1. No matter what the topic is, make it about Christ. This goes for talks about “getting the most out of Stake Conference” or Mother’s Day or tithing or the hazards of body piercings. Find some way to pull that surface topic back to the root of why we gather in the first place. This is the one meeting that is supposed to be His, so let’s keep it that way.

2. Use fresh vocabulary. Folks will get more exposure to some words than any person should have to hear in a lifetime. I make a point of not using them in talks I give just as a breather, a little vacay from the common lingo. Words I am not likely to use include: strive, duty, obey, righteousness, wickedness, evil, perfect, punish, condemn, special, indeed, and even. It’s not that I don’t believe in or understand the theological import and power of the obvious ones; I just prefer more original language.

Be smart about this, though. For example, to me it was TMI to learn that one fellow in the ward accomplished his post-mission objective of marrying a “hot babe with a bombshell testimony”.

3. Use Good Sources

A: Always include scriptures. When you are familiar enough with the scriptures to use them to support your points, you earn a lot of pulpit cred. Whenever possible and appropriate I try to work in scriptures involving a woman or women. Our scriptural sisters generally don’t get a lot of air time, so I do what I can to represent.

B: Use examples from other sources to support your points, too. Sometimes unusual sources get attention where the standard oeuvre won’t. I’d like to hear a talk with the wisdom of Mick Jagger:

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need
Oh yeah, hey hey hey, oh…

4. Be personal. People are much more likely to listen if you share examples and stories from your own life, especially ones that demonstrate your own vulnerability or struggles. But please, no travelogues and no embarrassing tales at the expense of your spouse or kids (or at least get permission from them before hand.) Believe what you’re saying. Avoid pontificating. Too much religious talk on broad topics puts people to sleep.

5. Take time to prepare well. Why are we so often plagued with dull talks read by droning adults? Because the talks are often pulled together on the fly. We can talk up the benefits of not having paid clergy to kingdom come, but if you grew up on good sermons like I did as a Protestant kid, there’s a stark difference. Address the topic (with the underlying focus on Christ. See #1.)? If you work best from a written text, read it out loud beforehand. This will give you a better sense of how long it really is (shorter is generally better). You will also learn how to pace yourself so the important points don’t get lost in the shuffle. It will remind you to make eye contact, breathe, know where the tricky parts are, and to enunciate.

Okay, so maybe I packed more than 5 tips in there. What would your tips be?

by Heather

One of my favorite writers is the very irreverent David Sedaris. Because I taught English as a second language, I get a big kick out of his tales of studying French–especially the story about the difficulty Easter.  “What is an Easter?” asks a Muslim student.  As Sedaris and some of his fellow Christians attempt to explain the crucifixion, the atonement and resurrection of Jesus, they find their vocabulary sadly inadequate (and indeed absurd).   A Polish student says Easter is “a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus.”  Another chimes in, “He die one day and then go above my head to be with my father.  He nice the Jesus.” So, as Sedaris puts it, “Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, [they] did what any self-respecting group of people might do.  [They] talked about food.” 

Even as a native speaker, I can relate to the difficulties of explaining abstract religious concepts.  If I examine my own Easter vocabulary, phrases like “solid dark chocolate,” “lovely decoupage eggs,” “marshmallow Peeps”, and “funeral potatoes” are more common than  phrases like “only begotten son,” “atoned for our suffereing,” and “He is risen.”   One set denotes Easter as holiday, the other, Easter as holy day. 

My earliest memories of Easter reflect this dichotomy. 

When I was a little girl, we knew Easter was coming when my mom did two things. First, she took my sister and me to Sears to get new dresses.  It was so exciting to try on fancy pastel frocks with scratchy lace and skirts that swung out when we’d twirl. Sometimes Angela and I matched. Sometimes not. We never got hats or gloves. New dresses were sufficient–anything more was just showing off. 

The other marker of Easter was the visit to my Grandma Jessie’s grave.   I enjoyed those visits.  The grass was velvety to lie on, the air smelled of roses, and the grooved letters of my grandma’s name carved into stone were fun to trace.  I never knew Jessie. I was 2 when she passed.  Perhaps my parents used the opportunity to speak of the resurrection. I don’t remember. My mother has never been one to sermonize. Yet a connection was made for me that Easter was a time to look forward to reunions.  My mother mourned her loss each April; Jessie was born on Easter Sunday in 1903.  But I also think my mom chose early spring as the time to visit because she cherished Easter’s promise of resurrection, the holy day reminded her that she would indeed embrace her mother again. 

