LDS Homeschooling Conference

Get inspired for the upcoming homeschool year at the LDS Homeschooling Conference!

From their webpage:

"All are invited. The LDS Homeschool Conference is designed for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who homeschool, however anyone from any religion or public/private schooled families are invited. It will be held August 8th and 9th. The first day will be workshops and activities for both the youth and the adults. There will be a talent show this night – open to everyone. The second day will be our keynote speakers and a catered lunch will be provided for all adults and youth. There will be time for interaction and discussion. That night will be a youth dance. On both days there will be time set aside to communicate with leaders in the area, ask and answer questions and many vendors. For lunch there will be concessions or place to eat your own lunch outside. There will also be displays of art and inventions through out the event."

Come register here!

What Do Our Church Leaders Say About Homeschool?

A good friend just asked a sincere question; what our Church leaders (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) say about homeschool. I was happy she asked me. This is what they say. They do not say one way or another. They want you and I to decide what we want to do and then they plead with us to pray for inspiration. The most they have ever said is that it is the sole responsibility of the parent to educate their child, however, they will not ever say how you are to be responsible for it. Only you, your spouse and the Lord with the Spirit can decide.

The Ensign of May 2010 is chalk full of good advice for teaching children. It was this general conference that helped to heal me from all the torment I was getting from my loved ones for my choices. However, nowhere in this General Conference did our leaders point out to me or you whether homeschooling or public-schooling is best. Nowhere! That answer is not for them to tell us. They tell us to work out our thoughts, ponder them and to pray.

How do we pray for an answer like this? The Bible dictionary discusses prayer and in the last part of it it states how specific we are supposed to be. My prayers have become extremely specific and then so have my answers. It is incredible to see how the Lord is just waiting for us to ask specific questions and communicate our specific desires before he will do any thing to help us. The responsibility is all on us! 

This brings me to another interesting thing I have discovered: asking questions of God. Think about the long time between the Savior’s death, which caused the eventual destruction of the Primitive Church, and the Restoration. During that time, no one was asking God questions. They thought that they knew everything that the Lord had revealed and they continued on that path until the Reformation when Calvin and Luther began to ask questions--only they didn’t ask questions of God, they only asked questions among themselves and their associates. Thus, God did not answer his people throughout that long dark period we know as the “dark ages” nor did he answer questions from the Reformers because no one, not even they asked Him! The queries of the Reformation gradually opened the gates to the Restoration when a little boy of 14, living in a world that finally asked questions once again--asked a question, not of men, but of God. Few had done that for over 1500 years! 

I must pause and exclaim that this is huge! What kind of power does our Heavenly Father give to sincere questions? All the power there is! Look at this for instance, after Joseph asked his question and got an answer, he forgot to ask a question for three years. He heard nothing from God. Nothing. Then one night, he thought about the first vision again and prayed asking God if he were to be doing something about the knowledge he received those three years prior. That night the Angel Moroni came to visit him three times and the next day twice. From there on out, whenever Joseph received word from God it was because he inquired of the Lord--he asked a question. 

Skip ahead to the time I was twelve and was babysitting a family in Lawrence Kansas, when an announcement came, interrupting a TV family movie we were all watching. President Spencer W. Kimball had just announced to the world that all worthy males, regardless of race, could hold the priesthood. This was huge! Not long after, we heard that the prophet had gone before the Lord with a question and the Lord had revealed to him what we all learned that eventful night. I ask again: How much power does our Heavenly Father place on the act of a single question? He places all his power there. He is waiting for us to ask, he is waiting for us to find the boldness within to ask the pivotal questions of our lives and of our responsibilities. He will not send anything unless we ask. The scriptures give the process by which we get our answers: "Ask and ye shall receive,” "Ask, and it shall be given unto you." I have never read a scripture that says, "Ye shall receive before you ask or even if you do not ask." That would be silly!

