beginnings new

Stepping Stones for 1-48

2009-12-13T16:03:00.008-05:00

I taught lesson 1-48 today and (as usual) I got inspired by reese's suggestions in her writeup for this lesson. I started thinking about how different people get bogged down at different parts of the goal "cycle." Some people have a hard time beginning, or having the courage to start on an ambitious goal. Others (like me) lose focus somewhere in the middle and need to remind themselves to stay focused and persist/endure in working on a goal. Others may have trouble finishing - they get close to finishing but never actually wrap it up. Others may have challenges with reflecting on and reporting at the end of a goal, or celebrating their accomplishment and using it as a stepping stone to plan for the next one.

So I decided to give my girls their own "stepping stones" to keep in some visible place to help get over whatever is the "sticky" part of the cycle for themselves. I bought decorative smooth black rocks in the silk flower aisle and some silver Sharpies, and I wrote inspirational words on them. In class, the girls chose one and if there wasn't one that fit what they needed to tell themselves they wrote their own, like "Finish" or "Done" or "Persevere" or whatever. Mine (based on the Mary/Martha story) is to help me keep focus on what is both necessary and essential in the moment - so mine says "one needful thing." In this busy season of my life and of the year, this is what I need to tell myself the most.

Lesson 1-48 "Short-Range Goals as Stepping Stones"

2009-12-09T11:12:00.004-05:00

I think this lesson would seriously benefit from some personalization. The stories are all perfectly nice, but this is one principle I think it would be really great for the girls to see up close. So few of the behaviors we try to encourage lead directly to what we want (they bring their own benefits, but no amount of reading my scriptures alone is going to get me the career/relationships/talents I want) I think it would be awesome to be able to testify of this idea through my own experiences and experiences of other leaders they know. I think I'll be grilling everyone around me.

The supplementary materials bring up the point that the personal progress program is a model of this system. One project or experience at a time, these girls are becoming women of faith. The talks included are a couple of talks by Elder Wirthlin. This one shares some funny football stories, and this one encourages taking the journey to become someone great.

I think this lesson is especially timely for my Laurels. They are all staring down college and adulthood and at times it completely overwhelms them. Especially because many of them will be putting themselves through college and the enormity of that task would scare anyone with sense in their head. I can't wait to explain this principle to them and tell them how I put myself through college. I figured that many of your girls would be in the same boat, so here's how I did it.

First, I studied and got good grades to be eligible for a good school
Then, I filled out applications and got accepted somewhere.
With that step done, the next hard part is paying for it. My younger sister got so intimidated by this part that she just didn't go to school at all. It's a big thing to overcome.

My best advice is to remember that they don't charge you for all four years at once. Don't think about how you're going to pay for EVERYTHING. Just focus on one semester at a time.

My first two years were at a community college which was way way cheaper, and also a way better learning environment for your general education classes. I pity the poor BYU students who take biology in a class of 900. My class had 20. Of course, this way being more beneficial depends on your major, so I don't think it's the best way for every case. But it sure was cheaper.

With the help of a high school counselor I looked into government programs and scholarships and paid for the first two years of tuition that way.

I worked as many jobs as I could over the summers and saved money.

When I was nearly done with an AA degree, I started applying for transfers and I got accepted to BYU.

I registered for classes and found housing

I wasn't eligible for government programs anymore, so I applied for federal student loans and used those to pay for the remaining two years. Going into debt was totally scary for me, it influenced what I allowed myself to study. I was convinced that I needed to walk out of college and into a career or else those loans would force me into the poor house. That's just not so. At least if all we're talking about is for an undergraduate degree. (The law school loans we're paying off are a little bit different.)

In America at least, after you graduate you have an entire year before loan payments start, and you can ask for more time if you need it. A few months ago I got a letter from the bank telling me that they were waiving the last $1500 as a reward for my continued payment, and my loan was paid off. I so wish I could go back and tell 18 year old me about this day. I spent so much time being scared, I wish I could tell myself that it's not that awful and that I would do it.

It really was just one step at a time, but every day people get too scared by the big picture that they don't take that first step. I'm so grateful I was just too stubborn to stop.

I think as we encourage these girls to try for big things, we need to add a little footnote, even just one sentence before they leave the room, explaining that hard work and good choices cannot guarantee everything we want in life and we shouldn't feel like it's our personal failing if life hands us adversity we couldn't plan on. Everyone seems to understand that on an intellectual level, but when things really hit the fan, I'd lay money down that each one of us thinks, at least on some level, that we could turn things around by being stricter with our worship. Admit it. On your hardest day ever, the thought at least crossed your mind that this never would have happened if you read your scriptures more. So let's address that with our girls.