Something else I have observed of my mom in the spring is that her heart turns to the soil.   When I had gone through a particularly hard time a few years ago, some dear friends sent me 4 dozen mixed bulbs. Life in a box.  I don’t share my mother’s green thumb and had never planted anything before and feared nothing would grow for me.  I read and reread the instructions before tentatively planting the first bulb that fall.  I found I enjoyed planting things and imagined the beautiful flowers that would grow.  But a few days later I went outside and saw that my garden was pock marked with hole after hole where squirrels had dug up and stolen my floral treasures.  I cursed those rodents and sobbed my heart out.  It was as if the squirrels had taken my hope from me along with the daffodils and crocuses. But to my surprise, come spring, I had the loveliest flowers in my front yard.  It was a little miracle. Flowers and faith can survive decimation.  

Last spring the kids helped me bury bulbs.  One of us would scoop out dirt with a little shovel, one would plop in a bulb, one would sprinkle it with Tabasco or “spicey wicey” to keep away the critters, and one would replace and pack the dirt.  I can’t describe the joy I feel when the first little green sprouts show themselves.  And these beautiful flowers keep coming back.  Sometimes in winter, when my sweet flower beds are buried under 3 feet of packed, salty snow, I just know nothing can survive. But not too long ago, when it seemed winter would never end, I went out my front door and saw little purple crocuses poking their heads out of the ground.  It called to mind a favorite primary song that beautifully parallels gardens and the resurrection:

 On a golden springtime, underneath the ground,
A tiny seedling lay asleep until the sun shone down.
Awake, awake, O little seed!
Push upward to the light!
The day is bright. With all your might,
push upward to the light!

On a golden springtime, Jesus Christ awoke
And left the tomb where he had lain; the bands of death he broke.
Awake, awake, O sleeping world!
Look upward to the light,
For now all men may live again.
Look upward to the light!

On that first Easter Sunday, that holy day, women came to Christ’s tomb, found it empty, and were heart broken.  Our hearts too are broken by our losses, large and small,  tangible and intangible. Yet that empty space can be filled with hope. Faith can survive a dormant season.  Easter means that the tomb is empty, because He is risen. He is risen. He is risen.

Our group poetry project was followed by Lisa Van Orman Hadley’s essay about her father and Reuben sandwiches.  We watch as their relationship grows from the basics of sandwich assembly to the two creating their own Thousand Island dressing with special secret ingredients.  The piece is particularly wonderful because she was able to turn to her junior high memories of making Reuben sandwiches with her dad when years later, she realized that he was no longer the same person and no longer shared her important memories of their times together.  

Canadian and RLDS member, Susan Scott connected her story about a town’s epidemic with tainted water to the importance of water in our Arizona deserts. The piece she read was taken from a collection that took her years to write. We learned about a small town that was betrayed by the people who kept its water supply clean. When half the town became ill and seven people died, the tragedy was so immense it altered the future of the community. Focusing on the issue of trust, Susan was able to connect us, as her audience, to our own lives where losing, gaining, and keeping trust are crucial to our successfully functioning in our communities.

Danielle Dubrasky offered several expressive poetry readings.  Her poem about being a child in her home church building growing up was poignant and evocative—one could almost smell the mustiness of the basement Primary room.

Judy Curtis also did some fabulous poetry readings.  Her poem, “Dessert,” talks about the self-sacrifice and often unappreciated offerings we, as women, make for our families.  She ended with a longer poem about Aunt Sarah, a fictional polygamous wife’s life post-Manifesto.  So many of us can’t wait until she gets back to Phoenix so that we can get our own copies.  How often do we think about the lives of those women who weren’t able to stay married to their husbands after the Church stopped polygamy?

Joanna Brooks came back with a piece about a blue Econoline van, which served as a symbol of life.  The stories that she wove together kept circling back to the van, driven by older women who control the lives of girls, approaching womanhood. The themes of childbirth, wife-work, and the eternal role of women were juxtaposed with amusing and almost-unbelievable tales of rides in the blue Econoline van. Most insightful for several of us was the realization that women’s traditional roles here were not reinforced by the patriarchy, but enforced by the matriarchy. 

