Lesson 3-44 "Using Time Wisely"

Yeah, for this lesson you COULD bring in a timer. Start low-tech... an hourglass, say.

Or a mechanical timer, spring-wound, the kind that ticks and dings.

Or a digital timer, the kind that beeps and needs a battery.

And yeah, you COULD do the tired old "put the big things into the jar first and then pour the rice" object lesson.

But let's say, for argument's sake, that you've done all that and are looking for more.

Let's kick it up a notch, shall we? Productivity tools and ideas have entered the 21st century, and many of our youth will have access to those tools and can make use of those ideas.

A few to get you started, or maybe even find something for yourself:

First of all, the guru du jour of productivity is David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. Here's a quick overview of the system. It involves keeping lists of everything, and frequently revisting them, to free up your brain for other things. It also involves recognizing that you need to think about your tasks on different levels of focus, from the immediate (current actions and projects) to the larger (areas of responsibility, goals) to really big-picture (5-year "visions" and "life goals"). I think this is helpful, because immediate tasks take on both significance and priority as they slot into one's bigger picture(s). Allen also suggests sorting your lists by context: in other words, a list just for things you need to do while at the computer, another for your roles at home, another for school, etc - so that you have a list ready for when you enter that physical or mental space. The advantage of that is not wasting time worrying about things you can't do at the moment, but to have a laser focus on maximizing your at-home time when at home, your schoolwork time when at school, your errand time when out, your worship/calling/spiritual side when at church, etc.

For some reason, Allen's "GTD" system is very hip right now in the business/computing geek world. As a lurker in a variety of higher education/technology/digital history-type communities, I hear a lot about his system and about the idea, in general, of finding better ways to do things. Sometimes that means a higher tech way to do it, and sometimes a lower-tech one is just as good if not better, but either way, the buzzword is to "work smarter, not harder."

So here's a quick rundown of links of both geeky and low-tech ways to use time more wisely. Set your timer (don't get lost in the links), and check out a few:

First, understand the basics of productivity and efficient time use, with this post from the Ubersite called LifeHacker.

Then, once the magic of The List has sunk in, think about other lists that could help unclutter your brain and organize your ideas, energy and time.

Or try a Zen approach to the GTD system.

Some of the GTD system, which was designed for business, can be very successfully adapted for students (HS, college, and otherwise). For example, "Getting Things Done, Explained for Students," or "Study Hacks" or "Hack College" (although, caution: some of the content on that last site is aimed at the college party scene).

There's a huge, growing market of online tools, many for free, that aim to digitize the GTD system and help you capture, search, manage, and collaborate with others on getting things done. This slideshow profiles some of them.

For example, you can try a computer wallpaper that helps you organize your desktop in ways that help your workflow, or just to give yourself a kick in the pants to stop messing around and get something done.

But, really, all you need is paper and pen. This week I'm trying out the Hipster PDA, essentially just a bundle of index cards held together with a binder clip, which would be an easy to-do in your classes with your young women. Have an index card for each "context" or what Franklin-Covey calls "roles." Mine include: @home, @family, @disciple, @Mom, @scholar, @professor, @self, @YW leader. Each card lists actions and projects pertaining to that role. Young women might sort by the places they are required to be throughout the day, since some of them have less control over their own schedules than we do: @school, @home, @music lesson, @church...

Let me know in the comments how it works out.

Of course, the main thing to emphasize here is that all the gee-whiz tools are only helpful to the extent that they bring us in tune with the Spirit, help point us towards Christ and keep us on the path of the disciple, and help us use the gift of time with gratitude and good stewardship. I love that we get to see glimpses of Christ taking time for renewal, quietness, planning, and that we see him multitasking with focus (teaching, on the way to raise a girl from the dead), and putting the people first because other things had been delegated, thought through, or planned ahead. We learn in the temple that all things were created spiritually before they were created physically; that's planning, goal-setting, and long-term vision. You could adapt Elder Bednar's talk on prayer to this: that prayer is an important part of time management, because morning prayer helps us create the coming day, and evening prayer is an opportunity to reflect on the just-past day and how we used our hours, and to peacefully and lovingly lay the day to rest.

Photo credits: To-Do list from lifehacker and Post-it madness from dead fish.

Things to never teach in YW

Originally posted at The Exponent

Since I've been teaching in YW my entire adult life, with no end in sight, I've been following D'Arcy's work on abstinence with interest. It's something I think about a lot, because I've seen so many consequences of crazy things that some YW leader taught to someone. I think if we leaders really tried to appreciate just how far reaching the effects of our teachings can be, we'd be too paralyzed with fear to actually present a lesson. But the fact remains that we leaders can send our girls on to a great experience with the gospel, or give them hangups that can plague them for years.

The lesson manuals aren't always a great help with this either. Over on Beginnings New we obsess about subtext, and if you read the lessons with that in mind it's often troubling to see the messages that are being sent unintentionally.

