to the man by my bus stop who sang, "The First Noel,"

I loved hearing you caroling; you had the most beautiful voice, so deep and rich and Christmasy. And you sang, "Noel, noel, noel, noel," and I felt holiday cheer bubble up inside my heart. And then after the "Noel"s you sang, "la da da da da da da da da da." And I just. I don't know. Maybe you already know. I wanted you to know. The words are, "Born is the King of Israel." And that's the reason I love that song: born is the King of Israel.

- girl who seriously could not be more excited about Christmas this year. I can't explain it, but all I want to do is watch Home Alone and make nijabread men.

Dear Rochester,

Last night I wondered if it would be worth the three hour round trip to hire just two of your people. Fortunately, as I was driving back to Syracuse after our orientation I thought, "eh, why don't I stop by the temple?" As it turns out, the temple is basically a stone's throw away from the Smith Farm. From a business standpoint, I don't know yet if these employees will be worth the drive. However, at a personal level, spending a few hours reading Psalms and Proverbs in the Sacred Grove made the drive totally worth it.

britt

Dear DC temple,

Picture from Marin. It's hard to tell, but that's me and some friends off to the left.

Yesterday was our ward temple night, and I went. As always, it was peaceful and orienting - I spent a lot of time thinking about faith, love, and this prayer. I've seen you once a month since I moved out here, so I guess that's six times this year. Woah. Six times.

see you next month,
britt

Elder Holland,

it begins around 1:50

Today, between intervals of drug-induced sleep, I listened to a talk you gave in 2008. The MP3 I have doesn't include the closing song, but I like that too.

Thanks,
britt

details of Elder Wirthlin

Early Monday morning while we were still asleep, Hilary got a text that Elder Wirthlin had died. I sat in silence for a minute and could only think to say, "I miss him." As I watched his funeral today, I thought of all the things that I and others loved and miss. My favorite thing about him was his firm belief that the darkest moments of our lives cannot last forever.

I attended a Regional Conference in September 2006 where President Monson and Elder Wirthlin spoke. Fall 2006 did not = my favorite time. In fact, it was the least favorite time of my entire life. I have never felt so burdened or alone, and I went to Regional conference praying for comfort and hope. Elder Wirthlin's talk answered my prayers, and I have had few prayers answered so powerfully. His wife (who was an English major) had died in August, and he talked about the pain and sorrow that filled his life. As he spoke, I felt like he knew the kind of pain I felt, and I trusted him when he talked about finding peace because I knew he understood profound sorrow. Later, in General Conference he gave his famous "Sunday Will Come" talk. I will always be grateful for him and his teachings especially because he helped me feel the Savior's love in my moments of trial.

Details of the BYU English Major {part one}

Preface: I love my English major. All things considered, I should probably have a more dignified/articulate way of saying "I love love LOVE studying literature."

Today I've been reading Elder Perry's Conference talk about Henry David Thoreau, Walden Pond, and simplicity. And might I just say, it is talks like this that make me glad to be an Enlish major at BYU. Elder Perry could have walked into any BYU English 293 class (American Literary History), given his talk, and it would have passed as a pretty decent lecture. In fact, I was struck by the similarities between Elder Perry's talk and the lecture Trent Hickman gave on Throeau when I was in 293. But obviously Dr. Hickman talked about a lot of things Elder Perry did not, and I want to tell you about one of them.

When I took 293, we learned about Thoreau the week before the April 2007 General Conference. In his lecture, Dr. Hickman taught us the importance of authors like Thoreau in church history. Thoreau was born when Joseph Smith was 12. He was born about 80 miles from where Joseph Smith was born. And he published Walden only 20 years after Joseph published the Book of Mormon. They were contemporaries, and Thoreau's writings were part of the the rhetoric prevelant during the early years of the church. During Joseph Smith's lifetime, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allen Poe, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson were all contributing to the rhetoric of American Romanticism. What is interesting is... we still use a lot of rhetoric from that time. Words like "supernal" and "sublime" had distinct meanings in Romanticism, and they are used at some point every Conference. And British Romanticists like William Wordsworth are quoted all the time! The "trailing clouds of glory do we come" and "the world is too much with us" quotes are probably the best examples.

Yeah okay, we isolated ourselves from the world in a lot of ways (i.e. moving to Utah) but our church history still fits into an important historical, political, and literary context. In my studies here, I've been able to see how the church fits into that history. And I'm grateful I have that kind of an education. Go Cougs.

sperry-licous details

For my Doctrine and Covenant class, I went to the Sperry Symposium. It was themed on Joseph Smith, and was cool, but my favorite presentation didn't even get published in the Sperry Symposium book! Whatever. It was "Why the Word of Wisdom is New and Unique When There is Nothing New and Unique in It." by Paul Y. Hoskisson. To review: the Word of Wisdom instructs the saints to A) eat more wheat, fruit, vegetables, etc., and B) eat no coffee, tea, alcohol, or tobacco.

Dr. Hoskisson just went through every aspect of the Word of Wisdom and showed that identical instruction had been given to tons of people and a lot of his examples were from Joseph Smith's contemporaries. But in every case he brought up, there were different details. There were a couple groups who didn't do "hot drinks" either. But Joseph Smith later clarrified that this meant coffee and tea, in these other groups, it meant no hot liquids of any kind (milk, water, chocolate, nadda). There were tons of religious groups who said no to alochol. A bunch of hippies in Philladelphia were big wheat/veggies/fruit people, but their reasoning was different than Joseph Smiths. In the end, the combination of principles and the motivation behind them were unique to the Word of Wisdom. His ultimate point was, none of the individual points were original points, but the revelation as a whole, was just that: revelation from God.

general details (lol)

For those of you who don't know, General Conference is a weekend in October and April where the leaders of the church all offer instruction to the general populous of the church. For me, it's always a time to reevaluate my life, set goals, etc. After General Conference this month, these are the things I would like to work on.