We were delighted with Holly Welker’s memoir, blowing many of us away with its fast pace and depth of content.  Her ability to weave the themes of diamonds, swine, and a hand print on her chest throughout a piece that seemed to be as smooth and jumbled as her life was so impressive and reminded some of us of our favorite contributors to “This American Life.”

In Joanna’s final contribution to the evening, she turned our thoughts again to the connections we feel with our grandmothers, and by extension, with all women. She read “Invocation/Benediction,” inspired by a grandmother’s patchwork quilt, with phrases evocative of feminine connection, including:
        “Where there is no pattern, God, give me courage to organize a fearsome beauty…
         “Give me an incandescent all-night garage with a quorum of thimble-thumbed
                    grandmothers sitting on borrowed folding chairs.
         “We will gather all the lost scraps and stitch them together:
         “A quilt big enough to warm all our generations.”

As Exponent women, we thoroughly enjoy and admired Joanna and Holly’s undertaking to warm all generations of all Mormon women.

If you’re lucky enough to live near Utah Valley University or University of Utah, you simply must make it a point to attend one of these last two stops on the tour.

Organizers Joanna Brooks and Holly Welker, both accomplished writers who have written beautifully, insightfully, and creatively of their experiences as Mormon women and feminists, brought the Mormon Women Writers’ Literary Tour, “Our Visions, Our Voices,” to Arizona State University on Tuesday, March 23, 2010.

I trace a lot my urges back to my Grandma. She raised my mom, and my mom raised me to not throw away useful things. Grandma lived through the depression, and she spent many years as a young single parent. In order to survive she learned how to be thrifty and frugal. She is very much of the ‘waste not want not’ school of thought. However, she has long since left her lean days behind her, and purchases new items freely. Her reluctance to part with her stuff means she has accumulated decades worth of detritus. She cannot bear to get rid of anything,* and at this point in her life it is driving her to distraction, ruining relationships, and destroying her quality of life.

She would love nothing more than to live year round with her friends in a retirement community where she already has a trailer home. She hasn’t made the move yet because she still has a house in another city. She doesn’t have the mental or emotional strength to make herself part with the stuff that she would have to get rid of in order to live in just one trailer home. So she’s living out her late 80′s divided between two cities. She can’t drive herself to and from these locations and relies heavily on friends and family to shuttle her back and forth. As her memory fails she leaves important things behind in one place or the other. However instead of blaming her memory she accuses those same friends and family members of stealing things. When the stolen items turn up ‘at the other house’ she denies making such accusations and those relationships suffer.

All of her children and grandchildren recognize the problem. We’ve helped her hold garage sales and watched her wander around the sale snatching things out of shoppers hands. We’ve all encouraged her to pick one place and stay there, and she admits that this is what she should do, but then insists that she just needs to finish sorting through things and that it’s something she has to do on her own. She doesn’t trust us to recognize what is valuable and what is not, so she refuses help. As she’s become more suspicious of her family members we’ve grown reluctant to offer her help sorting through her things. We don’t want to be accused of being thieves.

Many of us will freely admit that indulging our appetites for food, or sex, can be dangerous to both our physical and spiritual health. Looking at my Grandma I can see that sometimes our appetite for things can be just as spiritually, and ultimately physically damaging. The law of the fast, going without food and then donating the food we would have eaten (in money or in kind), can be readily applied to dealing with stuff too. “Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.”

Certainly there is value in ‘waste not, want not.’ But there is also value in ‘use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.’

*My sisters and I once found 5 or 6 shoeboxes filled with dried pens. Thousands upon thousands of useless pens.

Feeling the need for a break in the routine? It’s not too late to register for the 2010 Rocky Mountain Retreat. The retreat has been going strong for seventeen years, and this year promises another great experience.

Jana Riess, author of  Mormonism for Dummies and What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide, will speak.  Phyllis Barber will read from her new memoir. There will also be a panel discussion of Mormon women writers, get-acquainted activities, and music. The retreat is held June 4-6 this year, in a spectacular mountain setting, about 1.5 hours outside of Denver, Colorado.

