*Photo of the day*

Don't forget it!

*Mad World*

Always loved this song and the various artists who sing it. I'll go with Gary Jules. I feel like hell today and can't understand how people can be so mean, selfish, indifferent, and down right mean spirited. I have lost faith in people. I had a choice last year while in the hospital whether I wanted to go home to Heavenly Father or stay. I chose to stay. Not only for my family but for ME. I was keeping my cup of hope with at least a few swallows left. If I had the choice given to me today? I'd go home. I'm home sick beyond words. Some would say that is the easy way out...I say it would be the hardest.

*Sensitive Saturday*

U2 live at Glastonbury singing *BAD*...one of their greatest and most profound songs in my personal opinion. I have a super sensitive heart today, more so than other days. I like what he say's in it about the arrows. I'm not sure why he say's it...but it was just something that hit me in a very personal way. Leave it to U2 to reach my unreachableness.



"Bring me my arrow of burning Gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spears of clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire
BRING ME HOME!"

If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate

If I could throw this
Lifeless lifeline to the wind
Leave this heart of clay
See you walk, walk away
Into the night
And through the rain
Into the half-light
And through the flame

If I could through myself
Set your spirit free
I'd lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day

To let it go
And so to fade away
To let it go
And so fade away

I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
Wide awake
I'm not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

If you should ask then maybe they'd
Tell you what I would say
True colors fly in blue and black
Bruised silken sky and burning flag
Colors crash, collide in blood shot eyes

If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would
Let it go...

This desperation
Dislocation
Separation
Condemnation
Revelation
In temptation
Isolation
Desolation
Let it go

And so fade away
To let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so to fade away

I'm wide awake
I'm wide awake
Wide awake
I'm not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

*Thoughtful Thursday*

Today my mind went back to a drive home from San Jose, CA. A long time ago. It was beautiful and with all road trips I've been on (alone or with someone...I was alone on this one) I was loving it. I entered an area that looked like Ireland. SO GREEN! At that time I ascended a hill that was covered in Windmills. It was at that exact moment that Toad the wet sprocket's "Windmills" came on my mix cd. That is in my top ten favorite songs of all time. What I saw and felt was magical! I wish I had a time machine and could go back to that moment and feel it again.

*Why I gave up photography*

1- I didn't like that it became and FELT like a "Job" instead of a hobbie that I LOVED and got to share with others.

2- As you can see in photo 2, I can't figure out the damn things. I am a 100% point & shooter.

3- Everyone suddenly was a photographer and that bugs me. (I'm weird like that.)

4- My family stopped saying hi to me at family gatherings. Instead they would say, "Where's your camera?" "Can you take some photoz?" I would reply, "I'm so glad to see you TOO!!!" hahaha I got tired of being the family historian. ;)

5- The first photo is NOT posed. I told everyone DO NOT TAKE PHOTOZ OF ME! Well, Wayne ignored that. I layed down on a rock and looked up at my favorite things...clouds. I didn't want to take a photo I wanted to watch the formations take place and capture it in my heart. Sometimes you need to put the camera down and just enjoy the moment for yourself. Thank you Wayne for ignoring my request. ;) He called my name, I looked over and BAM! I was shot! hahahha I love this photo of me. I see a peace in myself that is so very rare. I see a holy land surrounding me...a place of healing...a place where I feel God and we can hear eachother clearly. It is the closest place to the feeling of "HOME" that I have found so far. I love you Southern Utah! Thank you for saving my life on more than one occasion!
(In other words, I wanted to see the world through my own cleareyes and not behind a lenz.)

Maybe there will be a time when I buy a camera again (I gave every single one of mine away! For realz.) and fall back in love with capturing life as it happens. Maybe.

Ps. I've climbed so many mountains that God put my initial on one of them. KOOL!

*Wordless Wednesday*

*Toad Tuesday*

I'm not going to set any blog rules again. I always break them. If I want to post a song on here everyday then I'm going to. ha. Plus a little Toad everyday, goes a really really long way.