Earlier this year I came across an old blog post encouraging readers to pick one word they wanted to govern their year. Her word was 'nurture' and she tried to keep that word in mind as she made choices about her family, her work, how to spend her time. I've been mulling it over ever since I read that, and I've decided my 2010 word of the year will be BEGIN.

I'm going to get it put on a necklace, I'm going to make something to hang near my computer. I just love how loaded with potential that word is. Maybe I'll make a little something for my girls too.

Lesson 1-47 "Encouraging the Development of Talents"

2009-12-06T20:48:00.008-05:00

It's the Christmas season and okay, so this blog is run by two busy moms... both of whom get legitimately overwhelmed now and then, and whose wards are on totally different lesson schedules by this point in the year (don't worry, we'll all be in sync again when we start the new manual in a few weeks!). So, it's Jeans for lesson 47, since I happened to teach it today and Reese is stuck a couple of lessons back in her ward.

Unlike Lesson 2-44, which is a straightforward lesson about developing one's talents, this lesson is more about how it can be tricky to identify talents, and why it's important to encourage them in your families, among your friends, etc. How to be a "talent-enabler," basically. One of the teachers in my ward handed out little chiffon gift bags of coins to her girls, using the parable of the talents. The MM's loved this. For my Laurels, I decided to avoid the whole guilt trip that comes with the various scriptures on talents ("If you bury them, they will be TAKEN FROM YOU!" Doom! Gloom! Etc), and just focused instead on a couple of key points:

--there are lots of ways to be talented. Talent is not just "artistic"; people can be talented in many different ways. I was going to bring in some ideas from Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, but then I didn't end up using it (good background for me, though).

--people (including ourselves) need uncritical encouragement in trying new things, discovering talents, and need room to make mistakes, learn, and improve. While you might think that your talents are the things you are "naturally" good at, that's not necessarily true. Creative work is work. But don't be too hard on yourself in the beginning; don't get discouraged, and be supportive of the talents-in-progress of people in your family. Talents are gifts, but they're kits... the kind that come "some assembly required."

--I used a lot of quotes from an article/interview with LDS author Jack Weyland from a 1990 New Era, which humorously covers a lot of these points. The way I did the lesson was to write some open-ended questions on little slips of paper. I rolled them up quilling-style and tucked them into the multiple drawers of a pretty jewelry box. Each Laurel had a chance to pull one out, think it over, and offer an answer for the discussion. We had a really wide-ranging discussion just talking over these questions!

My questions:

Complete this sentence: “Creative people…”

Complete this sentence: “For me, creativity is….”

What talent do I see in one of my parents? What can I do to help develop it?

What talent do I see in one of my brothers or sisters? What can I do to help develop it?

What is a talent I am developing? What encouragement or support might I need for it?

Complete this sentence: “I am passionate about…”

What personal progress goal has helped you develop a talent?

Complete this sentence: “A talented person in the scriptures was…”

What talents might go unrecognized or unvalued?

Complete this sentence: “Time just flies by and I feel happy and fulfilled when I am …”

Complete this sentence: “A person who inspires me is…”

Lesson 1-46 "The Purpose and Value of Education"

2009-11-30T06:07:00.003-05:00

So as you know, I am a college professor. This makes me, perhaps, well qualified to pontificate on this topic. It also makes me blindingly aware why I think it's so hard to teach a lesson like this, and rather hesitant to get on a soapbox about it. This lesson is tougher than it looks (but, to be fair, it's better than last year's). Why, you ask?

Because of the marriage/education false dichotomy, requiring YW leaders to tread on eggshells no matter what? Yes.

Because (see previous lesson) there is also a vocational training/higher education false dichotomy? Yes.

Because we might be creating a mixed message by teaching this, just months after teaching this? Yes.

Because, let's be honest, not all YW leaders value education themselves because not all have had the opportunity or the interest in finishing a higher education degree? Yes.

Because it's hard to be a smart girl in our culture? Yes.

But it's even harder to be one who never gets pigeonholed as "smart" at all? Yes.

Because some fields are still dominated by men and it's hard for women to break into them? Yes. (Yet there are glimmers of hope, especially in initiatives for girls in STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Math). I just had to highlight a few of them, like Girlstart, the National Girls Collaborative project, and state initiatives like those in Kentucky. I also notice, kudos to PBS for developing a new show, SciGirls and you can see a 17-minute pilot of it here).

Because it's hard to reconcile our LDS platitudes that "women should get an education" with our practices and really walk the walk about educating women? Yes.

Because higher ed is broken? Yes.

Because church schools don't necessarily fix what's broken about it? Yes (and more about that in a future post).

And, not least, because the "modern-day counsel" quotes in this lesson are from 1968 and 1977? Yes!

