What is a good education?

What is a good education?

I have a degree in education so I should be able to answer that question easily. But I can't. The word encompasses so much--I can't quite put a definition in words yet. Still working on my own definition for it.

I remember calling my dad after I graduated for college, preening a bit because I knew he must be so proud of me for getting my degree-- ready for him to celebrate with me. And he was excited for me. But what he said, I will never forget. He said something like, "And now your real education begins."

And boy was he right. No four-year instruction at a University could prepare me for the 6 years that came after my "formal education" was complete. A lot of learning has happened since I graduated from college.

As I was reading Elder L. Tom Perry's biography, I came across this experience that his wife shared--and it has been on my mind ever since:

"Several years ago when we were living in the state of New York, I remember attending a Relief Society Conference. President Belle S. Spafford was there. Also President Harold B. Lee--he was then Elder Lee.

Sister Spafford asked for a definition of education from the audience. Several were given. I recalled a definition give by Plato. Many centuries ago, someone asked him: 'What is a good education?' And he replied: 'A good education is that which gives to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.'

I was rather pleased with myself because I was able to remember the quotation, but my elation was short-lived because when President Lee arose and addressed the group, eh said; "Well, so much for Plato.'

Then President Lee said he had his own definition of education, and he liked it better. He said: 'The best education is that which gives to the individual the strength and ability to adjust.' I remembered his words and during the ensuing years I have had many occasions to ponder his words and recognize the great wisdom they contain.

Life is filled with adjustments--joys and sorrows, trials and temptations. That's what life is all about--this is the time of our schooling. We are gaining an education from the time we enter this mortal existence until we leave it. There are always adjustments to be made, and how we make them is all important. Our actions and reactions here will determine in a large measure how we spend the rest of eternity. . . .

President Lee has also said: 'The all-important thing in life isn't what happens to you. The important thing is how you take it.'

As we consider the adjustments necessary in life, it may be well to remember the biblical story of Joseph who was betrayed by his brothers and sold into Egypt. . . .Always, Joseph stayed close to God and kept his values in proper perspective. He had the strength and courage to do right. He was able to make the best out of whatever happened to him. . . .

May we prepare ourselves so that we, like Joseph of old, will be armed with an inner strength--even the power and inspiration of God--so that no matter what happens to us in this life during our mortal school, we will cling to the iron rod of the gospel and stand firm in our testimony of truth and right."

Virginia Lee Perry as quoted in L. Tom Perry: An Uncommon Life, pages 299-300

I really liked this account, because I, like Virginia Perry, love Plato's definition of education-- and I was a bit taken aback by President Lee's response to it. And I still think Plato's definition is correct in one sense of the word "education." A loving Heavenly Father wants us to become our biggest, brightest selves. He asks us to seek perfection and even provide the perfect example for us in His Son, Jesus Christ, so that we would know what perfection spoke and acted like. (Matthew 5:48) And filling our lives with knowledge and art and experiences that enrich and beautify our lives and the lives around us is all part of that. The scriptures provide many other insights into what learning and true wisdom are (Wisdom- Guide to the Scriptures).

If wisdom and learning and seeking perfection are the end goals, then we can define education as what gets us to wisdom, learning, and eventual perfection. And in that sense, though Plato's definition is lovely, I have to say, that President Lee's definition is certainly more appropriate and applicable. Learning to adjust well to life's circumstances and not become impaired or destroyed by them, is what allows us to move forward and continue learning and growing and flourishing. The times in my life where I became hurt and angry about things that were happening to me, were the times in my life when I learned and understood the least.  Once I learned to adjust and react in positive healthy ways, learning and understanding began again.

Life is the school. Learning to adjust is education. And it has been my experience that the way to adjust and learn and beautify best is through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

-elin
Who is learning that educating an almost 3-year old about using the potty is more difficult than teaching 6 periods of 7th-grade English.

