Family-ing

I picked up a book this morning at a friend's house and started skimming through it.  I found some interesting ideas, so I started writing them down, then thought about posting them, thus here I am.  :)
The book is all about being a functional family and "homemade recipes" to becoming a happy family.  We come from all different walks of life and whether we are single, divorced, going to school, raising children, we can apply these ideas:

"A family that prays together, plays together, spends time together, works together, and laughs together" is one that will stay together.  I love this idea - I love thinking about a mom, dad, and the children working together to have a fun time.  Families can have fun together!

On dreaming:
"If you can describe your family dream and if you want it to come true more than you have ever wanted anything before, or ever wanted anything now, or ever wanted anything in the future, it will come true."  I used to think that wishful thinking was for little girls, like myself once upon a time and still now and then, who like to go to Disneyland and wear their princess costumes.  Not true!  (especially after reading this quote)  If this is your dream, and you want it so very badly, it will happen.

We need to look into the future and see the good that is waiting there.  We need to create a family climate that will allow good desires to come true.  When we choose the right, families can be together forever.

"The thing to go after, with your whole soul, is not your career or your hobby or anything other than your family."  I like this idea of "going after" a family.  There are always things in life to "go after," but not like family.

To have a functional family: live in accord with spiritually founded values.  We will always be spiritually safe if we put our trust in the Lord.

(If you are wondering what the term "family-ing" means, it is the verb of "family."  This term reminds me that a family should be "doing.")

Never ceases to amaze

You might ask yourself who I am speaking of in the title of my posting:  Yes, there is only one Kobe Bryant.  Before you move away from my blog (again - I know, the last time you saw his name, you immediately headed for another website), try to be patient with me and read the article below.  Yes, the author admits Kobe's past selfishness, but is optimistic and spotlights his athleticism:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-heisler-lakers-20100429,0,5310675.column

The series is currently 3-2, Lakers lead.
Game 6, at Oklahoma City, Friday, 6:30, Channel 9 (for those of you who live in southern California)

Spiritual muscles

I apologize for not having written a substantial posting for a few weeks.  I heard a talk on Sunday at church that I keep thinking about and I wanted to share it.  I feel like it was directed at me and I'm grateful for that.  The topic was about the Spirit.  I feel like I have been in a spiritual slump lately and I am trying to resolve it.  I have decided that when we think we are doing really well in our lives and doing everything that we should, we cannot stop trying.  We always have to put in more and more effort to stay spiritually strong.  I need to continue to endure, but since life can be so fun (or we can make it that way), it does not always have to feel as if I am just enduring to the end.  I also have to realize that we are continuously being refined.  When we feel a sharp decline in our spirituality, let us double our efforts - keep moving and trying.  One resolution to picking ourselves out of a spiritual slump is to focus on the needs of others - focus on what we can do for others and put them first.  I truly believe that our frustration will diminish if we are seeking ways to involve and assist others in their lives. 

I liked the analogy that I heard about a runner - a runner who endures until the end.  A runner needs to endure to the finish line and the only way to do this is to condition and practice each day before the marathon.  A runner is conditioned to maintain his pace and endure to the end.  So should our spirituality be: we need to condition our spiritual muscles to endure to the end and perform well. 

Understanding this eternal principle of work allows us to become more like our Savior.  Constantly working to maintain our spirituality keeps us in tune with what the Savior and Heavenly Father would have us do.  For those unexpected moments when we are asked to perform a task to the best of our ability, the only way to successfully accomplish the task is to have been daily conditioned by the Spirit to silently and meekly listen to that still, small voice.  I find it interesting that the Spirit will never yell or nag at us - it will simply withdraw.  We radiate what we are.  I do not like being in a spiritual stagnation - it coarsens the soul and creates a hole for temptation to crawl through.  When I remember my relationship with my Heavenly Father, I remember to never lose confidence and continually trust in Him.

