holy moly

Talk on the Holy Ghost - Maddie’s Baptism - 6/29/14

I decided to write this talk as a letter to you. I've found freedom in these words when I think of expressing them within the stewardship I share with your dad in our family. I feel so lucky to be a mom, and even more grateful to be your mom. Me and you are different in many ways but sometimes you’ll do something or say something and it is like watching myself. We think about the world and process things in a similar way. One of the most important things to process in this life is our relationship with divinity. This is something I reflect on often, the spiritual nature of life, of our interactions in this life with divinity. This will also be described throughout your life as feeling the Holy Ghost or feeling the Spirit. Maddie, you are good-natured, you like to do good. But a lot of times our choices in life and how we think and act aren’t between choosing good and bad. What we talk about as the Holy Ghost is that connection to the Divine that helps you work through truth. Helps you work through what is good and bad, right and wrong and what we do about all the really important stuff in between.  

When I wrote this letter to you I had woken up in the middle of the night. That's often the time I find myself feeling the spirit and reflecting on the Holy Ghost. When the world is quiet and I have time to listen. I describe this to you partially because I find it somewhat humorous that I tend to take myself so seriously and sometimes wax poetic in these hours as 4:30am turns to 5:30am and the earliest of birds are starting to chirp and the light out the window slowly, then suddenly changes. I'm usually lying in my bed or have found a safe, quiet corner of the house. I've come to recognize this as my time to feel the spirit and receive revelation and as you get older and hopefully return to this letter I pray you'll have found your own time and place for reflection.

As I wrote this you had come into my bed and snuggled next to me and I watched your closed eyes flicker as you dreamed. I guess moments like these are a nice trade off to the times when your bony knees are in my back or you steal the covers. But in these moments I can see even in your flicker-eyed sleep you are processing the world and making sense of things. 

Thinking about the world, and taking interactions with others very seriously is a trait you and I share. I see it in the way you interact with others and I see it in the questions you ask, sometimes incessantly. 

Asking incessant questions is something that will bring you joy and pain over the years. 

This week where you are making commitments through baptism to join this church is the same week that another person in our church, someone I call a friend, has been excommunicated. A barrier has been put between her and the commitments she made during baptism and beyond. And the dichotomy of her out and you in fills me with equal measures of pain and excitement. 

I feel pain for her, she is someone that like you and like me, asks questions. And sometimes those questions may for you like they have for me, leave you feeling unsure of your place in the gospel as you navigate your spirituality. I have sometimes felt tension when the messy places of culture, policy and doctrine don’t align with my own head and heart.  These feeling are important and are not felt in isolation of the whole. In the end, I usually find myself feeling hope and excitement because through these experiences we grow and change. It can be within the our religious experience that we feel empowered. 

Through this pain, hope, and excitement I have felt and you may feel at times in your life, when you are sensitive to a power beyond your own that is when you will begin to feel and know divinity. To know your Heavenly Father and Mother. As you learn to be sensitive to the spirit you will begin to find your voice. And when that happens you will find strength in your voice. A new type of strength. You will find a power in words and in using your voice. But you will also find that greater power comes not from your choice of words but from those moments in between when you choose to listen. 

And as you develop this gift of words and voice you will find your own strength. And then you will learn how to use that strength and power. You will learn that your power comes not from being strong but in choosing to be kind. In difficult moments you will find how to understand those you interact with and you will know that you can choose to be kind. 

I cannot lay my hands on your head today but I share with your father today in giving you the gift of the Holy Ghost and in doing that giving you the gift of understanding your voice and the power that comes from listening. The gift of understanding your strength and the choice to be kind. 

And every week you'll have the opportunity to come together with others that each have their own gifts that they are also trying to navigate and their own voices they are trying to find. And we'll all come together to take the sacrament as we reflect on these gifts and reflect on where we went wrong, and where we can choose to make changes in our lives with the help of something beyond us. With the help of each other, the help of our Heavenly Father and Mother, the help of this gift you are given today of the Holy Ghost. 

I share these things in the name of Jesus Christ, one we call our brother, who is a great example to us of strength and kindness, amen.