Discover Alex Boye

Have you ever heard of Alex Boye?  He is, hands down, my favorite artist of popular sacred music.  The best person to speak for Alex is himself.  He does so here to Mormon.org where he's featured on I'm a Mormon.  He sings in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Alex became a sworn citizen of the United States in March of this year.  Read about it here.  Watch the video of here.   

—A Chaotic Mind

The Joys of Service

"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.  Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business."

—Michael J. Fox

Maybe it is because I spent so much time today reading the heartbreaking comments so many people have posted on Single Dad Laughing, that I feel so compelled to post today.  The button on the bottom right will send  you to Dan's amazing post, 'The Disease Called Perfection', a serious delve into the anguish caused by the pressure people put on themselves and upon others to appear as the media's contorted perception of beautiful, behave pleasantly, never feel lost or uncertain, never make mistakes, never feel anger, never doubt, never sin, never fail to meet the expectations of others or mold yourself into their misconception of you.  

As Dan so poignantly points out, lives have been lost—lives of children—because a person feels encompassed in darkness, trapped in their horrible situations, and there is no hope of that ever changing.  They feel they have betrayed God or God has betrayed them, or they have disappointed their families or shamed them or angered them or whatever overwhelming despair overcomes them, and they take their own lives because they see it as their only means of escape.  Because of the despair of imperfection in a society that demands it.

The point of Dan's post is to encourage people to stop castigating themselves that they are not the super model or the super mom or the ubber-dad or -kid they believe society demands of them; to be kinder to themselves; to know that they are not alone and that no one has experienced anything that has not been experienced by somoene else.   The perfection in which they feel surrounded is only an illusion.  That illusion distorts our vision. We see everyone else more perfect than they are, and ourselves far, far less.

In response to that blog post, readers have poured out their hearts to the great anonymous void of the internet, hoping to somehow connect with someone—anyone who will listen, receive some validation, or just get a virtual hug.  In one day, almost 500 people have shared this post with their friends via Facebook, and almost 200 have made comments on the blog, either sharing their own sorrows or attempting to uplift those who so desperately stand in need of it.

I'm going to share my own comment here, just to follow Dan's example and be real, and dig up the courage to not do it anonymously.  

To Blog or Not to Blog

Although the fact may be news of no consequence, I have created a new blog. However, when one considers the fact that I have already authored five different blogs, the temptation arises to beg the question, why another?

The answer to that question is simple---or, at least, it is to me. This blog is my blog, meaning all that stuff that which just bounces around in my head and requires some sort of receptacle. Considering I have no 'pensieve' into which I can store my extracted thoughts when my brain gets too cluttered, a blog seemed the simplest solution.

The more complex answer to the need and/or impulse lies in the content of my other blogs, each of which I created for a specific purpose. Given their individual natures, none are suitable for my random, haphazard, everyday musings. One could even go so far as to say I wanted a blog that is solely my own.

In the past, I have written nice, long newsy letters scattered with pictures and only the best events of our lives the previous year. I enjoyed it and fancied others did as well, until I heard from two different siblings that they absolutely hated receiving Christmas letters and considered them disingenuous and artificial. I left off, but still felt rather guilty for not maintaining the contacts that I treasured. However, indolence combined with apprehension of becoming an annoyance served to deaden those pesky little pricks of conscience which occasionally chastised me for failing to foster connections within our very large and far-flung family. I finally decided that I would keep a blog and that, combined with sending out simple Christmas cards with our URL would serve. Those who cared could check in on us from time to time. Those who didn't wouldn't simply refold a 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper completely filled with 8 point type.

After Dallas II (hence forth referred to as D2) and Lynda tied the knot in May of this year, I decided it was time to act. I created The Fabulous Family Freeman and registered our URL because I thought it was so terribly clever and didn't want to risk losing it. Then, because 'I knew it was a matter of considerable import and required my immediate attention', I started actually creating posts about two months later.

I still primarily post letters of the newsy sort which I have written to Elder Freeman. Despite the blog later I created for that purpose, tales of erupting sewers do not really have a place on pages dedicated to spiritual things. However, the time is fast approaching where I will not have that resource, so I will have to make myself compose specifically for that blog he comes home. Hopefully, I will convince my daughters-in-law to do so as well. (My sons never would).

Despite the secular nature of FabFreeFam, it is yet intended for family news. I do not care to clutter it with my treatises on Charles Dickens vs Jane Austen, Twain vs Alcott, Tolstoy vs Karazamov, my favorite heroes and heroines in literature, and modern values in movie productions and script-writing vs the accurace of social norms in the period pieces they create.

Steadfast Faith in Christ: a Missionary Journal was created as a means of sharing the letters home from my son, Elder Paul Freeman, as well as the pictures and video he has sent. Then, realizing the missionary tool it could become, I invited the various members of my family to share the letters from their own missionaries. The authors are the missionaries themselves through their letters which are posted. I consider myself merely the publisher and but one of the editors.

A Mormon Family Journal was created as a companion to Steadfast Faith in Christ, with the equal intent of bearing testimony of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and of his church here on earth, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From their love and support of their missionaries, parents, loved ones, and friends often write letters to their missionaries inspired by the Spirit of God as a means of providing instruction and encouragement through those difficult two years. Neither would my rattles be appropriate here.

A Mormon Journal I created to have a forum exclusively my own and perhaps through a different service gain a broader audience with which to share my testimony of the Gospel, but I have done next to nothing with it since. I use it primarily as a mirror site to A Mormon Family Journal. I need to get more in the habit of writing things of an eternal nature.

Then, along came Olde Oaks Relief Society Weekly Update. This I created, as the title indicates, as another means of providing news and information for the sisters in our ward, and especially to connect to the Relief Society those sisters who serve in other auxiliaries or who are otherwise out of the loop. I was then the secretary to the Relief Society presidency, maintained a group list, and published a monthly newsletter. Of course, we needed another less restrictive and/or conditional means of reaching all the sisters in our ward, not only those who showed up to get the newsletter or who knew how to access the information on our group site. Again, helping spread the Good News was/is my primary objective. I am now no longer the secretary, but I do not mean to abandon the site. It's good stuff to share, and hopefully the newly reorganized presidency will continue to use it as an information portal, as well as help it reach its full potential.

So, here I am, creating my sixth blog and using a really cool theme that I found on Jackbook.com (thanks Gosublogger). I guess one may say I liked to compartmentalize everything (which I tend to do), that I'm just a tad bit obsessive (only a tad?), and that my life tends to be boring (not news to anyone). The most interesting things go on in my brain (so interesting that I tend to get lost in there with increasing frequency), so, here this is, my brain pan.

Hmmm. Perhaps I should change the title to My Brain Pan. Nah. That has probably been used at least a dozen times over. How could that possibly reflect the imaginative and unique products of my all-too-fascinating mind? Besides which, I have changed the name of this blog six times already.