Sew Sew

Does anyone sew anymore--as in making clothing for their family members or for themselves? It seems like most people either don't know how to sew or have let it go by the wayside. There are those who maintain the arts of sewing and needlework as a hobby, so it probably won't become a lost art, but still....

I grew up sewing. My Mom taught me and I was in 4-H and FHA and did sewing projects for those organizations. When a young mother, I made myself a blouse and my daughter a dress out of the same material, and I even tackled making a western shirt for my then husband. I've let it go, though. I have done a little knitting, crocheting, and embroidery of various types. I really would like to do more sewing and such, even if I never do anything terribly complicated.

Sometimes I wish I weren't so interested in so many different things! I guess I could divide my time up into little bitty blocks and do some of it all.

Do any of you sew and/or do needlework? What kind and how do you make time for it?

Giving up on Josephus

I am giving up on Flavius Josephus. I just have too much difficulty making heads or tails of what all he is up to in his life. I am probably not familiar enough with the history of that time to make sense of it. It may be that I will write about him again in a more general way, but for now, it is just hanging over my head, making me feel guilty for not writing about him, so I am publicly abandoning him.

At the moment, it would be much more useful to me to study ways of keeping cool in the summertime!

Writing a Novel

Raise your hand if you are working on a novel. I thought so.

What genre are you interested in writing for?

I've been reading a book by Elizabeth George called Write Away that discusses how to write a novel. She makes some interesting points. One example is to figure your characters out in detail before you get too involved in creating a plot, because often the characters themselves (and what they would or wouldn't do) can decide which way your plot goes. She mentions that in one of her books, her starting idea was wanting to write about a particular type of character. For others, she had an idea or theme, but still detailed the characters early before she had done more than a brief sketching out of her idea.

It's a good book. She explains the different viewpoints a writer can choose from, what voice is, how to write good dialogue and what dialogue should do. There are a number of books out there about how to write a novel, but I thought this one was interesting and useful. It's published by Harper/Collins. The writing magazines, Writer's Digest and The Writer also publish writing books, plus you could subscribe to the magazines themselves.

Interesting stuff. Reading about writing can inspire me to work harder at my own writing, too.

How Do We Envision God?

I envision God as all powerful and all knowing (omnipotent and omniscient). I have an impression, though, that a number of people, both in and out of the church, see God as a perfect man, but with little or no ability beyond what we mortals have.

I think at least a part of the problem is that we mortals with our finite minds cannot envision a God who knows of natural laws that we do not know of, or do not understand, and can therefore do things we conceive of as impossible. Physical things. Creating a man, for example. I have heard arguments regarding foreknowledge--that if God had it, then we wouldn't have agency. I don't believe that--knowing that someone is going to do something does not mean that that person is forced to do that thing.

I realize that it is a hard thing to grasp that God is omnipotent and omniscient. This is something that we probably have to progress to being able to do--and probably not until the next life will we begin to fully grasp it.

There are, of course, many other traits that our Heavenly Father has--justice, mercy, love, integrity, patience and long-suffering, for example. We have been told in Matthew 5:48 and in 3 Nephi 12:48 and in other scripture (see, for example, 2 Nephi 31:12) to be like our Heavenly Father and Jesus. Some things, like the omnipotence and omniscience, we can't do anything about right now, but we can work on things like being just and merciful, forgiving and patient. I also think that secular learning is a part of learning to be like God and Jesus Christ (see D & C 88:118 and D & C 90:15). We should learn science and math and geography and languages and arts and so forth. We should learn to understand people and have empathy and sympathy for them. We should learn to manage our resources, our time, our talents. These things all take time to develop, but they are all things we can begin working on now.

How do you envision God and how do you envision becoming like him?