Segullah

Mormon women blogging about the peculiar and the treasured

Lyrically speaking

We were in the car on the way to my daughter’s flute lesson. The sunroof was open to the balmy, lovely sky. Music played on the radio and we sang along to Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours. Daughter: “…listen to the music of the Mormon people dance and sing. We’re just one big family…” Me: What [...]

Notes for my pockets

“The most exciting movement in nature is not progress, advance, but expansion and contraction, the opening and shutting of an eye, the heart, the mind. We throw our arms wide with a gesture of religion to the universe; we close them around a person. We explore and adventure for a while and then draw in [...]

Good Graciousness

The shutters and doors of the Radley home were closed on Sundays, another thing alien to Maycomb’s ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather only. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes.  But to climb the Radley front steps and call, [...]

Users Manual: Handle with Care

Several years ago,  I was called to serve as the Relief Society President in our ward–a very green, inexperienced, quite overwhelmed and over-her-head Relief Society president, to be more specific. The bishop of the ward was a wise and patient man.  In our first meeting together, he didn’t unload all the juicy details of the [...]

Leaving the Foyer

In my old filing cabinet next to the piano, there is a folder marked “spiritual insights” with articles and quotes that, at some point in my life, sparked something within me.  Lately I’ve needed some spiritual sparks—the shape of my testimony worn down by mundane daily-ness and taken for granted for too long—so I’ve turned [...]

How shall this be?

She cowers on the bed as a young girl would, introduced (by an angel, no less) to an overwhelming assignment/calling/challenge/blessing.  I feel for this Mary, the initial weight of the impossible evident in her slouch and gaze. Moments later she straightens her posture and says “be it unto me” and “behold” but I love that [...]

Failure Academy

“Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.”  Samuel Beckett In the early summer of 1991 we thought we had the world by the tail.  My husband had just finished his first year of law school and had been accepted to study international law for the summer in London.  Hooray! I’m no fool; I quit my job [...]

Launching our youth into adulthood

Recently our ward had the exquisite pleasure of welcoming home not one but two missionaries on one Sunday (in the process reducing the number of current missionary plaques in the foyer to one).  The abundance of love and support for these young men was palpable.  But it was more than that.  As we listened to [...]

Art of Raising Children

Pieta moments I wake up to a small sound at midnight, my Miss Clavell-like mother sensors detecting something is not right. There it is again–a soft sniffle, a low moan. Is someone crying? I shuffle into the hallway, squinting from the scant hour of sleep and still half in my dream. Maddy is crying–a soft, [...]

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