Update (on an update).

Even in the midst of these hard weeks and days there have been sweet moments, too. One was seeing some of my old Provo and Provo family, both of whom I love. I also feel closer to Spencer's family, which I'm sure he loves.

Zeke and Bing, pre-work.

Nana and Eden, post E getting a tad bit hurt.

My horse whisperer.

Myself.

Pretty. Grumpy.

Just pretty.

The one I love.

And again. (On the very day of loss.)

This field love day-of-days, the Autumnal Equinox was brought up, and someone in my family asked me how I used to celebrate it, when I used to celebrate it a lot. I explained our old rituals of jumping over flames, chanting/dancing, the one-at-a-time circle sharing of our favorite thing about the season, and/or a quote, poem, song, or drawing to go along with it. I also explained some of the more specialized rituals involving eating part of a nut and letting the other one go in the water, representing what we want to keep about our lives and what we want to change, or seeds planted with tiny letters written on them, of what we want to grow (which was actually more Spring), or folded paper boats with our secret wishes to be released into the same water (which was actually more Summer). After my telling, my family humored me in sharing their favorite part of fall. I was a tad bit surprised that they would be willing to do that for me, but they were, and it was quite touching--particularly on that holy, sad day. My favorite thing(s): family dinners with baked apple desserts, strolls through fields, feeding horses in those nearby fields, crisp, cool air, dreaming about more apple things (including fresh cider pressed from fresh fruit), and squash--all kinds of squash. (Plus reds and oranges and yellows if I lived somewhere where leaves could be those colors. And a special emphasis on temperatures below 100, wishing I lived somewhere where I could feel those temperatures.)

What are are a few of your favorite fall things?

An update (on a downdate).

I have been back in California for two days, and I am still exhausted, in almost every single way that a person could be exhausted: mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, etcetera. I also bore my testimony at church today, which I wasn't expecting. But, that may have been because I wasn't expecting it to be Fast and Testimony Meeting. I forgot that next week is October, and hence General Conference, as well as the fact that that can expedite an opportunity.

There was a baby blessed today, and afterward my heart started doing that pitter patter thing, where you know you are going to get up, even though you don't know what you are going to say. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I shared my sentiments on birth and death, and then even less surprisingly, I started to cry, and then I sat down and cried harder. I couldn't stop, for what felt like a long time. At least until the end of the meeting. A friend of mine, sitting in front of me, turned around to give me a package of kleenex. It was a small gesture in such a time, but it was a gesture, and I was grateful. Strangers were kind to me after, which I guess is one of the reasons we sometimes say something out loud in church. Or maybe it is just why I do, and on a day like today, when I needed kindness.

The services for Spencer's mother happened on Wednesday (which happened to be Yom Kippur, the Day of Holiness or Atonement). They were I think, just what she wanted, that is: simple and based largely on the Savior. One of her brother's spoke, the other sang, and her sister read the eulogy. Each of her children also spoke briefly, as well as her husband. Everyone's remarks were sweet and brave. Her grandchildren are mostly small, but they sang "I am a child of God," and one of my little nephews blew me a kiss during it, after I blew one to him. (Which means that maybe I shouldn't have done that, but it warmed my heart.)

There was a viewing the night before, and that is where I cried the most, aside from the night of the actual passing, or the days preceding it, when we knew it was immanent. What made me cry so hard? A conversation with one of Spencer's closest friends, wherein he asked me how Spencer was really doing, because he wanted to know, and also understood that most people in Spencer's situation just nod and say that they are fine, when they are really not fine. I was grateful that someone was that caring towards my husband in one of his greatest times of need.

The other moment of vast tears was when I noticed a bouquet of flowers that was not like the rest. It was vibrant and beautiful, but made out of some material, rather than living leaves and buds. I soon found out that it was from her students, and that each flower contained a note written in a unique child's hand. I started to read them, and there was no way that I could not cry. One child expressed gratitude to Mrs. Steenblik for teaching her how to read and write, another for teaching him how to speak English, still another for teaching her her multiplication. Each child mentioned Janice's smile and kindness. Many mentioned specific moments when she showed her smile or kindness to them. Many more told her that she was the best teacher that they had ever had, and that they missed her.

