When Ivar is worried that Alexandra might have to put him in an asylum because of how he worships God he says, "You believe that everyone should worship God in the way revealed to him. But that is not the way of this country. The way here is for all to do alike." He probably means in that town, but that is how our whole country is today and not necessarily just with worship. Most people believe in freedom of religion and even one of my Articles of Faith tells us that this is true, but I am afraid that some of those who belong to the same church as me take the adage, "Only true and living church" to mean, "Only church." I think that the leaders of my church are doing a good job of trying to end this mentality, but the people don't always hear what the leaders are saying.. Plus, they say they believe this, but still act like everyone has to believe in and then join our church.
The problem with believing that all people should worship how God tells them to is where to draw the line. I can accept that some are Christian and some are Jewish and some are Buddhist etc., but what about the radicals of any religion; the Muslims who blow up building and people or the Baptists who protest at a fall war hero’s funeral. I don't think that we can really think like this and still be safe. There are also those serial killers who believe that God was talking to them, telling them to kill. I am not sure how to reconcile this.
Carl Linstrum comes back and Alexandra and him are musing over the fact that they miss the way the country used to be before it became successful. He tells her that the story of their lives is being rewritten all over again. He says, "Is n't it queer: there are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." At first I didn't understand what was meant by this, but after some thought I believe that this is a lamentation over the fact that we no longer look to our elders as wisdom holders. We see them with frailty and as another burden to take care of. We do not seek advice from them. Young mothers do not ask older mothers for help with their children, they read books or watch television programs. Old mothers do not offer advice to young mothers. The same thing goes for men too, young fathers rarely talk to older men about how to handle the stress of a job, a family, church callings, etc. We can learn a lot from those who have already experienced what we are experiencing right now. I recently read that learning from the experience of other’s is difficult for people now because it is submitting to an authority and admitting that we need help.
Pride is the great sin of my generation which is what keeps us from seeking a leader and keeps leaders from trying to lead us. A perfect example happened in my life. When I had my first child I decided that I was going to nurse her. When I would try to talk to people about this the only response I got was that it was painful. This was not good news to me. It may have been true, but no one offered any advice on how to prevent the pain or even what to do about it. I knew I was ill prepared when she was born, but I tried it anyway. Well by the time I figured out on my own how to do it right I was in a lot of pain and even worse I didn't know how to cure it. Finally a woman in my ward told me what to do to heal, offered support during the healing process, and then told me how to prevent the pain the next time. I could have done a better job seeking support, but the little seeking I did yielded no fruit. I feel strongly that women have an obligation to other women to support and teach them about pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing. Historically this was wisdom passed on by family members, but we no longer have families like we used to. I believe that one of the reasons that the Lord established the Relief Society so that young sisters would have a whole group of experienced women to seek support and advice from and all of us need to take advantage of this.
"If Alexandra had much imagination she might have guessed what was going on in Marie's mind, and she would have seen long before what was going on in Emil's." She was too busy with her own issues to see those around her. In that same paragraph Cather writes that her (Alexandra‘s) personal life almost always took a back seat to her work. I do this sometimes. I find myself being too busy to see what is going on in my house and then all of a sudden I realize that my children are being naughty or bickering with each other all because I was too busy to see that they needed some attention. I try hard to not say, I'm busy, or Not right now, very often to my children, and if I catch myself saying it more than once in a day I make myself stop what I am doing and be a mother. In the April 2008 conference Elder Ballard gave a talk and he quoted Anna Quniland about her experience of missing the moments with her children. She could remember a day that her children were sitting outside on a quilt only because she had a photograph of it, but couldn't remember anything about the day and regrets it. After hearing that talk and studying it I decided that I didn't want to have regrets like that and that I would make time to be in the moment and stop rushing to get things done. I realized that I love to have done things and not actually doing them. I wanted to have memories of doing something, but not actually take the time to make the memories. I am getting better at being in the moment.
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