Education Week Notes -- Monday

ON PASSING OF THOSE WE LOVE:  GETTING THROUGH THE DIFFICULT DAYS (S. MICHAEL WILCOX):  To love is to be vulnerable to grief and sooner or later we'll all find ourselves in that situation.  Even said it was better to pass through sorrow that we may know certain things.  As we pass through sorrow, we learn things from it.  The last two years of his life have been the highest education he has had.  Grief is an instructor.  His wife passed away a year and a half ago of brain cancer.  In going through her things, he found two CD's of songs she liked. He started listening and heard a song by Linda Rondstadt "Goodbye My Friend."  We never know when life will take us.  I know it's just a ride on the wheel.  We never know when death will shake us.  We wonder how it will feel.  So good-bye my friend.  I know I'll never see you again.    But the love you gave me through all these years will take away my tears.  I'm okay.  Life is so fragile and love so pure.  We can't hold on, but we try.  I'm okay now, you can go now.  Good-bye my friend.   He wonders if this is his wife's message to him.  He can't say good-bye.  In the gospel we ultimately don't have to say good-bye.  It's too hard.  We never know when death will shake us and we don't know how it will feel.  It may be a spouse, a child, a parent, a friend.  Sometimes even someone we don't know well will shake us.  He knows how this feels in 18 months.  He doesn't know how it will feel in 5 or 10 years.  He assumes it will continue to shake until he sees his wife again.  We're all shaken by this experience.  People sometimes ask how he's doing.  Thomas Jefferson's wife Martha died young.  Before she died, he described marriage as a scenic beautiful painting.  It is framed.  There is something prominent in the picture.  Maybe it's a castle or a waterfall.  But the picture has one central thing that draws the eyes to it as you look at the picture.  That is what his wife is to him.  She's not in the picture anymore.  She's gone out of it.  That's what life feels like now.  There are a lot of little happinesses still in his life, but the grand happiness is no longer in the frame.  Sometimes people talk about grief as being a journey.  For him, a journey does not work.  It feels more like a mist or foggy day.  He grew up in California and it feels like a fog where you can't see very far.  You're just surrounded by it.  Sometimes it clears and you see a little sun and the warmth comes back, but then the fog closes in again and you have bad moments.  Through it all, he knows the sun is shining.  There will be warmth and clear vision again, but at least for a while it comes and goes. He feels like life isn't real like it used to be.  He's in a play.  It's not a bad play.  He says his lines.  But there's something unreal about life. He keeps thinking that the time will come when the stage lights will go down and the play will be over.  And then there will be the bigger, eternal world where his wife is.  He'll be able to walk off with her.  That's where he is.  That's what life feels like for him.  The temple has become a critical thing for him.  Shortly after his wife died, he was struck deeply by Eve's words.  It is better for us to pass through sorrow that we may know.  We learn a lot of things while passing through sorrow.  "Pass through" has a sense of brevity to it.  That phrase has a sense of not being permanent.  If we love, we will grieve.  Grief is love's shadow.  But it's not permanent.  What has he learned from all this?  He's learned how to better answer a question his wife asked him once when they were engaged.  He met his wife at BYU.  He can't really relax and enjoy himself until everything is done.  He saves the best for last.  The best was being with Laurie.  He couldn't enjoy being with her if he had a paper to write.  Sometimes he had a big paper to write and he wouldn't have as much time for her.  To her relationships should come first.  They would disagree about this.  One time she was hurt because he hadn't been there for her.  She asked him, "Don't you need me?"  At age 22 he didn't answer the question very well.  Now he knows how to answer that question.  When they meet again, he wants her to askhim that question because now he knows how to answer.  He's not sure he knew at 60 how to answer that question.  He's profoundly grateful for death because it intensifies death and we learn how much we love and how deeply we love.  In the formation of an eternal relationship between husband and wife, the grave may be equal to the altar in it's necessity of binding souls together in an eternal relationship.  We have to recognize how God talks to us.  Sometimes it's through scriptures, or imagination, or through dreams.  Shortly after Laurie died, he dreamed he was wearing black and white, colorless, looking across at men and women in vibrant colors celebrating.  