Time Experience Thoughts

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 ...

Her Heart’s Desire Poem by Scott L. Vanatter for Becky on her 57th birthday The power and clarity of her word, The strength and surety of her promise,   Shows us that she knows. The breadth and depth of her experience, The focus and extent of her knowledge,   Helps us grow as she grows. Because of . . . The light and truth that fill her mind, The yearning and warmth and conscience of her heart,   Our soul’s comfort overflows.     Basking in the shower of her love, we are whole.  # Her Heart’s Desire (2.0) Poem by Scott L. Vanatter for Becky on her 57 th birthday, alternate version. Ver. 2.0 is another take on the same ideas, only more declarative. Becky prefers the original above, as do I. ~ Her words are clear and powerful. Her promises are sure and strong.   We know she knows. Her experience is broad and deep. Her knowledge is focused and extensive.   We grow as s...

How Priesthood Leaders Have Blessed Me and My Family And Helped Us Come Closer to Christ Talk by Scott Vanatter at Oakton Stake Priesthood Leadership Meeting, June 11, 2011 INTRO Melchizedek priesthood leaders are taught that “…this greater priesthood administereth the gospel and holdeth . . . the key of the knowledge of God.” That “…in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest.”(DC 84: 19-20) Good morning brethren. My topic is, “How Priesthood Leaders have Blessed Me and My Family -- and Helped Us Come Closer to Christ.” My family and I have been blessed by inspired words of ward and stake priesthood leaders. We’ve also been blessed by their dedicated lives – by what they do, by who they are. Their eternal perspective, and their connection with us, has created within us a lively, real world hope. This ‘hope in Christ’ provides us calm assurance that we can do it -- we can live the gospel, repent and progress and come unto Christ…. [1] ORDINANCES As impor...

Thanksgiving 2007

Jared Demke, 1957 ~ 2006 Hallelujah, All the Time Without the slightest exaggeration, I count it as one of my life’s great blessings that Jared Demke was my friend. To paraphrase Brigham Young regarding Joseph Smith, “I feel like shouting Hallelujah, all the time, when I think that I ever knew [Jared Demke].” So thankful am I for the love and perspective of thirty years of close friendship. The Things of God For more than fifteen of those recent years, my wife and I have been privileged to have Jared stay with us in our home in northern Virginia, during his usual twice-a-year business trip to the DC area. When not visiting in person Jared and I would talk on the phone -- often. Ginger related to me that one of his friends commented that talking with Jared on the phone was like going to Disneyland. I wholeheartedly agree – the printed theme on the sign outside Disneyland is “The Happiest Place on Earth.” That’s Jared. He brought prodigious amounts of happiness and shear joy -- and ligh...

Rol Allen, 1919 ~ 2005 Eternal Nature * About one hundred fifty years ago, the poet William Wordsworth began writing one of his most inspiring and insightful pieces on what he deemed a crucial idea: that of man’s eternal nature; not only that we all would continue to live on after death, but that we, each of us, came from somewhere before we were born. AND that knowing where we came from, and who we were then and who we really are now, at our very core, makes a big difference. He got the poem to a certain point, setting the stage for illustrating his main idea, but then laid it aside for a year and a half while he continued pondering the subject. He came back to it and penned these words: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us (our life's Star) Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Character John Roland Allen - “...