• Finish my Book of Mormon by the time I graduate
• Be more angelic (as defined by Elder Holland)
• "Come what may and love it"
  
• Have more/more meaningful prayer
• Respond in a more Christ-like way
• Express gratitude more often
  
• Do more to help others
  

Details I loved:

• Elder Perry reinforcing the reasons I became an English major
• Elder Wirthlin's daughter going on what she thought was a blind date
• President Monson using the phrase "in the details" (and thanks to Pagie noticing too. I do love you).

brotherly details

My brother Steven is on a mission right now. After a year at Dixie College, he volunteered the next two years to teach people about the gospel. He was called to Portland, Oregon and he leaves in a few weeks. Right now he is in the Missionary Training Center learning A) how to teach the gospel and B) Spanish. He's written me a few letters, sent a few pictures (the one here is on my fridge. he's the tallest one {6'4"}, the cutest one, and he's second from the left), and emails our family every Friday. I wanted to include an excerpt from his last family letter because I think it says a lot about him and an interesting principle of the gospel:

"Richard G. Hinkley came. The son of the former prophet. fyi. He knows everything about every mission in the whole world. all the mission presidents and all the missions he is brilliant and does the same hand gestures as his dad. And sounds the exact same. He was awesome. My favorite quote was from his dad. He said that in his last few years alive he was loosing his hearing and he asked him what he did when he (Gordon B. Hinkley) did in meetings when he couldn't hear what the person was saying. He said, "I would just fake it" it was so funny! Then he said if we get feeling down, we can just fake it and eventually we will get happy because serving the lord is happy stuff, and it will come."

I know he's not saying we won't have our down days, because we will. But it's just like Steve to have a good attitude. And I know he appreciated the message not only for it's truth, but also because he's such a positive person himself.

detail #5

I realize that speaking in church doesn't exactly = performing. It's very different. The point wasn't to entertain or to impress others. But I spoke in church today, and I prepared more for this talk than I did for State Speech. So I'm counting it. I was assigned to speak on diligence. I knew the topic a week in advance, and throughout the week I found some great material. But it wasn't until Saturday afternoon that I found my favorite bit of inspiration. About a quarter of my talk was on the atonement of Jesus Christ, and I had written my testimony and how important the atonement has been in my life, but I wanted to include something from the scriptures or from April Conference. Then I remembered a devotional Elder Scott gave in March {I cried literally through the entire thing}, and thought I would check there. As I reviewed the talk, I found the perfect quote for my talk! It was about diligence, and I thought I should include it here.

"You can’t be diligent once. One who keeps the commandments only when convenient will not receive the strength and inspiration needed in times of difficulty. Nor does selectively obeying some commandments while ignoring others produce the same power in one’s life as does full compliance with the laws of the Lord."

If you get a chance, find some time to review the full talk. You can get the PDF and mp3 for free, so there is no excuse to neglect this one. It really changed the way I feel about the atonement and made me appreciate even more Christ's sacrifice for us.

detail #4

Well, when my hard drive crashed I lost my summer book list. But from what I put back together, I'm doing a pretty good job with detail #4. I've done some C.S. Lewis, Dandelion Wine, and next is Crucial Conversations then Dubliners. But just to give you a sample of what I'm reading, I wanted to include what I read last week in The Problem of Pain. I know theology isn't everyone's cup of tea, but the ex-Philosophy major in me will read this stuff until I die. Courtney blogged about this quote earlier and it just reinforced how much I loved this book.

At the beginning of chapter 3:
"Love can forbear, and Love can forgive...but Love can never be reconciled to an unlvoely object.... He can never therefore be reconciled to your sin, because sin itself is incapable of being altered; but He may be reconciled to your person because that may be restored." Traherne

faithful details

When I was home last week, our family started talking about a Family Home Evening we had a couple years ago. In my house, we used to have a scripture that hung next to the fireplace from D&C 109:8 it said, "Organize yourselves; Prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, and house of order, a house of God." This lesson was specifically on our family's need to have a clean house. Mom wasn't pleased with how messy we had become and used this scripture as motivation for making sure our house had order. At the end of her lesson, she said something like, "Does that sound like something you guys can do?" And after a little silence my brother said,
"Can't we just have a house of faith?"

in the details

Today at church we read a quote by Neal A. Maxwell that led to the .com for the blogspot that I’ve been searching for. In the June 1996 Ensign, Elder Maxwell said, “So it is, amid the vastness of His creations, God’s personal shaping influence is felt in the details of our lives – not only in the details of the galaxies and molecules but, much more importantly, in the details of our own lives.” As I thought about this, I realized that it's the little things that make me the happiest. So, for my first post ever, I thought I would give a short list.

• Last week at Katie’s little birthday celebration, Whitney wanted to have fruit on the straws.
• At Anthropologie, they put lace on the collar.
• The silver lining that is allegedly around every cloud.
• Buttons in fancy places.
• Golden flecks in my lip gloss from Pagie.
• Dandelions in a paper cup.