Now, because this lesson recycles the Howard W. Hunter quote also used in the Manual 3 lesson, I said it before and I will say it again. Here's me, last year, reflecting on the following quotation:

"President Howard W. Hunter is quoted in 1975: 'There are impelling reasons for our sisters to plan toward employment. … We want them to obtain all the education and vocational training possible before marriage. If they become widowed or divorced and need to work, we want them to have dignified and rewarding employment. If a sister does not marry, she has every right to engage in a profession that allows her to magnify her talents and gifts.'

I know that not everyone will agree, but I would just say boldly that the modifying clause at the beginning of that last sentence should be dropped at this point in time. And I mean no disrepect to President Hunter or any other church leader. But I believe we should update our language not just because of current financial uncertainty, but as an unequivocal recognition of the inherent value of all women. Each person of both genders should reach her/his own fullest potential and contribute to the greater good according to her/his abilities, talents, circumstances, and desires. 'A sister has every right to engage in a profession that allows her to magnify her talents and gifts' PERIOD. Regardless of her marital status or whether she is a mother."

So you will make of this lesson what feels right and natural for you to do - given who you are and who your girls are. Of course I feel very strongly that girls should be encouraged to pursue whatever education they can, even up into graduate and professional degrees if their inclinations and opportunities allow (and not just "before marriage"). I also believe (despite daily evidence in my classrooms to the contrary, which I try to deny and ignore) that education can be transformative.

But I also feel that education is WAY broader than college diplomas, and that some of our brightest women in the past were largely self-taught (think Helen Keller, Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jane Goodall, just to name a few). The hunger for knowledge needn't be connected to finishing high school, going to college, or getting some kind of advanced degree. That hunger -- which I think ALL girls and women should have as a personal passion -- can be filled with a library card, an internet connection, and a set of scriptures, if you know the tools to unlock each of those lifelong learning resources. I almost feel like devoting the class session to talking about those tools. So few of my college students come equipped with the skills to do anything beyond Google and Wikipedia, and so few write elegantly (speaking from a humanities perspective here - I'm sure my colleagues over in math and science would add to the wishlist of things that any educated person should be able to do).

To me, the purpose and value of an education is to snap the mind out of its media-induced coma and to awaken the insatiable beast of curiosity, never to let it sleep again but to grow more ferocious the older we get. The truly educated person is not content to be fed the answers but to search them out for herself. The truly educated among us are living in a state of perpetual wonder. No tuition required.

Lesson 1-45 "The Value of Work"

2009-11-25T12:54:00.003-05:00

I hope we know the family circumstances of every girl in our classes, because there are parts of this lesson that could be a serious hardship to a poverty-stricken family. We should be careful about insulting welfare systems if there are girls around us who's family use them, since there are way too many variables and nuances to properly address in 40 minutes.

Other than that, I only have one additional problem with this lesson. But it's a biggy. During the chalkboard exercise listing the temporal, social, and spiritual benefits of work, the lesson lists prestige as a spiritual blessing. PRESTIGE AS A SPIRITUAL BLESSING?? What in the what now? What happened to God being no respecter of persons? Oh my goodness that troubles me. If we ever needed proof of members often conflating temporal success with spiritual success, I think we just found it. Oy vey.

Sure, prestige is a blessing that can come from hard work. Put it in the temporal category. Put it in the social category. You'll get no complaint from me. But the SPIRITUAL category! Prestige increases your spirituality?? I can't even find words to make the case for why I find that so troublesome, it just seems so outrageous to me. If anything, prestige would make it harder to be spiritual because it would be so much harder to be humble. I think this makes me so crazy because I see it so often in the church, the people with social power, the people with money, are so often deferred to on the ward and stake level. Deferred to in a way that can bring problems of pride or cliquishness, undermining sustained authority, being unChristian to those from humbler circumstances. Anyway, enough. It's one word Reese, let it go.

The rest of the lesson is just great. Seriously. It includes all the points I'd wish to make myself. How when you can't do it, you appreciate work, how noble work in all it's forms is, the affect of your attitude on the work you do. Great stuff.

I suffer from a chronic illness that has left me bedridden for years at a time, and I can testify to the truthfulness of that story. Those years changed everything for me. I remember when just taking a shower and defrosting meat for dinner was a totally productive day. Back then I struggled so much with my self-esteem. I had no appreciation for how much my feelings of worth were tied up in the work that I did. Since then I've changed so that my self-worth is more in line with things that are eternal, but there's no denying how good you feel about yourself when you accomplish something well. Like a clean refrigerator. Man, I feel like an amazon when that happens. I think that the feelings of worth we get from work well done is an important part of our progression towards understanding our divine nature.