2-2

So the series is tied 2-2.  (Lakers vs. Thunder)  What an embarrassing game on Saturday night for the Lakers!  I really don't want to talk about it - all I want to say is that it happens and we all have our off nights.  But being that off was just plain embarrassing.  Kobe does need to step it up if the Lakers want to go to the Western championships.  Even though he did have a 39 points game in game 2, he needs to have one of those games during each of the playoff games.  The Lakers need to win game 5 (tonight, currently 48-30, Lakers, 2:43 in the 2nd) if they are to win the series.  If they lose game 5 in Los Angeles, they will probably not win game 6 in New Orleans (based upon the last 2 games played there in the past week) and the Thunder will win the series.  That just sounds wrong to say that.  

2 years old!

Emma is 2 years old now - actually she turned 2 three months ago today.  haha.  So I'm a little bit late on this posting.  I had wanted to get her 2 year old photos taken, but had not done it until now.  (I must admit that there were a few reasons that I was waiting, one being that I wanted her to cooperate at the studio and I knew that even though she may be a few months older, that would make a big difference).  The last time we took her and Grant (see adwhanderson.blogspot.com) at Halloween, Emma would not cooperate and wanted to run over to me and have her hold her.  She still wants me to hold her constantly (which is pretty much what I do a lot of the time), but she is using more words and phrases, so she and I can communicate better.  I'm glad that I waited a few months to get her 2 year old photos taken because it was so fun and she had so much fun!  She loved climbing in and out of the box.  Although, she would not lay on her tummy for one, so I got down on mine, hoping that she would get on hers too, but instead she proceeded to sit on me, hence the photo below of her on me.  :)

Update

I really need to think about updating my blog soon...  :)

Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 11, 2010

By the title of this posting, which will be lengthy, I am going to try to summarize why I have such a passion for learning about the Holocaust and I will use graphic stories to illustrate the gravity of this gross period of history.  WARNING:  DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO READ ABOUT GENOCIDE AND THE MANNER IN WHICH IT WAS PERFORMED.


THE NAZI YEARS
Many of you know the basics about the Holocaust, ie the fact the six million Jews were killed in concentration camps around Germany and Eastern Europe, but there is so much more to understanding the mindset behind these atrocious brutalities performed during the reign of the Third Reich.  I will attempt to illustrate scenes in which the Nazis used and abused their power to rid their race of all that was "sub-human."  In Hitler's publication of Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1925), he asserts his political ideology to that of committed anti-Semitism and blames Germany's struggles upon the swift punishment incurred by other countries after WWI.  To understand the crimes committed against humanity during the Holocaust, one must understand the mindset behind the leaders of the German regime.  For centuries, Jews have been persecuted and murdered for numerous reasons.  So why now?  Why the need for the Holocaust (in the German mind) now?  The Jew was not considered part of the super-human race which Hitler attempted to create.  The Jew did not fit the blonde-hair, blue-eyed stereotype.  The Germans believed it their destiny to further the Aryan race, which would include the concept of eugenics (detailed below) and purifying the blood, leaving no traces of any person considered to be "sub-man."  Almost a Christian ideal, the Germans viewed this idea of ridding their race of any unclean thing a commandment:  "As for any other nation, too, the eternal God created for our nation a law that is peculiar to its own kind.  It took shape in the Leader Adolf Hitler, and in the National Socialist stated created by him.  This law speaks to us from the history of our people, a history grown of blood and soil.  It is loyalty to this law which demands of us the battle for honor and freedom."  (The Nazi Years)  Out of this ideology grew a contempt and disgust for the European Jew.  One is probably familiar with the terms "Kristallnacht," "The Final Solution," and the "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising," so I have written some of the lesser known Nazi crimes out in detail (which is just as horrific as the major events of which one is aware) so that one may understand the severity of the years between 1939-1945 and why we have a holiday called "Holocaust Remembrance Day."

Told from the perspective of a German woman:

"I saw another woman with a crying baby in her

arms.  One of the Gestapo was yelling at the 

baby, 'Shut up!  Quiet!  Stop yelling!'  The mother

tried to quiet the baby.  She opened her blouse and 

tried to breast-feed, but her baby was scared, or

cold, or in pain, because it was just crying.  Then with

one movement of his arm, the Gestapo officer

pulled the baby from its mother's arms, took it by

the feet, and threw it with the head to the ground.