They had great joy, going off somewhere.  He was alone and silent.  Sometimes it feels that way.  He has learned through this that Laurie was the color of his life.  She brought him the color.  The scriptures say God will lift us up as on eagle's wings.  He pondered about a beautiful mansion in England, dressed in beautiful colors with Laurie.  He was introduced as the man that Laurie loves.  If he's that man, the world is full of color again, even though she's not with him.  As we pass through sorrow, we come to KNOW, not just learn.  He has come to know that he can live through the worst.  Joseph Smith learned this in Liberty Jail.  A couple of months before Laurie went into seizures, he had a dream that he was with her in a foreign country.  They were both young again.  He fell down stairs and struck her head at the foot of the stairs.  He ran down and gathered her up and in his dream she died of brain trauma.  This dream was a forewarning of what would happen.  He got home from out of town and his daughter told him that Laurie was in seizure.  There was a mass on her brain.  This was the worst thing he could imagine.  Now he knows he can get through the worst.  He can't be mad at God for it.  He never realized how much of his faith and testimony would be shaken by this experience.  As he's passed through sorrow, he has found that the real you is you at your best.  The sum total of a person is the addition of all their best moments. That is what we are, not our worst moments.  His wife died 8 months later.  His daughters offered to go through the house and clear out their mother's things, but he knew he had to do it himself, although he let his daughters help.  Some things he treasured and wanted to keep, some things his children wanted.  Some things they gave to DI or threw away.  When he got done with this experience, the Lord taught him a lesson.  There was another cleansing he needed to do.  He needed to go through his memory, his life with this woman--every argument, every painful thing, and throw it away.  When you marry, you get a vessel to put all our memories and shared life in, the good and the bad.  But now as he pictures Laurie coming together with him with their shared vessel, he realizes he doesn't want to take the motes and beams into heaven with them.  He looks back at her in perfection. She is the sum total of all her best moments and nothing else matters.  The motes and beams all gone.  If there were motes in Laurie, there are beams in him.  Annoyances have suddenly become endearances.  The things about your spouse that annoyed you, now endear you.  Laurie was always losing earrings. When going through the house, he found a lot of single earrings.  He kept them all.  Sometimes she'd fall asleep while reading.  She liked to underline and the books would have hen scratches where she'd fallen asleep.  He saved all those.  He always felt that eternal love started at the altar of the temple.  That was the supreme moment of his life.  He knew he would always love her.  After he found out Laurie had terminal cancer, he asked his mother-in-law for a picture of Laurie at age 17.  She brought a lot of pictures of Laurie growing up.  He realized he was in love with that 5 year old girl in ringlets, and the high school sophmore.  He realized he didn't just love the college student he met, but he also loved the 5 year old and the 12 year old.  Eternity goes both ways.  Eternal love reaches not only into the future, but also into the past.  He can now not only say that he'll always love her, but that he has always loved her.  Sometimes after Laurie died, he'd look at an empty chair at a table and think Laurie should be there.  He can't look across the table anymore and see what he loves.  He can look at pictures.  But there is also a love where you can both look at something you love and enjoy it together.  They both enjoyed animals.  They both loved scenic views.  They still have that.  He can look at the Canadian Rockies or Chinese art, the things he enjoyed with Laurie, and those things are still there.  Laurie didn't want to die and she never really accepted it so they never really said good-bye.  One night near the end he told her it was all right, she could go.  She said good-bye to her physical body and he came to know why body and spirit inseparably connected is a fulness of joy.  She loved her body, even though it had given her a lot of pain.  She could use her voice to sing, her fingers to draw, she had born children.  In the spirit world she would see her father and her grandparents, and one day she'll see him, but the reunion she'll have to wait longer for will be her reunion with her body.  The supreme moment of his life is to understand the sealing of the temple.  Only the Mormons really believe the love songs about eternal love.  All his happiness now rides on that temple ceremony that seals him to Laurie.  The memory of that moment stays with him always. 