I also love how the lesson sticks up for the blue collars of the world. My own education was so hard won that I had some serious snobbery for a few years. And then my husband did a year of law school and I worked retail and stressed about every penny while the wives who went to hair school were able to take care of their families. I am a major proponent of life long education for the sake of education, so I still want to push everyone I know on to college, but I have also gained a massive appreciation for a trade.

A book was released this year on this topic, and it's still on my Amazon wishlist, but there's a really fabulous article here that summarizes the basic point. In a nutshell, a really smart college dude goes to work for some really smart political thinktank and finds it to be unfulfilling. So he leaves that job and starts a shop fixing up obscure motorcycles. The book, and the article, expound on the value of work, the virtue of a trade, the nobility of working with your hands, from an erudite philosophical perspective. There's good stuff in there.

Lesson 1-44 "Using Time Wisely"

2009-11-15T08:00:00.008-05:00

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.

Update: I made a PDF handout that I'll be using with my class tomorrow, for quick brainstorming about tasks and goals (Print in landscape mode).

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.

* and anyway, what do you do with all that wasted wet rice?

Things to never teach in YW

2009-11-10T12:04:00.002-05:00

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"

2009-11-07T15:02:00.004-05:00

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"

2009-10-29T20:00:00.003-04:00

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"

2009-10-25T21:42:00.004-04:00

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

2009-10-18T07:34:00.007-04:00

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"

2009-10-11T15:17:00.007-04:00

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

2009-10-08T11:38:00.002-04:00

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"

2009-09-22T10:00:00.006-04:00

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"

2009-09-14T11:53:00.004-04:00

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

2009-09-09T06:41:00.006-04:00

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"

2009-09-08T07:39:00.009-04:00

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"

2009-09-02T18:08:00.006-04:00

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

2009-08-25T08:41:00.004-04:00

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.

Lesson 1-34 "Worthy Thoughts"

2009-08-24T20:32:00.008-04:00

Well, if there was ever a lesson that demonstrated, unequivocally, the egregious lack of updating in young women's resources, this has got to be it. For crying out loud, when this lesson was written, there were three TV networks. The only computers were mainframes at IBM with punchcards. The music that Church leaders were worried about were the Doors and Herman's Hermits. It was BEFORE WOODSTOCK. The entire lesson is based on Boyd K. Packer's BYU talk from 1967 (the year my parents got married), with a postscript from a 1976 Church filmstrip (!) titled "Worthy Music, Worthy Thoughts." I will knit a fabulous winter hat for anyone who finds a copy of that filmstrip in their ward library and posts a video version of it on Youtube. I'm not kidding about the hat!

Now, don't jump all over me. I didn't say I didn't like the lesson or appreciate its message, I'm just pointing out its vintage. Fact.

I don't think any teacher throughout the Church could possibly not have her own ideas about how to bring this lesson up into this century. The obvious places to go for more frank, updated, media-savvy counsel about virtuous thoughts and the role that music and media can play in them are the new YW Virtue materials, or the 2009 New Year materials, or any recent issue of the New Era.

But while you do that, let me just tell you about the little journey I went on this week. I know President Packer has a soft spot for youth, so I thought he must have said something a l-i-t-t-l-e more recently on this topic than 1967. I thought I'd stick with him rather than looking around at what other people have said about this topic. So I went back through the conference talks that are posted on LDS.org's Conference page and read every one that President Packer had given. That page only goes back to 1997, and by the way (note to Church computer people - ), there's no easy way to plug in such a request to the search engine. I think there should be a way to call up all of a certain person's talks and articles with one query. But I digress. I spent a morning reading through the last 25 Packer Conference talks, backwards through time, and as I did so, I started to notice things. I found myself reading slower and slower. I connected bits of his own personal stories that started to fit together--here a mention, there a mention. My affection and appreciation for him grew. He became more real to me as a person. It was a rather remarkable exercise, actually. I would recommend it.

He had polio as a 5 year old boy, a disease his "small town doctor" didn't know how to treat. After months of convalescence he learned to walk again by dragging himself behind a chair. Later he lost an 8-year old sister, Adele, to rheumatic fever, a complication of measles. He squeaked into the Air Force by one test point and served during World War II; his brother was a bomber on a flight crew and was shot down more than once. He was called to be a General Authority while serving as a Seminary teacher (age 37).

Two talks were standouts and appropos to this lesson, I thought. The first tells the story of his two sisters' battle with the measles. Adele died, Nona lived. He talks about the effort to develop a measles vaccine, and then makes the analogy to spiritual inoculation, of giving children an "eye within" with the gift of the Holy Ghost, as a preventive measure against immorality. (Do Not Fear, April 2004).

