Maintaining hope and motivation in dark times

Hey, the fascists are running again. 

They never really stop.

I had sort of forgotten that new school board elections were coming up, then vaguely wondered if every district has a fascist slate again.

Why yes! And apparently now they are trying to take over water boards too. I need to look into soil boards.

In 2021 I did several posts on the elections, though they were primarily on the main blog. I contacted people I knew directly (it was pointless, but I still did it). Two things made a difference.

First of all, I was seeing references everywhere. There was surprisingly little news, but I would see posts from other people, and then talk to them. I ended up finding a wealth of material on the situation.

Also -- and it is hard to picture it now -- I wasn't so tired.

So now I feel this need to dig deep, but there are only two weeks left. Last time I started hearing things in February.

One thing on our side is that at least for Beaverton and Hillsboro, there are fewer seats open this time. That means fewer candidates to look into, and less ability for them to take a majority. They can cause a lot of disruption anyway. One of the Hillsboro candidates won last time, so the risk is greater, but I will be grateful for small favors.

Speaking of that candidate who won in Hillsboro... the two districts I follow did okay, but a lot of other districts didn't. Most notably the fascists took Newberg, which has had some notable racist incidents happening at school since then.

It's easy to forget that it happened. Life is busy, and there were so many districts with the same issue. I can barely keep up with two, and even in those two, people get used to it. Oh, of course there are some crazies... 

Except they aren't crazy, and what they do has a real impact.

Like I said, I am tired, and I don't have a big influence so it is questionable how much good anything I do has anyway.

Frankly, there is a lot scripturally that indicates that the bad guys are going to keep winning until Christ's return. The timing is unclear, and there may be some periods where things seem to get better, but they will keep trying to take over the government, disenfranchising people who won't support them, and shooting people.

And yet, I have to keep going. Any breaks my efforts give to someone else are worth it. Plus, it keeps me from joining the bad guys, which is surprisingly easy.

There may be times when I can say that I will go to bed early this time or ease off somewhat; after all, my influence is limited. However, I believe that I matter and that other people matter and that nature matters, and that my caring about everything matters. 

Also, combined efforts make more difference. I say my contacting people didn't make a difference, but one person who was sure I was exaggerating started to wonder after another mutual acquaintance backed me up. I don't know that either of us alone would have been enough.

If only we'd had a third.

Therefore I have started checking, and Tuesday on the main blog (sporkful.blogspot.com) I will at least point out the fascist candidates in Beaverton and Hillsboro.

I may find other things to do, and then do them.

Finally, I know that they don't call themselves fascist. There are striking similarities. 

As much as they aren't ashamed of now, it's probably only a matter of time until they start embracing the term. They have already vilified "antifa".

Not so different

I have kind of hinted at this before, so I don't want to belabor the point. Also, I think it should be fairly obvious.

I think one of our (maybe our church specifically but probably pretty common to other churches) flaws is that we tend to view different kinds of sins as inherently different from each other.

Maybe it's because they come up in temple recommend interview questions.

Meaning that we may think that a person who uses alcohol or smokes or has sex as uniquely sinful, compared to people who lose their temper and judge other people.

I know there is a grand tradition of this, because the Pharisees considered themselves better than other people based on some of the things that they did. For us that would probably equate to church attendance and not sleeping around. However, we know that they did not have charity, that they were not particularly generous, and while they might not have considered themselves dishonest there was a lack of integrity.

And the Savior said the harlots and publicans would get into Heaven before them.

I think that's worth reflecting on.

Maybe one reason we consider some sins different is that they are easy to monitor, though that falls apart upon closer examination.

I know right away if I am having sex with other people or drinking alcohol. I might have a harder time determining if I am really being kind or humble.

That sounds like it makes sense, but people are great at justifying different things, where they might be able to maintain a surprising amount of denial about fairly obvious things.

And, if you are not being kind enough, I suspect if you listen, you will find that you know.

That being said, some of those more obvious things might be repented of more clearly. That does not take into account issues of addiction, but that leads to a completely different issue.

It is worth thinking about how often addiction seems to correlate with difficult life circumstances, and unhealed trauma.

It also bears some thinking easy it is for various types of sins to fall along different financial sectors. To be a prominent Pharisee, you probably needed to be doing all right financially.  

I have appreciated at times going through those temple recommend questions, and the reminders that yes, I do believe in this, and I am living according to my beliefs.

There may also be a level on which those questions are too easy or seem too easy.

We may need to ask ourselves harder questions.

Becoming "mighty in prayer": Update

Now that we have completed the first quarter of the year, it seemed reasonable to track progress; that's something people do for resolutions, right?

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/01/mighty-in-prayer.html

I am not being that scientific about my goal. I have no specific benchmarks and tracking set up. Frankly, I think it could be hard to quantify. There has still been progress.

For the issue of being less tired and more organized... I am still working on that. It is a hard area for me, which made it both more likely as an immediate awareness and harder to overcome.

However, as I have been working on it, there were two other things that came to mind, and there has been more progress there.

One was that I need to bring my sisters along more. This is not exclusive to prayer, but when I am making plans and trying to improve things sometimes I keep those to myself. If it is something that would be good for them too, and something where working together makes it easier for me, then we should work together.

Having started in that direction made the second part easier.

Many years ago we started praying together for various people. 

It started with the hopes that various members of the singles ward would get married. I had the idea that maybe if we cleared out some other people we would have our own chance. 

It did not hurt to revisit that now, when it seems so naive. Granted, we did pray for people who did get married and are still married, but we have also seen a lot of bad marriages, even with meeting in church and being married in the temple. (Again, not any of the people we prayed for, but we know them.)