So, in summary, the prophets and apostles tell us that only we, the parents, have the responsibility to educate our children. Then, they, the General Authorities, will NOT tell us how, but the next step is to ask God! We ask the question and He will surely give us the answer as sure as He gave an answer to each and every one of his children on this earth, including Joseph Smith.

That is the formula! And to add in our friendly on-going discussion—we must never fall prey to that worldly conveyor belt that goes along and fits parts onto us and our children without our clear conscience and without our “thinking” caps on. We all fall prey to this when we get too comfortable in what we are doing…this is the test! And to pass the test, we must pray for our INDIVIDUAL answer. Sometimes that answer will be that a child ought to be in the public school system, sometimes not. Our answers are all about the questions we ask.

What is the role of science, art and religion in the ethics of society?

"We have no government armed with 

power capable of contending with human 

passions unbridled by morality and religion." 

—John Adams

             Ethics is the science of morals. Morals inform manners and manners make up the character of a man. If ethics is the powerful foundation of the character of man, would it not be wise to inquire what it is that informs ethics? What is the role of science, art and religion in the ethics of society? Religion claims to form the lifeblood of societal ethos, demonstrating a strong correlation between societal virtue and religious observance.  On the other hand, science undertakes the search for truth without mysticism. Finally, art is the cultural expression of truth. All three seem to fight each other in a battle of truth and justice.

The role of science in ethics is to reduce ethics to a science for business and corporations.  The secular world is created in order to divide the divine from the human with certain rules of conduct written and enforced. Science is the facts proven true. “Science and technology conferred a new value upon fact and created a new cultural type—the fact-gatherer, the fact-treasurer” which became the new popular character in society.^[1] For Sir Francis Bacon, science was a study divorced from art and morals. He condemned the conception of “contemplating the truth” as a study of knowledge. This ushered in the modern era that everything, including human nature, is based on scientific experimentation.^[2] Furthermore, Einstein’s theory of relativity had great influence upon not only the scientific world, but on morals and religion. The idea that all things could mean something different for each individual was the new morality. Who needed the old prophets and the old systems? The new morality meant that ethics could be re-written according to each man. This proposed a great moral dilemma: with God out of sight and out of mind, who would be God? The nature of man is always changing from ordered to disordered, however, the nature of God invites man to change from disordered to ordered. Without God, man would spiral downward into a disordered wasteland, but a wasteland with only relics of human ethics.

The role of art is to enhance life, says Nietzsche. Art is used as a tool of inspiration to help its beholder remember something higher and more noble. Collectively, art is a reflection on the culture of society and as modern man has been gradually doing away with God, so has art been gradually doing away with the ideal, the good, the true and the beautiful. Only an unemotional skeleton of societal duties is all that is left of ethics when the good, the true and the beautiful are lacking. Art affects people and people affect art. Art reflects societal customs as Henry James has said, “art is our flounderings shown” and yet it still has the power to change our customs, for good or evil.  “Great art has the power of transfiguring the aspect of the world,”^[3]says Jacques Barzun. It, then, could be said that art has the power to impart the good in ethics. As long as there remains a moral people who demand moral art, art will transcend the world to inspire us to contemplate the sublime.

The role of religion is to inform individuals and groups of what is right and correct according to a divine set of laws. As religion teaches the observance of the good and the true, it then expects its people to be agents of choice and to be susceptible to the consequences of those choices. Religion sets the moral basis for making moral choices. History is embellished with the stories of moral choice and action encouraged because of religious observance. Religious communities have demonstrated heroic acts of disaster-clean-up; have set the standard on moral issues from abortion to defining marriage; have formed associations to help lift third world countries and have inspired parents to raise their children with good moral character.

It is important to note the special characteristic of religion, that there must be and will always be a higher standard set by God that transcends all human law. If this were not so, then any man could set his own “divine” law and live accordingly at the expense of his neighbor.  The law of relativity must be absent in religion. James Russell Lowell artfully wrote, “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.” It is religion that ultimately teaches truth. Humans are continually constructed, mended and reconstructed through the scaffolding of Truth, if they will assume it to be so, afterall, they have a choice.