The other tells, in some detail, his brother's and his own war stories and the power and comfort that can come from having a hymn in one's mind in a moment of distress, panic, or confrontation with evil. The talk's aimed at youth (great talk: The Spirit of Revelation, October 1999), and uses a small poem written by Louisa May Alcott when she was only 14 to support his point that the way to safety is to control one's thoughts. He quotes two stanzas of it, but the whole poem is worth a reprint (Go Louisa!):

A little kingdom I possess
where thoughts and feelings dwell,
And very hard I find the task
of governing it well;

For passion tempts and troubles me,
A wayward will misleads,
And selfishness its shadow casts
On all my words and deeds.

How can I learn to rule myself,
to be the child I should,
Honest and brave, nor ever tire
Of trying to be good?

How can I keep a sunny soul
To shine along life’s way?
How can I tune my little heart
To sweetly sing all day?

Dear Father, help me with the love
that casteth out my fear;
Teach me to lean on thee, and feel
That thou art very near,

That no temptation is unseen
No childish grief too small,
Since thou, with patience infinite,
Doth soothe and comfort all.

I do not ask for any crown
But that which all may win
Nor seek to conquer any world
Except the one within.

Be thou my guide until I find,
Led by a tender hand,
Thy happy kingdom in myself
And dare to take command.

our concern's not new nor ours alone

2009-08-19T15:54:00.012-04:00

Interestingly enough, as we're having this great conversation here on the blog about degrading vs. uplifting media, I've been reading Thomas Doherty's fascinating new book*, Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration. Breen was a devout Catholic who headed the agency in charge of vetting scripts and editing all Hollywood films to meet the Hays Production Code, a moral code which was in effect from the mid-1930s to the late 1960s (after which, the MPAA ratings system was developed to help alert viewers to dubious or mature film content). The cardinal principle of the code: "Wrong must always be characterized as wrong, and not something else... in the end the audience feels that evil is wrong and good is right." Doherty writes about the Catholic Legion of Decency in the 1930s (which gets major points in my book for being SUCH a GREAT NAME), a league of concerned Catholic priests and laypeople who signed the "Legion pledge:"

"I condemn absolutely those debauching motion pictures which, with other degrading agencies, are corrupting public morals and promoting a sex mania in our land. Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality."

A sentiment we surely could get behind, and packaged in much livelier prose than we're likely to get from official Mormon channels...!

I was captivated by the cartoon he reprints, from the Chicago Catholic archdiocese weekly, New World from 28 Sept 1934 and just had to post it here (p. 58):
Don't let that delicate ship of purity and innocence be attacked by that hideous octopus with its filmy arms of atheism, indecency, suggestiveness, slime, and filth! And check out the grisly drowned corpses who've been entangled in film. Ew. Thought you all would enjoy seeing that.

*Full disclosure: one of my grad school mentors

Women, Modesty, and Media

2009-08-18T12:22:00.004-04:00

Guest Post by Seraphine of Zelophehad's Daughters

[My arm twisting campaign was successful, and Seraphine has graciously shared some of her Sunstone presentation here with us. I think she makes a number of brilliant insights that are very important to consider when we discuss the experience our YW have with the media and the effect that has on their emotional and spiritual health. I kind of wanted to go over this whole essay with a highlighter. -Reese]

Talks on pornography are almost solely directed at men. But how and where do women fit into this picture? When they are mentioned or addressed, it’s primarily in two ways:

* Way #1: The most common is that women are usually cast in the role of victim when discussing pornography. Typically, this comes with a mention of the wife of the pornography user who is the innocent victim and suffers greatly when her husband uses pornography. Most talks (though not all) are very vague about how and why the wife suffers.
* Way #2: Women being condemned for their participation in pornography. Very, very occasionally women are included in the admonition to avoid pornography, but more often women are reminded that they participate in pornography when they choose to dress immodestly. The most well-known of these (at least, in the circles that I inhabit) is Elder Oaks’ April 2005 conference talk titled “Pornography,” in which he tells women that by dressing immodestly, “you are magnifying the problem by becoming pornography to some of the men who see you.”

The patterns in our discourse on modesty are a bit more varied, though there are a few major themes. There definitely is a large amount of discussion of clothing and its appropriateness: women are admonished not to wear short skirts, short shorts, prom dresses without sleeves, etc. Another common pattern is that women are reminded that their outside reflects their inside, and that when they dress immodestly, they are not representing their divine status as a daughter of God. Women are also generally encouraged to respect their bodies, usually with a discussion of how bodies are important, a temple, etc.

Our discussions of pornography/modesty/female embodiment rarely address an important critique of certain kinds of pornography: how the pornographic industry often problematically represents women (and increasingly men) as objects. However, this is one of the most prevalent trends of the media, and one of the most damaging. Women’s bodies are treated as objects, as things, waiting to be viewed and consumed (typically by men). Contemporary advertising often breaks down women’s bodies into parts: hands, faces, breasts, etc. By doing this, women more closely resemble the products being sold, rather than living, breathing human beings (and if you want to see this demonstrated, I would recommend Jean Kilbourne’s videos, especially “Killing Us Softly”).

