Just Once a Year

When I've talked with anybody today about how my birthday went, I can't really describe it.  It started on Tuesday and hasn't stopped.  I had a friend make me an incredible cake and decorate HER house.  How, cool?  I had another friend take me on a surprise visit downtown Kansas City to view the Nelson.  It was so awesome, and she fed me the best picnic I've ever had:  a BLT with probably a pound of bacon! and a whole batch of peanut butter cookies. ha.  It's so cool to see how much your friends really know you... kind of surprised me.  Got to work a full 8 hours at work today, a cupcake specially delivered from another good friends.  The most impactful gift came from the most beautiful greeting from my Heavenly Father.  I had a sunrise in the east and a rainbow in the southwest this morning.  They only lasted 20 minutes or so.  I drove to work and looked off to the east as much as I could without being hazardous.  I was almost moved to tears as I soaked in the tranquil beauty of it.  It spoke to me, great love, words that I cannot even write.  I listened to Trinity College's rendition of "Hymn to the Eternal Flame" (Thanks to Matt Nielsen) as I drove and stared at the beautiful rays reaching up in the sky, chasing away the night's darkness...  It was very allegorical, very moving.

I came home to streamers and balloons.  I spent the evening with my family out to eat a great restaurant; we were completely ridiculous together.

Mom made an angel food cake for me.  Absolute favorite.

I am filled with great joy, overwhelmed with the love of my family and friends.  There are so many well wishes and greetings that were so special, so thoughtful.  I wish I could name each of them right now.  Thank you everyone.  Birthday's are for feeling special, unique, important, loved.  That has happened today.

Oh Frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Morgan and Bryanna Rainey

Winter Quarters Temple | Omaha, NE

I love this one...  They are looking into the stain glass of the celestial room.  It is a depiction of the Tree of Life.

Opening the Aperture a Little More

[Journal entry dated July 14, 2011]


I had a wonderful talk with [my brother] Ben last night into the early hours of the morning.  We discussed much of the character of God and how we can more fully exercise faith in Him.  We talked about the ability that we are given to view people in a "more-than-now" type of sense.  There is this spiritual and mental capacity that is gifted from God to see people in an eternal context.  The mind opens up and lets the past as well as the future start to paint our view of others.  It paints a clearer picture.

We also talked about how the desire for sin decreases as our spiritual aperture opens up and our lens widens.  When we can see ourselves and life in a greater plain and more eternally, the thought of sin seems ridiculous, for we realize our divine destiny and potential--who we really ARE.  The path to get there becomes much more clear.  When we act out of emotion or because of the present circumstance only, we are viewing life, ourselves, and others out of focus, with less light and perspective.

Mosiah 1:5-7 helps to show us how we can remember that eternal perspective, widen our lens, and let in more light.  If we keep the His words constantly before our eyes, we are reminded of our divine potential.  So, not only physically before us, but also figuratively before us.  Our thoughts should begin to assume the role of scripture.  In other words, we should begin to view life through the words of Christ.  As we do, we will understand what we are to do everyday.

I'm grateful for the Truth that has been restored through Joseph Smith.  The fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ that he primitively established on earth has been restored once again and allows us all to see life through the lens of God, of our loving Father in Heaven.  We can learn to see as He and our Savior sees, which is the only true, clear, and correct vision.


[As pointed out by a reader, there are some technical inaccuracies in my analogy that I'll fix later when I have the chance.  So, don't use this analogy as a source of accurate information regarding photography fundamentals.  I'm definitely new to this field.]

Lytro

So, I can't go to sleep... to much anxiety about my exam.  So, I decided to clear my mind by looking into a new camera that is projected to come out sometime this year:  Lytro's Light Field.  It's intriguing.  You just point and shoot.  It's sensors pick up the intensity and all other sorts of information about the light coming in.  Afterward, you can take the picture and focus it however you want to..  If you want to focus on something in the background or foreground, you just select that area on the picture and you've got an entirely different picture.
My opinion?  I don't have a ton of experience in photography to merit any weighty opinion, but sometimes I sure wish I had that option with some of the pictures I've taken.  I'm just wondering if a point-and-shoot camera can really produce the same quality that SLRs put out?  The most fun in shooting is picking what to focus on and creating the composition that way.  The Light Field seems like it will take big chunk of the art of out photography.  I don't imagine it will be used by professional photographers.
Would I buy one?  Depends on how expensive it is.  They say it will be competitive with other point and shoots cameras.  That must be somewhere between $200 and 300?  It wouldn't be my first choice of camera.  I'd rather buy a new lens for an SLR.  Who knows...  maybe this camera will be as revolutionary as they say.

