[New] Mooning about...

An alternate voice. I liked New Moon somewhat better than Twilight. I like Jacob and Alice better than most of the other characters, because even though he is a werewolf and she is a vampire, both seem to have a solid grasp on reality.

I have been that wimpy, obsessed woman, yearning and mooning over the man who was just out of my reach, which is maybe why I feel so impatient with Bella. Ack, honey, just get through calculus, figure out what you want to study in college, other than how to become undead as painlessly as possible, bring something to your marriage besides nubility and wistfulness.

As my mother once explained to me, marital intimacy is for grownups. [I could have used a little more exposition on why that is; I tried to give more context to my girls than I had received. And may I hasten to add: being physically intimate does not, per se, confer adulthood. In case any of you are laboring under that misapprehension.]

A good marriage has a healthy amount of physical intimacy: hugs, kisses, backrubs, and the mommy-and-daddy stuff. But first and foremost there should be spiritual intimacy, and emotional intimacy, and a meeting of the minds. And all this needs to be kept in balance. Passion alone does not a good marriage make, even when the passion is mutual and endures over time. Spiritual connection exalts the physical relationship and sanctifies discourse, but a marriage without appropriate physical contact may be insufficient inoculation against temptation.

And I think this is one reason why online relationships can go so badly, so quickly, even when it is not adulterous for the parties to be in communication. It is all too easy for the emotional and the intellectual aspects to override the spiritual, and with no physical presence [body language is such an effective reality check] to ground the relationship, people fall in love with a fantasy compounded of words and emoticons and are disappointed when they attempt to impose their fantasy what-if on the corporeal what-is.

Which of course assumes that both parties are behaving with perfect integrity. If one or both are predatory, all bets are off.

I puttered a lot on Saturday. I think about stuff when my hands are busy.

I have been absolutely stunned by music this weekend. Coming home from the yarn shop on Friday night, I heard somebody [Josh Groban?] singing “O Holy Night”, and it was a good thing I was only a couple of blocks from home, because it completely undid me. I was signing bits and pieces of it while driving one-handed, and the Spirit overcame me during the second verse: tears, sobs, and a sudden inability to sing along. Happened again tonight during the First Presidency’s Christmas broadcast. The Tabernacle Choir sang “For Unto Us a Child is Born”, and I lost it. And the closing hymn was “Silent Night”; when we joined the Choir for the third verse, I had to sign because I was weeping.

I would blame this on hormones, but we are officially done with that, remember? I think this is directly connected to my attempts to obey the prompting to “open your heart” which I received [repeatedly] at stake conference two weeks ago.

It’s been a long day, and I’m going to bed now. Night, y’all.