"Brigham Young has said, “The person who enjoys the experience of the knowledge of the Kingdom of God on the earth, and at the same time has the love of God within him, is the happiest of any individuals on the earth. …“Where is happiness, real happiness? Nowhere but in God. By possessing the spirit of our holy religion, we are happy in the morning, we are happy at noon, we are happy in the evening; for the spirit of love and union is with us, and we rejoice in the spirit because it is of God, and we rejoice in God, for he is the giver of every good thing. ... He may be in pain, in error, in poverty, or in prison, if necessity demands, still, he is joyful. ...“Truly happy is that man or woman, or that people, who enjoys the privileges of the Gospel of the Son of God, and who know how to appreciate his blessings.” As quoted by Elder L. Tom Perry here

Imagine a World Where It Is Never Too Late

Imagine a world and life in which you can make mistakes, experience physical, mental, and emotional pain, and make some really poor choices and have the effects (not necessarily the consequences--but the effects of the pain and choices on our bodies and spirits) entirely erased. You would still gain all of the learning and wisdom and experience that come from mistakes and pain and choices...but any negative effects would not be permanent.

That is, in fact, what our Heavenly Father promises if we turn to Him in faith. If we love Him (which means we will strive to keep his commandments (John 14:15).

He tells us that "[. . .] all things work together for good to them that love God [. . .]" (Romans 8:28) Not some things. Not just the good choices we make. All things work together for our good.

This is possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ--through His mortal life, His suffering in Gethsamane, His death on the cross, and His resurrection, 3 days later.

"Jesus was . . . a being of flesh and spirit, but He yielded not to temptation (see Mosiah 15:5). We can turn to Him . . . because He understands. He understands the struggle, and He also understands how to win the struggle. . . . The power of His Atonement can erase the effects of sin in us. When we repent, His atoning grace justifies and cleanses us (see 3 Nephi 27: 16-20). It is as if we had not succumbed, as if we had not yielded to temptation. As we endeavor day by day and week by week to follow the path of Christ, our spirit asserts its preeminence, the battle within subsides, and temptations cease to trouble."

Elder D. Todd Christofferson, "That They May Be One in Us"

The more I live and make mistakes, the more grateful I am for my life and the learning experience it is for me--the more I am grateful for the love and mercy of Heavenly Father and His Son--the kind of love that turns darkness into light (or scarlet to white (Isaiah 1:18) and can pull beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3). So if I have anything to say today and hopefully every day, it is this: It is never to late. You and I have never gone too far. God can make all things work together for your and my good. He can "erase the effects of sin" in you and in me.

Last of all, awhile ago, I put together a little picture montage to go with my favorite arrangement (arranged by Rob Gardner) of my favorite hymn. The words to the song are below.

Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish;
Come to the mercy seat, fervently kneel.
Here bring your wounded hearts; here tell your anguish.
Earth has no sorrow that heav'n cannot heal.

Joy of the desolate, Light of the straying,
Hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure!
Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,
"Earth has no sorrow that heav'n cannot cure."

Here see the Bread of Life; see waters flowing
Forth from the throne of God, pure from above.
Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing
Earth has no sorrow but heav'n can remove.

Text: Thomas Moore, 1779-1852. Verse three, Thomas Hastings, 1784-1872

Elin
-who wishes she could sing like the girl in the video and compose music like Rob Gardner....

Entropy, 2 year-olds, and the Lord

From dictionary.com:
 
entropy
2. a statistical measure of the disorder of a closed system expressed by S = k log P + c where P is the probability that a particular state of the system exists, k is the Boltzmann constant, and c is another constant

3. lack of pattern or organization; disorder

 
Basically what entropy means is that everything breaks down, becomes disorganized, scatters, and decays over time. Order is lost. And, after a week at home watching our 2.5 year-old daughter, I am convinced that children are the greatest entropic force in the universe. Just kidding. But seriously.
 
If we look around we see that entropy is a legitimate force. Our bodies break down, as do our automobiles, buildings, roads, etc. The same things happen in nature. One might argue that over time plants and animals destroy or take over man-made creations, but those same plants and animals also break down and die and others take their place. Even schools of thought, ideas, philosophies, and morals break down over time. Here is another definition from the source above: a doctrine of inevitable social decline and degeneration. Almost all societies from the past have gone through this, and ours certainly is at the moment, whether we acknowledge it or not.
 