After my own trip through the YW's program and subsequent re-learning of certain aspects of the gospel, coupled with the last ten years of service in the program, I've come up with my own little list of things I have to diplomatically correct or root out of any instruction to the young women, whether that comes from the lesson manuals, my own missteps, or the efforts of another well meaning leader who maybe isn't as obsessive as I am. In no particular order:

Chastity lessons that include shame or exclude the Savior:
As D'Arcy has written about, this can be tricky. It's hard to impress upon the girls the importance of respecting themselves and their bodies without slipping into the standard pattern of instruction that includes comparing an unchaste woman to a chewed piece of gum or a dirty broken cookie. These object lessons may be compelling, but are so damaging to someone who has already messed up, not to mention someone who has been victimized. Plus it discounts the effects of the Atonement to create a "new piece of wood."

In the last conference, Elder Cook included an analogy that was probably the best I've heard. A "life-giving" stream that got polluted after not enough protections were taken, restored to purity after corrections were made. If you must use an analogy, use that one. Just make sure to explain that this doesn't apply if someone else broke down your fence.

Lessons about their specialness that set them up for disappointment with a regular life:
This one comes from unpacking my own baggage. But I know I'm not alone. These youth really are an amazing generation. Smarter, more savvy, more experienced, and they're most likely going to go on to be smarter, more savvy, more experienced in their regular old happy normal lives. Too much talk about choice generations makes some people (like my teenage self) expect some kind of a grand life befitting such a choice person.

I just yesterday discovered another wrinkle with this kind of talk. My girls told me about a lesson our Bishop gave them called, "You're not as strong as you think you are," where he talked to them about avoiding opportunities for temptation. Each one of the girls told me that her first reaction was, "Hey! I am too strong! I'm part of a choice generation!" Oh dear.

That happiness is a function of righteousness:
The most recent lesson I reviewed was about making righteous choices and how good it will make you feel. Imagine my dismay when not once in the lesson did it mention the Holy Spirit. It gave several reasons why it feels good to choose the right, but the one it favored in quantity was that we will feel proud of ourselves for making a right choice. Ignoring the circular logic, I also find it troubling that instead of encouraging a relationship with the Divine as a source of happiness despite life circumstances, it encouraged a false sense of pride in our own strength and for being better than the sinners. This encourages the thought that if I (or someone else - extra ammo for judging others) am unhappy it's because I'm not righteous enough. So I get to internalize shame, particularly about mental illness, and get a view of God that punishes me with reasons to be unhappy if I'm not reading my scriptures enough.

An emphasis on Do Not's over an emphasis of good works: It's really easy to stick to the things that are quantifiable. No drugs. Check. No alcohol. Check. Don't let boys touch my boobs. Check. I think this is where the TAMN's of the world get stuck, stalling on this level of progression and never seeming to catch on that to be a true disciple of Christ you should actually be kind. It's not enough to just NOT do stuff. We should be defining ourselves as disciples by what we DO.

A vision of their future that does not include the unpredictability of fate: Statistics say that not every girl I teach will get married. Half of them won't stay married, and in my area at least, nearly all of them will have to work at some point. I'm not fulfilling my stewardship to prepare them for their future if all I do is talk about one option - particularly staying at home to raise many babies. I should certainly teach the ideal, but there are loads of times when I can at least mention that there are other things that can happen.

An all or never view of the gospel: As a teenager I was the overly earnest sort, and I was convinced that one kiss, one drink, one poor choice leads directly to the gutter. In this year's lesson on drug abuse, there was a case history about a 12(!) year old heroin addict and prostitute. I mean come on now. This vision of the world is almost schizophrenic - they go to school with a ton of kids who break the commandments and live to tell about it - and once again it denies the power of the Atonement. Once again it teaches fear about consequences over making choices out of a love of God. And when it suddenly becomes OK to give a kiss and then some, it can be really difficult to let go of that fear and shame.

A condescension towards other faiths: The way to teach teenagers about the One True Church is for them to experience it, and test it for themselves. Not to build it up at the expense of someone else or denigrate any other options. That just makes them intolerant and lousy citizens.

The world is a big fat scary place: President Hinckley used to tell us all the time how we were not alone in the world. That our concerns were not new nor ours alone. Sure there are temptations out there, things we should work against, but every time we say "The World," even if we just mean the people who disagree with us, there are going to be some girls who hear "The World" and think, you know, the world. For me, this fear influenced where I went to college, who I dated, who I made close friends with, and as a result I completely isolated myself from anyone who hadn't been baptized. Utterly ridiculous, I know, but I had been fed a steady diet of horror stories about friends who seemed fine until the day they tried to shove drugs down the throat of the poor unsuspecting Mormon girl. If we're going to be good members, good citizens, good missionaries for that matter, we have to actually be a part of the world. Which is different than "The World."

What do you think? Anything you'd add to the list? Are there still hangups you're trying to shake from some YW leader who didn't really think things through?