*Little Heaven*

*You do the math*

*A Latter-day Saint view of Book of Mormon musical*

by~ Michael Otterson

Reviews of “The Book of Mormon” musical have been all over the entertainment media in the past few weeks. According to the reviews, the play sketches the journey of two Mormon missionaries from their sheltered life in Salt Lake City to Uganda, where their training and life experience proves wholly inadequate to the realities of a continent plagued by poverty, AIDS, genital mutilation and other horrors. While extolling the musical for its originality, most reviewers also make reference to the play’s over-the-top blasphemous and offensive language.

Dealing with parody and satire is always a tricky thing for churches. We can easily appear thin-skinned or defensive, and churches sometimes are. A few members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have seen this musical and blogged about it seem to have gone out of their way to show how they can take it. That’s their choice. There’s always room for different perspectives, and we can all decide what to do with our free time.

But I’m not buying what I’m reading in the reviews. Specifically, I’m not willing to spend $200 for a ticket to be sold the idea that religion moves along oblivious to real-world problems in a kind of blissful naiveté.

Somewhere I read that the show’s creators spent seven years writing and producing “The Book of Mormon” musical. As I reflected on all that time spent parodying this particular target, I also wondered what was really going on with Mormons in Africa during those same seven years.

So I checked.

•The World Health Organization estimates that 884 million people worldwide don’t have access to clean water. This is a huge problem in Africa, not only because of water-borne diseases but because kids who spend hours each day walking to and from the nearest well to fill old gasoline cans with water cannot attend school. According to church records, in the past seven years, more than four million Africans in 17 countries have gained access to clean drinking water through Mormon humanitarian efforts to sink or rehabilitate boreholes.

•More than 34,000 physically handicapped African kids now have wheelchairs through the same Mormon-sponsored humanitarian program. To see a legless child whose knuckles have become calloused through walking on his hands lifted into a wheelchair may be the best way to fully understand the liberation this brings.

•Millions of children, meanwhile, have now been vaccinated against killer diseases like measles as the church has sponsored or assisted with projects in 22 African countries.

•More than 126,000 Africans have had their sight restored or improved through Mormon partnership with African eye care professionals in providing training, equipment and supplies.

•Another 52,000 Africans have been trained to help newborns who otherwise would never take a first breath. Training in neonatal resuscitation has also been a big project for Mormons in Africa.

•Then, of course, there is the tragedy of AIDS. A couple of weeks ago I attended a dinner where the Utah AIDS Foundation honored James O. Mason, former United States Assistant Secretary of Health. When he was working for the Center for Disease Control in 1984, a project to research the epidemiology and treatment of AIDS was established at the Hospital Mama Yempo in Kinshasha, Zaire. After visiting the hospital and examining the children and adults with AIDS, Mason described the death rate and the associated infections from AIDS as “horrific.” Mason, a Mormon, knows quite a bit about AIDS and a great deal about Africa.

•None of this includes responses to multiple disasters, like the flooding in Niger, where the Church provided clothing, quits and hygiene items to 20,000 people in six inundated regions of the country.

Of course, parody isn’t reality, and it’s the very distortion that makes it appealing and often funny. The danger is not when people laugh but when they take it seriously – if they leave a theater believing that Mormons really do live in some kind of a surreal world of self-deception and illusion.

A couple of weeks ago a review about the musical appeared at the New York Times from a Jewish writer who simply listed himself as Levi. “As someone of Jewish faith,” he began, “I take personal offense at this show….I cannot believe that New York, MY New York, where I was born and raised, would ever do such a thing. Shame on you, New York Times, shame on Broadway, and shame on all of us who stand idly by and do nothing while the faith of others is mocked. Religious and cultural Jews need not support such bigotry.”

Levi’s point was echoed by some reviewers, but by surprisingly few. So why hasn’t there been a huge outcry from Mormons?

In my opinion, three reasons. The first is that in the great scheme of things, what Broadway does with “The Book of Mormon” musical is irrelevant to most of us. In the great sweep of history, parodies and TV dramas are blips on the radar screen that come and go. Popular culture will be whatever it will be.

