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!

Realizing That Prayer Works

"It is well to know that prayer is not compounded of words, words that may fail to express what one desires to say, words that so often cloak inconsistencies, words that may have no deeper source than the physical organs of speech, words that may be spoken to impress mortal ears. The dumb may pray, and that too with the eloquence that prevails in heaven. Prayer is made up of heart throbs and the righteous yearnings of the soul, of supplication based on the realization of need, of contrition and pure desire [. . .] Prayer is for the uplifting of the suppliant. God without our prayers would be God; but we without prayer cannot be admitted to the kingdom of God." James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, Sermon on the Mount chapter

Prayer is an interesting thing. I grew up in a family that prayed. We prayed over our food and we were encouraged to pray individually and talk to Heavenly Father. Sometimes, I would burst into my parents' bedroom and find one of them on their knees saying a silent prayer. So I grew up in a home where prayer wasn't an odd thing.

I also had wonderful experiences at various friends' houses. At one friend's house, as we sat around the dinner table, the family held hands as one of them offered what they called "grace." It was strange at first, since my family didn't hold hands when we prayed together; but I grew to love it. It made me feel close to them as a family. I learned something from those moments: prayer brings people together at the same time it brings them closer to God. (3 Nephi 18:21)

And have you ever had someone pray for you by name, out loud? I'm sure my mom and dad prayed for me by name sometimes, during our family prayers--like before a piano recital or when I was feeling sick; but I don't really remember any specific instances. The first time I remember someone praying for me by name, out loud, was in the home of my future husband. I was dating my husband at the time and it was my first time in his childhood home. The day I was going to fly back home, the family knelt together in prayer and my future father-in-law mentioned me specifically by name and asked for some blessings in my behalf. I have never experienced anything like that before. It is one of the most tender moments of my life--a moment when I felt the love of God from someone who I had only known a short time.

The interesting thing about prayer, is that I have been praying my entire life, but only now am beginning to recognize the power attached to prayer. It is not that I ever thought prayer didn't work. I always felt that Heavenly Father was listening to me. But in the last few years, for the first time in my life, I have wanted and needed things desperately--so desperately, that my prayers changed from being a habitual conversation with a friend I knew and trusted to pleading, constant cries to the only Being in the universe who knew me and those I loved well enough and who had the kind of love and power to actually help me and change me and fix me. (Enos 1:4, Alma 5:45-46, Alma 34:18-27,)

And those kind of prayers worked. Really worked. I was asking for BIG things. Sometimes the answers were immediate, other times the answers took years to come. Sometimes the answers were exactly what I asked for. Sometimes the answers weren't even close to what I asked for. But the answers always came. And these new kinds of prayers I am praying are changing me and changing the way I see the world and other people. (D&C 112:10, Jeremiah 29:12-13)

Whatever your circumstance, I can promise you that when you pray, Heavenly Father hears you and answers. It may take time and it will take a lot of prayers, but the moment you kneel on the ground (be it physically or only figuratively), you will begin to feel him near you. You don't even have to have the right words. Most of the time, I don't. "Prayer is made up of heart throbs and the righteous yearnings of the soul, of supplication based on the realization of need, of contrition and pure desire."

"I have had prayers answered. Those answers were most clear when what I wanted was silenced by an overpowering need to know what God wanted. It is then that the answer from a loving Heavenly Father can be spoken to the mind by the still, small voice and can be written on the heart."
President Henry B. Eyring

-Elin
Who really likes the color blue...as evidenced in this post

Resolution #1: Finisher



After an extensive blogging hiatus, we are back. At least I am. I'm sure the others are right behind me. Holidays throw off routines, as do births of babies, so we missed some days. This post would have been ideal for last Thursday.

Finishing has been on my mind for about a month; the need to finish what I start. It began with the desire to finish books that I had previously started. Now it has extended to the only "New Year's Resolution" that I currently have and goes beyond books. On my literary list is "The Brother's Karamazov," "Mere Christianity," "Leaning Forward" (the autobiography of my thesis advisor that I picked up at a campus bookstore), and a couple others. I've been working on "Karamazov" off and on for a couple years. Other things I mean to finish are wood-carving projects, physical wellness goals, and going completely bald. Time I finished that one off.

What is the value in finishing what I began? For one thing, I can feel the relief of having it done. For another, I began these readings or projects for a reason; there is something of value in the book or the wood-working that led me to originally start, and it is still worth obtaining. Finally, it is good training for the things in life that require that I finish in order to obtain all that is in store for me. Especially according to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In gospel terms, "finishing" is referred to as "enduring to the end." Here are a couple of scriptures that make clear the importance of this principle:

2 Ne 31:16 And now, my beloved brethren, I know by this that unless a man shall endure to the end, in following the example of the Son of the living God, he cannot be saved.
 
3 Ne 15:9 Behold, I am the law, and the light. Look unto me, and endure to the end, and ye shall live; for unto him that endureth to the end will I give eternal life.
 
D&C 14:7 And, if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God.

I want to say, like Paul was able to, that "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith," and thereby merit the greatest of all the gifts of God.

Forrest
--Who already knocked out a couple books before the New Year began but still faces Karamazov.

Great article called "Finishers Wanted," by President Thomas S. Monson (before being president).