Sometime later I noticed a woman in line to pay her respects, that I recognized. She was the teacher who subbed for Janice, when she was on her 6 months of sick leave. I met her because the very first day that Janice had to return to work she was still sick, and exhausted, and nervous, so Spencer and I accompanied her, and helped her teach for part of the day. The teacher was so kind then, so I greeted her now. She was hired full time and teaching the next grade up, meaning the same students Janice had last year. She had them make the flowers, and told me that they needed it for themselves, they were so distraught. One of the students, a girl, was standing in front of her with her dad. At class that day she begged her teacher to bring her, and convinced her father instead. She wanted to be there. I watched as this little girl looked at the body of her former teacher, and could not help but feel for her and with her.

Many others gathered together that day and the next to show love, and also to mourn with many others who were mourning, as well as to rejoice in Janice's life.

In picture form:

Love notes from children.

Love notes to each other.

Post-crying eyes.

Pretty flowers designed by S's oldest sister, Aunika.

In peace.

Friendship.

Maybe this is my child's namesake.

Nephews x 2.

Nice niece.

I'll fly away, oh glory.

Farewell car ride.

A time to mourn.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stone, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. -Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

For ones I love, these days are mourning days. And weeping days. And laughing days. And loving days. And embracing days. And sometimes dancing days. And for one among us, today was a dying day.

The one was Spencer's mother, Janice, who passed away this morning, at 2:00 am, after a year of mornings, and afternoons, and evenings of battling cancer. Spencer was with her, holding her, as were nearly all of his siblings. I had slipped downstairs five minutes before to read about Zion, but bounded back up when Spencer called my name.

His mama's breath was no longer labored; it was no longer breath. Before or after, her strong heart beats beating in her strong heart quieted, until they too were silent. Everyone hugged each other for a long time, gently weeping. This passing was expected, but still painful. Despite that, it was still peaceful. So very peaceful.

Throughout this hard but tender week, I have frequently found myself thinking, "Death is holy. It is sacred. Mourning is sacred." It was sacred to watch Spencer's sisters flutter around their mother, administering care with a combination of grace, gentleness, and skill. It was sacred to sit beside Spencer as he sat beside the woman who bore him, who is his exemplar in almost all things. It was sacred to hear him speak to her, and tell her firmly that he will see her everywhere: in his sisters, in himself, in his father, in his next building, etc.

It was equally sacred to hear him tell her that, he "will remember her, okay?" because remembering those who have died is one of the purest works of love that we can give. (If you don't believe me, just ask Kierkegaard.) It was sacred for me to spend yesterday morning dancing with Spencer and our baby nephew across the living room, before spending the afternoon cleaning it. It was sacred to see Spencer's maternal uncle enter the home earlier in the week with the purpose of making every meal, so his younger sister's family would be both nourished and free to spend their time with their beloved matriarch. It was sacred to weep and pray and sing when there was nothing else to be done. When stories were told, it became sacred to laugh.

Again, death itself, is sacred. I believe this, because I believe that birth and death are the opposite sides of the same coin, and that that coin is life, or "the plan of salvation," or whatever you want to call it. Part of me wondered this week if heaven's words for death and birth might be reversed. I can picture spirits in heaven mourning the loss of one they love, prior to that individual's birth into our world, as we mourn the loss of them after they return to theirs. Regardless, I am glad that there is always rejoicing, on at least one side, and that Janice's deceased loved ones can welcome her back again in a new birth.

I also thought of my favorite story, with the Little Prince I love so much. When it was time for the small prince to return to his rose, on a planet, on a star far away, he asked the aviator narrator not to come, saying, "I shall look as if I were suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. It is like that. Do not come to see that. It is not worth the trouble..." His friend could only repeat: "I shall not leave you. I shall not leave you." He did indeed, come anyway. At that new moment, the Little Prince said, "It was wrong of you to come. You will suffer. I shall look as if I were dead; and that will not be true..." When his friend said nothing, he continued, "You understand...it is too far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy." When again nothing, "But it will be like an old abandoned shell. There is nothing sad about old shells..."