Lesson 1-43 "Righteous Living"

I'm having a hard time getting a hold of this lesson. It's a really simple message - Be Good to Feel Good - and it seems like such a fundamental thing that I don't know how I'm going to fill 45 minutes on it.

If I was going to pretend to be the girl sitting in the back of the room with their arms crossed, I think that quote after quote of person after person saying how good it felt to make righteous choices would cause me to roll my eyes and cut through it all with one well placed, "Why?"

Why does making righteous choices make me feel better about myself? The answer the lesson gives is basically "you'll feel proud that you made a right choice, you won't feel guilty, you won't lose feelings of self-worth, and you will feel confidence in the presence of God."

Those are all more or less valid, but the one that the lesson goes back to the most is feeling proud for making the right choice, and that concerns me a little bit. Mosiah 2:21 reminds us that we really can't get to where we want by works alone, and I've seen this kind of thinking turn into some really snotty, "I'm more righteous, therefore better, than you," kind of behavior.

The most important reason why righteous living brings happiness is because of that last one, feeling confidence in the presence of God. I think I'm going to add in a discussion of how living righteously allows the Spirit to dwell with us, and how having the Spirit in our lives can serve as a reminder of the divine nature of our own spirits. It also allows better communication with our Heavenly Father, and I can certainly testify how that brings happiness even in the most dire of circumstances.

I think I'm also going to expand the section about how living righteously is more than just not sinning. This goes back to that snottiness I see so often. Which is more cancerous to our souls in the long run, slipping up with a boyfriend and then going through the repentance process, or staying technically chaste but persecuting those who mess up by shunning and gossiping? It's so easy to take pride in obeying the word of wisdom - or something else equally quantifiable with a big Do Not Touch - and ignore the harder work of living as a disciple of Christ by mourning with those that mourn and spreading kindness and charity.

Also, I have to give a(nother) shout out to this just beautiful story Jeans linked to in the sidebar. I usually replace the stories in the lesson for something personal, but this time I'll be replacing them for this one. It's such a great example of a kid solving a problem by making a righteous choice and reaping the spiritual benefits, not because he gets to feel better than the sinners, but because he felt the influence of the divine in his life. That's all I could hope for for my girls.

Lesson 1-42 "The Courage to Try"

The lesson titles in this unit and the next one just crack me up. They're all important topics, but listing them one after the other it sounds exactly like some kind of teambuilding exercise out of the Franklin Covey playbook. Remember in the early 1990s when Franklins were the one true personal planning system of the Church? No offense to those who used and loved them cough*me*cough, of course, but these next few lesson titles just sound like generic motivational sayings torn right from the corporate-inspirational world of individualistic, me-oriented, "American dream" self-help: The Ability to Succeed, this one - The Courage to Try, Righteous Living, Using Time Wisely, The Value of Work, The Purpose and Value of Education, Encouraging the Development of Talents, Short-Range Goals as Stepping Stones, and Leadership: Delegating to Others. Corner office & glass ceiling, here we come!

Ah well, that aside, it's great to have a lesson on courage. Moral courage, of course, but other kinds as well. I just finished watching with one of my survey classes the HBO Film Iron-Jawed Angels, which depicts the young generation of confrontational women's suffrage activists in the late 1910s: Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and the National Women's Party. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for YW unedited (some racy content), and I was super-annoyed by its "contemporary" soundtrack, but it reminded me that we have a wealth of examples in American history and in the scriptures of true female courage: boldness, resolution, determination, speaking truth to power, and that we consciously ignore those examples at our peril. One great resource for this lesson would be President Monson's talk from this year's YW meeting, "May You Have Courage," which draws heavily on the story of Esther.

That got me looking for artistic depictions of Queen Esther and I stumbled onto a website reproducing paintings of Esther from over the years - many of them from the Renaissance period that show Esther (in gorgeous Renaissance gowns and robes) fainting in Ahasuerus's presence. That's consonant with the times in which they were painted, when women were supposed to be cowed by male authority. LDS artist Minerva Teichert's lovely image of the grave, dignified Queen is such a welcome contrast to the shrinking, collapsing Esthers of the earlier era! I was also intrigued by this abstract painting titled "Esther," by the Jewish artist Yoram Raanan, who comments:

The very name 'Esther' is symbolic for our times. The Bible relates that 'And he [Mordechai] had brought up/ nurtured /reared Hadassah, that is Esther' (Esther 2:7). Why are two names mentioned? Hadassah stems from the Hebrew word 'hadas,' (myrtle). The Midrash relates that Esther was similar to the hadas in that she had a deep olive-green complexion. The leaves of this plant have a very sweet fragrance that can only be released when the leaves are bruised and crushed. Just like the hadas, which is only fragrant when it is bruised and crushed, so too was Esther’s potential brought out to its fullest by the difficult challenges that faced her.

