As Easter Approaches

I am still cleaning out my inbox and finding notes for blog posts that I meant to put together months and months ago. This article is about the Christmas story and how it ties in with accounts from other cultures, and how the symbolism in the Book of Mormon fits in neatly, and how the temples, ancient and modern, tie it all together. I meant to blog about it around Christmas 2008, and then I earmarked it for Easter 2009, and now I’m going to just hit publish and share it with you.

We wouldn’t have the Easter story if we did not first have the Christmas story. And the Christmas story would be nowhere near as meaningful if it did not point our minds and hearts forward to the Easter story, and to what it can mean in our individual lives.

I grew up in a not-particularly-religious home. Easter was bunnies and eggs and chocolate, and only incidentally about one of the two most important events in Earth’s history. And in our church, all the talks and all the lessons are supposed to encourage us to be mindful of the Savior and to model our lives after His. So for me, Easter Sunday is not all that different from any other Sunday: I go to church, I ponder the Resurrection and the Atonement, I worship, I give thanks, and I gather strength for the week ahead. [Our sacrament hymns (the ones we sing while the bread is being prepared) are, in their own quiet way, Easter hymns and sermons. The tablecloths remind us of Christ: His burial, and the empty tomb.]

Which is not meant to be disrespectful of Easter as it is celebrated by my friends who are truly devout, traditional Christians; those who observe Lent because they want to deepen their discipleship. Our monthly fasts, with their associated and consecrated fast offerings, serve the same purpose: to purify our hearts and minds, to both humble and strengthen us. In a way, each Fast Sunday is a small Lenten season of the heart, and whether we focus on what we are giving up, or on what the Spirit is trying to teach us, is entirely up to us.

I clicked on that link just now, to make sure it was still active, and I reread the article. It served as a spiritual palate-cleanser, much needed after the day I had at work yesterday. Today may prove to be one of the “Oh, Lord, make my words sweet and tender, for I may have to eat them tomorrow” sort of days.

Thank you, Middlest, for listening when I needed to vent a little. I am also thankful for my visiting teacher, who came last night and listened to my Readers Digest version of the earlier rant, and who has promised to pray for me today. I will need to be humble (i.e., teachable), with a side order of assertive.

Could be interesting. If you were inclined to add your prayers to those of my visiting teacher, I would not be inclined to say you nay.

To end on a positive, fiber-y note, I frogged the ruffle on the doll skirt while on the train to work yesterday morning, and I split those stitches as contemplated and split enough of the yarn to work four rounds. It was lighter, with a better drape, as I had suspected. It was also insufficiently ruffled, and I did not have the time or the patience to figure out how many extra stitches it needed to be what I had in mind, so I frogged it again, put the stitches onto my 000 needles, smoothed the yarn into a semblance of normalcy [wasn’t easy] and worked a deep ribbed hem, which is now properly bound off. I put my needles into my toolbag shortly before the train pulled into the station.

For me, knitting really was the new yoga last night.

All that remains is to weave in two ends, work the loops for the ribbon down the yoke in back, and figure out how to embellish the lower skirt front in a manner which does not compete with the ribbon accent in back.

I also need to figure out what I want to knit on the train this morning. But for now, I’m going back to bed.