The baby was instantly quiet.  I will never forget

the inhuman, shrill scream that the mother let

out as she jumped to reach her child."  (Conscience & Courage)

"In Amsterdam they rounded up Jews, opened the

bridges and drove them into the channels to drown.

I saw with my own eyes one hundred and twenty

Jews killed...I was with my sister on an open field.

We saw the Jews forced to kneel and put their hands

up.  As one by one they lost their balance - ping -

they were shot.  One gone, two gone, three one,

one hundred and twenty gone.  And they left them

there...And mothers cried for their babies..."

(Conscience & Courage)

EUGENICS

Eugenics is (formerly) known as the ethnic cleansing of a race, which was prevalent during the Holocaust.  "All the instincts of human decency which distinguished men from beasts were forgotten, and the law of the jungle took command.  If there is such a thing as a crime against humanity, here we have it repeated a million times over."  (The War Against the Weak)  (I must mention that the idea of eugenics originated in the United States in the late 1800s, including the Virginia states and Utah as well. The concept of Social Darwinism was taken to an extreme and only the "survival of the fittest" would remain to produce the next generations.  Those who were handicapped, mentally disabled, or socially dysfunctional were eliminated to preserve the "racial hygiene."  Several institutions in the United States fully supported and funded the eugenics campaign.  Hitler adopted these concepts and put them to use in the concentration camps, especially at Dauchau and Auschwitz.  Yes, millions were gassed in the chambers, but one also need to understand the other crimes committed against the Jews and the camp doctor, Josef Mengele, known as the "doctrinaire Nazi eugenicist", abused his genetic engineering background and inflicted pain to the Jews beyond what any of us can imagine.  Mengele used twins for his experimentation.  He seemed to have the perfect control group for planning a super human race.    (warning: VERY GRAPHIC)

"The Reichenberg boys, mistakenly thought to be twins

because they so closely resembled each other, piqued

Mengele's interest because one possessed a singer's voice

while the other couldn't carry a tune.  After crude

surgery on both boys' vocal chords, one brother lost

his speech altogether.  Twin girls were forced to have

sex with twin boys to see if twin children would result.

Efforts were made to surgically change the gender of

the other twins.

One day, Mengele brought chocolates and extra clothing

for twin brothers, Guido and Nino, both popular with

the medical personnel.  A few days later the twins were

brought back, their wrists and backs sewn together in a 

crude parody of Siamese twins, their veins interconnected 

and their surgical wounds clearly festering.  The boys

screamed all night until their mother managed to end

their agony with a fatal injection of morphine.

Mengele suspected that two Gypsy boys, about seven 

years of age and well-liked in the lab, carried latent

tuberculosis.  When prisoner doctors offered a different

opinion, Mengele became agitated.  He told the assembly

staff to wait a while.  An hour later he returned and

sedately declared, 'You are right.  There was nothing.'

After a brief silence, Mengele acknowledged, 'Yes,

I dissected them.'  He had shot both in the neck and

autopsied them, 'while they were still warm.'"

Today eugenics is known as genetics.  However, there is still some debate as to where to draw the moral and ethical boundary.  To what extent and when does this practice become immoral?  We do have scientists around the world dedicated to fighting disease and finding cures - just how they conduct their experiments can become a moral dilemma if not taken with caution.  

THE RESCUERS

"The hand of compassion was faster than the calculus of reason" was penned by one rescuer (of Jews).  I often ask myself these questions:  Would I lay down my life for the life of another?  Would I allow a Jew to step across my doorstep into my home, knowing that if I got caught, we would both be shot?  Would I have enough compassion to allow the endlessly sought-after Jew into my home, knowing the consequences?  Would I have enough courage?  Would my conscience allow compassion to take over?  These rescuers did:

"Six-year-old Annie P.'s stepfather told her to let

certain strangers into her Bussum, Holland,

house after curfew.  Her stepfather, noted in this

suburb of Amsterdam for his black roses, was a 

horticulturist who was hiding twenty-five Jews on

various parts of his nursery property.  Annie was

never directly told that her family was sheltering 

Jews, but she figured it out.  So did her step-

father's pro-Nazi neighbors.  They noticed that

the huge amount of garbage Annie's family

threw out was too much, even for a family with

twelve children.  The neighbors reported their 

suspicions to the Germans, who raided Annie's

house regularly.  One one of these occasions, the

officer in charge was particularly frustrated by

still another fruitless foray by his troops.  He questioned

Annie:  Did she know where the Jews were hiding?

