On Saturday we went to Great Basin National Park. It was farther away than we realized, but it was SO fun to drive through a part of Utah we’d never been to before! We got to see the Sevier Desert and Sevier Lake, and we stopped en route to pick up lunch and snacks in Delta, UT. There is literally no place near Great Basin to get food or gas, and the desert road there was empty. There were no cars. It was just sage brush and sand running up against a wall of grey mountains in the distance.
Here are the pictures from our adventure:
The grasses in this meadow were stunning. The wind, which has an incredible personality in Great Basin, was blowing the grasses and making them look like waves in the ocean.I adore the smells and sight of this mountain brush.Clarissa has been so hard and has been driving us out of our minds. But she looks pleased with herself, doesn’t she?
This sums it up. The girls were posing while Ammon attempted to run away.
This was a tremendously frustrating photo to take. The mountains were SO HUGE in person, and they kept looking so tiny and diminished in the photo!!!!Great Basin National Park is basically an island of an ecological system. In the ice age, all of the desert in this picture was actually the same ecological system as the basin system we hiked in. When it warmed up, all of that died and became desert surrounding the basin.
Abe’s overnight trip canceled, so he took the day off on Friday. It was so wonderful to have an extra day with him! We drove to Salt Lake to drop my mom off so she could visit with one of her Stanford friends, and while she was visiting we went to Red Butte Gardens and just relaxed (um, as much as that is possible while also chasing Ammon AND Clarissa around) there. The weather was PERFECT and everything was gorgeous and peaceful.
Did I say this was relaxing? Scratch that. Tearing Clarissa away from a water fountain is traumatic for all. I actually stopped taking my kids to the library months ago because I could not handle what happens when I try to get Clarissa away from the water fountain.
After the gardens, we picked up lunch and then visited Tom, who is recovering from kidney cancer. We sat in the back yard visiting and eating not-yet-ripe grapes. You can see Clarissa’s reaction in this short photo series:
Calmly holding grapesstuffing face with grapesSOUR!!!Repeat.
Abe took pictures of everyone in the family, too:
After we finished up in Salt Lake, we came back, grilled some veggie burgers and brats outside, put the kids down and binged on Game of Thrones. Oh, and I had ice cream too!! It’s the first sugar I’ve had in weeks. I don’t know how I feel about that, but the cravings were all consuming. I felt better after eating the ice cream, I can say that much.
On Thursday I took Lydia to her harp lesson while I let the kids play on the playground and read a book on mixed faith marriage.
Mary and Ammon found a little worm, so they built it a habitat with dirt and grass to eat. Never mind that if they put it on the lawn there would be acres of natural habitat…
Then we came home and in the afternoon I went to physical therapy. And I can’t remember anything else about this day!
On Wednesday the kids spent hour working on a paper bag puppet show. They made a million puppets, rehearsed, and put on the, er, loooooong show for us. It was very cute.
In the morning I had to drop the van off for recall work. So we were home most of the day–hence the puppet show. I took Ammon with me to drop off the van, and it was really fun hanging out with him and taking the shuttle home. He is so friendly and tried to make friends with everyone in the shuttle.
I know I write that I’ve been grumpy a lot recently, and I don’t know if that’s because the steroids are in my system, or if I’m sleep deprived from too much caffeine and steroids, or if I am just exhausted thinking so much about faith transitions, but in any case, I was not patient with my kids today. Again. Sigh.
But I took them to the park while Lydia had her harp lesson, then home, then the splash pad for Mary’s first grade meet-up, dropped Lydia off at a pool party, cleaned the house top to bottom, did a ton of laundry, and managed Clarissa, who fell asleep on the way home from the splash pad and never slept again. She was a disaster.
Also, Ammon forgot my name today. I think I’ve been gone or checked out so much that he honestly forgot who I was. I have barely interacted with him for days, I guess. He was trying to talk to me at the splash pad while I was chatting with another mom, and after repeating himself a bunch he tugged on my shirt and said, very earnestly, “Um, what’s your name?” I replied, “Ammon, I’m your mom.” Matter-of-factly he said, “Oh. I need to go potty!” I guess I need to read to him more.
In a little bit here Abe and I are going out with our friends, the Harmons. In the meantime, here’s a picture I took of the girls at the splash pad:
Mary won’t let go of Lydia. It was an Arches gathering for first graders, and Mary is really shy so she literally hangs onto Lydia the whole time. I heard that she did this all last year at recess and it was hard on Lydia, but I got to see it with my own eyes. (I did tell Mary to let go after I snapped the picture.)
