Claire Full of Suprises #2

Jameson got a hair cut. He now looks like a little boy. Is he still as cute?

The jury is still out on that.


Meanwhile, however, we oo'd and ah'd about how different he looks. He's not the same little boy. Who is the little guy running around our feet? He seems to know us. He runs around the house as though he knows where he's going and how to most effectively get into trouble.

We just don't know him.

And then we notice Claire crying.

"What's wrong?" we ask.

"Since Jameson got his hair cut, nobody loves him!" she sobs.

We found out that we simply cannot make such comments. She either breaks down crying, or she gets mad at us. She does it with her parents, too, we notice.

Claire Full of Suprises

The other day (June 21st) I did my morning constitutional run around the base of Grandeur Peak. A half hour up the side and a half hour back down -- a respectable single day's workout for which I was well equipped with walking sticks and detachable spikes to prevent slipping.

This is a beautiful time of the year. Everything is green and the wild flowers are a profuse delight. In a few weeks, everything'll be brown and dead -- this being Utah and all. I wondered if Claire would enjoy it. We like (and she likes) to do something together every day she's with us.

How to get her up on the mountain? The last few times I've tried to take her geocaching with me, she's been decidedly unenthusiastic about even the idea.

"Would you like to go on a picnic with me, Sweetheart? There're beautiful flowers and a most delightful view."

I was proud of my cleverness. It worked, too.


She loved it, enthralled by the green lushness, the beautiful flowers, and the ever broadening gorgeous perspective on the world. We found a shaded place to sit on a large towel and eat our lunch and she sidled up close to me for stability since we were on the side of a mountain.

"This is just right!" she said. "It's fun and it doesn't cost anything. We have to do this when the cousins come in August."


She wasn't particularly thrilled when I pointed out that, by August, the only thing living here would be the scrub oak.

She wanted to climb continuously higher and she scrambled ahead of me, often on all fours, chattering animatedly the whole time while I huffed and puffed trying to keep up with her. Soon we were beyond the half-hour point I had reached earlier that morning, but now I had neither walking sticks nor spikes. I was not expecting to come up this far nor into an area this rugged. She was fully equipped with flip-flops.

I tried to talk her into believing that we were amply high enough, but I was unconvincing. "Let's just go a little higher," she said. I seldom say no to anything she suggests.

But this time I had to lay down the law. "See those rocks up there?" I said. "That's as far as we should go."

"OK," she agreed.

Soon we were at the rocks. "OK," I said. "This is as far as we go."

"No, it isn't," she said. "You said those rocks up there." She pointed to a huge outcropping way above where we were.


On we went. Soon we were higher than I have ever been on that trail and before we reached the outcropping the trail petered out completely. We continued climbing and finally stood on the rocks.

Then she was freaked out a little, realizing we were higher than she has ever been on the side of a steep mountain. She almost immediately realized that getting down was harder than getting up. But she followed me down, slipping and sliding and whimpering slightly. I was slipping and sliding, too, and was amused.

Half way down, she decided she needed to call Mommy, which she did, chattering with her for a while and feeling much better.

She was very proud of herself. "We got almost all the way to the very top!" she told people.

"Not by a long-shot," I tried to tell her, but she believes her eyes over accepting my words.

What am I to do with you, little boy?!

I brought in the mail one day a couple of weeks before General Conference. It included our tax return. We were supposed to review it and approve it for filing. How on earth does our simple financial situation warrant a half-inch stack of paper? It always alarms and confuses me. I stood at the kitchen counter and examined it trying to understand it. I looked at each page and tried to figure out what it meant and why it was relevant.

Finally, after several minutes, I understood it as well as when I started.

Then I looked up and saw Jamison sitting right in the middle of the kitchen table. He had spread various things around him and had a salt and pepper shaker in each hand. Everything was covered with salt and pepper. It looked like a dirty snow storm. And he accomplished all this right in front of me while I was facing him.

I hit myself in the forehead and said, "What am I to do with you, little boy?" Then I said, "Your grandma is going to be so mad at me."