Annie said nothing.  The German threw her down and

kicked her again and again.  Still Annie said nothing.

She kept the secret.  The Jews survived the war, but

the vicious kicking Annie received damaged her

spine.  Years and a number of unsuccessful 

operations later, she lost the use of her left leg and 

required a brace." (Conscience & Courage)

Would you have been able to keep quiet like Annie did?

"In the case of Romaulda Ciesielska, she found Nazis

rounding up Jews in the square, providing them with

spades to dig their own graves in the forest.  Ciesielska

first walked away casually, then ran straight to the Jews

in hiding [at her home] to warn them.  There was no

time to flee, and the Jewish woman looked too Semitic

to slip past.  Ciesielska ordered the Jewish woman into

bed and told her to pretend she was dying.  She placed

a towel over the woman's head, a cross in her hands,

and candles at her sides.  Ciesielska grabbed the

peasant's apron and tied it on the daughter, who was

commanded to kneel at the bed and start weeping.

She ordered the peasant woman outside to feed the chickens.

When the Gestapo arrived Ciesielska told them in

German, 'Please be quiet, there is a dying woman

here.'  The Germans took one look and left."

(Conscience & Courage) 

Would you have had the creative mind to do what Ciesielska did?

Helmuth Hubener, LDS boy, aged 17 and youngest opponent of the Hitler regime, was executed (at the guillotine) for treason on October 27, 1942. His crime: speaking the truth.  Three years earlier, he had started listening to the BBC Broadcast (illegally) and writing anti-Nazi pamphlets, which were eventually distributed to not only the surrounding towns of his hometown of Hamburg, but surrounding countries as well.  His pamphlets were intended to prove how distorted the Nazi propaganda and other indoctrination proved to be.  By the time he was arrested and executed, Helmuth had influenced hundreds, if not thousands of people, to disbelieve and separate themselves from Hitler's loyalty (all done in secret, of course).  He lost all civil rights in prison, ie no bedding and minimal food.  

Would you have had the courage to do what Helmuth did?

LEARNING FROM THE HOLOCAUST THROUGH THE LENS OF THE GOSPEL:

You are probably wondering how I can connect the Holocaust to the gospel.  We can use the gospel in this context to learn how to treat people and not repeat our own or history's mistakes.  If we act in the place of the Savior on behalf of our brothers and sisters, I highly doubt that we will be tempted to do what those did during this dark time period of history.  I will always try to remember who I owe and act in accordance to that.  I like the phrase, "Remember that the worth of souls is great in the sight of God."  Let's never suppress a generous impulse - or a righteous impulse.  No matter how little or big our crimes are, we are all in need of mercy.  Jesus atoned for all of our sins and I'm sure that He wept uncontrollably for those who committed these disgusting crimes.  (I almost wept uncontrollably just writing out these graphic stories, especially the ones with the mothers....)  We all have trials, some much more difficult than others.  As we willingly submit our burdens to the Lord and place all that we have upon His altar, we will be blessed and have more faith to emulate His ways.  

OTHER RESOURCES:

SHOAH Foundation (http://college.usc.edu/vhi/?gclid=CIqsipexgKECFRP_iAodXwQLzw)

Maus Comic Books (by Art Spiegelman)

Life is Beautiful (movie) 

The War Against the Weak, by Edwin Black

Conscience & Courage by Eva Fogelman
The Nazi Years by Joachim Remak

E.M.M.A.

