Time Experience Thoughts

Following the Prophets in Unity In this there is safety, peace By Scott L. Vanatter, Reston Ward, July 20, 2014 INTRO Please return with me to my senior year in high school over forty years ago. It was just prior to my  receiving a testimony of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. The foundational truths of the Restoration revealed by God through the Prophet Joseph Smith were about to be made known to me. At the time I was ignorantly, blissfully satisfied existing in the world without a belief in God. While others found truth and solace in religion, I was compelled to reject what I saw as the false, double predestination of automatically consigning most of humankind to eternal damnation. This very narrow sliver of philosophy, to me, seemed to infect most of the Christian churches I had encountered. I couldn’t conceive that, if there was a God, this plan was what he or she or it designed and set in motion. If there was a God, this world could not have begun as a major accident. I

The Things of Mom On the occasion of her moving out of her home, and giving up and giving away the stuff of her life’s accumulations Things   Whether “dust collector,” simply useful, or family treasure. . .     Impossible to measure. Memories   Regrets? (“Too few to mention.”) Overcome and offset     By a thousand beautiful memories . . . impossible to forget. Reach   An Eternal chain of new “Dollybabes” are the results of her instinctive divine maternal impulses. . .     Impossible to number. Her Soul   The depth and breadth of the tears she wept     on behalf of loved ones here grieved   Echo in the eternal realm and are felt     by dear ones who long before us have left    This frail existence, but who now know where they are what we must here accept     to appreciate thereby the heights with them later to be received.       Her joys and glories and the extent of her sphere of influence in the next world there,         Will a thousand fold compensate for an

Sounding Joy I. She speaks! Really she never ceased. II. Her boundless voice of love now echoes not only in Time, but Eternity. With all the angels she shouts, and even dances. More than ever, she is there for us. No, she is here for us. III. Into all the Eternities, she beckons us. (Yes, we can hear her.) Finally, her communication is again Sounding and heard by her dear ones there (and here), Vibrant, clear and audibly brilliant for them (and us) Till that Great Day when all shall hear clearly. IV. Embracing her mother , with all of Heaven’s Family welcoming her home, She stops to think of us, and whispers to us, We are not alone. One day we shall behold her shining face again, She will look deep within our eyes, and in a moment, into our very souls. We yearn to talk and walk with her – looking forward with her to Eternal possibilities. In our deepest trials, her voice will sound in our ears The silence of our night will be broken Punctuated with a

Family History and Temple Worship Scott L. Vanatter, May 18, 2014, Chantilly Ward #A1. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE As a convert, Nauvoo the city Joseph Smith founded and named in 1839, has always held a special place in my mind and heart. I have been fascinated and inspired by Nauvoo -- the name, its Hebrew meaning, even its sound, its history, and more importantly, the doctrine revealed there -- the ultimate in Mormon theology. The ennobling doctrine that we can be sealed to our loved ones in the Temple as part of God’s whole family in heaven. ##1 Sacred Experience (Nauvoo Temple) We were fortunate to be able to serve as patrons in the Nauvoo Temple the very first week it opened in 2002. I had several Vanatter family names with me so we could do all aspects of temple ordinances, from baptisms for the dead, confirmations, and ordinations, to initiatory, endowment, and sealings -- sealings of spouses, and sealing of children to parents. Actually, it was my mother and one of my sist

The Center Through the heart and words of a natural mother AND through the heart and works of a natural genealogist, Mom (Grandma Dot) is at the very center of all that is important. Connecting our hearts and the generations.    Looking back (and forward), seeing past an earthy veil    Into the heart. Love no longer lost, the chain no longer frail,     Is now rebuilt and an inherent part . . . Of those we knew. But being separated     Here in our own time . . . And forgotten. Are now recovered and remembered --     With faint inklings sublime. Weak links, now strong. Those long asleep, now awakening,     No longer alone. She, at the center point of our shared existence, connecting     Our Hearts and the Generations. Now one -- and known. (Poem by Scott L. Vanatter, written Feb. 26, 2014, in honor of my Mother’s 80th birthday.)

http://www.amazon.com/Beginnings-Beyond-Carol-Lynn-Pearson/dp/1599558602 The Steward ~ a poem by Carol Lynn Pearson, from her book, Beginnings and Beyond Heber looked at his lands And he was pleased. He’d be leaving them, tomorrow, and his hands Hurt with anticipated idleness. But he knew there was no other way When a man is seventy-eight and has to make Two rest stops with a full bucket of milk Between the barn and the kitchen. Condominiums-do they have gardens? He wondered. His son had arranged the place for them in town And he was ready. He sat down On the rock that knew his body Better than the front room chair. Could it really be fifty-five years ago That sitting right there They had talked? His father’s voice had never left him: “Heber, I’m trusting to you The most precious thing I’ve got. I worked hard for this land. You know all about The crickets and the Indians and the drought, And the buckets of sweat it took To make what you see