The name Esther is related to the word 'hester,' meaning hidden. For nine years, until Haman's downfall, Esther guarded the secret of her ancestry. This incredible silence is the outstanding virtue that made Esther queen. Esther did not dare reveal anything, for she knew that her silence was necessary for the salvation of her brethren. Esther had perfect self-control. The ability to be queen over herself is what made her queen and savior of her people.

If you look closely at the painting, you will notice that the hope and courage that personified Esther, glows from all parts of her being. Her optimism and confidence, coupled with her deep conviction and faith radiates from her while enlightening the gloom, pessimism and despair that surrounds her.

Isn't that lovely?

If you want to focus on the Esther story, even though it's slightly the wrong season, you could do a mini-Purim during your lesson. Give the girls small noisemakers or shakers for whenever you mention Haman's name as you retell Esther's story, and serve Hamantaschen and give all the girls costume tiaras. I know that would all be a little out of the ordinary for Mormons, but Purim is such a great holiday - and we haven't got one of our own that so joyously celebrates a scriptural woman's courage, beauty, and wisdom - that I think it's completely appropriate.

Lesson 1-41 "The Ability to Succeed"

This lesson is such a wonderful breath of fresh air! Not only do I get away from those strictly practical lessons that I struggle with so much, but it may just be the first lesson in this entire manual that I didn't want to completely rework.

This whole ability to succeed thing is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I am from that generation that was spoon fed a steady diet of how special my millennial peers and I were. I'm one of those nonsensical "generals in the war in heaven" that was going to lead the world to the truth through the strength of my bright shining countenance, and I'm left with the middle age angst to prove it. I can't tell you how happy I am to find none of that kind of stuff in this lesson, and I would beg all of us to resist the temptation to add it.

Instead, this lesson teaches divine nature as it *should* be taught. We are of worth because we are children of God. And as such we have seeds of divinity within us. Seeds that can be nourished into expressions of creativity and compassion, kindness and intelligence. Not because we make a lot of money or a lot of people know who we are.

This lesson would be such a great place to make a dent in the purely cultural construct that visible blessings of wealth or beauty come because of righteousness. I think it's a belief that is epidemic in our culture. In both it's virulent spread as well as the cancerous toll it takes on our spiritual lives. That opening exercise is just perfection. My favorite part is how it asks us to cross off any desires that we don't have money for *right now* instead of encouraging hard work to obtain them. That's just wonderful! I bet we can all testify that hard work is not all it takes to get earthly blessings and that our worth and happiness cannot be based on them. Let's do what we can to knock that thinking loose in the girls under our care.

I also really love the discussion of how we often compare the worst of ourselves with the best of what we see in others. Boy is that ever the truth, and so destructive to our sensitive little spirits! I feel like I bring this up every lesson, but it's my own little mantra and it comes up here again - we have to have the courage to share ourselves with each other honestly. I think this ties into that commonly held view that blessings and happiness automatically follow righteousness, so we only share this fake, perfect, pleasant view of ourselves with the world lest anyone get the wrong idea about us. But of course we're really only setting each other up for disappointment over and over again as we're each faced with trials despite our good behavior, and compare ourselves at our lowest to those fake perfect pleasant people around us. That's hardly a Zion people living up to their baptismal covenants.

A couple years ago I read this fascinating article about how to praise a child. In a nutshell, it's far FAR more effective to praise something a child can control - how hard he works, how he keeps trying - rather than to label them conclusively, even if the label is a good one. For example, if you tell a kid that they're smart, it can translate into behavior where they're afraid to risk proving you wrong, or an unwillingness to continue to try at something they weren't naturally gifted at. The whole article is worth a read, since I'm not really doing the nuance of the situation justice, but it got me thinking about how this would translate to how we teach the gospel.

Telling a few generations of kids how durned special we were hasn't seemed to result in a whole bunch of people shining with confidence and secure in our divine nature. Maybe we should be telling each other that the seeds are there, and that we're all doing a really good job when we nurture them.

I can't believe they're selling this with a straight face

So the other day I got a toy catalog in the mail along with the others in an avalanche of pre-Christmas advertising. I recycled most of them, but I hung onto this one thinking there might be something in it for the younger nieces and nephews on my list. Flipping through, I found this description of a game for girls ages 8 and up:

LOL! THIS GAME IS RLY FUN!

"Great for parties and sleepovers, as players try to identify which of 24 cool guys is their Secret Admirer by calling his friends for clues. Includes an electronic phone that texts and sounds just like a real cell phone! Private text messages, surprise callers, and action cards like "Mom Says Hang Up" add extra giggles to the game."

Interestingly, this texting-cell phone version is an update of an older one from the early 1990s in which players got information from a large pink electric phone that occasionally gave "speakerphone" calls that everyone could hear. The manufacturer, Fundex, says that over 72 million of these games have sold since 1991.