Science is a means of discovering and demonstrating the material truth, art is a means of sensorial communication of truth, and religion is a means of delivering godly remembrance of truth and redemption from the false. Ethics are influenced by all three vying for the divine position. However, rarely is religion the strongest force of the three. “Art and science...become dogmatizing rivals about who owns the truth--a rivalry that does not keep out envy, trespass, compromise, and confusion.”^[4] In contrast, religion, in the truest sense, inspires mankind to love, serve and lift one another, which ultimately has the supreme influence on ethics.

---

^[1] Barzun, The Use and Abuse of Art, Princeton University Press: 1973, 100

^[2] Adler, Syntopicon, Art

^[3] Barzun, The Use and Abuse of Art, Princeton University Press: 1973, 74

^[4] Ibid., 99

What is the Painting that Most Reflects Me?

The Baroque/Rococo era is to excess and decadence as the Neo-Classical is to the fundamental and moral revival. With the discovery of the ash covered Pompeii, came the rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman virtues of prudence, temperance, justice and courage. This moral resurgence is reflected in the art of Angelica Kauffmann’s Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi as she places greater love upon her children than upon the treasures of the world. Children are eternal. Families are eternal. Souls are eternal. Cornelia kindly, but boldly sets forth her fundamental belief of the enduring principles that preserve civilizations.

I love this painting because it portrays the role of an attentive mother who understands her influential role in guiding her treasured children to become principled leaders in society. It is often a great sacrifice for a woman to leave the things of the world for a time and put her full focus on the guidance and teaching of children, but the result is usually far greater than the treasures the world has to offer. Cornelia understood this exultant end when the other woman asked why her clothes were not elegant or why she did not adorn herself with jewels since she had such a wealthy husband. Of course, Cornelia expressed to the woman that she had no need of worldly treasure or jewels, for her children were her greatest jewels - her treasures.

Another reason I love this painting is that it reflects a major turning point in my life as I struggled past the conventional and status quo to a better place in order to think for myself and do what was right for my individual family. This change brought bitter enemies for a time, but those same people eventually perceived the confidence deep within me that the rich woman sees, but does not understand yet in Cornelia. It is a confidence that has potential to lead others to think outside the box and discover new ways of seeing our purpose in life.

Why Should We Study Art?

Our family recently went to visit the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University, who is sponsoring several originals of Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hofmann and Frans Schwartz in their Sacred Gifts Exhibition. Some paintings have taken their very first trip ever, from their home at the Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød, Denmark. All of us were touched by the beauty,  the feelings it provoked within us and the serenity of Christ's life, Atonement and Resurrection as depicted by these great painters. What a privilege it is to have opportunities to view the works of masters and especially to have working relations with other churches and people all over the world.

I have been reflecting on the subject of art and its place in our world. Why do we go, even travel far, to see it? Why does it have such a hold on us? The obvious is that it brings beauty and refinement, but is that all? What is art? Why do we study it?

Someone has asked, What is the first thing we know about man? His Art. The Cave paintings in France and Spain tell us more about the first inhabitants than anything else we have found. Man has always expressed himself with art and as Cuban artist, Pablo Picasso once said, "Primitive sculpture has never been surpassed."What, then, is art? Is it communication?

Notes from Barzun's, The Use and Abuse of Art...and what gives art the power to destroy?

