Playing Big

Ooh, we’re lucky today. I’ve persuaded Annie of Basic Joy to share a post that will inspire you for the New Year. Annie is the mother of 3 incredible children, loving wife to G, a fellow at Tufts University and an incomparable friend. She also runs the Letters to a Parent Project and she’d probably [...]

Fresh Courage Take

2008– it’s been a rough year to be a Mormon. January brought the death of our beloved prophet, President Hinckley, a force of nature who had virtually led the church for 30 years. We’d scarcely had time to mourn before Mitt Romney’s presidential bid poured scrutiny and ridicule upon the church. As a people, we [...]

Reproaching ourselves at Christmas time

Yesterday we pulled the boxes down out of the attic and performed in reverse the ritual we went through exactly a month ago: garlands rewound, ornaments rewrapped, Christmas stories packed away for another year. My mom always waited until after the New Year to pack up the Christmas decorations, but I was starting to feel [...]

The Case for Shopping

There’s a particular kind of happy anticipation that comes when you know your loved one is going to open up a gift on Christmas morning that will put them over the moon. It obviously doesn’t need to be an expensive or elaborate gift, but this year we somehow managed to actually divine what each child [...]

The Tinker Stage

Five days from now is our contest deadline–now is time for the “tinker stage” of writing. You can find details for our poetry contest here. As you revise your poems before submission, we recommend you read this post, by Sharlee Glenn, which explains the kind of poetry we’re looking for. You might also want to [...]

This is the stable . . .

Tonight I watched my kids dressed up in our family’s annual Nativity. My daughter was an angel. I had warned her ahead of time that she might not be Mary. “I don’t want to be Mary!” she informed me. “You made me be Mary the last time. I want to be an angel.” And angelic [...]

Mother In Me Giveaway winner

Congratulations to Shauna, who won our giveaway! And thank you to everyone for your kind words. As I read them I felt a bit guilty, because I seriously fished for compliments, and I think I should have just said “comment here” not “comment and tell us how great we are.” So, my apologies. But also [...]

Always a Daughter

This concludes a series of guest posts from lovely Leslie R. of Heaven’s Overlook. Many thanks to Leslie for sharing with us her poetic style, poignant insights and thoughtful prose. If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things, and again with things; If we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment [...]

Just. Perfect.

I hear him talking to Sister S* on the phone. He’s making small talk (quite a feat!) before inviting her to speak about charity on Sunday. He’s happy, she must have accepted. They continue to talk but their conversation fades as I look at the disastrous kitchen. Because of a full working day and Christmas [...]

Christmas Thank You Giveaway

Announcing our Christmas thank you giveaway: comment between now and midnight December 24th, Utah time, and you could win a copy of The Mother in Me. Tell us why you read our blog, or why you want to win the book, or both. And thank you for coming to our blog, for reading the journal [...]

Alone

When the doctor told me that something was wrong, I don’t think I believed him. I smiled and asked questions, nodding at appropriate moments. I’m sure the doctor thought I must have fallen off my rocker. It wasn’t until I got home that I let myself contemplate his words. “Something is wrong. We need to [...]

Structure

You may have heard that we have a writing contest going on right now (Deadline December 31!). In my last post I talked about writing with an honest heart; I have to say that’s still the first thing I try for when I write, that non-wallowing, non-glossing honesty. The next thing I work on as [...]

Gift Ideas Galore

Can I beg your indulgence for a little more self-promotion? In addition to Andrea’s suggestions, found here, here are some other great gift ideas from Segullah staff members:

The Segullah Christmas Gift Guide

Christmas is fast approaching. You have made your list, checked it twice, and are now comfortably settling in for a sugar-induced haze with a cup of hot cocoa and some Christmas goodies. But wait! You are startled out of your reverie when you realize that you have missed someone…that friend that gave you a gift [...]

Tidings of Comfort

Christmas is a season to be jolly, right? Looking around me, though, I see lots of people who are feeling anything but cheerful. Times are tough. With financial meltdowns, wars, terrorism, and corruption filling up our newscasts, it’s easy to see why the future seems a little, well, rickety. I know many people who’ve been [...]