I don't even know where to start with all that is wrong and hideous about this, especially for girls under 10. Let me start with the board itself, a hexagon with 4 guys' silhouettes along each side, and THEY don't look like preteen boys, they are Men. What's the message here? Also the "sneak around and ask their friends" aspect creeps me out too - in real life, that tends not to be the best way to get your information. That "Mom" shows up here only as a sinister force is disturbing. In fact, everything about it is disturbing (even the $30 price tag). What bugs me most of all is that someone, somewhere, in some boardroom (of men! No doubt!) thought this was a good idea, and it's undoubtedly gone through all kinds of market research and focus group testing, and furthermore that 72 million someones, somewhere, have provided this to young girls. What are people thinking??

Lesson 1-40 "Health Care in the Home"

The foundational principles here are good:

1) it's useful to know basic first aid and how to facilitate healing from an injury, sickness, childbirth, or surgery

2) every home should have a preparedness kit and first aid supplies, and people should know how to use them if the need arises, and how to keep their heads in a crisis

3) families should try to solve their own problems and deal with short-term health care needs within the extended family circle if possible

But beyond that, uh... hmm. We don't advocate practicing frontier medicine, or necessarily setting up an ICU in one's own home rather than taking advantage of caring professional services. These kinds of decisions are for families themselves to work out and don't seem to lend themselves well to generalization or instruction from above. As one of the members of our presidency put it, this lesson seems more appropriate for RS sisters in the "sandwich generation" who have aging parents rather than their teenaged daughters.

The more practical skills suggested here are also not going to interest everyone, but for a young woman who wants to get CPR certified, or become a young EMT, or start a training program as a medical assistant or PA? Yahoo! More power to her. Those skills are always needed and will benefit her personally and professionally. The world--and your understaffed local hospital--always needs additional nurturing caregivers with skilled hands and compassionate hearts.

I just want to make a couple of observations, just take them as my own musings on this topic.

First, there's no explicit gospel angle to this lesson, except the generic scripture from D&C 38:30, "if ye are prepared ye shall not fear." I can think of several gospel angles, and think it's rather a shame that the lesson isn't linked to gospel doctrine in a stronger way, that's a missed opportunity. One angle might be to Christ-as-healer, and Christian disciples as God's hands on earth: To minister, and not to be ministered unto (another great college motto, Wellesley College: Non Ministrari sed Ministrare). Another might be that part of LDS "health care in the home" includes anointing of the sick with consecrated oil, prayer, fasting, and blessings. We have this dimension that has to do with spiritual power that goes way beyond just bandage-dressing changes and serving soup on a tray and we should acknowledge and celebrate that. You needn't even (but you could) mention the common practice of Mormon women laying hands on the sick in prior generations. Even if you're not comfortable bringing that up, I think it's important to say that divine healing is a particular gift of the Spirit to which members of the Church have access. Not that everyone is physically restored to perfect health in all cases, but the Lord offers "balm in Gilead" for sickness, injury, and disability. This lesson is so dry and clinical, that it BEGS for some mention of the rich fount of spiritual healing that we can tap into for help with healing and care of the sick.

Second, I fear that lessons like this one perpetuate certain prescribed roles for women as nurturers, healers, and nurses simply because of their gender. Particularly in the past, women became nurses and men became doctors, and the hierarchy was clear. Thankfully that is changing. I have only been half-following the discussion over at fMh this week, on Martin's guest post that coined the acronym of women's SEMO (Social Expectations and Moral Obligations). It's not that women necessarily belong in the sickroom, scrubbing out bedpans, or massaging elderly limbs with lotion just because we are women. It's not feminine compassion, it's "in humanity's name." Some women are going to take to this sort of thing more than others. Some men are just as suited. Some families will express compassion and foster healing by performing certain tasks at home, and others will express love and compassion and foster healing by employing the services of professionals whose skills and training provide expertise that would otherwise be sorely needed. In other words, you can't provide all the "health care" that your family will ever need, all by yourself, and women shouldn't be made to feel that they are less of a woman if they can't.

Lesson 1-39 Drug Abuse

These practical lessons are kind of challenging for me. How can I make sure that I give the girls a chance to experience the Spirit during a health class? But that is my failing, not the lesson's. I think that where the Spirit will come in for me in this lesson is as I pray fervently to know what issues I need to address.

It's been my experience that with drugs or chastity, someone right under your nose can be needing your help and you wouldn't even know. The girl who dyes her hair and has facial piercings could be clean as a whistle, and the laurel president/captain of the softball team could be taking diet pills every day. I'm going to have to seek out revelation to make sure I hit the areas that would affect the girls under my care.

Overall, this lesson is a fairly good one. I don't think I'll be using the checklist exercise. After 12 years of school and DARE classes, my laurels would be a little insulted. But I LOVE the section on addressing justifications for drug use. That part is fantastic. Teenagers are in the middle of that messy quest for self-identification. Just because they do something doesn't mean they know why they do it. I think this exercise is really empowering.