Speakers, panel discussions, and presentations are an important part of the retreat. Equally important activities include spending Saturday afternoon in mountain hot springs, talking and playing games late into the night, and savoring an array of chocolate products available 24/7. It’s a chance to share with other women. Topics run the gamut from work woes and boring Relief Society lessons to great books and exciting travel options. Nothing is off-limits, including sex and politics (though  political preferences are definitely diverse). At times we find ourselves discussing topics that may not be brought up in Relief Society, but just as often swap ideas for great Young Women activities and Relief Society service projects. You can also hike, swim, ride horses, or just take a good nap.

If this sounds good, check out our website:  http://rockymountainretreat.org/.

Believing Christians often conceive of Jesus as static. Jesus was born divine in a stable in Bethlehem and remained that way for the rest of his life. While I feel that the LDS doctrine goes a bit farther than most religions, I still find myself trapped into thinking of Jesus in a very one-dimensional way. I have a hard time believing that he never “sinned,” at least, by standards of my old definition of the word. Now, I tend reflect deeper what “sin” actually means for me, free from religious input. Did Jesus never hit his siblings? Did Jesus never argue with his father? Did Jesus skip school occasionally? Did Jesus swear? Did Jesus get a crush on a girl and have thoughts about her that he might need to confess to his Bishop? Did Jesus ever feel competitive? Did Jesus ever let his ego get in the way? And if he didn’t, well, then, how can he understand me when I do all of these things? And if he did, well, can he REALLY be sinless? Was Jesus able to repent?

A static Jesus tends to serve religion because you can’t REALLY equate him with true human experience (like all the little things mentioned above). He has to be unique—the one and only Son of God—that is what makes him special, isn’t it? But, in my mind, it creates a gap that seems impossible to cross.

Think about it, “for over two thousand years millions of people have worshipped Christ with out really being transformed. With the exception of a handful of saints, Christianity has not turned believers into the ‘light of the world’ even though Jesus clearly intended the Kingdom of God to descend to earth in his lifetime. Like Buddha and every other enlightened person, Jesus wanted his followers to become enlightened too.”

Jesus was the product of transformation, and he wanted others to be transformed also. Lately, I’ve been reading books on Jesus written by non-Christians. In the most recent one, Jesus, a Story of Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra (where the quotes come from), I have thought about Jesus in a way that I never have thought about him before. What if he wasn’t really born of a virgin birth, what if his birth and life were just like mine–only he started to understand deeply his own divinity—which is JUST like mine? What if he heard prophecies of a Messiah and decided to step up and fulfill those prophecies—not because he was any different or more divine than I am, but because he was willing to act. What if his life choices and teachings were simply a reflection of the power of enlightenment, conviction of who he is, and faith in his own ability? What if everything that Jesus taught and was, I can learn and be—not in heaven, but RIGHT NOW? What if he was just a man—a man who tapped into some higher part of himself that WE ALL HAVE? Somehow, these ideas seems to spur me to action more than the idea that he was part divinity, perfect, unchanging, and always clear about who and what he was. These thoughts make me drawn to his life path as something more conceivable for me to achieve right now. What if millions of people connected to these aspects of Jesus’s path on a deeper level (instead of the concentrating on all the miracles surrounding his calling)?

“What, then, is the path that Jesus laid out? Parts of it are already familiar. Jesus told his disciples to pray. He asked them to trust God. They were to rely on faith to accomplish miracles. Their attitude toward the world was to be one of peace and love. Millions of Christians still attempt to live by these precepts, yet something crucial must be missing, because we don’t witness a large-scale transformation of human nature among Christians. Like the rest of us, they seem just as tempted to be unloving, violent, selfish, and narrow-minded, the difference being that they are tempted to use their religion to justify their behavior. (In that, they aren’t alone—every organized religion creates an ethos that covers human flaws with self-righteous rhetoric).”

There must be more to the path that Jesus outlined. There must be more to his life mission as a man on this earth. There must be a greater world transformation that can happen. There must be some part of a static Jesus that just isn’t resonating with the Christian population as it was meant to. How can we view and follow Jesus in a way that will actually bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth? What do you think it is?

Dreamcatchers

by Kelly Ann

I am a dreamer.  My mind imagines many things.  Flying.  Achieving Goals.  Sci Fi Characters.  Family Drama.  Being an animal.  Science experiments.  Time Travel.  Church-related themes.

