The Burnt-Over Blog: November 2009

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Linc's Bed

For Lincolns birthday and christmas present, Papa and Amma Bryant got him a new bed! He loves it and now sleeps better than ever. Seriously he was getting up at 5:30 in the morning and once he got the new big bed he hasn't got up that early since. It would also help if they didn't do daylight savings, that always throws their sleeping schedule off.

Here is his McQueen bed.

My mom asked why I didn't have anything new on the blog and I said it was because we didn't do anything crazy this weekend besides stain our deck (which doesn't make for very exciting pictures). She said to just take pictures of the kiddos playing. So these are for you mom!

Here they are playing together in their room.

Crazy Lincoln face!

Linc and Bekah like to jump on his bed.

Bekah dressed for church.

Dancing with daddy.

We also woke up this morning to deer in our backyard.

That is all she wrote. Happy Thanksgiving this week to everyone.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The Day for the Dead

Halloween was a fun day for us. We started out by going to the most beautiful cemetery we have ever seen. It is called the Mount Olivet Cemetery. Everyday I drive Seth to school I pass it and have always wondered what it looks like. You only get to see a slim view from the road as it sits on top of a big hill. So we decided to check it out. Between the awesome grave markers and all the trees turning colors, it was amazing! And Halloween was the perfect day to go and honor the dead!

There were so many huge mausoleums all over the cemetery like these ones.

This is for Sue as her maiden name is Marshall like on this fancy grave marker.

Lincoln even found his name!

There were a lot of interesting things there. This grave marker mentions how this woman was a faithful servant for three generations and this is the size of her marker.

This is the family's she worked for grave marker.

Cute angel statue the kids liked.

The cemetery started when some women wanted to have a place to honor and bury those confederate soldiers who had died during the civil war. This is the monument for them.

This was the resting place of one of the richest families in Nashville. Their Belmont Mansion is a great tourist place here as well.

Can it get any prettier?

This is the way Linc likes to walk around when he wears this hat!

We then came home and carved pumpkins.

Linc liked getting all slimy.

Bekah wouldn't touch it!

The kids drew the faces and we carved them out.

And here are their costumes.

Happy Halloween!

Doctrine and Covenants 163:10a-b

Del Gue's Parting Words

I ain't never seen 'em, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb! Keep good care of your hair! These here is God's finest sculpturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here! And there ain't no priests excepting the birds. By God, I are a mountain man, and I'll live 'til an arrow or a bullet finds me. And then I'll leave my bones on this great map of the magnificent...

The Meaning of Christ on the Cross

At the heart of divine love is sacrifice-the willingness to be diminished so that another may be increased. This is the meaning of Christ on the cross. God, who could have insulated himself from pain, descended to earth, assumed the aspect of his children, and bore the greatest pain in his own person. Rather than hoard the heavenly feast for himself, he invites beggars to his table. He breaks bread with us and drinks from the cup our lips have touched. When he speaks to us, it is no longer from a great white throne, centered in a vortex of light, surrounded by celestial griffins, warding off the unwashed. He speaks to us eye to eye, from a traitor’s gibbet, with his blood and sweat and shame upon him for all to see, and with his wounds forever open. He comes not as king, but as slave. He comes not as judge, but as accused. He comes not as patriarch, but as bastard. He comes not to punish us, but to let us punish him. He does not ask us to love him until we are first certain that he loves us. He is the great failure who saves us from our success. He is the great fool who spares us from our wisdom. He is the rejected lover who will not, in turn, reject his love. He is a prophet without honor, a citizen of a despised nation, a poor relation, an unwanted guest. He is the voice of one crying in the wilderness of every human heart. He is the God of grief and sorrow who is the joy of our desiring. He is utterly good because he loves us in our sins and imperfections, because he freely made himself equal to us, and because he freely opened the way whereby we may be made equal to him.

--Paul Toscano's "Priesthood Concepts in the Book of Mormon," Sunstone (Dec. 1989): 17.

True Conversion

Conversion is a permanent process in which very often the obstacles we meet make us lose all we had gained and start anew. The fruitfulness of our conversion depends on our openness to doing this, our spiritual childhood. All conversion implies a break. To wish to accomplish it without conflict is to deceive oneself and others: "No one is worthy of me who cares more for father or mother than for me." But it is not a question of a withdrawn and pious attitude. Our conversion process is affected by the socio-economic, political, cultural, and human environment in which it occurs. Without a change in these structures, there is no authentic conversion. We have to break with our mental categories, with the way we relate to others, with our way of identifying with the Lord, with our cultural milieu, with our social class, in other words, with all that can stand in the way of a real, profound solidarity with those who suffer, in the first place, from misery and injustice. Only thus, and not through purely interior and spiritual attitudes, will the 'new person' arise from the ashes of the 'old.'"
--Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 118

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