The most common mistake I see when adults teach about drug use (or internet use for that matter) is when they get carried away with the dire consequences and make it sound like a joint one day will find you in the gutter the next. Please, let's not get hysterical about this. Some of the case studies in the lesson are really good, but the one about the 12 year old heroin addict and prostitute? That's just sensational and alarmist. Nothing is going to close the ears of a teenager faster than an adult freaking out about something that seems to them to be No Big Deal. We should *ABSOLUTELY* instruct about the consequences, but these kids are surrounded by people who abuse drugs daily with nothing happening as far as they can see. If we try to make the case that all drugs = death, they're just going to think that we don't know what we're talking about.

These teens are very savvy and they know that all drugs are not created equal. I have some teenagers in my life who are well aware of the consequences of meth or heroin, so they stay "safely" experimenting with marijuana and mushrooms. When talking to one young friend of mine, all those scary horror stories starting falling out of my mouth before I really thought things through and she just looked at me skeptically and said, "I don't believe that's true. That's not how it works." What can you really say to that? "Is so!"

So yes, emphasize the sad facts of addiction, but don't ignore all the people who take drugs socially, just like people drink socially without being alcoholics. I think we need to change the way we talk about drugs to be more in line with how we talk about drinking. That one drink might not lead you to the road to ruin, but it will dull the Spirit, will expose you to further sin, can lead you to trouble you can't protect yourself from, and stalls your eternal progress as it masks whatever it is you need to be addressing in your life.

Here's one more site for more education on the subject.

Lesson 1-38 "Nutrition and the Word of Wisdom"

I love this lesson, it's so basic. I also think the object lesson, to wrap foods with varying nutritional value up in appealing packages and let them choose, is a fun one that I think I'll try. I've seen little decorative Chinese takeout boxes at the craft store, etc.

Last week we had the lesson on making good choices amid pressure and I used the story of Daniel as in the manual, comparing the three stories about him in the first few chapters of Daniel and talking about how he matured in spiritual strength and ability to be righteous when it counted. In the section of the lesson where we talked about how the 4 Israelite young men refused the king's rich food and instead chose "pulse," we got into a discussion about what that word meant. I thought it was like porridge, mixed-grain oatmeal, or pilaf (a word none of them had heard, btw). When I described it there was universal agreement that pulse was yucky and Daniel was a man to be pitied for having to insist on eating it. They also got a kick out of the KJV's translation that the young men were "fairer and fatter in flesh" and that was supposed to be a good thing. Giggles all around.

Which was a reminder that food is culturally constructed and that there's no single "diet plan" of the Lord that crosses all cultures and time periods and climates. We've really lost a lot of the context within which the Word of Wisdom was written. We tend to interpret Section 89 as a code for all seasons and places on the planet, given directly from the mouth of God, for our time. Remember, though, that it took decades for it to become widely accepted even WITHIN Mormon culture, and that for the vast majority of our history it was considered simply good advice. Mormons listed coffee among the necessary items in the packing lists for handcart and wagon companies going to Salt Lake, and that wasn't just to sell or trade along the way. A good shot of apple jack was part of many medicinal treatments, and I'm not talking only for the washing of the body. (Is that where Jack Mormon comes from?). Hm, someday it might be interesting to compare Section 89 with the health & dietary codes written in about the same time period by other American Christians who were defining Godly eating through frugality, avoidance of richness, and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. Take, for example, the Seventh-Day Adventists in the mid-19th century. This is where Kellogg's cereal got its start, e.g. corn flakes, as a religious health food up in Michigan where many Adventists had gone to form a community. Also, perhaps compare with the dietary rules (some of them seemingly quite random) of health reform guru Sylvester Graham, whose crackers are now mostly relegated to baby food or S'mores. American Victorians had some pretty wacky ideas about food and the relationship of digestion to physical and spiritual health (anyone else following the incredibly hilarious series on mince pie in the blog The Hope Chest?). We might want to take some of that with a grain of salt (so to speak) and be discerning about how we sort through all of this. How much of Section 89 might be related to the time period that its writer lived in, before refrigeration and industrial tin canning, where fresh food was only available in certain seasons, and where farming your own food was assumed? It seems to me that what that section teaches is truth about the relationship between body and spirit, and the importance of listening to both body and spirit when it comes to nourishment.

I also have to say that when it comes to contemporary Mormon interpretations of the Word of Wisdom, some fringe stuff really enters in here in LDS culture. Be cautious of micro-interpreting the document, or of emphasizing (say) the prohibitions on coffee & tea (which are, of course, nowhere mentioned in those terms) and not mentioning at all the common Mormon propensity for heavy consumption of meat & sugar. The recent Ensign article on those awful "energy drinks" (I see a lot of those in the hands of my college students) should alert us to the value of an ongoing dialogue with this revelation and that very little in it is permanently set in stone.

Lesson 1 - 37 "Caring for Our Physical Bodies"

Sometimes I wonder if the correlation committee that wrote these manuals were running out of ideas. We've seen all year long that this Manual 1 tends to overkill its subject, particularly when they're presented all together. Four lessons on women's divine roles, four lessons on the priesthood, three lessons on missionary work, SIX lessons on virtue. The hardest thing about teaching this year has been coming up with yet another thing to say about some of these topics week after week after week.