CHURCH HUMANITARIAN SERVICE AND THE POWERFUL ROLE OF CHARITY IN BLESSING THE POOR WHILE PROTECTING COVENANT PEOPLE AGAINST PRIDE (GLEN T. EVANS):  He loves the topic of charity.  Miracles are happening that seem to be suited for the times we live in.  We need to provide in the Lord's way.  Charity has a profound ability to change us.  We can use charity as a shield and protection.  It protects us from pride.  Moroni 7:46-48 talks about cleaving unto charity.  Charity never fails.  2010 was the deadly hear with earthquakes, floods, and disasters.  Heavenly Father hears prayers of His children around the earth who cry out for food and basic needs.  He has invited His children to consecrate their time and means to join with Him in serving others.  2011 was the most costly year on record--$265 billion in losses.  Japan had an earthquake.  There were lots of countries with flooding.  The church did 111 emergency responses.  Something bad happens, we go.  However, the bulk of what we do is proactively helping the poor and needy, not waiting for disasters to happen--such as helping provide wheelchairs and clean water. There is a change going on.  Most of these projects did not originate in Salt Lake City, they originated in China.  When Japan's earthquake happened, there were no shipments from Salt Lake City. It's faster and less expensive to send shipments from places closer to where they're needed.  This is a worldwide church.  You don't always need to look to Salt Lake.  What can you do to serve others beyond our church callings and our families.  There are things going on all around us.  We're not like government entities.  We have local members and we can utilize those talents.  We understand you have a need to serve, but the need to serve cannot take precedence over the need for your service.  Please, identify the need for your service first, then tailor your service to meet that need. The only ones who qualify to serve in this work are the humble.  We don't get there from being compelled.  We need to give more locally.  That is the trend.  When we are more constantly engaged in giving, it changes our hearts.  In pride, we life ourselves up.  But in charity, we lift others up.  We need to see that all things are done in wisdom and order.  Maybe if we don't have an abundance of money, we still have an abundance of time to give.  God will have a humble people.  We can choose to be humble or compelled to be humble.  We can choose to be humble by rendering service, going on missions, going to the temple more frequently, by repenting of our sins.  It's almost impossible to be lifted up in pride when our hearts are full of charity.  It's like not feeling the Spirit when you're angry--you'll have one or the other.  Charity kills pride.  In order to retain a remission of our sins from day to day, we need to get caught up in charity and make it a part of our lives.  We don't discover humility by thinking less of ourselves.  The moment we stop obsessing with ourselves, and lose ourselves in service, our pride diminishes and begins to die.  Often there is a need right around us that we're hoping someone else will solve.  We're not being shouted at, we're being testified to.  The reason charity never fails is that charity is not an act but a condition or state of being.  Charity is attained through a succession of acts.  Charity is something one becomes.  The Lord can take our weaknesses and use them to touch the lives of others.  When Heber J. Grant was a young boy his mother struggled to give him a nice coat to wear.  But he gave it away to a boy he saw who was cold.  She asked him why he didn't give the boy his old coat, but then realized that of course he couldn't do that. Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, you do it unto Him.  Heber J. Grant knew what poverty felt like and when he saw that boy, he understood what he was going through.  The Lord used that to bless lives.  As you serve others for Him, He lets you feel His love.  And in time, feelings of charity become part of your very nature.  And you will receive the assurance in your heart as you persist in serving others in life that all will be well with you. In small little moments we stop and serve, we're authorizing the spirit to change our nature and our hearts.  If you will follow this pattern, you will receive specific guidance as to the who, what, when and where of providing in the Lord's way.  His sister died suddenly two months ago. He was shocked.  On his way to the funeral, he sat next to a drunk woman on the plane.  He felt a prompting that he was supposed to help this woman.  He talked to her and they discussed things about God.  He shared an affirmation with her, "I am a beautiful daughter of a loving Heavenly Father."  This affirmation touched her.  Even though she was drunk, she didn't continue drinking.  She needed to hear that she had a loving Heavenly Father.  Even though he was grieving for his sister, he needed to talk to that woman and help her.  We can pray for charity to come into our hearts.  Charity endures forever.  We want to be possessed of it at the last day. 

PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION:  THE LATTER-DAY WORK EXPANDS--DAVID O. MCKAY TO SPENCER W. KIMBALL (ROBERT C. FREEMAN):  During President McKay's 18 years as church president, he traveled all over the world.  He had to be out among the people.  Even as the church is growing in numbers and strength before WWI, church members were still gathering to Utah.  But by President McKay's time they were being encouraged to stay in their homeland.  President McKay saw there there were few stakes or temples outside the U.S. and he knew he needed to do something about it.  He is remembered for education.  He was born in Huntsville, Utah.  He was a professional educator.  He was the right man, in the right place, at the right time.  While he was president, U.S. presidents were Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.  He served from 1951 to 1970.  He was not show about speaking against communism.  He was very well read.  While he was president, Alaska and Hawaii became states and the first man walked on the moon.  He said that if you want a strong nation, you'd better protect the family.  A nation's greatest asset is their children.  His and Emma Rae's relationship was that of sweethearts.  He said never to shout at each other unless the house is on fire.  Never let your wife's hand touch a doorknob.  Always open the door for her.  Take your wife out once a week.  His motto was kindness, courtesy, and trust.  He encouraged every member to be a missionary.  He dedicated numerous temples--New Zealand, Swiss, L.A., Oakland, London. He presided over the church during much of the Korean and Vietnam wars.  He saw war as a tool that Satan uses to divide the family.  As a church we renounce war and proclaim peace, even though there are circumstances when war may be necessary.  Joseph Fielding Smith served 1970-1972.  His father Joseph F. Smith felt inspired to call him as an apostle.  For over 50 years, he was the historian of the church.  He was born while President Brigham Young was still alive.  He was born in 1876.  Those presidents aren't that long ago.  He didn't have to just study church history in books, he had his own memory.  His father had been instrumental in preserving many sites in the church.  In 1939 he directed the withdrawal of missionaries from Europe before WWII.  His first two wives passed away, and then he married Jessie who had a beautiful voice and involved him in duets, which he called do-its.  They'd just "do it."  President Harold B. Lee served from 1972-1973.  Presidents McKays and Smith lived into their mid 90's.  So when President Lee began serving at age 72, we thought he'd be president for 20 years.  But he died a year and a half later.  The Lord calls the right man for that right season in time.  President Lee's presidency was short, but it was important.  We need to look at these leaders and their entire ministry in their previous callings.  He was the architect of the entire welfare service in the church.  As a stake president, he tried an experiment.  There were events that happened in President Lee's earlier life that show the Lord wanted him preserved to be the prophet.  He had serious accidents and illnesses in his youth, any one of which could have killed him.  He helped the correlation program in the church.  In other religions, there are a lot of variations among different congregations, even in the same city.  But we can attend church anywhere in the world and they teach the same things out of the same manuals.  President Spencer W. Kimball thought that President Lee would outlive him.  President Lee shook his finger at him and told him that he would live to be president of the church.  President Kimball served from 1973 to 1985.  He's known for telling is to lengthen our stride.  He challenged us to greater heights.  Watergate happened during his presidency.  Final withdrawal from Vietnam.  Advent of the personal computer.  He nearly drowned when he was 7 years old.  Two sisters and his mother died.  He believed you should give everything 100%.  He wrote the book "The Miracle of Forgiveness."  He suffered throat cancer that took away his beautiful voice.  He went back east for surgery and said he "fell among cut throats."  He used a little microphone to magnify his raspy voice.  We loved him.  He was a man short in stature, but the Spencer W. Kimball Tower at BYU is one of the tallest buildings on campus.  The revelation extending the priesthood to all male members is one of the most remarkable moments of the century.  President Kimball had a special love for the Lamanites.  He introduced smaller temples.  He called for an increase in the full time missionary force.  He traveled the world as his health allowed. 