The idea of entropy is kind of scary, actually. Is there anyway to fight it? Yes, of course. At least temporarily. Entropy is combatted by putting work or energy into a system. For example, my house is usually pretty clean at the beginning of the day. Through the day it gets messier and messier, and to reverse the entropy, I have to exert energy on the house; in other words, I have to clean it up (or convince someone else to). With a house we can do this over and over, but eventually we run out of energy, and something has to put energy into us (food, sleep, medicine, etc.). And in the end there is nothing left to put into our system, our bodies, that can keep us going, and we die. The whole known universe operates this way. Our Earth depends on the sun to provide most of the energy (light, and to some degree, heat) to fight entropy. But the sun itself is subject to entropy as well.
 
Fortunately for all of us, there is a power or energy that is not subject to entropy (I don't know how, so don't ask me) and ultimately reverses all disorganization, decay, and ruin. And that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Here are some passages of scripture that say this same thing in various ways:
 
Matthew 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
(3 Nephi 12:48 Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.)

John 14:16 Jesus sayeth unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
 
John 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

John 9:5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

John 10:10 I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Moroni 10:32 Come unto Christ, and be perfected in Him.

Doctrine and Covenants 132:8 Behold, mine house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion.

And a great talk about life and light by President Henry B. Eyring, The Light and the Life of the World.

 

Forrest

--Who was glad to go back to work after a week of entropy!

The Miracle and Gift of Birth

Kissing the Face of God,  Morgan Weistling

I am due to have a baby sometime this week and naturally have been thinking about pregnancy and this whole process of creating a new life. The more I think about it, the more unfathomable it is to me.

As far as I can tell, we human beings are unique on this earth in our ability to reason and create. Obviously animals can reason to a degree and can create some pretty spectacular things: spiderwebs, beaver dams, honey--I could go on forever. But animals seem limited to a degree in what they are able to create.

We, obviously, are limited too. I haven't seen a human being create a spider web the way a spider can (at least in a way that wasn't done digitally)--but the breadth and scope of what we are able to think and do seems to go beyond that of other animals. We paint, we sing, we write, we build, we find ways to recycle, we pull fuels out of the ground to power our world, we discover medicines to heal--we create. And all of this creation takes a lot of thinking, research, and lots of trial and error and lots of time and lots of work.

But nothing we have ever created so far has ever had the capacity to think and create (the way we can) on its own. As much as we like to be creeped out by movies that portray human inventions like computers and robots coming to life and taking on human-like capacities to reason and create (and as creepy as it is when Siri responds to you when you talk at your phone), it is something that is beyond our capacity. Except in our ability to reproduce.

And here is where it all goes beyond me. About 9 months ago, a life began to grow inside of me. At this very moment, I feel him moving around in me. In a few days, he will be outside of me, a living, breathing boy, who will be capable of thought, motion, reason and creation. How did it happen? It is the one creative process that I have been a part of that required almost no work or thought from me. Obviously, pregnant women experience nausea and sickness during their pregnancies. Some become very sick and are put on bed rest. So our bodies are working hard and their is certainly sacrifice involved (and you do have to push the baby out of you in the end--no denying that).

But their has been no mental exertion or creativity on my part in the building of this new life. I haven't had to spend hours or minutes of my day, willing my baby's hand to form, building my baby's heart and lungs and digestive system piece by piece. I haven't had to go through several rough drafts until I came to the right form or idea. It all just happens inside of me, with very little effort on my part. And the end result is something that will be able to think and create on its own.

In short, I am convinced that pregnancy and birth is divine. It is nothing short of miraculous. Nothing I have ever attempted to do on my own--with all the thought and work and time that I have put into things I have written, music I have performed, physical and mental exercises--has come close to creating what is created when a baby is born. It is a process that God allows us to be a part of. It is a gift He gives.

I am grateful today for the gift of my life. For the gift it is to be a part of creating life. And for the gift of the birth and life of God's son, Jesus Christ, who brings peace and joy to life.

-Elin
Who hopes to better understand that spiritual re-birth that the scriptures so often speak of: Eph. 4:24 , 1 Jn. 4:7,  Mosiah 27:25, Alma 5:7–14, 26–28, Mosiah 5:2, Jer. 24:7