This objectification has a variety of destructive consequences. In her book, Can’t Buy My Love, Jean Kilbourne talks about the link between representations of women in popular culture and violence against women. She writes,

Ads don’t directly cause violence of course. But…objectification and disconnection create a climate in which there is widespread and increasing violence. Turning a human being into a thing, an object, is almost always the first step toward justifying violence against that person. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to be violent to someone we think of as an equal, someone we have empathy with, but it is very easy to abuse a thing.[1]

Kilbourne and others point out that one of the primary problems with pornography and the media in general is that they participates in a culture where men are encouraged to see women as objects rather than full human beings.

These images also impact women’s experience with their bodies and sexual desires. The emphasis on beauty and thinness puts an extraordinary amount of pressure on young women who are already struggling to figure out who they are and who they want to be. Jean Kilbourne observes that

Even girls who are raised in loving homes by supportive parents grow up in a toxic cultural environment, at risk for self-mutilation, eating disorders, and addictions. The culture, both reflected and reinforced by advertising, urges girls to adopt a false self, to bury alive their real selves, to become “feminine,” which means to be nice and kind and sweet, to compete with other girls for the attention of boys, and to value romantic relationships with boys above all else.[2]

In addition to these problematic effects on girls, through their experiences with popular culture, women come to see their own bodies as things and objects, as things to be viewed rather than to be directly experienced. Because they are constantly being looked at, they often look at themselves not through their own eyes, but through the eyes and perspectives of others. Popular culture trains women to objectify their own bodies.

So, how might these ideas impact our understanding and views of the media as Mormons? I’ve already pointed out that I don’t think we (Mormons) spend enough time thinking and talking about objectification and the problems connected with it. Also, I do think we can be more careful about the ways in which we discuss women—their bodies, dress, selfhood, femininity, etc. Our discourse often doesn’t fight the problem of objectification (see, for example, the remark above by Elder Oaks above about women “becoming pornography”). Given that the media makes women incredibly anxious about how they dress, how they don’t live up to the beauty ideal, how men view them, etc., we need to be more explicit in discussing the destructive ways in which media represents and objectifies women, and we need to be much more careful when discussing these issues so that we are doing our best not to replicate or reinforce the messages and patterns in popular culture.

Also, as we think about the issue of pornography, in the church, we so often discuss it as sleaze, filth, sexually graphic, etc. But we do not spend enough time talking about how it represents people and relationships. Pornography can be damaging because much of it encourages us to see human beings as less than human. People become objects, and fantasies and images replace real intimacy. This impairs our ability to love, show compassion, and honor the personhood of one another, all of which are essential to our overall mission of becoming more Christlike.

Finally, media critics like Jean Kilbourne help us to see the importance of developing a richer discourse on female subjectivity, and I believe that Mormon theology offers a unique and compelling way to think about female subjectivity, embodiment, and desire. Not only are we human (rather than objects), we are also divine. We talk about bodies as being essential to our personhood/divinity: we will have our bodies through the eternities, and they are essential to who we are and who we will become (we’ve inherited them from a God who shares the same form). As Susan W. Tanner states in her conference address “The Sanctity of the Body,” “We are not less but more like Heavenly Father because we are embodied.” Because of this, we should feel an increased need to more fully explore the implications of embodiment. And our discussions of popular culture should be informed by the understanding that our bodies are central to our human and divine potential.

[1] Jean Kilbourne. Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. (New York: Touchstone, 1999), 278

[2] Kilbourne, 130

Lesson 1-33 "Avoiding Degrading Media Influences"

2009-08-17T14:05:00.007-04:00

OK everyone. If I've ever said anything that you've ever found beneficial, if you have any warm feelings towards me at all, please, please, please use this lesson as an opportunity to talk to your YW about porn.

The majority of LDSaints still function under the delusion that porn is exclusively a male problem (Seraphine from ZD's did a great Sunstone presentation touching on this and I'm hoping to twist her arm into sharing some excerpts with us) but I can bear witness that it is absolutely not. I have personally known women who were addicted to hard core porn as a sexual stimulant, and outside of the LDS world, women using porn just the same way men do is accepted as a fact.

An article originally published in O magazine of all places cited a study that claims 1 out of every 3 visitors to an adult website is a woman, and that this market is rising so swiftly that porn manufacturers are rushing to create films of a quality that would appeal to these women. Old fashioned bodice rippers are not the only problem that needs to be addressed anymore.