And there isn't. (Or there is, but it is still okay.) What looks like dying isn't always dying. Or it isn't always permanent dying. It wasn't when Christ was crucified, and it isn't for us.

The veil between earth and heaven is so thin. I can feel its thinness.


This is the way I remember her best:

(Mis)diagnosed?

Today I visited a doctor, which is something I do not do very often. I visited him for a few reasons. 1. Because I have had a near constant sore throat for the last two years. 2. Because I have had a more severe sore throat, nose issues, and cough that I cannot kick for the last three or so weeks. 3. Because I promised my mom I would.

I described my symptoms (including length of symptoms) as best I could, and he ran some tests, which largely consisted of looking in my ears, nose, and mouth, listening to my hoarse voice and cough and heart, and asking me to do various breathing exercises while placing a device on equally various parts of my back (I think to measure my lungs?).

He ruled out bronchitis. And allergies (which I suspected 1 was). And a few other things. And then told me what he thinks it is, and it is something I would have never guessed: HEARTBURN. I was so skeptical of his diagnosis that the first thing I did when I left his office was google the symptoms of heart burn. And sure enough, chronic sore throat and cough are among them. And there is a type of heart burn that predominantly strikes at night, leaving the poor sufferer to wake up with a sore throat in the morning. Which has been my fate for much, much, much of my last few weeks, and months, and years. It is something about the lying down flat combined with gravity that makes the stomach acid not stay where stomach acid is supposed to stay.

My one concern now is that I went in while I actually do have a more real (i.e., traditional) sore throat, because I am pretty sure that he entirely ignored that aspect, or the fact that as part of this particular multi-week bout, I had also had a very runny nose. Now I think that he may have conflated my hoarser than usual voice and more constant than usual cough as the very long term sore throat issue, when really I need help with both.

The bummer news of the heartburn news is that apparently lots of foods that I like and believed to be healthy (tomatoes, onions, garlic, citrus fruits, chocolate, etc., etc.) make heartburn worse. :( What ever will I do?

Spencer's thesis is making me tired.

More tired than I can say. I am thanking the heavens that it will be over in a few short hours.

A tiny bit of fall, and a big decision.

There are still summer temperatures here, but there are fall smells of ginger carrot soup wafting in from my kitchen. Why? Because despite the summer temperatures and summer season that does not quite want to let go, I am still sick sick sick, so soup (as well as sleep and the ability to breathe) happens to sound, and smell delicious.

I am back to school tomorrow after a whirlwind summer. But it is not as simple as it sounds, and not only for the sickness. Spencer graduates in exactly 6 days, and will be headed to Salt Lake City after that to work and be by his (much-much-more-sick-than-me) mama. I am having trouble deciding whether I should stay California and school as planned, or be Utah/family/break-time too.

On sickness.

The worst part of being sick is that you're sick.

The best part of being sick is that you may* lay in bed all day, watching Downton Abbey, drinking Naked juice, and eating tomato soup.


*If you are very lucky. And three days away from going back to school.

Sometimes when it is your first anniversary, you arrive in Copenhagen, Denmark while your husband is laboring away on his thesis in Los Angeles.

Happy Anniversary, dear Spencer.

If you would like to read something very, very beautiful,

read this.

It is the story of a woman, who was once a girl, who listened to Hellen Keller speak in the Salt Lake Tabernacle about learning to read and type and speak. I did not even know that that Salt Lake Tabernacle circumstance happened, but it did, and it is moving.

(As a note: one of the best things that happened during my Boston Library Science days was getting to go on a class field trip to the school where Hellen Keller learned. It was just down the road from my house, so I passed it sometimes, without knowing quite how special it was. And then I knew. Just like that. I saw shelf after shelf and row after row of books and tapes filled with pretty dots, in pretty patterns, that mean something important to the people who use them. I saw the recording rooms where volunteers come and read books out loud, as clearly as they can, so still more words may be accessed. I learned that Boston's main library, the BPL, is one of the best libraries in the world for people who cannot see, in large part because of Hellen Keller's presence in the city, and I felt deep feelings, of admiration and gratitude for her legacy that she paid forward in very real ways. End note.)

