(Wikimedia Commons public domain)
I first read the famous Meditations of the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180; reigned 161-180) when I was a teenager, and the volume has been one of my very favorite books ever since. Here’s one of many quotable passages from it:
Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill. . . . I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together.
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I encourage every Latter-day Saint to participate, as he or she is able, in this international effort:
I’ll be trying to do something with it myself, not only personally but here on this blog.
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I’m not posting this in the spirit of political partisanship:
“President Trump to Meet with LDS Church Leaders, Tour Welfare Square”
When I want to say something politically partisan — as I often do — I will post it in a distinct entry, clearly distinguished from spiritual or religious or other matters. At least, that’s my aspiration.
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From the blog of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir:
“Watch the New Choir Christmas Video: ‘O Come, Little Children'”
The video is a real tear-jerker.
Which is mortifying to me.
I once had a very masculine heart of stone. I never came close to fainting at the sight of blood, nor even to comprehending how such a thing could ever happen. And I never cried.
Things began to change, I think, when I had children. To my horror, I found myself becoming . . . sentimental. It was horrifying.
Once, when I was speaking in church, I referred to the completely unexpected stroke that left my father blind for the last several years of his life, I choked up. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before.
Still, when my father died and I was set to speak at his funeral, I worried that my control, my lack of visible emotion, would make people wonder whether I really cared about him. But I needn’t have worried. I sniffed and daubed my eyes and fought to control my voice throughout the whole talk.
And, since then, I’ve lost my mother and my only sibling and my first grandchild and many other relatives and friends. And, as I’ve spoken at their funerals, I’ve cried. Me! The aloof Scandinavian. The cool intellectual. And I find myself tearing up at movies. Chick flicks now pose real dangers to me.
Unbelievably, I teared up at this Tabernacle Choir video. What’s happening to me?
Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah
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