WHO YOU REALLY ARE (BRAD R. WILCOX):  Education Week is where you attend classes from sunup to sundown and you call it fun.  We seek education at any age.  Remember who you are.  A mother and daughter kept telling each other to remember who they are.  What does that actually mean?  Our first answer is usually that we are a child of God.  But let's not stop there.  What does it mean to be a child of God.  We were not puppets made by God the way you'd make a puppet, or the way a person makes cookies.  We were begotten by God. That puts our relationship on a completely different level.  Even though other churches may use the same term, "child of God" they're using the term figuratively.  In Latter-day Saint circles, we understand that we are literally children of God.  Have you ever looked out at a starry sky away from city lights?  You can't count all the stars.  Trying to might make you feel insignificant.  But we are more important than all the stars.  They are God's handiwork.  We are his child.  This is what it means to be a child of God.  Go to the second verse of the song.  Not only are we children of God, but He has sent us here, in this time and place.  We have been foreordained to help prepare the way for the Second Coming of Christ.  We were excited to come to earth.  But God held us back, saving us for the last days.  We love the word birthright.  Look under first born in your Bible dictionary and you can read about what it means to have a birthright.  If a man has four sons and two daughters, his estate is divided into five parts.  The youngest three sons get one share each and the oldest boy gets two shares.  The firstborn gets a double portion of the father's estate.  With the extra portion comes extra responsibility.  He has to care for his mother and sisters.  He stays and cares for his father's estate.  Because we have been given much, we too must give.  A birthright is a double portion.  We have been given much--an extra portion.  If you have one change of shoes and clothing, it puts you at the top of the list compared to the people of the world.  If you look at the entire planet, you can see that you've been given an extra portion--temporally and spiritually.  With that extra portion, we must care for our brothers and sisters.  There is nothing that could be asked of us that we have not already been paid in advance and paid in full.  Israel had twelve sons.  The birthright should have gone to Reuben, his firstborn son.  But Reuben was guilty of committing adultery with his father's concubine so he lost the birthright.  It then went to the firstborn son of the second full wife, which was Joseph.  So Joseph got a double portion, and the estate went to his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh.  Joseph has two tribes, his two sons.  That's part of the birthright.  What does that have to do with you?  Whose blood flows in your veins? Most of you are children of Ephraim or Manasseh.   Ephraim and Manasseh together are gathering Israel.  Ten tribes have been scattered and they've forgotten who they are.  They are lost because they don't know who they are.  Judah was not lost.  Even if they're not religious, they know who they are. The job of missionaries is to find Israel.  Will we be ready for the influx of people accepting the gospel?  We will if we have Israel gathered and organized.  When each tribe has its own organization, we will be the backbone.  We're just getting ready for that big event.  Right now we're caring for our brothers and sisters and preparing for the Second Coming.  Because God loves all His children, He has trusted us.  Remember who you are.  You are not a passenger.  You are a member of the crew.  Crew members get a paycheck.  You have the birthright.  I am a child of God.  Saved for the latter-days.  With noble birthright given to me, that I must now repay. Lead me so that I can lead.  Help me find the way so I can help the world find the way.  Teach me all that I must be to live with Him someday.  Remember who you are.  And don't settle for the primary answers that everyone answers.  Go deeper.  Understand what it means to be children of the birthright. 

ARCHAEOLOGY AND JESUS' FINAL DAYS IN JERUSALEM:  ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE TOMB OF JESUS (MATTHEW J. GREY):  It's possible that the reason the women went back to the tomb after the Sabbath was to get the body out of the tomb of Joseph of Aramathea.  They were coming to take the body away and bury it the way it was supposed to be buried.  Different sites have been suggested for the tomb of Jesus.  Sometimes it's hard for people to discern fact from fiction. There have been TV documentaries, coming out around Easter Time, with sensational finds.  One claims to have found the tomb of Jesus.  One came out that was by a guy of Titanic fame.  They came to that conclusion by reexamining a tomb that had been excavated 20 years ago.  It contained the names of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  They thought that clustering of names must mean that this must be the Jesus family tomb.  However, none of this has any historical validity whatsoever.  Most of the archeological community takes this seriously at all.  This completely ignores all historical evidence for Jesus burial.  Jesus' family would not have had a rock cut tomb.  They were too poor.  The reality of those names is that Jesus, Joseph, and Mary were very common names and most tombs would have those names.  Another tomb is right next door.  They sent down a robotic camera which picked up a picture of a fish.  So they concluded that this was Jonah's whale and was the sign of resurrection.  However, if you turn that fish on its side, it looks like a vase.  