What an interesting, event-filled Tuesday!  (Too bad the Dodgers lost yesterday and the Lakers lost Sunday....come on, at least 1 of the 2 should be winning the same week).  Anyways, I went to get my teeth whitened today and the electricity was out at the office, so I didn't end up getting that done.  I ended up doing some errands with my dad and we ate at a little Mexican restaurant down in San Gabriel.  He's friends with everyone there and they know him, so it was fun to meet some new people and learn a little Spanish.  It's fun to hear my dad speak Spanish too.  :)  When I got home, Emma woke up from her nap, so we took a little trip to Target and Michaels.  Target was uneventful (which is a good thing when you take a toddler anywhere), but Michaels proved to be a slight disaster - not terribly, but slight.  Emma (meaning I) wanted to paint her block letters (of her name) pink, so we picked up some pink paint.  As we were standing in the world's longest line (why does that store have the longest lines - it doesn't matter what state you're in), Emma saw the candy shelf and decided to go grab some.  I told her to please look and not touch; we were getting her a plastic $2 whale, so I thought that would keep her occupied, but obviously the candy looked more enticing.  So she brings over a big bag of Hershey kisses and as she started to open the top, I try to gently take it away from her and she did sort of give it to me, but the bag was already open and the kisses went flying everywhere.  So of course, the most expensive thing that I bought today was an unwanted, opened bag of pink Hershey's kisses with each tag reading, "It's a Girl." Yeah, I know.  Out of all the candy "we" could have picked, it had to be the candy appropriate for a baby girl's shower.  That one is just a couple years too late.  Haha
See pictures below and enjoy:

Michael Jackson, Jesus Christ, and Duke

I know what you may be thinking:  How can she put Jesus Christ and Michael Jackson in the same sentence?  Does she live on the same planet as we do?  Yes, in fact, I do.  Although I am somewhat educated as to the history of Michael Jackson (I don't really like bragging about what pop culture I know, so we won't really go there - haha), his music and his personal life, one of his songs struck me.  I wasn't really planning on buying his CDs since I have some of his songs on iTunes, so it was a last minute decision to buy his "Number Ones" last week.  And I love the CD!  I'm sure it's in my CD player in my car right now.  His song, "You are not alone" made an impression on me.  Although it is a love song, I thought about the Savior, especially with this line:

"Just the other night I thought I heard you cry

Asking me to come and hold you in my arms

I can hear your prayers

Your burdens I will bear...

You are not alone

For I am here with you

Though you're far away

I am here to stay"

As I heard this song, I thought of the Savior and how He will bear our burdens.  Interestingly, I am comforted by that thought.  Perhaps it is hard to give up everything we have and cast it upon Him, but when I think about this idea, I feel relieved.  Let Him have everything that is difficult for us!  Let's just give it all to Him.  Think how much lighter and happier we will feel.  Let's get rid of all that extra weight that is bearing us down - the Savior will gladly take our burdens.  He will even lift us up too.  When we feel sadness or like crying or feel alone, the Savior is "here with [us] and here to stay."  While there is constant change and turmoil around us, He is constantly here with us forever; he is unchanging.  

On a different note, if you do not follow March Madness or read the sports section or watch ESPN, Duke did win and it was an easy win for them too.  If only I had them winning tomorrow too!  

Mr. Darcy & Partygirl

I'm trying to think of some really good excuses as to why I haven't posted for a week....ummm...March Madness - wait, that hasn't happened for a week; how about the Lakers - hard week for them, but pulled in a good win against the Jazz last night; how about Emma taking all my time - at least this one does sound legitimate, right?  haha.

I found two fun surprises when I walked into the door this morning:  the most adorable pugs!  Ever!  We get to keep Mr. Darcy and Partygirl for a week or two (tragic story as to why they are staying with us: their owners, Rachel and Tyler, found their 18 month old daughter at the bottom of the pool 2 weeks ago; Sophie is still in intensive care, breathing with minimal support and may require a trachea/esophagus surgery; the brain damage is still unknown).  

Emma and I already love these cute guys as if they were ours.  I have always wanted a pug anyways.