble acceptance of this will we have our home in eternities future. Service is how we will decorate it.

Stained

Moon Stained, He Glowed
His spirit alight
In the garden, He paid what was owed
On that still spring night.

Tear stained, He wept
Alone and unafraid
Sacred were the promises to be kept
A sinless sacrifice to be made.

Blood stained, He endured
Straining under the weight of our sins
Drinking of the bitter cup, un-demured
Uniting all men as kin.

Glory stained, He stood
Against the accusing hoard
Crucified, tormented, lots drawn in blood
To provide us a seat around the board.

Water stained, at baptism
We take upon His name
His sacrifice unites the schism
So once stained, one will never be the same.

Wrote 6/11/06