Sure enough, a few minutes later when I was in the middle of cleaning the mess up and Jamison was trying his persistent best to climb back up onto the table, in walked Grandma. She took one look at us, hit herself in the forehead and asked, "What am I to do with you two guys."

Fast forward a couple of days. I was coming out of the Bountiful Temple after a multi-hour temple meditation and worship session. The topic for this meditation turned out to be the Invictus Response. You know: discovering that the Lord is the master of my fate and the pilot of my soul -- or rediscovering it or discovering it for the first or something. Anyway, I was pleased at the insight and quite proud of my spiritual progress.

I came out of the dressing room -- or I tried to come out -- and went around the corner just in time to see a man turn around and start a conversation with an ordinance worker. The ordinance worker was outside the dressing room and I was inside, and this man stood right in the middle of the entrance way facing out. You couldn't get around him without pushing him aside with an "Excuse me!" which I didn't do.

The Master of my Fate had placed me in this inconvenient situation and I was completely OK with that and I responded with absolute patience -- with silent absolute patience -- quite unusual for me. And I was proud of my advanced spiritual development. I was almost a finished work, shiny, beautiful to look at, my calling and election nearly made sure, the second comforter ready to settle around me and embrace me with arms of love and joy.

All I did was sidle up close to the man so that, as soon as he finished his discussion, he would turn around and immediately bump into me and recognize how severely he had inconvenienced me. And I was proud of the diplomatic way I was handling the situation and feeling quite righteous.

And it worked out just as I engineered it. He finished his conversation, turned around, bumped into me immediately, was appropriately apologetic, and disappeared into the dressing room.

And it was Elder Richard G. Scott.

I stood there for a second, then hurried after the ordinance worker who had been talking to him.

"Was that Elder Scott?!" I asked.

"Yes, it was," he answered.

Oh.

I didn't feel so righteous anymore.

In fact, I seemed to hear the Lord saying, "What am I to do with you, my son?"

My response was, "Well, my Lord. If you'd have let me recognize Elder Scott from the back side, I'd have treated him differently. I'd have stood back and given him room enough to turn around and perhaps he would have favored me with one of his loving smiles I've seen in the Salt Lake Temple."

And I seemed to hear the Lord say, "My son, when you eventually give yourself to me to be the pilot of your soul, you will treat everyone you meet as though they were all Elder Scott. You are still a work in progress, my son, with much left to do."

And as I stood there in the temple being chastised by the Spirit, I realized that our infinite Heavenly Father possesses infinite patience and he will continue to work with me and with others of us who are still works in progress for as long as it takes.

Tinga (a Mexican Recipe)

Continuing the series of delicious, easy, crock-pot, conforming meals at the Jeff and Amy house, we have "Tinga". Which means... who knows? (Amy says it's not normally made in a crock-pot, but it couldn't have been better made any other way! And it's much easier in crock-pot.)

In crock-pot:

Bunch of pieces of boneless chicken (>= 5 breasts)
Lot of onions (5+?) sliced (not chopped) previously sauteed on stove top
Generous amounts of garlic also previously sauteed
Chicken boullion(?) to taste (generous)
1-3 t chopped chipotle (a pepper) (canned) to taste
1/4 cup veggie broth

Cook on low 6 hours

Shred the chicken. Remove most of excess juice. Taste juice to see if it's to taste. Add components that may need enhancement.

Continue cooking for another hour.

Serve on tostadas liberally sladdered with sour cream.

Delicious!

Jeff (and Amy's) Gluten-free Pancakes

Jeff's Sat a.m. pancakes (OK, Amy says she found the recipe):

In food processor (!) blend

0.4 C Gluten-free oats
0.5 C cottage cheese
Some Splenda brown sugar
1T oil
1t vanilla
pinch salt
2 eggs

Jeff quadruples or quintuples the recipe

Fry

Serve with fruit stuff made from various food-processor-processed frozen fruits and berries.
Peanut butter also helps.
Mushed bananas are a great addition.
For best results, swim in whipping cream.