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

Sometimes breathing messes things up

I want to preface this post by saying I highly recommend breathing, whenever necessary.

There are times when breathing is better than at other times, though. For instance, breathing while also drinking never is a good idea, while breathing between drinks is just fine. Breathing while surrounded by noxious fumes is probably not good either. You get the idea. One instance when breathing can mess things up is during songs, particularly at moments where there is not a designated breath mark or break in the music. I noticed this last week as we sang "Silent Night" during Sacrament meeting at church. The first verse is as follows:

1. Silent night! Holy night!

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin mother and Child.

Holy Infant, so tender and mild,

Sleep in heavenly peace;

Sleep in heavenly peace.

If you look closely you'll see that there is not a comma or any other punctuation indicating a break after the line "all is bright." While our congregation was singing, there was a definite pause there so people could breathe. This really isn't a big deal, and doesn't personally make much difference to me, but it can change the meaning of the phrase. It makes it sound like all is calm and bright on that silent night. And that wasn't the case.


For example, one of the reasons that Jesus was born in Bethlehem instead of Nazareth is because Joseph had to go and pay taxes by decree of Caesar Augustus, emperor of Rome (Luke 2). Did the Jews think all was calm and bright, being ruled over by a foreign power? Probably not. And I imagine there was suffering and unrest of all kinds and magnitude all over the world, as there is now.


The absence of a break after bright is significant to me because the phrase says "All is calm, all is bright round yon virgin mother and Child." Around Jesus Christ all was calm, all was bright. And in a world as filled with turmoil as ever, we still find that all is calm and bright around Jesus Christ. When I draw near him, my world is calm and bright. Jesus proclaimed that He is the light of the world (John 8:12; 3 Nephi 9:18) and provider of peace (John 14:27; Mosiah 5:18).


"All is calm, all is bright round yon virgin mother and Child."

A choir that knows when to breathe.

Forrest

--Who is excited Christmas is only one week away!

We are His words. We are His Music.

A friend took me to see The Nutcracker last night and through the entire performance, I marveled at the skill and artistry of the dancers and musicians that brought Tchaikovsky's masterful music to life. He wrote the music over a century ago. But the notes on the page wouldn't be worth much to us if there weren't people who dedicated their time and focus to understanding the notes and striving to be able to play them perfectly. 

In case you haven't noticed, I read a lot. And in some of my reading, years ago, I came across this: “Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself. (Virginia Woolf, Moments of being)

Reading that left me cold. I can see what she is saying to a degree--about this human connection--about how just life itself and shared experience and creation can kind of remove the "creator" or "author" or "composer" out of the picture. It is easy to take away the individual and merely become part of the whole. And maybe I'm not entirely understanding what she is saying. But having read Shakespeare and having seen and experienced his plays, having listened to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and experienced and attempted to play their music, I simply cannot remove the creator out of the equation. They were the individuals who made a choice to live their lives and then pick up their pen or sit down at their piano and create. It is not that music and words just flowed out of them...they made a conscience choice and sat down or stood up and went to work. The results of their time and effort simply would not exist were it not for their individual life and exertion. And what they created is beautiful.

So, the way I would re-write her thought is like this: "The whole world is a work of art; we are works of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet are part of the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. There is a Shakespeare, there is a Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is a God; and we are His words. We are His music. "We are His work and His glory." (Moses 1:39)

I believe that wholeheartedly. Individuals matter. We matter. Our choices, our lives--they matter. And because we are the creations of a loving Heavenly Father, His words and His help matter to us. The way to achieve the greatest and lasting happiness is by returning to the One who knows and loves and understands us best. And He made this possible by sending Jesus Christ to the earth. In my darkest hours, I have wondered how any of this could really be true...I have doubted and complained and have wanted to no longer be responsible for my own choices. But in those darkest hours, I have felt and seen and experienced things that are not definable or even expressable--and defy human logic. God is real. Our choices do matter. We are His words and His music and He loves us. He loves you.

-Elin

Who wishes she could express herself better....Speaking and writing succinctly have never been a strength of mine...

Foundation in Christ

I realize it has been quite some time since I have written a post, but, I promise, I have a good reason. After spending a week in New York, a weekend in Virginia, and Thanksgiving in Atlanta, we moved across the country to Texas. That’s right, we now live in the same state as my fellow blog authors and we are excited! Sadly, Texas is huge so we are still 6 hours from them.

The move to Texas went well and I am so grateful that it did. I’ve been thinking a lot about our frequent moving and the difficulties that can bring. About every 6 months we move, leaving familiar places, coworkers, friends, favorite restaurants, doctors, apartment or house, and neighbors. Getting moved into completely different surroundings so often can be disorienting, stressful, and challenging.

Somehow, amidst the difficulties, we love this lifestyle. Many people ask us when we will settle down or put down roots and I feel like we already have. We have settled our roots in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our strength and comfort comes from Christ. It is through Him that we are stable and feel peace even when everything around us changes. He heals our hearts as we say goodbye to our friends. He comforts us when we feel lonely.

There is a scripture in The Book of Mormon that talks about building foundations on Christ; Helaman 5:12;

“And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwinds, yeah, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over  you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fail.”

My favorite part about this verse is the end. A foundation built on Christ cannot fail. I know this to be true. I have experienced it and seen it in others.

-Ryanne

Who thinks Texas will be great.