On the radio.

Once upon a time, a friend of mine from Kierkegaard class (not to be confused with Kierkegaard Camp), invited my husband and I to discuss some of the tenets of our faith on his radio show. I said yes before having a clear conception of his objectives, which may have been a slightly brave or rash thing to do.

As some communication passed between us, I learned more of what the personal and professional objectives were. As it turns out, the radio station my friend Sam works for (found at apologetics.com) is a conservative, mostly Evangelical, Christian station, "challenging believers to think, and thinkers to believe." During this campaign season they have been inundated with emails and phone calls from listeners wondering if it is okay for them to vote for a Mormon.

Because of this, they knew that they wanted to have a segment on Latter-day Saint beliefs, so their listeners could learn what we believe, and make their decision for themselves. Initially, the producers wanted to have a round table discussion about our faith, without any members present to defend or clarify. Sam understood that even with good intentions that could easily slip into a bashing session, so he suggested that he be in charge of finding Mormons to interview, by saying, "I go to Claremont [aka: the only graduate university in the world with a Mormon Studies program]. I can find me a Mormon." And he did.

Earlier he had brought on one of our very atheist classmates to have a dialogue betwixt the two. One of his purposes during that conversation, he explained, as well as in the conversation we would have, was simply to model for his audience how it could be done--how you could respectfully talk with, and disagree with someone whose views are unlike your own. He wanted them to understand that "the other" could still be good human beings, and are worth engaging in a real way. It was worth it to him to let the atheist tell his own story, and to let Spencer and I tell ours.

In this, he did not want any of us to downplay our differences, or presume that they are not real or important, and in fact wanted to highlight our differences, but the real ones that matter, not the ones that are trivial or inaccurately portrayed.

When he told me these purposes, I felt full confidence in appearing on his show. Even when he sent us a list of the questions he would likely ask and it included many of those frequently repeated quips about "holy underwear" or baptism for the dead, because that list came attached with a very apologetic, and I believe sincere email explicating that he used the phrasing he did only that his questions might match what his audience members are likely to have heard or read.

I planned to go over the list with Spencer the day of, and at least begin thinking about what we might say. However, it didn't quite work like that. You see, because he had originally asked me for the 4th of August, which happens to be last Saturday. What I had missed in his initial email was the caveat that it was actually for Friday night, starting at midnight and going until 2:00 am, hence the 4th.

Thankfully I wrote him an email on Friday, saying, "I look forward to seeing you tomorrow," and he had the good sense to write back and say, "Tomorrow? I am trusting you mean today," with a renewed explanation about the date and time. More thankfully still, I had the good fortune to read his email at 10:40 pm, just a little more than an hour before we would be appearing live, on air, at his studio, a town or so over, when we are without a car.

Spencer looked up bus routes immediately, and told me that we needed to leave right then if we wanted to make it. We rode our bikes to the far away station, under and over passes, on quasi-highways, etc., etc. And let me tell you: if I have ever doubted that adrenaline is a real thing, I do not doubt now. I have never biked so fast, or felt so fearless on the road. For that 20 minutes I felt infinite. Or invincible.

And then we waited at the bus stop, and the bus didn't come. We waited some more. And still more. He checked the time of the bus again, and now it was telling us a new time. A later time. A time that would get us there fifteen minutes before we would be on. It would be cutting it close, because when I called Sam while we waited at that bus stop, he said that while he wanted to do the show on Mormons, he had two backup guests prepared to speak on the Problem of Evil, and that whatever program went on at midnight would need to be the program he stuck with.