I am just saying that we have seen a lot and understand a lot more fifteen years later. We were still praying for various people for many issues not related to marriage, and it was starting to feel like too many people, and not well-thought out enough.

For example, there was one person that we had been praying for when he was job-hunting. We did submit him for different jobs, but there hasn't been anything for quite a while now. He is still in his old job. That is probably okay, and probably not something we can affect.

Other people may still always need blessings -- that's just life -- but the issues that first got them added in have subsided.

Clearly the issue was that things had gotten too habitual. That was hard to change; stopping praying for someone feels kind of mean. Plus, so many times we would just be in the prayer without talking about it that much, and then there is this long list that feels rote, even if the caring is sincere.

So we talked about it.

Some people are still in there. One remained for a long time while we were hearing nothing from her, but it felt important. When communication was re-established it was confirmed that friendship and sense of being cared for mattered. 

There are some we know we shouldn't let go, and we won't. 

Otherwise, now it feels lighter, and like there is more room for other people to come in. The amount of people we are praying for doesn't overwhelm the things that we are thankful for. 

I believe that will make it easier to feel influences.

That will be part of these prayers being more powerful because of what we "hear" and act on.

It will take work, but I expect that to continue to improve.

Happy Easter

Yesterday I was in the temple, and I kept thinking about my mother. That was something we used to do together, and can't do together now.

Referencing the travel blog, I also had a lot of thoughts of her in Disneyland. We only went there together twice in adulthood, but they were significant trips and not something we will do again in this life.

I suppose the next time I will have those thoughts will be the next time I go to Italy and see my cousins,

Grief is real, and it can come with any losses. I will spend some time with my mother. She will probably be cheerful and friendly, and she will quite likely talk about her young children. She may say she is waiting for her father. 

That won't devastate me, but there are times when I feel how much I miss her and the relationship we had when she knew me. It's not really that her personality has changed -- she is very much still her -- but she has lost her connections to those who are still here.

I am very grateful for my faith in the eternal nature of our lives, and resurrection and restoration. 

It does not remove the pangs that strike me now.

There is a dual nature to our lives here. There are things before that we don't remember, and faith in things to come, but there is also in very bold letters "NOW", with all of its accompanying pains and pleasures.

It can work this way.

Somehow, we need to feel the pain and the fear and doubts, and still remember the faith and the trust, and not let it lessen our love.

 

The versatility of soup

This comes from a recent cooking experience, but it probably hit me more because of a thread I'd read about some people finding eating stew in fantasy novels unrealistic, because it is so labor-intensive.

(It may have come from something that was written humorously being taken literally by people who don't cook.)

There are certainly circumstances where stew would not be practical, but once ingredients are assembled -- which can be very quick -- soups and stews don't require a lot of effort and do give you a lot of versatility.

(This versatility is also true of casseroles, but there are more things that can go wrong.)

The recent cooking experience reminded me of that, and if I'd thought of it sooner, I could have taken photos.

We are starting to have turkey less often, and there are fewer fans of the turkey soup, but when we do have it I can't bear to waste the bones, because I know they make such a good broth base.

After Thanksgiving I had put the bones and some skin in a freezer bag and put them in the freezer. They had stayed there until recently. Any separate leftover meat had been used up already, but there was still meat on the bones for the neck and wings.

I pulled out that bag on a Friday, put some salt and water over it, and set it on low heat.

I understand that it is common to also add some vinegar to help with the breaking down. I have only ever worked with poultry for that. If I were starting with thicker bones, I might add an acid.

I let that simmer all day. When I got off work, I strained the broth into another pot. With the bones in the strainer, I pulled off that meat and added it back to the broth, along with some carrots. Then I whipped up my home made noodles (one egg, a half egg shell's worth of milk, some salt, and then flour to make a dough).

That, and then stirring as I brought everything to a boil, was the most labor-intensive part of the experience, and it was not that bad.

It was a good soup, but there was a lot more broth than items in the broth. Ladling that into a bowl made those bowls fine, but then there was still all of this good broth that I still couldn't bear to waste.

I had recently made mushroom tetrazzini. Because we had been at Costco instead of Fred Meyer, I had quite a few leftover mushrooms. I sliced these up and added them as a noodle substitute. Mushrooms are low-carb, but texture-wise they fill a similar role. I also sliced up a couple of chicken tenders to fill out the meat. I heated up this new mix, which still had carrots, and stray bits of turkey and noodle. It was once again a good soup.

I still had a lot of leftover broth.

It occurred to me that when I was putting in my homemade noodles, that the texture was kind of similar to the dough for crescent rolls. We had a pack (because I had needed one for another recipe, and I bought multiple to take advantage of a sale). I pulled those out, sliced them up, and threw them in.

That was a failure; the dough disintegrated in the broth. All this did was make the broth thicker. Oddly, back when I was using some of that original turkey meat to make turkey and dumplings, I had put in too much dough, resulting in an unfortunate thickness that I had to try baking and frying. Edible, but not ideal.

It was still an okay soup, and there was still some broth left.

The final version had the rest of the mushrooms, some carrots from something else, and some ramen noodles.

There are a few points in here, but the reason I address it at all is that being able to prepare your own food has value. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but being able to put something together that will nourish and satisfy has a great value.

When you can combine that with getting more out of what you do buy, and taking advantage of sales and discounts, it all works together to help.

There are recipes, but there is also an experience that builds up, where you can imagine different combinations that will work together, including odds and ends and leftovers. Soups and stews can be very forgiving, even when you make mistakes.

And mistakes are part of the process. Don't get discouraged when things don't come out as you hoped. 

You learn from that too.