If you really want to know about a tomb connected with Jesus, you need to consult legitimate archeologists.  More serious contenders for the tomb of Jesus include the most traditional site, the church of the holy seplucre.  This church has its roots in the fourth century.  Constantine converted to Christianity.  His mother went to the Holy Land to identify sites related to Jesus.  Helena built fourth century churches to commemorate events related to Jesus.  She asked local people where Jesus was buried.  They told her the legend of where it was. She built a church over the site.  It is now 1,600 years old.  It's been damaged and rebuilt.  If you go there today, you'll find the traditional site of Golgotha.  It's a beautiful site, but most tourists don't have a spiritual experience there.  There are icons and incense and most Western Protestants don't identify with things like that.  Excavations show that there was an ancient quarry under the church.  This really was a first century burial ground.  Don't make an emotional decision about this site based on icons and incense.  Protestants wanted to find a tomb in a garden, like they imagined it.  Such a tomb started taking shape in the 1800's.  He saw a rock formation that reminded him of a skull, so he thought that must be Golgotha.  The scriptures never said it looked like a skull, it might have been named after a skull because it was a place of execution.  Right around the corner they discovered a beautiful tomb.  So some English missionaries bought the tomb and turned it into a garden area, calling it the garden tomb.  There was a track in front of the tomb, which they said was for the rolling stone.  These are marvelous sites.  It's a great place to ponder the resurrection of Jesus.  However, when we feel the Spirit there, is the Spirit testifying of the site or testifying of the event?  As archeologists look at the tomb, they come to different conclusions about the site.  Those familiar with the facts realize that the tomb does date to the time of Christ.  Every decade has it's own style--like the styles in automobiles.  Ancient pottery and ancient tombs are the same way.  The style dates to 600 years before Jesus.  The other issue is the track.  The track is very shallow would would not match the type of rolling stone they would use.  They have excavated crusader stables. The feeding troughs are cut the same way as the garden tomb track.  So it is not a track to support a rolling stone, but rather a feeding trough.  There are stone dividers to divide the stables.  They had dividers like that in the garden tomb before they were removed.  So they were indeed feeding troughs.  There were also channels to take away animal waste.  There's a very strong case that the garden tomb is an iron age tomb that later crusaders converted to a stable to house their horses.  The site has undergone many changes in the last couple of hundred years.  Did it look like a skull 2,000 years ago?  Church leaders have had powerful experiences there and many LDS gravitate toward it.  But President Hinckley gave a testimony at the garden tomb.  He said "In this place, or somewhere nearby" the resurrection of Jesus took place.  So he admitted they didn't know where the resurrection had taken place.  But he knew the resurrection did take place.  It doesn't really matter where.  We know it was somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem. It's not important where the tomb was.  It is important that the tomb of Jesus does not hold the body of Jesus.  He is risen!  We don't know where it is, but these events did take place.   

HOW KNOWLEDGE, PATIENCE AND LEARNING COME FROM MUSIC (JAMES ONEIL MINER):  He played songs from The Sounds of Music on the piano, and had us sing along sometimes.  There are 88 keys on the piano.  Only 7 matter, the rest are octaves.  So remarkable to learn to execute the right notes at the right time.  Sometimes he misses.  Those are miner mistakes.  He played music from Mary Poppins.  When he was released from a bishopric, he was called to be a primary pianist.  A little girl asked him how he played so good.  Even little children notice these things.  He played some primary songs.  What a great joy to have your children and grandchildren walk in truth.  He's currently married to a primary teacher and he knows the patience it requires.  She asked him to come and sit between two of her boys.  The songs in the Children's Songbook plant faith in the hearts of these children.  We teach children to walk in the light.  Jesus wants them for a sunbeam.  What greater thing to hope for than our children will walk in truth. Primary songs talk about the pioneers.  He loves the songs and stories about the pioneers.  William Clayton--would you ever know how your song would lift and bless and rally so many people?  We are so grateful for that kind of music.  The pioneers didn't know the song "Climb Every Mountain" but they did it anyway.  His great grandfather crossed the plains as a 9 year old.  He had a nickname "Mormon Miner."  We're grateful for how fun music is and how it motivates.  Music helps us patiently face challenges.  Do your duty with a heart full of song.  No man transmits knowledge into experience except by doing.  No man grows in spiritual or intellectual stature except by achieving.  A generation that lives by the efforts of others grows soft.  Text the Lord daily--pray.  Isn't that a great thought?  Next to prayer itself nothing can bring us the Spirit more than good music.  It teaches us faith and hope and endurance.  We learn so effectively with it.  Seek to bring salvation to your soul.  We can learn a love for our country from patriotic songs.  He played several.  He ended by taking requests from people.