Triggered perhaps by recently participating in the Catholic Eucharist at a family funeral, as described in my post last month,

Being asked minutes before the start of the Mass, I did not have time to think about the honor of carrying the bread and wine forward for Communion. As my brother and I walked to the front of the chapel with the bread and wine in hand, I welled with emotion to offer this sacrifice to the Priest. And yet, the irony struck me that I would never have had such an opportunity to do this in my own church.

or by reading blog entries about how a feminist feels about baby blessings, questioning authority, mormon feminist activism, and blessings administered by women, I have had several odd dreams that I still vividly recall wide awake.

The first: After tripping while passing the sacrament, I see myself passionately conducting the sacrament meeting (imagine fire and brimstone) with a mix of men and women sitting on the stand.

The second: I have a bird’s eye view of a circle of people in the chapel.  I can’t see any faces but it becomes evident they are half way through giving a blessing to a baby.  No one seems phased that the tight circle alternates men and women and that the mother and father are kneeled in the middle together jointly giving the blessing.

The third: I am called to be a special representative of the high council assigned to be a female voice in a disciplinary council for a woman that I know.  In the bird’s eye view of the sea of short male haircuts, while I appreciate the possibility of a woman’s voice in the decision, something not part of the current structure, it pains me that an even number of men and women aren’t counciling together or that better yet, there is no all women’s council for such a sensitive trial of a woman.

Apparently, my subconscious, and elements of my conscious, envisions a completely different Mormon world then the one I am re-immersing myself into.  I don’t claim that my dreams are inspired (and would rather state that they are not), but I do wonder how what the church would be like if there was more gender equality in various church affairs.

Even as a little kid, I had much tamer dreams about passing the sacrament or being a minister but knowing that those ideas were preposterous for a good Mormon and still are, I’ve always dismissed them.  As my mind has become alerted to a number of other issues, I now consciously imagine more balance and even some of the luxuries that early sisters in the church had blessing others.

My subconscious goes for the extreme but even minor changes would make me really happy.

Although the recent guest post regarding how women still participate in blessings, helped me remember some of my own experience’s that I treasure.

On my mission, as a way to find families, the mission president encouraged us to offer a “bendicion de hogar” on the house with the whole family present before we invited them to listen to the first discussion. This way the introduction to the church included everyone in a non-threatening manner. A lot of people wanted a blessing on their home even if they didn’t want to learn about the Book of Mormon. He emphasized that it was more than a prayer, that the elders should use their priesthood to pronounce the blessing. This begged the question from the sisters (a quarter of my mission) as to what they should do. He told us that as missionaries we had the power to bless the house and families just the same. And not to worry about that we couldn’t say “by the authority of the priesthood which we hold.” I am not sure how effective these “bendiciones de hogar” were in terms of finding families to teach but the sisters were blessing many in so doing. Thinking about it now, I am grateful for the experience. I felt like I could offer them something on the principle of faith that could bless their lives and give them a good impression of the church.

That is probably my most pronounced experience I have had (other than also loving the initiatory and temple as described by G).

So I just try to cling to my simple testimony, the peace I have found returning to church, and not get so fed up between the difference between my expectations and reality that I leave.

So I’ll continue to dream.

What do you dream?  Or how do you think we can achieve balance in the church now?

In the two previous installments of this music and church series, several commenters mentioned the lack of musical education among church members. This third post will consider how adding a musical curriculum could improve not only the musicality of our congregations, but also their spirituality.

Although the answers may seem fairly obvious, we must consider where our general musical knowledge is lacking (and whether that even matters), how broad should the curriculum be, and whether or not there is room in the already-busy Sunday School hour for such a course.

First, what are the significant gaps in musical knowledge that limit the effectiveness of our sacred music? The most obvious concerns for many wards is a lack of keyboard players and proficient conductors. I doubt the keyboard issue could be dealt with during Sunday School. If each ward had a small keyboard lab and a competent keyboard teacher it could work. But that is simply unrealistic to expect, even for a healthy ward. Keyboard lessons, however, could be organized by the stake, teaching two to four students at a time, with only one or two keyboard instruments in a room (say, the chapel). These lessons would have to be given during the week or on Saturdays, perhaps over the course of three or four months.