We continued to wait, and continued to wonder if we would make it. Spencer checked to see how many miles away it was, to see if it was possible for us to bike there in time. We determined that it was only possible for Spencer--the still faster rider, adrenaline or no. The time came and went, and there was no bus. Ten minutes came and went, and there was no bus. Five more minutes passed. We called a taxi. And then the bus came.

We boarded. A little sadly. A little nervously. A little (or a lot) fearfully that we would not make it on time. It was still worth it to us to try, because even though the friend assured me that we could reschedule, it somehow felt like a now-or-never opportunity. I called him to tell him where we were. He told us he could give us a window of five minutes. No more. No less. He could say something about Mormonism by himself for that long.

I still felt scared, but our bus finally came to our stop. We dashed off and across the street to what we hoped was the correct building. We really had no time to waste. It was 12:04. We only had one minute. Someone was to be waiting at the door for us, to help us pass through the three clearance checkpoints. That someone was to have Sam's cellphone. No one was at door number one. Spencer ran to the other side of the building while I waited further. Then I saw them inside of the building, walking towards me.

We walked quickly through the building to the recording space, where it would all transpire. Miraculously we made the five minute window. Unfortunately, we did not have time to get a much needed drink of water, or use the restroom, or catch our breaths. Our seats were taken, our headphones were put on, and we were on the air.

The shortest way to explain the next two hours was to say that it was a remarkable experience. My friend Sam is very adept at what he does, and was more than knowledgeable about the LDS faith, as well as more than generous to us his guests, and to the religion that we imperfectly explained. Because of my mixup in dates, I was not able to prepare the way that I wished, nor Spencer, so we both winged it as best as we could.

And calls came from real listeners, which could not be planned for anyway. One question was very thoughtful and kind. Another was delightful and surprising for a different reason. The last was not quite as polite, but still relatively fine. It was a very fun and fulfilling opportunity and even more so because it was with Spencer.

Feel free to have a listen here.

(And if we made any egregious errors, please be a little bit kind to us. It was very late, and we had had a very wild ride getting there.)

Sometimes I stay up late helping Spencer write architectural manifestos.

Fact.

When I was in New York, I met a woman who didn't look at herself in the mirror for one year.

For an art project slash life project. When she first looked at herself in the mirror, she wept.

She showed me the video, and told me that there is something very powerful about looking at yourself when you are weeping, or when you are mourning. She said it allows you to feel empathy for yourself: it allows you to love yourself. "Double pain, and double relief too."


OYP_VIDEO IN THE BOX N˚2 from Anita Sto on Vimeo

Maybe because of this, I documented S and I, seconds after finding out last night's heavy news. I wanted to know what our grief looks like. Suffice it to say that today is another day for pictures and mirror looking.

On cancer.

What do you do when one of your family members tells you that their cancer came back, that it is agressive, and that they have mere weeks (to months) to live?

This happened just moments ago. I feel paralyzed.

Caputo on faith, hope, and charity.

So we start to see how deeply the not is embedded in the path, how deeply the impasse is embedded in the pass, and more generally how deeply the impossible is embedded in the possible--almost to the point that, far from being a simple play on words among wild-eyed French theorists, it is beginning to look like a law, and indeed one very close to the religious heart. Think about faith, hope, and charity singled out by St. Paul. When is faith really faith? Not when it is looking more and more like we are right, but when the situation is beginning to look impossible, in the darkest night of the soul. The more credible things are, the less faith is needed, but the more incredible things seem, the more faith is required, the faith that is said to move mountains. So, too, hope is hope not when we have every reason to expect a favorable outcome, which is nothing more than a reasonable expectation (the virtue of a stockbroker), but when it is beginning to look hopeless, when we are called on to "hope against hope," as St. Paul says (Rom. 4:18), which is a magnificently deconstructive turn of phrase. This is above all true of love, where loving those who are lovable of those who love you makes perfect sense. But when is love really love? When does love burn white hot? When we love those who are not lovable or who do not love us--in short, when we love our enemies. In other words, we are really on the way of faith and hope and love when the way is blocked; we are really under way when the way seems impossible, where this "impossible" makes the way possible. It is precisely the "not" that makes the "path" kick into high gear. -What Would Jesus Deconstruct?

