Questions in the Margins

Is a positive 'relational' purpose part of the criteria of personal worthiness of the Spirit of God? 

I may leave this open-ended. Or I may explore it with you next week. It's a thought I wrote in the margin of a book about Karl G. Maeser, second president of Brigham Young University.

Have a good week everyone. <3

Learning how to be a student

I've been thinking about what it means to be a student, and how one approaches learning the restored gospel of Jesus Christ via the role of a student versus as a teacher/leader. I realized this morning that to be a disciple, really, is just to be a student.

For all my life I've had it flip flopped. I saw discipleship as a form of leadership--which it is, I guess, if one learns how to be an 'exemplar' student. But what does it mean to be a student? My questions began last week when a lady in my Sunday School class asked a "Do you think" question instead of sharing an "I think" statement. I decided to try a do you think question too and wow. It revolutionized the way I think about teaching and learning. I've been so focused on leadership I think I've missed a few things. My new goal is to learn what it means to be a student, and what the Savior taught about how to be a student/disciple.

I prefer to identify myself as a student rather than a teacher. It's less stressful. I don't have to be perfect. I can mess up, like a lot, and still feel safe as long as I'm trying to learn from my mistakes and not play the scapegoat blaming games--projecting my own faults and failings on other people, things, and situations. I can own my imperfectness and embrace my role as student. Heck, that's why a student's a student. We have lots of room to grow and we know it, so we do something about it :)

The Seas Above

The Family

"In the family circle is to be found everything that is highest and most sacred for the people and for the poor. It is the benign influence of the family circle which alone can help the people and it is this aid which is today most urgently needed. . . . From the moral and religious point of view the tie which binds father, mother and children is at the same time the source of all views and feelings which lead man through faith and love to all that is exalted and eternal, and prepares him in the earthly enjoyment of the love of father and mother for sonship with God, and through the obedience of faith in father and mother, exalts him to the obedience of faith in God."

~Johann Pestalozzi, 1818

Swiss Educational Reformer

Lewis Flint Anderson, ed., citing "Pestalozzi's address on his 72nd birthday (January 12, 1818)," Pestalozzii (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974), 142-44.

She's a little messy, just a quickie drawing, but she's cute :)

<3 Have a great week everybody!