Now to bookend a couple good lessons on the Word of Wisdom and drug abuse, they present this lesson - a whole lesson on sleeping and using deodorant - and then a lesson on health care in the home - which is basically a first aid lesson. What do these have to do with Sunday worship exactly? Sometimes I think they must have decided on the structure of the book - roughly four lessons per unit - before they actually had to write the lessons.

I have to admit, I was truly stumped the first time through this lesson. I think it could be good to have a discussion on grooming with certain groups of Beehives - things are changing, hygiene regularly gets away from this group - but with my Laurels? Seriously?

Sister Tanner's talk recommended in the supplement gave me my way in. She write so beautifully about the spiritual mind body connection, and the power that comes from appreciating our bodies as literal temples for our spirits. I also absolutely ADORE the story she tells about her mom overindulging in sweet rolls.

Her thoughts also put me in mind of the awesome talk Elder Holland gave to the young women a few years ago where he begs them to be more accepting of their bodies. I think this lesson could be a great opportunity to discuss body image in the media and push back against it with the LDS understanding of the body.

D&C 88:15 : And the spirit and the body are the soul of man.

Part of our job in this earth life is to master this physical body. To learn to bridle our passions and overcome the natural man. I am a massive fan of So You Think You Can Dance, a dancers version of American Idol. As a non-athletic person I just marvel at what the dancers are able to make their bodies do. I sit there each week with my mouth hanging open and just think how accomplished they are at mastering their bodies. It's the same with my young women who are soccer players or field hockey stars.

I think we often value intellectual gifts in the church - a learned theologian, a talented teacher - but if the soul is the uniting of body and spirit, surely we should place more value than we do on those who excel in physical skills.

test-drive a new LDS youth website

The LDS Media Talk blog has a post up about a new LDS youth website under construction, called "Rising Generation." They've got some test material up on a "Labs" site, and are looking for youth participants (Joel Dehlin provides a guest login and password if you want to give it a spin). There's also a Facebook group where you can get more information and updates. At first glance, it's visually gorgeous, spiritually meaty, and has music, video, even interactive "games" (okay, quizzes). Put your girls on it & see what they think. I think there's a lot to look forward to when it launches officially.

Update: 9/14 - they're seeking participants for a survey. Link is here. Go!

Lesson 1-36 "The Importance of Truth in Living a Virtuous Life"

I will be happy to see the back end of these virtue lessons - not that they're not important, and in our ward we've had some great and very practical discussions about how to access spiritual power through precise, obedient, Atonement-centered living, but didn't they all begin to sound alike after a while? This might be part of the good argument for breaking up these long units of similarly themed lessons so that we get a virtue/truth lesson every other month across a whole year, instead of six in a row.

Ah, back to school. Which explains the lateness of my post, I am now back into my full load of teaching. I went on a trip right before school started, that included the weekend before Sept 1, and the airports were full of sweatshirt-wearing young people, looking fresh and maybe a little nervous on their way to their colleges.

Did you ever notice how many colleges have mottos or official seals that include the word truth?

Harvard: Veritas (Truth)

Yale: Lux et Veritas (Light and Truth - not to be outdone by Harvard)

CalTech: the Truth will set you free

Downing College, Cambridge England: Quaerere Verum (Seek the truth)

King's College, Cambridge: Veritas et Utilitas (Truth and Usefulness)

Eastern Nazarene College: Via, Veritas, Vita (the Way, the Truth and the Life)

University of Waterloo: Concordia cum Veritate (In harmony with truth)

Aside, there are just a lot of great mottos out there, including some that wouldn't be as applicable to this lesson, like Evergreen State College's Omnia Extares ("Let it all hang out"). Ahem.

One of my favorites is where I got my graduate degree, the nonsectarian Jewish university of Brandeis in the Boston area. The motto is "Truth, Even Unto its Innermost Parts." I had occasion to ponder that one many times, looking at it on a wall during meetings or fluttering on a flag. I can't find where it comes from, probably from Psalms 51:6 "Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom." I love the idea that truth is not always bald, obvious and external - that it has a hidden heart, it has guts coiled up, that it requires persistence and determination.

What's ironic to me about being a college professor is that my classrooms are the one place in my entire life that I can't talk about transcendent truth, even if the college seal proclaims it (which, in my case, it doesn't). That is the victory of moral relativism and secularism, and I don't say that with bitterness - I genuinely think that has been a victory across much of the academy. People who aren't willing in college to encounter people and ideas who are their radical Other can be nurtured in the places that continue to hold out, whether that be Bob Jones or BYU. I don't teach in a religious college, I am a public servant in a state college system, and capital-T Truth is long gone from my curriculum. That's one reason I find teaching Laurels to be such a refreshing change from my weekday life, because we can go for truth's innermost parts.