Amy's Chicken in a Pot

Amy's wonderful gluten-free chicken stuff:

In crock-pot:

Several chicken breasts (or other bone-out chicken pieces)
2T melted butter
Packet of gluten-free Italian dressing seasoning

After a bunch of hours in crockpot and an hour before serving, cook on stove top:

2T butter
1 chopped up onion previously sauteed in the butter
(some) chopped up garlic (also previously sauteed)
8 oz cream cheese
(some - half cup+) gluten-free veggie broth (or chicken broth)
spoon fulls of sour cream

heat to melt cream cheese and mix together

Break up chicken in crock pot

pour everything together in crock pot and cook for another hour.

Serve over brown (whole-grain) rice (if desired and you don't mind the carbs).

Wonderful!

(I'm told that celery and/or other veggies can also be put in -- sauteed with onions.)

Stunning

Elder Maxwell gave two BYU devotionals (that I'm aware of). One was in 1990. The other was in 2004. He looked quite different in the two. Understandably. The one in 2004 was given 4 months before he died of leukemia.

The themes of these two devotionals were quite different, but a significant point he made in both involved the nature of God. Put his intellect together with Elder Scott's particle-physics background and you get an insight into the nature of God that is shocking. It is similar to the insight to which I have belatedly become aware and which I have mentioned in the last few blogs.

Elder Maxwell calls this insight "stunning."

I called it terrifying.

That this insight keeps coming up in scripture, in prophetic writings, and in journals is attested to by common scriptural description of the discomfort and even terror of the wicked as they are brought before God. They will want mountains to fall upon them to hide them from His glory. And the oft-quoted statements from early 19th century brethren that if an angel were to appear in their room, they would be out the window in an instant even if it meant leaping to their deaths.

These brethren had a very clear view of the nature of God and His glorified servants.

As mentioned in recent blogs, this insight has bothered me. It makes me nervous. It scares me. I've never been scared of Heavenly Father before. To whom am I praying? To whom have I prayed for 70 years? How dare I?

With relief, I grasped at the image of Christ. He's definitely loving, gentle, accessible. He reaches out a comforting arm and puts it around my shoulders. He encourages me. He draws me into his presence in intense love. All of this is enabled by the atonement -- by the way he sacrificed his own life to save me.

Amazing grace.

And he is just like God, the Father. God, the Father -- stunning, terrifying -- is just like him.

It is comfort.

If I could believe it.

God is infinity. Infinity of power. Infinity of energy. Infinity of complexity. Infinity of perception. Infinity of knowledge.

All in a man-sized being. Composed of tightly encapsulated infinitesimals of energy -- an infinite number of infinitesimals -- each comprising the mass and energy of an entire universe.

Infinite universes in a finite man-sized being.

A mathematical concept.

It is only mathematically that we are able to characterize this. Intellectually, it is beyond us. As is the case in so many areas of nature. Einstein looked at his math and his eyes went wide and his jaw dropped. Incomprehensible. Among the first incomprehensibles of the 20th and 21st century.

And there it hit me. A solution to my discomfort, my terror, my inability to believe that such a God is approachable -- that He is truly like Christ, His son.

Mathematically.

God has be be absolutely humble and meek. He has to be. Mathematically. Because if He has the slightest, tiniest, non-zero portion of vindictiveness -- or whatever else the opposite of humble and meek may be -- multiplying this by infinity creates a catastrophe. A demon. A devil.

The only thing you can multiply infinity by -- without creating a catastrophe -- is zero. A singularity.

Ergo God is absolutely humble and absolutely meek. His declaration that "I am a jealous God," the description of us being subject to the "judgements of God," His raining down fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction on this continent that accompanied the Crucifixion of His son -- all those things are for our instruction and tutoring, and a reflection of His mercy. He will bring to end the doings of the wicked so that they will require no further reconciliation. He will bless us as greatly as it is possible for us to be blessed and He will punish us a little as it is possible for us to be punished.

And we are to become like Him -- and through the atonement, we shall become like Him -- equally humble and meek.