One article I read (but lamentably can not find again, as I don't relish the thought of scouring the internet looking for porn info) justified the apparent contradiction between the men=visual turn-ons, women=relational turn-ons belief and the rise in female porn use by explaining that both men and women mentally put themselves into the images they're viewing. For men the turn-on comes from the act he's practicing, for women it comes from the desire she's inciting.

Porn is also doubly insidious for girls because not only does it carry all the impure thoughts and sexual temptations the boys deal with, but it also provides dangerous and unnatural body images that can greatly affect the self image of our young women.

I know it is difficult to discuss sex frankly, especially at church, but our girls are in just as much danger as our boys so we owe it to them to get over our shyness and say what needs to be said.

Now that I've got the really scary stuff out of the way, let me also say that I think we should address those bodice rippers by suggesting that there is a higher law besides just "don't look at naked boobies", and that it's best to avoid anything that creates feelings of arousal until we're married or mature enough to handle it. In my thinking this actually includes the Twilight books. They might not have had sex until after they were married, but I dare anyone to look me in the eye and tell me that those books were still not intended to stimulate. I've seen enough online discussions of how many husbands love their wives reading the series because of the benefits of that particular type of crossfire.

We have to use our heads and honestly, humbly, decide what draws us closer to God and what desensitizes us to feeling the Spirit. Our relationship with the media is one big gray area, and it takes spiritual maturity and sincere discipleship to properly choose what we spend our time with.

In the modern version of the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, they no longer suggest a strict "no-R rated movies" prohibition. I think this is mainly because of the needs of a global church where every country has it's own rating system, but I think it's also because our American ratings just don't make a ton of sense and relying on that line alone would leave out a lot of very valuable material (Schindler's List, Glory, Saving Private Ryan are the obvious ones, but I would also see Billy Elliot every day and twice on Sunday before I thought of it as bad for me) and leave in a lot of stupid, callow, or crude movies (like all three Austin Powers and both Ace Ventura movies, although avoiding those movies would have crippled my college communications given that we mainly spoke in movie quotes).

I think so much of what is troublesome about the media is the version it presents of what is "factual". How a woman is supposed to look, how fun it is to party with no consequences, how much better your life will be if you owned that product, false ideals about what everyone else is living like. I remember an episode of The Real World that featured Julie, the Mormon roommate. One of her roommates had dated a local guy a few times and spent the night at his house. Julie made some comment that showed she assumed her roommate had sex with her date and the roommate was deeply offended, saying she wasn't "some kind of slut." I felt for Julie. If your experience with a world where sex is not reserved for marriage comes only through the television screen, you would assume that you're expected to have sex with someone you date more than three times. I've known a lot of former Mormons who had to learn how not to be promiscuous because popular media makes it seem like that is how things are done.

I think it would also be productive to have a discussion about how much time we spend with our favorite media. Not necessarily dwelling on the content, but the proportion of our lives we give to it. I am acquainted with one guy who got into BYU only to flunk out his first semester because he played so much darn counterstrike, and heaven knows I could testify about spending too much time online. Even if it is in the worthwhile pursuit of knowledge existing in the bloggernacle.

The lesson concludes with some quotes I really like. From For the Strength of Youth:

Have the courage to walk out of a movie or video party, turn off a computer or television, change a radio station, or put down a magazine if what is being presented does not meet Heavenly Father’s standards. Do these things even if others do not. Let your friends and family know that you are committed to keeping God’s standards. You have the gift of the Holy Ghost, which will give you strength and help you make good choices.

I love the counsel to rely on the Holy Ghost and personal revelation rather than a prescribed list of do's and don'ts. This goes back to seeking out the higher law that I mentioned earlier.

So does President Ezra Taft Benson's quote,

“Some of the greatest battles you will face will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul”

Love this. This might become a needlepointed pillow at my house. I think it is easier to have courage when people are watching. Then you have the weight of all those lessons on example and the whole missionary effort of the church keeping you from caving in to your baser impulses. It's when no one would know any different that the true test of courage comes in.

I also really like President Benson's standards to judge media against because it covers both ends of the spectrum and shows what we should be seeking out. I think media that encourages a facile relationship with God or a shallow experience with the gospel is also degrading enough to be avoided.

Beginnings New at Sunstone!

2009-08-10T09:34:00.002-04:00

I probably should have brought this up a while ago, but time has completely gotten away from me!

On Saturday I'll be appearing on a panel at the Sunstone symposium discussing online lesson resources. I'll be talking about our experiences here at Beginnings New, our motivations for working on the site, and some of the lessons we've learned over the past two years.*

I'll be appearing with some esteemed company so it should be an interesting hour. I hope some of you will come and say hello, I'd love to put some faces to the people in my imagination.

*Holy cow! Two years already? How did that happen?