Check it out for yourself.

Interview with Lytro rep:  http://www.pcworld.com/article/231245/eight_questions_about_lytros_lightfield_camera.html

Lytro's interactive website (you can play with the pictures on their website to see how it will work)
http://www.lytro.com/

Rainey Engagements

Awesome couple... awesome, awesome.  Gonna miss having these two around.  They were great guinea pigs for me.  

No more glass!

So, have you ever had a piece of glass embedded in your heel?  I have... for the past month or so.  Big deal?  No, not really.  Annoying? yeah. With a little coaxing from my friend Lauren, I made an appointment with the doctor, and it's out.  So, I'm writing this for a couple of reasons I guess.  I have no posts for May, and I think for me this experience has been a little parable about the atonement.  Let me explain...

Things happen in life.  We make mistakes, or someone does something to us, and it's hard to let go.  We try to deal with it, maybe hope that it will ease itself out over time and we'll be rid of it if we just try to forget about it and move on.  Can you remember how good it feels to keep stepping on it every day, and driving it back in?  In my experienced (and not just with this little nothing piece of glass), I've tried to just move on and not use the Lord to help me heal.  Fact: that doesn't work.  That continues to be a lesson for me.  So, what does using the Lord's help really mean?  For me, it's following his commandments and exercising faith in him unto repentance.  If I've got some sort of unforgiving grudge against someone, I've got to repent, forgive, and let it go.  If I've let Him down and disobeyed his commandments, I need to ask for forgiveness and do all I can to make it right and change.
Though it might seem hard, he promises the priceless gift of peace.  He promises light.  He promises a return to progression, which otherwise is not possible.  The atonement of Jesus Christ truly is a miracle.  It is real. I don't know how to explain it, but I know it's real.  And I am soo grateful.

Desire

To me this past General Conference was like a New Year's.  I feel like it's given me a renewed hope and desire to change.  I hope you all were able to watch it.  I listened to one talk especially that I felt was specifically prepared for me to hear.  Isn't that phrase so cliche?  It's absolutely true, and Elder Holland affirmed this "phenomenon."

Elder Oaks spoke on desire.  This one thing is the source of great change and power to do so.  I'm not sure it's an incredibly easy thing to obtain and takes some serious pondering, reflecting, and influence from the Holy Ghost.  Most of all, as he stated, it takes labor and faith.

"The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming."

- Elder Dallin H. Oaks

To be honest, I've completely disregarded my goals for awhile now.  Everything went downhill when I came down with the flu.  I just haven't been able to recover.  This past week, I realized how inspired my goals were.  I just came to a realization of how not working on them has allowed selfishness and idleness to slip back into my life (a nasty duo!).  The consequences are quite obvious and definitely not contenting.  So, how in the heck do I get back to where I was?  It takes a deeply rooted desire, one day at a time, I guess.  So, this has caused me to reflect a bit on what my original desire was and if it was deeply rooted.  I think that it was, and it was rooted in Truth.  So, I had the desire part of the equation; now I just need to put in the labor and exercise the faith.  I was pleased last night.  It was 11:00 and I picked up my laptop to blog to you guys.  Instead, I decided "No, I can do that in the morning."  I put it down and just went to sleep, and here I am.  That to me was a triumph and a step back onto the path of attaining my goals.

I've got great friends.  You care about me, and want to see me succeed, and that means so much.  Thank you.  I hope you, too, have great desires inside.  I hope they are rooted in Truth, rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  "...yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe..." (Alma 32:27)  And as it works in us, it will grow and we will see the Truth blossom into great joy.
I mean those words so much.

Desire, my friends.