In his Human, All too Human, Nietzsche foretold the decline of western culture, that society has fallen away from the heavenly conceptions and someday only tales will be told of the past art. Barzun certainly becomes the storyteller in this case. He  states that the power of art is sufficiently strong to “shape the minds and emotions of men” toward good or evil. Before the eighteenth century, Art’s purpose was to imitate or represent the best, the ideal and the godly—to communicate the good, the true and the beautiful. Its effect tended to lift mankind. Since then, modern art has gradually purported the opposite in its new ideals— to “expose the worst, degrade society” New art is ‘meant to bruise the beholder’s feelings and senses,” in order to create the “new man” with new ideals. The new ideals are variable standards imposed by the mind as artistic pretensions that gradually become new models and precedents. Think of Lydia Bennet’s unrefined and wild behavior that becomes her new model for how she should behave in her mother’s eyes.  

Barzun warns that if “man’s most sophisticated relation to art is to be casual and humorous...then the conception of Art as an all-important institution...is quite destroyed.” When the ideal, the best and the godly are removed, when the imitation, the representation and the natural are put aside, what remains? The lowest reality, anti-ideals, unrestrained brutality, anger, obscenities, cynicism, and the lowest quality of everything persists, essentially rendering art as meaningless, thus destroying art.

Only Christ Can Overcome the Monstrous Venom of Anger

Anger, if let to fester in our hearts grows within the heart until it has filled every space therein. And if allowed to increase will overflow into our organs until all within us is morbidly infested with its venom. And if again allowed to increase will find a way to escape the poisoned body in the form of word and action from its victim.

I received an email from a professor last night that exposed me as one who informed my college's administration of a concern I had about a class this past semester. It is true, I did confide in them my gravest concerns about staying true to the college's methodology of the socratic, rather than moving towards the oxford model of lecture. I believe that the administration kept all comments anonymous, but did share with the mentors/professors the students' concerns as written on a college-wide survey.

The email was short and to the point—verbally and physically, it pointed directly at me with a sharp poke. At first my amygdala flared up in "fight mode" as I tried to understand my fault. I settled down to pondering upon him and the hurt he must feel, according to the feel of his email.  However, I had not recalled anything hurtful I had said about him or the other professor, only that I was concerned that they used the Oxford model of teaching, which is against the college's methodology and not on what I want to pay my scarce monies.

I was sincerely sorry about the harm that my comments had caused, but I was confused at why he would point all his anger at me. Still, I tried to reconcile our differences and to apologize, still holding onto the fact that I need an education that employed the socratic method. I sent a kind and sincere email to him and tried to sleep.

Sleep never came until 3:00 AM.

When I awoke a few hours later, there was a response from him that bore so much weight of anger, not only at me, but toward the administration and past administrations, student evaluations and many more things. He sent me old papers he had written about bad-mouthing; about how student evaluations not only do not help, but cause much harm; about working things out before-hand with the perpetrator of the offense before sharing the "gossip" with others. Many other things he pointed out in his long papers and I melted into "victim" mode again. What had I done to receive such a heavy burden? It was so utterly incomprehensible and vast and unclear that I broke down and cried. Did I truly merit this heavy massive weight? Had I truly been the one to cause him such intense and boundless anger?

...or was I the scapegoat for his years-worth of built-up anger so expansive it burst...

As I dwelled upon the matter, I imagined this vision:

I stood before my professor as a meek student searching for truth,

and he loomed over me with a heavy solid sword in his hand.

Anger had overcome him.

Every morsel of anger he had collected over the decades, 

toward administrations, student evaluations and much more 

from decades of teaching had come together at this very moment

to make mighty his sword as he 

plunged it's heaviness into my heart and killed me. 

I was no longer alive for him...

not him

But, then a very dim light shone through the darkness and illuminated a small corridor leading upward...

I came to the only person who could possibly understand,
the person filled with all light and understanding,
Christ

He, who had the power to lift us all from the Grave, has the power to lift our Burdens and carry them for us on condition that we follow him. I became alive for Him ...and for me, and for my family and for all around me who will have me be in their life. Christ and his glorious power came through for me once again.

Christ's love and his atonement has the power to fill our hearts until it is overflowing with light and love and if we let it, it will fill every space within our bodies until we become children of Christ, having been saved by his Redemption.

Of this I testify, Amen.