Still Points in a Moving World

Many thanks to Leslie R. of Heaven’s Overlook for another beautiful guest post. You can read some of her previous posts here here here and here. Thanks so much Leslie! The fact that Mary and Elizabeth found shelter in each other, and they weren’t even the same age is my favorite part of the story. [...]

Family Affair

My mother just left after a three-week visit to my house. Yes, you read that right—three weeks. She and I are do not have a best friend-type relationship. She has, to put it nicely, a flair for the dramatic. There were many incidents of raised voices during her trip. At one point my teenage daughter [...]

My Pastoral Life

I saw an ad while watching the Peanuts Christmas Special on TV with the kids. It was for an air freshener that smelled like gingerbread. It was a simple enough ad, but the overall message of the ad suggested that you could just use the air freshener to fool people into thinking you’d been baking. [...]

No Respecter of Ornaments

“Do we have to put them all up this year?,” my husband grumbles as he shuffles down a few trees and a dozen freezing cold boxes from the attic. “Yes, all of them!,” I assert, with some insistence. “In the Graff house we are no respecter of ornaments. It’s a matter of principle.” Everyone is welcome [...]

Christmas Letters 101

My mailbox is always full in December– crammed with catalogs and brimming with bills. But I’m also sure to find Christmas cards along with the credit card statements. I admire the few who send handwritten notes each year, although if I were in their shoes, my great intentions would fizzle after a dozen or so [...]

Reciprocity: Angels Among Us

Another lovely guest post from Leslie at Heaven’s Overlook. Here at the Segullah Blog, quite a bit of reciprocity emerges on a daily basis. It goes like this. You have a good quote, poem, or idea and you share it with someone and they love it so they share it with a neighbor or a [...]

For Zion Must Increase in Beauty, and in Holiness

Last weekend I was on vacation in a very non-LDS part of the country. When Sunday rolled around I found myself feeling churchy, but as I was more than 60 miles from the closest Mormon chapel I decided I would have to worship with some of my Protestant brothers and sisters. Driving around town I [...]

Writing and the Honest Heart

Something to think about while you revise your contest essays: One of the first things I look for when evaluating an essay is its truth level. By this I mean, how honest is the core issue of the essay? Does the writer give it to me raw, in a way that shows me her pain/poignant [...]

Christmas service: Bitter? Sweet? Or some of both?

It was nearly ten years ago at Christmastime I had an experience that only in the past year have I’ve been able to make sense of and make peace with. It was my second Christmas at BYU, though this year my parents and two younger siblings would be there in Provo too. Very much there, [...]

The Value of X

We sat at the kitchen table, trying to figure out the value of x. “I think…Well, if I recall…Umm, if we cross…What about trying…Oh honestly, son, I just don’t remember”. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to decipher the 14 symbol long equation, then started writing furiously. “I figured it out, mom, thanks [...]

‘Tis the Season (Cold & Flu Season)

My vision blurred as I stepped from the run-down station platform onto the downtown A train. Luckily I’m close to the beginning of the line so there were still plenty of places for me to sit and continue asking myself the questions, “Is my head actually going to split open? If it doesn’t what will [...]

The Stories of Christmas

As we we hauled the Christmas boxes up from the basement this week my children whipped into a frenzy of excitement– the stockings! the ornaments! the ribbons! the creche! the books! Poor little people, they hardly knew which to partake of first. But once the tree was up and the stockings hung, every child hauled [...]

Words of Rescue

We’re lucky today to have another Guest Post from Leslie at Heaven’s Overlook. Last Saturday I biked through the desert in Las Vegas, Nevada. The only strip my eyes saw was a thick strip of red rock lacing its way through the mountain range, far west from Sin City. With my husband beside me, the [...]

How do we put the “society” in Relief Society (or society in general)?

I still remember how excited I was when we moved out of the dark basement apartment in my single cousin’s bachelor pad and into our first home. It was a hole (a tiny one at that). But it was in a nice neighborhood, close to my husband’s school, and it was ours. Our new ward [...]

Don’t Go Mixin’ Politics

It has always bothered me when a well-loved (by me) singer or actor decides to use the fame they have gained through art-making for political ends. I don’t necessarily fault them for feeling like they ‘should’ do something to better the world given their money and influence. It just makes me….want to classify them as [...]