Conducting is an entirely different matter. Every member needs to know how conducting works–not necessarily to make conductors out of them, but so they can interpret what conductors tell them with their motions. These lessons can certainly be offered in any ward during the Sunday School hour. When I mention conducting, I should clarify that I do not refer to learning conducting patterns. Those are adequately explained in the back of the hymnal and anyone can at least pick up a two, three, or four pattern by reading about them there. The critical issues that need to be covered in a Sunday School music class are feeling strong beats (especially the down beat), how to keep a steady tempo, how to start the music, and how to stop it. No one ever discusses this stuff, but that’s where the conducting work really happens.

What kind of a curriculum teaches that stuff? Well, honestly it would be a curriculum that more closely resembles that of Nursery rather than Gospel Doctrine. Movement would be absolutely necessary to feel rhythm: dance, clapping, toe tapping, etc. Also, body movements would be explored to understand what each gesture communicates to the group watching them. No doubt this class would feel alien and silly to many Mormons today. That doesn’t really bother or deter me, though.

Leadership of music is another important question that needs to be visited in individual congregations. Being both a pianist (slash faking-organist) and conductor, I know very well that the real musical power in church lies with the keyboard player. They are the ones who actually establish tempo, tell people when to start and stop, and determine how much time the singing congregation gets to take a breath before starting the next verse. In this ubiquitous musical power arrangement, the conductor is actually superfluous and really should just sit down. Tomorrow, take a look around your congregation. See how many people actually look at and try to follow the conductor. You’ll be the only one not staring at your hymnal in a “If You Could Hie to Kolob”-induced stupor. (I know there is some wonderful allegory for how the greater organization of the Church works here, but I won’t even try to formulate that today.)

So this brings up  a philosophical question: Do we need a conductor in Sacrament Meeting? Can’t we just let the organist guide as along our slow slog through the sacrament hymn? I would vehemently argue that we do need a conductor (and not just because it is my profession!). Congregational singing is all about unification of many people in heart and mind. Listen in sacrament meeting, and you will find the music is rarely unified at all. Typically two hundred people are singing to themselves, the general result being a mumbly, barely-passable hymn sound. No one even tries to unify in the mood and character of the music, let alone enunciating words and singing pitches in unison. But if the congregation knew how to follow a conductor, and the conductor knew how to lead a group of amateur singers, I contend our singing could reach a much higher level of spiritual effectiveness while achieving true congregational unity.

Other musical topics that could be usefully added to a Sunday School musical course could be some basic music theory to aid member’s music reading (probably focusing mostly on rhythm and pitch-gesture direction [i.e. this part goes up, this part goes down, here it stays the same]), and basic vocal skills. Again, covering basic vocal skills would push many far out of their comfort zones. But I have no doubt that if President Monson gave a talk about the spiritual imperative behind congregational music skills, members would get over their shyness.

So are such skills truly necessary for the spirituality of our congregations? Since music is so basic to our worship traditions, I must conclude that it is. Bad singing is not going to strengthen anyone’s testimony, but unified, committed hymn singing will certainly bless the lives of all who attend our meetings.

Now it is your turn. How would the music curriculum look if you were charged with creating it? How would you fit it into the traditional Sunday School lineup? (My solution is to have a twelve lesson curriculum and assign maybe thirty members to take the class at a time. Within a year or two most active members will have been through the course and are ready to take it again. As President Hinkley wisely stated, repetition is the law of learning.)

What have I overlooked (lots, no doubt), and where might you disagree with my assertions?

There are two rules when you come to visit my home. First, take off your shoes and store them in the hall closet. If your socks are holey, there are some clean ones in the bag on the door handle. Second, sign the WE canvas before you leave.

What is the WE canvas? Hmmm. I wish I had a two word answer. But it takes a few more than that to explain this amalgamation of an old tradition with several new ideas.

Once upon a time, when my mother was the ward relief society president, she decided that she needed to become better acquainted with the families in our ward. And what better way to get acquainted than over Sunday dinner? Thus began the seemingly endless series of Sunday nights when we hosted dinner for just about every family in our ward, often including the elder or sister missionaries. What do I remember of those nights? Not much. I remember my parents chatting up our dinner guests, trying to understand where they were coming from. I remember making layered chocolate mousse in the fluted glass bowl. I remember all the dishes my sister and I washed. And I remember The Tablecloth.