On Sunday we attended the Community of Christ, which is the church Emma started when Brigham Young took the saints west after Joseph Smith died. I grew up thinking the Community of Christ wasn’t even in the running for “one true church” status because they’ve had so many financial troubles. In LDS church, we unofficially but ubiquitously preach “prosperity gospel,” which basically says that if you are good, God will prosper you in the land. So good Mormons are rich. And a lot of Mormons are actually rich, and the church is unbelievably rich. With that mindset it just makes sense that the church has “prospered” because it is True. At least, that seemed like an obvious connection to me at the time.
Anyway, with prosperity gospel and One True Church off the table for me, I approached Community of Christ in a completely different mindset. And it turns out, they are the only healthy restorationist church! Women are ordained, they are not racist, they are open about church history, and they are committed to humanitarian service. Go, Emma, go!! John Hamer has, through the Community of Christ, created “Church for the unchurched” up in Toronto. He was in town for Sunstone, and I made Abe go up to him and talk to him between sessions while I chased around the kids. He was so nice and open. Attending at least one service of his church is on my personal bucket list now.
I am pretty sure I heard people at Sunstone say that this man, who gave the sermon and led the Sunday school, is a direct descendant of Joseph Smith’s. He certainly had his nose and eyes!! Abe and I couldn’t get over how similar he looked.Children were included in the service. The woman pictured was reading them the picture book, “I am human,” after which each child was given a bag of reusable quiet activities to occupy them for the rest of the sacrament meeting.Ammon doing “quiet” activities. Of course, it’s Ammon, so these weren’t all that quiet for him…
I was stunned to see women perform ordinances. The bishop was a woman who sat on the stand the whole service, just as LDS bishops do. And here she is confirming a member of their church in a beautiful blessing, wherein she referred to the seated woman as “snarky” and “kind.” I have never heard the word “snarky” used in a blessing, much less in church! But it was so beautiful, so tender, so personal, so full of love. I am afraid I was not super polite because I kept hissing at my daughters to pay attention and watch women perform priesthood ordinances. I also took this picture.
At one point during the service, there was a coloring activity for everyone. We were supposed to draw our spiritual homes with provided paper and crayons. I have no spiritual home and drew nothing. In the meantime, Abe could only picture our home ward, over and over. It was fun to watch elderly men with white beards color their spiritual homes right alongside children who did the same.
Everything was about inclusion. Even the sacrament had gluten free bread for those who needed it, and there was water for those who felt uncomfortable with grape juice. And the sermon was super inclusive. Joseph Smith’s descendant talked about his own doubts and disbelief and the peace he has made with his own individual spiritual journey.
Honestly, two hours of sacrament was too long for Abe and me, especially after the one hour of Sunday school right before (during which time our kids attended their primary). I think Abe is spoiled by 2 hour church, and I am spoiled by no church! So we took off after the sacrament and didn’t get a chance to join the Community of Christ for their lunch afterward. I guess every Sunday they follow their 3 hours of service with lunch. It really is a community, and people like being with each other so much it seems as though they spend the whole day together! (They have up to five hours of church in John Hamer’s Toronto church, but it is totally a la carte.) Anyway, Abe and I enjoyed it very much and then took off early to eat, return home, and enjoy the rest of our day together.
This day at Sunstone I went to sooooo many incredible presentations. I went to a presentation on Joseph Smith’s relationship with the freemasons, and specifically to Abraham Jonas. That was interesting. I also went to a presentation on how to bring Richard Rohr’s theology into the LDS church, a beautiful presentation on why people stay in the church (that one had me in tears), a presentation on people who have healed through supplementing their LDS experience by another church, a presentation by Michael Quinn on the persistence of post second manifesto plural marriage among LDS women, and had a really nice conversation at lunch with a lovely septegenarian couple who are active LDS.
In the evening Abe took Ammon to father’s and sons, which was really good for Ammon. Ammon has been watching tv nonstop with his babysitters so it was great for him to get out in nature with Abe.
While they were at father’s and sons, I had fun with the girls in the back yard. I just relaxed and chatted with them, which was nice because normally I don’t have energy or time to just sit there and talk with them. They ate too much ice cream while we talked, but it was fun.
On Thursday I was gone all day to Sunstone. I went to a presentation by LDS poets about the intersection between poetry and prophecy. Anciently, prophets were often poets charged with speaking truth to power (e.g., Isaiah!), and in our church we have made the prophet the source of power. So he can’t really speak truth to himself. Then I went to a presentation on philosophy, presented by a woman who might have known my dad when she studied philosophy at Loyola! After that I had a fun lunch conversation with a man I met on Wednesday night and talked about our respective faith journeys and current beliefs. It was such a relief to find other live people on faith journeys, I really can’t even express. And then I went to a presentation from John Hamer on church for the unchurched. What he is doing in Toronto is spectacular.
I came home early so Abe could take Mary to her eye doctor and piano lesson. He took this picture of Mary on their outing. She was so excited because after he took her to dinner on a special daddy-daughter date.