The second reason is related. Jesus’s apostle Paul put it rather well when he said that Christians seek out the positive and virtuous things in life. His New Testament phraseology was adapted in the early years of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in this formal Article of Faith:

“We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men…If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”

Finally, if we Mormons really do follow Jesus Christ in our lives and look to him as an example, then it’s hard for us to ignore the injunction to turn the other cheek. There were times, to be sure, when Jesus roundly criticized others, but it was almost always for hardened hypocrisy. He dismissed the criticism he received personally and told his followers: “Do good to them who despitefully use you and persecute you.”

It takes strength of character to do this, but it’s the Christian mandate. Sure, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pushes back when the record needs correcting or when legal rights need defending, but the world of popular entertainment is more likely to be met with a collective shrug than by placard-waving Mormon protesters.

Meanwhile, what of those thousands of remarkable and selfless Mormon missionaries who opted to pay their own expenses during the past seven years to serve in Africa while their peers were focused on careers or getting on with life? They have returned home, bringing with them a connection with the African people that will last a lifetime. Many will keep up their Swahili language or their Igbo dialect. They will keep in their bedrooms the flags of the nations where they served. They will look up every time they hear Africa mentioned on the evening news. Their associations with the people whose lives they touched will become lifetime friendships. And in a hundred ways they will become unofficial ambassadors for the nations they served.

*Music Monday*

I need to get my blog in order and shake it up a bit. Too much of one thing is well...not a good thing. I'm obviously a music lover and that's how heaven speaks to me sometimes, so I like to share it. I have no idea why the youtube videos are so big on my blog. I've done all the things to make it "right" but it's not working. I'm content with imperfection and always will be. *shrug*

On another note...here is a band I found at 19, The Trashcan Sinatras. LOVE THEM! I've chosen 'All the Dark Horses' to share.

*Picture of the day*

Partners in crime...once Jen stepped in we were all about to run with Wubba'z wedding cake.  It was SO GOOD!  I hate that we whimped out.  Obviously we ate as much as we could without anyone looking but the damn camera man.  We got caught!

Ps. Tiffany's wedding was beautiful and I will post pictures soonish.

*I am the ocean and I am sorrowful*

This might be on here already but my friend just found all my documents (Thank you Stine!!!) and I am grateful because I thought I had lost many precious things to me.  I wrote this in maybe 2007?  Not sure...but it's pretty special to me because the concept or knowledge that EVERYTHING has a spirit testify's itself in a poem about an Ocean who is sorrowful for a dieing girl.  I give thanks to Heavenly Father for helping me write my ideas, feelings, and poetry...I'm nothing without him and I never want to be.

*I AM THE OCEAN AND I AM SORROWFUL*

I am the ocean and I am sorrowful.  My waves have crossed not a few but the numbers of the sand.  I have swallowed the wicked and filled the earth at command.  And I must do it again…but I know not when.  I reason with the angels but they cannot say either for they know not.  I delight in bringing mercy and justice.  My waves listen for the sound of the horn to blow for all people and for me that I may roll with the earths scroll and be made anew and be cleansed.

But for now, it is late…the sky is black and my spirit is heavy. I hold the small ship that never moves, the ship that holds His daughter.  I love her because she first loved me.  She walked my shoreline many times.  She dreamed lovely dreams and entrusted me with their care. But now my touch stings her and my mist recoils her and I mourn for her.  My anger rises and I thrash upon the great rocks for I am helpless and cursed.  Oh I long to part for her as I did for the ancients.  That deliverance may be hers.  I call upon the Moon, the Milky Way and their twinkling’s that they may shine upon her.   But even they had to part from her and she is left to whimper in confinement.  The lights of her rescue boats grew too dim, for long was their journey and they were forced to turn back.  No one can see her.  But I can…I surround her and I will hold her with my stillness that she may not be disturbed for a moment.  I have hidden her dreams beneath my corals that they may never be separated from me…I will hold them always that she may believe in me.  He that created me has been quiet for too long.  Her bones are frail and her breath is shallow.  Her sash in blue satin is now rope that binds her.  She has been made afraid, mocked and seized upon.  She will no longer speak.  And so in her behalf I cry to the heavens, IT IS ENOUGH!!!

