Last updated on August 25th, 2024 at 10:26 pm
August 18, 2024
Here is the best thing I heard (What?), saw (Eye.), and read (Read.) this week, as well as the best idea (💡) I developed.
What?
- [Joseph Grenny] “When I look at what President Nelson has done in the Church in the past few years, with moving us away from home teaching, which sounds like a transactional kind of experience, to ministering and saying, ‘Don’t let a lesson get in the way of the relationship. Sure, share ideas, share inspiration and so forth, if that’s the right thing to do, but the most important thing for you to do is understand where people are at and what they struggle with.’ …
“It’s one thing, frankly, in the Church that I think that we need to do a lot better at. We love to sit next to each other and look forward at a lesson, at a teacher, but what we’re not really good at is turning sideways and saying, ‘Hey, I noticed that you were crying in the back of the room today. What’s going on with you?’ That’s the real struggle that we’ve got. And us learning to step into that vulnerability and create those kind of intimate relationships is the key to the gathering and is the key to us creating Zion. …
“The way we grow spiritually, the way we grow morally, is dependent on the level of vulnerability in our relationships. It is our ability to get into each other’s business and to do so with love. These groups that we’re describing now, I’ve never heard more expressions of sincere love, side by side. And the combination is beautiful, because you’ll see somebody who’s hearing truth and candor, but then there’s this disarming sense of, ‘I’m here doing this because I love you and I’m trying to save your life.’ And they melt into that and are unable to resist the kind of truth that’s being presented to them. And that’s how human beings grow. …
“I think that the two things we’re here on this earth to learn are truth and love. And that’s it. It all comes down to those two basic things, an unvarnished, unqualified commitment to truth, and secondly, an absolute commitment to love, to doing whatever it takes to help our brothers and sisters to grow. And the problem is we think we have to trade those two variables off against each other.” - Joseph Grenny is one of the authors of ‘Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High‘ and is one of the founders of The Other Side Academy.
Eye.
Participating in Temple Sealings in the Draper Utah Temple with my wife, my parents, my siblings and their spouses, and my uncle who was serving as the sealer.
- “The Spirit of Elijah“, Elder Russell M. Nelson, October 1994 General Conference: “Sister Nelson, our family, and I have submitted our own ancestral names to the temple and have performed ordinances for them. Because we are fortunate to live near a temple, we like to meet there early in the morning. Usually in less than an hour, the initiatory work is accomplished, our youth are taken directly to school, their mothers return home, and their fathers get to work—on time! When we do endowments or sealings, available adults prefer to meet early in the evening to share that choice experience. Following that, we gather at home to update our records and enjoy some of Sister Nelson’s homemade goodies.”
Read.
‘Last of the Breed‘ by Louis L’Amour:
- “[Stephan Baronas] stared into the flames. ‘I hunger for books, not food,’ he said. ‘I have so few.’ He gestured toward the door. ‘So much is happening out there of which I know nothing. Scholars are making discoveries, writing papers, lecturing. Here, I know nothing of it. Even we in Soviet Russia know so little and miss so much.
“‘Knowledge is meant to be shared, and much of it is being shared. There is so much to learn, and we have so little time. When I was a young man and lived in Paris for a year … how wonderful it was! We paced the floors and walked the streets, arguing, reciting poetry to each other, discussing all the ideas, all the things that were happening. We talked of Tolstoy and Balzac, of Fielding and Cervantes! It was wonderful! … Those were marvelous times!
“‘And then when I was older but no longer in Paris, we would meet in our own homes or sometimes in a cafe and talk of books and ideas. Even in the days when we were poor, there were always books. There were libraries, and we read everything. The mind was free to navigate any course; the world of ideas is a vast universe of unexplored worlds, and we were free to go anywhere!
“‘Those days are past, yet I would like to sit again with men of my kind and hear what they have done and are doing. New avenues are opening with every breath we draw. In America, in England, France, West Germany, people are free to think what they will, to write what they think!
“‘Russia has so much to give, yet so much to learn. We should be a part of all that instead of being confined as in a prison. I am not a Russian, yet I have lived and thought and worked so much in Russia that I feel like one. But our growth is being stunted by restrictions and rules made by idiots defending themselves against the shadows that are only in their minds!
“‘So many of our best dancers have fled Russian ballet for Europe or America. It is not that they love Russia less; it is simply that an art must grow. They wish to escape the cocoon of Russia and, like a butterfly, spread their wings in a larger world with greater challenges. An artist needs freedom, he needs innovation, he needs opportunity, he needs to create.’
“He shook his head, embarrassed. ‘Talya, I talk too much! But we must escape! We must get out into a larger world where we can breathe deeper, stretch our mental muscles, and see what is happening around us.'” - Do I fully appreciate the freedom to learn about ‘what is happening around [me]’? It’s true that ‘there is so much to learn, and we have so little time’.
💡
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