Caputo on a beautiful risk.

The relation with the other person is a journey we never complete, where that incompleteness is not an imperfection but testimony to the perfect excess of the other it is not a loss but a source of endless novelty and discovery. Were the opposite true, our relation to the other would be ruined. We can never be sure of what is going on in the heart of the other but we affirm that distance rather than being demoralized or defeated by it. The relation to the other is bracing but risky business. To give a very concrete example of what I mean, when you get married, you are saying "I do" not only to who this person is, or who you think this person is, but to whomever or whatever this person is going to become, which is unknown and unforeseen to the both of you. That is a risk, what Levinas called a "beautiful risk," but it is a risk all the same, at best a fifty-fifty chance if we can go by the divorce rates. But the risk is constitutive of the vow or the commitment. It is the faith these two people have in each other that we admire, the willingness to go forward, even though the way is not certain, that leads us to describe it as beautiful. If it were a sure thing, it would be about as beautiful as a conversation with your stockbroker. -What Would Jesus Deconstruct?

On homelessness and pioneers.

Kristus er som en lilje på marken og fuglen i luften.

Christ is like the lilly in the field and the bird in the air. How so? Because he has nowhere to lay his head. In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard's pseudonym, Climacus, wonders if this made Christ unable to understand the essentially human, as humans tend to care about home and head-laying and things of the morrow.

Inspired by these same passages, my dear friend, Deidre, pointed out (first while sitting on couches in her temporary living room, and second while standing at a Mormon pulpit while I sat on a Mormon pew) that in the very same scriptural breath that Christ mentions some of these things, he asks his followers to do the same, by simply saying, "Come follow me." She mentioned that he says other strong words, about the dead burying their dead and son being against father.

It may not be surprising, then, that early Latter-day Saints were asked to follow Christ in homelessness, by giving up everything familiar and comfortable to follow the dictates of their conscience and their new faith. What may be more surprising is that they were repeatedly asked to build temples (i.e., houses) for the Lord, amidst personal poverty, uncertainty, and external persecution.

Plans were made for temples that could not be finished due to the third of those "amidsts." Others (the Kirtland and Nauvoo) were completed, following great acts of sacrifice, time, and belief. Nauvoo took at least 5 years to build. And still they were pushed Westward. Still they were without a home.

When some of the saints arrived in Utah, it was announced prophetically that it "was the right place." Notwithstanding this, I wonder how much faith and hope and love it must have taken to be willing to work so carefully and painstakingly on a new temple, a new home, that they did not know for sure that they would get to enjoy. It makes the already impressive 40 year figure that much more impressive, and helps me feel greater gratitude for this building that means so much to S (as it meant so much to his ancestors who helped build it).

One of my friend's points in her inspiring speech is that many (if not most) of the things that we try to do in life fail, or don't last. We might lose a job or have trouble finding a job in the first place. We might anything. But (and this is a big But), we just build again. We just try again. We just work to have a (Christ-centered) home again, or to feel at home (my personal crisis).

This makes it even more beautiful that the Nauvoo Temple was rebuilt, and makes me feel honored to have been married by the architect who designed it.

From Minnesota with Love.

Minnesota has been lovely (albeit a tad too hot for me, with a tad too many mosquitos). I fly back to LA this evening, and while it will be good to no longer have to talk to Spencer through the interwebs and phone lines, I will miss this calm, pretty place. I will miss the green fields and green trees. I will miss the quiet. I will miss the safe feelings I feel here. I will miss the ivy covered brick buildings. I will miss the library. I will miss the track a small jaunt away that helped me feel happier (and more myself) than I have felt in a long time. I will miss hearing snippets of Kierkegaard conversations everywhere I go. I will miss being with one to two good friends everywhere I go. I will miss my Danish classmates and my Danish class. I will even miss the fact that the majority of Kierkegaard scholars are as (socially) anxious as Kierkegaard. I will miss. I will miss.