I am the ocean and I am sorrowful...may deliverance be nigh at hand.

*Taking Punches for being Mormon*

For a girl who is NOT into politics (too much contention for me), I read these articles and felt gratitude for those who STAND FOR SOMETHING...especially RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. Our founding Fathers DID lay the foundation and we should not only honor it but abide by it in every way. They lead the path that we are on. If our country had stayed true to the values in which were written with their own lives...we wouldn't be in such a down spiral economy. So here are the two articles feel free to read and believe what you will. I especially love the article about the "Mormon Musical" and what the Jewish man say's. SO TRUE!  EVERY FAITH SHOULD BE RESPECTED!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/why-i-wont-be-seeing-the-book-of-mormon-musical/2011/04/14/AFiEn1fD_blog.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith?fb_ref=NetworkNews&fb_source=profile_multiline

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-will-try-to-stay-focused-on-economy-avoid-becoming-punching-bag/2011/06/13/AGitZDTH_story.html?hpid=z1

*Beautiful Girl...you will get better*

My new favorite song. I love William Fitzsimmons. He is so sincere in his lyrics and they are beautiful!!! Here is an acoustic version. Oh and btw, the whole cd is really good!


"Unfurl your gown
A distant fuller skin
I knew you once

My God the sun
The windows bear your bones
Reveal your crime

Beautiful girl
Let the sunrise come again
Beautiful girl

Your sailor eyes
The water in the well
A thirst to fill

Let down your arms
The purging of this dark
The fall to free

Beautiful girl
Let the sunrise come again
Beautiful girl
May the weight of world resign
You will get better*

*Deep Thoughts and stuff*

“Do not let loyalty and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart”

"Kim, I've been kicking against the pricks for so long that I don't even know why I'm doing it anymore."
(A boy I once dated.)

~ There is a big difference between a religious fanatic and someone who is dedicated to Christ.
(My own thought)

~If I had a penny and you hadn't any...I'd buy a candy stick and let you have a lick! :)

"I don't know much about fighting but I'd fight for you."
(I dunno who the origional singer/writer is but I heard Beyonce sing it and I liked that lyric.)

"If I had a choice between breathing and loving you, I would use my last breath to say, I love you!"
~Kristiina Curtis (My niece age 12 She's amazing!)

"To withhold your love and affection during a friends dark and painful hour, because of a past bruised ego or wounded pride, is a tragedy. For you may have been the very one that was chosen to give the sentiments of the Savior as you also drank of the bitter cup and could help close up and seal the tender wound."
(This was in my notes in a journal...not sure who wrote it. I'm pretty sure I did. *wink wink* Ha!)

*'Streets' on a deeper level*

I might have a "Streets" video on here about 3 times (It's my all time favorite song)...but this one say's more and explains why I see Bono as one of the greatest men to walk the earth, it's shows why I love U2, it's shows why I love God, it's shows why, since I was 14, I have cleaved unto them/their music for over 20 years. I can still see myself on our familys' Yellow boat roaming the canyons of Lake Powell. I would sit on the bow (sp?) and you could hang your legs over because there was a bar to protect you. I would put my head phones on and listen to my first tape of Joshua tree over and over and never tire of it. The wind in my hair and U2 in my ears. I felt free from own inner and outter oppression I was facing at that time. Over my life the oppression grew to levels I didn't know were possible. I am a survivor and I hope with all my heart I can live longer...because my own voice and heart are as loud, sincere, powerful and as bold as Bono's. My LOVE is VAST! I HAVE been waiting on the Lord...BUT "HOW LONG?" Ihope it's soon...It's my turn for a season of rest. Here or in heaven.
Ps. A BIG thank you to my friend Jeff. I so needed this. What a blessing you are.
Pss. Please watch it to the VERY END! What he says at the end is important!