Lesson 1-32 "Personal Purity through Self-Discipline"

2009-08-09T14:00:00.002-04:00

Let's talk about marshmallows for a moment. Everyone likes marshmallows, right? Especially little kids. Over the last few months I've run into several different accounts of one scientific experiment involving little kids and marshmallows, and it had some pretty interesting results.

It starts with a group of Stanford psychologists in the 1960s, led by Walter Mischel. Mischel used a small research room at the Stanford University preschool, and he posed the following scenario to the kids in the study:

"Here's one marshmallow for you. I am going to give it to you and leave the room. While I'm gone, you can eat it, or not, it's up to you. When I come back, if the marshmallow is still here, you get TWO marshmallows because I will give you another one. "

Then he'd leave the room, and watch through the one-way observation window. You can imagine what they did. In fact, there's video here of kids in a similar study, and you can see what they do. Some just eat it right away and don't even try to wait. Others poke it, sniff it, lick it, hold it, and some of those ultimately give up and eat it because they can't stand not to any longer. The ones who hold out until the researcher reappears turn their back on the marshmallow, put their hands over their ears and sing, kick the chair, distract themselves with counting things--in other words, they develop coping strategies for the stress, and control their impulses while waiting for a larger goal that is coming at some unspecified future moment. And the study was published, discussing the ability to delay gratification as a developmental milestone in the young child.

Okay, now here's where it gets interesting. Mischel's own kids were in the study, and so were some of their classmates, and as they all got older, he started to notice that there might be a correlation between the ability to delay gratification and other markers of academic performance and life skills later. So he tracked down the original study's participants, then in their teens, and tested them all kinds of ways. The researchers found that the kids who had skills to delay gratification as small children performed better in school, maintained better friendships, got higher SAT scores, had fewer behavioral problems, you get the idea. The study and its results were in a really fascinating New Yorker article this spring, and in a RadioLab podcast a few months before that, and David Walsh has a book out that draws on the research, titled No: Why Kids--of All Ages--Need to Hear It and How Parents Can Say It.

Walsh argues that in previous generations there were multiple cultural constraints in favor of teaching kids self-control and delayed gratification, but that one by one, those have weakened or been undermined by a marketing/entertainment "Me Generation" Gratification Juggernaut. He wants to bring back those lost constraints, and his slogan is "Say Yes to No." Sound familiar? I thought so. It's the foundational principle behind church teachings and Heavenly Father's commandments: you can choose what feels good now, or you can wait for rewards and blessings later, but it's up to you, and here are some resources to help you develop coping strategies for that stress and feel supported in your efforts at self-control.

This lesson's a chastity lesson in disguise, if you want to teach it that way, but as we've discussed many times since President Dalton's talk last fall, "purity" and "virtue" have multiple meanings beyond just whether someone's had sex or not, and self-discipline is a broadly applicable trait.

I've been watching the Bristol Palin saga over the last year. Very pretty teenager, daughter of a famous family-values conservative, a photogenic boyfriend, a cute baby, a dramatic breakup full of recrimination: a soap opera totally made for the tabloids. Since her son Tripp (Freudian name?) was born, she's done her best to become what she admits she needed while she and her boyfriend were having a sexual relationship: an abstinence ambassador. Although clearly, she managed to ignore every message in that direction that she herself had gotten in a born-again Christian household, throwing some doubt on the efficacy of the abstinence message if teens are determined and the marshmallow is RIGHT THERE. I thought the headline on People's cover (with Bristol as a grad-gown Madonna) earlier this summer sort of a stunner: "If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody."

The subtext being: it's girls who get the "skank" label, it's girls who are either scarred by an abortion, heartbroken over an adoption decision, or stuck for life raising their out-of-wedlock child, missing the senior prom and working part-time just to pay for diapers. Sex goes from something glamorous to something very un-glamorous, very fast, once the whole issue of "consequences" is attached to it.

I am not sure where I will head with this lesson. I want to keep it light, for sure. I think I'll be exploring the root word of discipline, "disciple." Maybe I'll talk about bonsai trees (long-term shaping, training the tree, the small pruning, commitment). There's a good talk by Elder Uchtdorf from April's conference on "The Way of the Disciple." I want to link developing self-discipline to being a disciple of Christ. I think that once someone develops self-control and personal discipline about important things--both in the sense of making yourself DO something (practice an instrument, daily prayer, exercise) and of making yourself NOT do something (binge on Twinkies, meet your boyfriend when you know no one else is home, sleep in rather than go to Seminary)--then sexual purity is just part of your way of being. Christ never did anything out of self-gratification or to coerce another person, and seemed always to be able to see the big picture. His disciples should be the same way; the inner peace that comes is way sweeter than marshmallows.