allah! allah!

i spent most of the day yesterday finishing a shoot i did of krystal and her baby indie and listening to oprah's soul sunday podcasts.  it's so nice to finish a project.  while i was uploading them to pixieset, my client viewer website, i started playing candy crush.  curse candy crush!  i don't even keep it on my phone because it's so addictive to me and such a time waster.  once in a blue moon i get an urge to play candy crush so i download it, play it for a while, lose hours of my life, then uninstall it, knowing it to be the bane to my existence that it is.  thanks to candy crush i didn't leave the house, despite long held hunger pangs, until just before 9.  i was too late for the cat food store, but i still had time to buy groceries which i did.  and i found salted caramel cruch fatso high performance peanut butter!  i haven't tried it yet, but i have a deep and abiding belief that if paired with a banana, this peanut butter might bring me to a peanut butter nirvana state.  lettuce see.

this morning was ward council and i can't believe i'm saying this about ward council, but it felt like a good one.  to me anyways.  when i walked in they were just finishing the 1st verse of battle hymn of the republic, which is an unusual choice for ward council but i joined in trying to catch my breath, which isn't easy in that song.  but anyways about ward council i feel like we did really council about some things and that felt good.  at the end of ward council the bishop said that one of the speakers was going to be a no show and that each of us should be prepared to bear our testimonies.  i just kind of had a feeling that it might be me.  so in the few minutes before sacrament started i scrolled through my blog looking for inspiration and i saw the blog post entitled new heart , a post i wrote in september.  i read it and felt the burn of the spirit and rush of feelings that i felt when i wrote that.  i decided i could share something about that experience if called upon.  sure enough it was me and brother chan who were asked to bear our testimonies.  he was first which also gave me a chance to compose myself and what i wanted to say.   and so i did.  i shared.  like christine wolsey said to me after, it was a vulnerable moment.  but like brene brown says, vulnerability is necessary for connection.  afterwards a guy who was visiting with his wife from utah came and talked to me and thanked me in a way that i knew it was meaningful to him.  several people said something to me.  sister deyell asked me for the poem that i read.  at first i was like poem?  and then i realized that she thought the words i read were a poem, and that for some reason was sweet to me.  there are some moments when i write something when i feel them flowing from me with a passion, from a spirit burning inside me, from a deep well of feeling and belief  and maybe to her they sounded like a poem, or poetic.  i feel like it's those times that the spirit is moving in me, magnifying my gift to communicate.  so i feel like  any power in those words or in those times is not from me but from God.  he gave me my gifts, yes, and he can magnify them to something better than they are.  i believe that.  one of the podcasts i listened to was oprah talking with paulo coelho who wrote the alchemist.  he said he wrote it in something like 2 weeks.  he said people find all this symbolisim and depth to his book that he has never thought about or seen.  he didn't purposely put it in.  he said "oprah, maybe i didn't write this book."  he meant he was the instrument to something higher than himself.  i believe that.  i remember in linguistics learning that the word ole! that people yell at seminal performances is from the word allah, which is God in arabic.  and that people who were dancing used to some to a transcendence where they felt so connected with God and so in partnership with him in their art that people would yell allah! allah!  i'm not sure if it was the dancers or the audience, but that changed over time to ole!  

speaking of brene brown, i listened to two podcasts with her and oprah and in one she said "Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgement, sorrow, shame.” then i found this quote from her book which expands on that thought,  “There’s no such thing as creative people, and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear".  i think that is a most interesting idea.  sometimes i feel such a need a drive, to create.  to write, to make, to photograph, to express.  i don't always give that need a space.  i mean i started writing here more seriously and regularly because i felt little inner shoves to do it and i found that it helped me feel better somehow. i don't think i am particularly genius in what i write sometimes it's probably super dullard but i do it anway, as a practice.  and i hope it will have value at least to me.  but maybe this is why i feel better when i spend time every day writing something.  and it made me think of president uchtdorf's talk from 2008 Happiness Your Heritage,   he said, 

"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before...You might say, “I’m not the creative type. When I sing, I’m always half a tone above or below the note. I cannot draw a line without a ruler. And the only practical use for my homemade bread is as a paperweight or as a doorstop.”If that is how you feel, think again, and remember that you are spirit daughters of the most creative Being in the universe. Isn’t it remarkable to think that your very spirits are fashioned by an endlessly creative and eternally compassionate God? Think about it—your spirit body is a masterpiece, created with a beauty, function, and capacity beyond imagination.But to what end were we created? We were created with the express purpose and potential of experiencing a fulness of joy.⁴ Our birthright—and the purpose of our great voyage on this earth—is to seek and experience eternal happiness. One of the ways we find this is by creating things....You may think you don’t have talents, but that is a false assumption, for we all have talents and gifts, every one of us.⁵ The bounds of creativity extend far beyond the limits of a canvas or a sheet of paper and do not require a brush, a pen, or the keys of a piano. Creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before—colorful gardens, harmonious homes, family memories, flowing laughter...The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create. That is your opportunity in this life and your destiny in the life to come. Sisters, trust and rely on the Spirit. As you take the normal opportunities of your daily life and create something of beauty and helpfulness, you improve not only the world around you but also the world within you."

i like how he said as we create we can improve the world within.  that's a beautiful thought.  speaking of creativity, i leave you with some of my favourite shots of indie and krystal.  what i loved the most in this shoot was the capturing small moments of motherhood.  in this case it was a mom and a baby. that was the thing that was so beautiful to me.