spring emergence

   last night I spoke at my ward's annual relief society birthday celebration. It was our first official Relief Society face to face gathering since the lockdown 1 year ago.  I had intended to speak on the origin and importance of the Relief Society, but on Tuesday morning when I got up for the gym, the ideas for this talk flowed into outline form on the notes apps of my phone. It's fun when the Spirit intervenes and says, "let's just do it the easy way this time instead of belaboring everything like you normally do." Later I was able to follow my notes and I wrote this short talk about renewal:

This past year we experienced an overwhelm of all things. We had an incredibly divisive presidential election, murder hornets, uncontrollable wildfires, heartbreaking civil unrest among our fellow Americans due to increasing racial tensions, and a worldwide pandemic which brought about fear, death, loneliness, food shortages, job loss and high levels of uncertainty. Also, few of our personal, private trials took the year off. Despite our different walks of life, there was one thing to unite us and that was our grief. 

As spring is here and Easter is approaching, I want to focus on renewal. Our dormant plants are coming back to life, and our dormant country is reopening and our dormant social lives are re-emerging. Easter is the celebration of renewal, that Jesus Christ lived again and so can we. Our world has new rules, new language and sadly new divisions. But the Lord’s commandments are the same. Despite and because of our differences, love one another.

 While the world was dormant, what were the things you discovered were essential? Did you learn the importance of food storage? Did you realize how much you enjoyed personal scripture study? Did your spirituality drop off because of the inability to congregate for church at a chapel? Did you learn how much more you needed and how much more you can live without? Did the prophecies from the prophet Russell M Nelson strengthen your testimony? Did you witness miracles? Did the Spirit prompt you to change your life? This time a year ago, I had a completely different life. I lived far away in a big city with everything that I thought I needed in my life. I had prayed for many years for the blessings that I very much enjoyed at that time. Then my husband got terribly sick with Covid 19 and we made a sharp re-evaulation of our life.  How much of our lifestyle was keeping us from progressing to the type of familial relationships we were missing out on? I had a very powerful spiritual experience that led us to take a leap of faith and pack up our house, move a month later and walk into the unknown. Are we ready to walk into the unknown of this new and re-emerging world?

The poet Dino Christianopolis wrote, “what didn’t you do to bury me, but you forgot I was a seed”

In the past year we have been buried and rained upon and left alone in what feels like impenetrable darkness. How did we respond to it? Did we choose to enjoy the nutrients in the soil that we thought so confining? Will we allow the rain to cleanse our impurities and strengthen our testimonies? Will embrace the smelly fertilizer of adversity to make us into the strong, fruitful bloom that we know that we are? Will we push through the dense soil and bask in the light of the Son of God?

In 4^th Nephi, we read that the Nephites and Lamanites, bitter sworn enemies are all converted unto the Lord. In verse 2, “all people were converted unto the Lord…and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another.” Verse 15 states that “there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.” Verse 17, “nor any manner of Ites; but they were in one, the culture of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.”

In our most recent General Conference, we heard from Elder William K Jackson of the Seventy. “Many of our world’s problems are a direct result of clashes between those of differing ideas and customs arising from their culture. But virtually all conflict and chaos would quickly fade if the world would only accept its original culture, the one we all possessed not so very long ago. This culture dates back to our premortal existence. It was the culture of Adam and Enoch. It was the culture founded on the Savior’s teachings in the meridian of time, and it is available to all women and men once again in our day. It is unique. It is the greatest of all cultures and comes from the great plan of happiness, authored by God and championed by Christ. It unites rather than divides. It heals rather than harms.”

 

          Now that we emerging from the past year, what is your maintenance plan for the important lessons that have been thrust upon us? Will you call your ministering sisters and just check on them? It doesn’t have to be a hard-hitting gospel question and answer session. What questions would you ask a friend? Will you reach out to family members who are difficult to love? Will you look at your friendship circle and enlarge it into a shape you don’t recognize so that all sorts and kinds fit in it? Will you be kinder to yourself as you are still blooming and growing? Will you stop criticizing the type and shape and size and color of flower that you are and stop the cycle of negative self-talk for the next generation of flowers that are watching you?

          Sisters, I’m grateful for spring, for the opportunity for daily renewal through repentance, for the beauty of new growth, for an all knowing Gardner that keeps being patient and continually tends to me.