The Tablecloth was not generally laid on the dining table under the dishes. Oh no. It was usually laid out on the large coffee table in the formal dining/entertaining room, along with an assortment of colored sharpie markers … we got rid of the puffy paints after a missionary with an especially strong grip inadvertently squirted some lavendar paint on the ceiling. Anyway, The Tablecloth was a family institution. All guests to our home signed it. Some just printed their name. Some signed with a flourish. Some even added pictures … a smiley face, a heart, the shape of their home state, or signed their names in foreign writing. It was quite a large tablecloth, but we managed to fill it up pretty well.

I came across The Tablecloth tucked back in an odd corner of my parents’ linen closet a while back. I think it started to decline after my mother was finally released from her calling. Or maybe it was because I moved away to college, and so bereft the family of its main dishwashing power? Anyway, it was quite nostalgic to look over this tangible record of that period of our lives.

Another inspiration for the WE canvas came from an art display at the Canvas Cafe in San Francisco. This was one of my and my sister’s favorite places up north. We could order a large cup of steaming Spanish hot chocolate. We could wander around the back corners and catch quirky works of local artists. And we could listen in to whatever live entertainment was on for the night. One time, there was a exhibit that featured two large canvases that seemed mirror opposites. One was a large white canvas with the word “love” hand printed in black. Just the word love printed over and over and over on the large canvas. The companion piece was a black canvas with the word “hate” printed in white, over and over and over. Typing it now, it seems like it must have been a pretty monotonous project. But it made a strong statement, side by side.

Fast forward a couple of years. My nephews are now racing through their preschool-age years. They love to sing. One song they love in particular goes like this. “You. You. You you you you, you you you, you. You you you …” You get the idea. The next verse goes like the first, except they sing, “Me. Me. Me me me me, me me me, me.” Not very original lyrics, but charming when sung by miniature beings who share at least some of my DNA. At the very end, they sing out the line, “We are you and me!” And I revel in how these two boys, born so close together, who are so different in their abilities and personalities, have formed such a close bond.

Fast forward to last September. Escrow finally closes, and I own a piece of real estate. Slowly I start to make the place my own. New wood floors and tile. Shelving for the kitchen and the garage. Large appliances that make me glow as I walk past. Moving old furniture in. Buying some new pieces. A piano. Putting the library in order. And … the WE canvas.

Bought the largest canvas I could hang over the fireplace. It’s really massive. 48″ x 72″. Thank heavens the art store delivers. I measure and tape out the dimensions. And I start to write, with my black sharpie marker. YOU – YOU – YOU – YOU – YOU.

About halfway across, I switch to ME – ME- ME – ME.

The next line switches back to YOU. But the division between YOU and ME shifts back and forth, much as I imagine the tension does in any relationship.

About a third of the way down, I start writing YOU & ME. Which later morphs into YOU & ME ARE WE.

I keep on writing. Needing tape to keep my writing level. And as the central WE becomes more and more visible, I start getting bored with writing the same five words. It’s a very large canvas.

Soon, I decide that I can no longer take those five words any longer. I start to write names. My grandparents. My aunts and uncles. My parents, siblings, in-laws and nephews. There’s still a lot of canvas left. So I start adding good friends. Elementary school. Girl scouts. Junior high school. High school. Friends from my travels. Friends from college. Friends from the numerous wards I’ve been in. Boys I dated. Friends from work. Important role models. Teachers. Important experiences. Friends from dancing. Song titles. Soon, the canvas seems to represent my whole life … so many of the things that have helped to form my character and inform my mind and soul. I never thought that it would be such a fulfilling experience to write things down in such a manner.

And so it is that I ask everyone who comes to my home to sign the WE canvas. To leave a small reminder of the times we shared together. Every time I pass it, a smile comes to my face, as I recall good memories. Singing Christmas carols together as we drank wasail. Having 30+ people over for curry dinner. Book group dinner to discuss a favorite work. Meeting together at the start of a long road trip. Just hanging out.

Life is good.

Here, grab a marker. And sign.

What about you? Do you or your family have hospitality traditions? Is there a creative space in your home where you (or your spouse or your children) can let loose?