Daily "fix"

Just wishing this morning as I was taking my daily body "fix" that I could just pop a pill and BE graciously honest. Or surely one for pure hearted and pure LOVING. And forgiving--mostly of myself. I'd swallow it down and it would integrate with the good I am, but make up for all that's lacking. Each would transform my soul and I would just BE love and light. And it could still "work" under the current plan since I was using my AGENCY in CHOOSING to take them. You know, still just trying to make whatever THIS PLAN IS--- EASIER.

It's not a pill to pop, but reading Tessa's blog this morning made my head tingle and lips smile...if you haven't read her...you'll LOVE me when you do!!! These are two excerpts from recent posts that I wanted the world to read:

It’s no mistake that John came, wild and woolly out of the wilderness, crying “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” I don’t think John meant for the Jews to turn from sin. I’m sure there were your garden varieties of usury, adultery, hypocrisy and prideful neglect going on in the shadow of every synagogue. But, that’s small change compared to the change John asked of the Jews. He wanted them to change the way they thought, the dreams they dreamed. He wanted them to demolish the very form of the Messiah on which they had pinned their hopes. Only with a changed mind could they actually “see” this Jesus, who looked, for all they knew, exactly like “Joseph’s son.”

The Greek root of the word “repentance” denotes a change of mind. Given this etymology, at the heart of all repentance is the work of changing what’s in our head. It’s about putting in new ideas about God, about ourselves and about the outside world. Paul says it this way: “Be ye not conformed to the world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Ryan Bingham told me this morning to “take yourself out of your mind, away from everything [you] say you are.” It’s different words for the same idea. The change we seek starts with a repentant mind, dismantling the ideas and visions that prevent us from experiencing the truth of the life before us.

___________________and then this:

This was what I was thinking today in Sunday School (I only teach every third week; I'm up next week).

The question--probably straight out of the lesson manual--was "In what ways today are people not willing to recognize or embrace Christ?"

The answers were all outward-looking. People who don't believe he's the Saviour; people who don't have a sense of his divine mission. The comments indicated that they were all people outside of our church. As if to say that members of the Church all embrace the divine mission of the Savior.

So, I raised my hand, (and I confess that some of these ideas are attributed to my sister Laura), and said, "Have you ever read the description of the Pharisees in the Bible Dictionary?" I read a portion of the description: rule bound, separatists, liked to keep themselves apart from the gentile, reduced all observations down to formulas, encouraged self-sufficiency and spiritual self-reliance, believed fervently in an afterlife and a resurrection. (Sort of like this life really blows, but the next one's going to be so great). Then the clincher is, the Pharisees (a group of Jewish elect) were a major stumbling block to the reception of Christ and his gospel.

Then I made the comment that when people develop a mindset that relies on colors of shirts, inches of hems, minutes of scriptures read, numbers of children, percentage of hand touching head of infant in baby blessing circle, that that mindset find it almost impossible to accept Christ's gospel of miracles.

And no, the Pharisees are not the Baptists, as one dear sister commented in my sister's class, they are alive and well and living within us. They're there because in every religious order where people are required to be committed there's a portion of people, and even a portion of each of our brains that likes to go "nazi." To be hypervigilant, to be completely fixed, to have no ambiguity and no mess. It makes our position more definite that way.

It also makes it really difficult to tell light from dark.

That was my thought today.
___________________________so, I knew you'd love me! I am 47 and WEARY of the Pharisees around me and especially IN ME.
Maybe that is WHY I wanted to take the whole HANDBOOK theme from Stake Conference and put it where the sun doesn't shine? WHO has those GRACIOULY HONEST pills?

**I wanted to thank my husband for preaching Christ at that stake meeting.
*** And I want to THANK BARB who when I told her I wanted a break from church but wasn't sure HOW to take one...you know, a break just until I missed going...she clarified..."You want a break from the institution and certain people, NOT from the gospel of Jesus Christ...The Gospel of Jesus Christ IS LOVE and FORGIVENESS...and NO ONE gets tired of LOVE AND FORGIVENESS..." Is there a Barb Pill?