I will/do look forward to Spencer, taco trucks, the ocean, two little dark haired darlings who I love, their angel mother, my grandma with (and without) her always abundant avocado and lemon trees, and the weather that is very nearly always perfect.

xo

(pictures and follow ups to come)

Colorado.

My heart aches for you this summer, for your fires and your bullets, the first disaster natural, the second manmade, but still a disaster. I puzzle over the right response, and admit that I don't know how to respond. Earlier today I saw someone post on facebook about how she feels convinced that the right course of action for her personally is to get a license, so she may carry her own weapon, concealed. Others on her thread seconded her, thirded her. I couldn't shake the feeling that more weapons is not the right response. At the least, it is not the right response for me.

I suppose that it is possible that in a number of cases having someone present with a concealed weapon may in fact have the power to change what would otherwise be a catastrophe, but that assumes that a lot of specific things happen, and that the one carrying the concealed weapon is a moral and responsible citizen, who is also proficient in shooting firearms accurately. It assumes that the right to carry weapons not only applies to militia,* but to ordinary citizens, and that citizens who will take advantage of that "right" will only be the good ones, rather than the ones who first pull them out, in sometimes very public settings--in such settings that should be safe settings, but that are made to feel unsafe.

The clearest example of this is in our schools, both high school and university. So what do we do when children have to go to school? What do we do when that place that should be a beacon of learning and light can contain so much darkness? And now a place that was built for pleasure and pretend has become a place of a very violent reality.** I understand that schools and movie theaters are not the same thing, that people don't have to go to the cinema. I also understand that they will likely be as safe tomorrow as they were yesterday, before the murders, but I understand something further, that they won't feel as safe. It is partially that feeling that I am also grappling with.

Why? Because we have to live our lives. We still have to do the things we would do, and it is best to do them without fear. Does that mean then, that we should strive to overcome our fear of death or pain or rape, or live in a way that even if the worst things happened we would be okay within ourselves, or be okay in our eternity?

*At lunchtime I sat with friends from my Danish course and listened to one woman from South Africa explain how America, in general, feels about this to a woman from Russia. It made me sad listening to them, because they, as individuals removed, can see clearer what some of our problematic assumptions are. I think that they are right, and I think we need to do something right, so that this type of senseless, random violence may not continue. This article gets at the heart of my feelings better than anything else I have read on the matter today.

**This also leads me to wonder the correlation between the particular movie being screened and the horrific actions. Did it make any difference what the film was? Could the same thing have happened at a different kind of movie? I know that people on one certain side argue passionately about the number of people who play violent video games and watch violent films or shows that do not go out and make violent, real life choices. But I still wonder. I still may not be entirely convinced.

A breakthrough.

Sometimes at night Spencer (who is far away in LA) and I (who am close at hand in Minnesota) read the Book of Mormon together via the magic of video chat. Or really, he reads to me from the Book of Mormon, and I follow along in its dansk (i.e., Danish) counterpart: Mormons Bog. Sometimes I get ambitious and try to tell him what it says in English before he can tell me by looking at the Danish. Sometimes when I do that I know a few words. Yesterday I translated ten complete verses to him--slowly and haltingly, like the way a kindergartner reads aloud from a simple book--but I did it, nonetheless. It was a really beautiful moment, to realize that I am indeed learning how to read this foreign tongue.

Jeg læser Mormons Bog i dansk!

After Life.

I have been watching a plethora of phenomenal foreign films--mostly in Danish, but one (tonight) in Japanese. This night's film was slow, but still beautiful. It was also centered around two themes that I deeply cherish: memory and recollection.

In the film, when people die, they all go to the same place, for one week. While there they meet with counselors to help them choose a single memory from their lives. The memory is to be the most meaningful, most joyous, or most representative. It is generally a very small memory--sitting on the bench with the beloved, swinging and eating rice balls amidst family and bamboo, or wearing a red dress in a cafe and dancing with one's older brother. They have only three days to choose.