This lesson isn't about "telling the truth" so much as it is about recognizing it and using it as a solid foundation for life choices. This weekend I was at a Labor Day barbecue at a friend's house and she'd invited a neighbor family. They are in the middle of renovating a very old colonial cape house, with a fieldstone foundation. She told me that a few weeks ago they got ready to pour a new foundation under one of the walls to attach an addition. They jacked up the house, and the stone wall under that wall immediately crumbled and fell down. It had been built with too much sand in the mortar and of course it was very, very old and had never been reinforced, and only the compression of the house above it had kept it from doing that before. Once the pressure was released, the wall had no internal means of support and collapsed instantly.

Make no mistake, ferreting out the innermost parts of truth is hard. Try going through even a single day with total honesty and personal integrity. It's exhausting and exhilarating. In an era of "spin" and "image," it's decidedly not glamorous. I can't decide if the lesson is too simplistic with its 25-degree angle chart of how a small decision can have gradually divergent results that end up in completely different destinations. Or maybe not. Maybe living in accordance with divine truth at every possible moment really always is about such stark choices: at every moment, at any moment, to move towards, or away from, the Lux et Veritas.

Lesson 1-35 "Living Righteously Amid Pressures"

The older I get, the smaller the gap seems to me to be between how I live my life and how my friends and neighbors live. As a youth it seemed like choosing the right made me so dramatically different from the people I went to school with that I might as well have been a different species. Even the born again friends I had would talk about God with me and then go get drunk and have sex (but not the kind that counted, cause that would be wrong) with their boyfriends. I felt that divisive us vs. them battle keenly, and when it was time for me to go to college I wouldn't even consider applying anywhere but a church school. Imagine my shock on my first day in Provo when all the girls at the pool party next door were wearing two pieces! The horror!

I like that this lesson manages to avoid that dichotomous thinking and frames the challenge to stay faithful as a personal one.

The supplementary resources for this lesson are really great too. President Monson's talk focuses on developing a foundation of faith that cannot be shaken, with the perfect little President Monson analogy to illustrate his point. This is one of those things I'm always preaching to my girls. Personalize the gospel. Foundation, foundation, foundation.

Elder Cook's talk cheers me endlessly as he talks about how productively problems are solved when approached from an attitude of faith rather than fear. The subtext to all of this is just so great. We shouldn't be afraid of everything outside of the gospel. We should just start with ourselves, build up our families, and then serve as examples to the rest of the world. And understand that we're not as alone as we think we are.

President Hinckley was such a vanguard of this line of thought, that it's only right we point out his talk "An Ensign to the Nations, a Light to the World." There is so much goodness in that talk, chock full of his trademark optimism and humor, and much of it is addressed specifically to the youth. My favorite part?:

"Life is better than that which is so frequently portrayed. Nature is better than that. Love is better than that."

The whole talk reads like a coach's halftime locker room speech. By the end of it I want to jump out of my chair and go CHOOSE THE RIGHT FOR THE GIPPER!

"God bless you, my dear young friends. You are the best generation we have ever had. You know the gospel better. You are more faithful in your duties. You are stronger to face the temptations which come your way. Live by your standards. Pray for the guidance and protection of the Lord. He will never leave you alone. He will comfort you. He will sustain you. He will bless and magnify you and make your reward sweet and beautiful. And you will discover that your example will attract others who will take courage from your strength."

This part is what I think is especially masterful. Teenagers are notoriously short sighted. They think they're invincible, they think adulthood is miles away. When I first read the optional handout I just thought that it didn't sound enticing. What teenager wants to think about eternity when *graduation* seems like it will never come. But in this talk President Hinckley emphasizes the immediate blessings as well as the eternal blessings. Blessings of strength, of respect, of heightened sensibilities. Plus all those blessings awaiting us in the life to come.

Now I try to tell my girls to just hang on. It will get so much easier. Now when I go to a party and say I don't drink, people not only support me in that but will often apologize for offering. Now I'm old enough to see those teenage friends abandon their wanton ways and settle down into responsibility, all the while telling me how much easier I made things on myself because I didn't make the mistakes the first time. "The World" is not a big fat scary place. It's just a place full of temptations, so we should steel ourselves against them and get on with a faithful life.

church bag bling

I'm not going to claim any credit for this awesome idea. A friend of mine did this a while back and I thought it was really clever. I finally got around to doing it myelf. She collected all the youth materials and took them to an office-supply superstore and had them spiral bound together. Easy reference, all in one place. Genius, right?


This is great for parents or leaders - I am just glad to have all my kids' stuff in one place so I can stop losing the little priesthood manual pamphlets and have to ask for new ones every year. It cost me about $8 to have the binding done - they just sliced off the edge of the Personal Progress book and removed the staples and cut the others, and then bound them with a clear plastic cover and a black back board.

Mine has everything: For the Strength of Youth, Guidelines for Parents and Leaders of Youth, Deacon, Teacher and Priest Duty to God, and Personal Progress. But of course you could just customize to YWs if you only have girls, or as a gift for your leaders.