It was beautiful to listen to the counselors and deceased tease out the memories, and try to narrow down to the one. It was beautiful to think about what memory I would choose, and how, and why. What came next was also beautiful, as well as thought provoking: After the memory was selected, the workers helped them recreate the memory viscerally and visually, in film. The ones remembering were present for the recapturing of the memory, to feel it and participate in it again, but this time there were others too, in their intimate moments, and the clouds that looked like cotton candy were now strung on invisible wire, and made out of cotton balls, making the memory the same, but not the same; real, but less real. On the last day the movies would be screened. The new memories would be screened, and then the people would go on, where they presumably live with or in that memory, alone, with no other memories, for eternity.

I told Spencer that part, and he thought it sounded very sad, to have only one memory. It wasn't necessarily sad to me. It mostly made me think of Nietzsche, and his eternal recurrence of the same. If the angel-demon came to us, and said we had to live one memory over for the rest of our life (or the rest of our eternal life), would we rejoice, or would we weep? This particular case does bring up important things about forgetting though. I would say that even in the recollection of the single memory, there was forgetting. The woman couldn't remember exactly how the dance went. Another women sat in a circle making large rice balls with strangers to try to recapture the rice balls she ate with loved ones.

One women didn't want to forget anything. She told the man she loved (that she could not tell that she loved) that she would never choose just one memory. She would never leave that place where she could keep them all. She would stay there, keeping him inside of her forever. He chose to leave, to continue, but promised that he would remember everything he learned there, that while it took him a long time to look at his life as a life of happiness, he finally understood that his life brought happiness to someone else. And it did. I presume to multiple someone else's.

But that knowledge allowed him to select one memory, and to continue onto eternal remembrance. Still, in his case (which was rewarded special permission) he chose a memory from the in between place, where he sat on a bench and saw a glimmer of joy in his life, that allowed him to look at it with love's vision. When they filmed him on that bench, he was looking at them--the filmmakers, and those he worked with. Those he was. So what did he remember from his memory? The internal thoughts, or his outward view? I hope both, somehow.

There was one earlier scene were a resident was permitted to watch videos of his life, to get ideas for his single memory. He was warned that they would not be quite like his memories, because they came from outside of him. Only later did I realize that they could have just found the day, the actual memory from each person's videos, to show them for all eternity. Instead they recreated it anew, from their memory. I wonder if it has something to do with the warning: They are choosing to preserve the deceaseds' memory of the event, rather than the event itself.

I told my mom about this movie tonight, nearly immediately after watching it. It is her 60th birthday. She told me almost immediately after telling her the premise that she knew exactly what memory she would choose. It was when my siblings and I were young, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, at a park she used to take us to in the Summer. We swam there. The little ones (including myself) swam in the kiddie pool, the wade pool. The others could go deeper. They were big kids then. My mom told me they played shark. We sometimes went to A&W after. They still had the frosty mugs and cheap kiddie cones. Her friends would be there too, with their tiny ones. It was a happy time for her, and for us also.

If I chose a memory with my mom, it would be sometime when I was young, and having a rough day, and she would climb into my bed with me, and put the covers over both of us. She would lay there and talk to just me, for a long time. And I would feel better. Or it would be when I was sick, and she would let me wear a tiara and eat popsicles. (These thoughts also make me wonder if every good memory must have a little bad in it. But her swim one seemed all good, so I don't know.)

If I chose a memory with my dad, it would be the week of my wedding. We played basketball at the local church, by ourselves--the old games we used to play. I almost beat him at horse for the first time in my life. The reason: he needed eye surgery, and wasn't scheduled to have it for some time, so his focus was fuzzy. He still beat me, but it was delightful anyway.

With Spencer: maybe the first day we ate pizza together, and I couldn't stop smiling. Or the day we got engaged for real, and we danced in his sister's living room and grinned at each other for a long time. Or when we biked away after our wedding and waved goodbye to so many people that we love. Too many, maybe.

With others: still other precious, defining memories. The narrowing down is the hardest. The friend whom I watched it with told me she would want an event, where everyone she loved was in the same place. That truly sounds like my idea of Heaven.

And you? What memory would you choose? How would you like to spend your after life?