and that is beautiful

may has flown by undocumented. it's june and i'm in my yellow dress, rose in hair because that's the kind of thing that is done in june.  the thing about trees in june is that they put on airs. it was just in april that they were naked and bare for everyone to see. we all saw them get their tiny neon new leaves. we know they were nuding about all winter! and yet in june they act like, "oh we've always had leaves. this is how it always is." trees. pfft. i see your gaslighting ways.

i haven't been able to fast for a while. i need to eat something with my meds. i was up early this morning. preparing to teach sunday school (substitute) and after a while i stopped to have a peanut butter toast and pop the pills. and i was thinking about fasting. and i thought, well i don't have to eat a lot. i could just eat half of this toast, and so that's what i did. and that's how i fast now.  it gave me more of a feeling of fasting. congrats to me.

but really it was congrats to me because i was sitting in sacrament meeting receiving so much light and goodness as the things i had been studying for the lesson percolated in my mind and heart. i don't know how to describe it. it was revelation and it was sweet. i kept tearing up.

one thing i was thinking about was the sacrament because the lesson covered the last supper and the institution of the sacrament. i usually ponder the sacrament hymn or the sacrament prayer during sacrament, but this time i was thinking about some of the things i studied while preparing the lesson. about the bread being broken, like Jesus' body, and about how Jesus is the bread of life and living water. if we come to him we will not hunger or thirst but we will feast and delight in fatness (2nephi 9:50-51).  how i look for ways to satiated my hungers that never satisfy, but coming to Christ fills me up in the most beautiful way. and why we eat the bread (his body) and drink the water (his blood) to remember him. and i thought we become one with him. we put him into our bodies, and become new creatures in Christ. it is all part of being born again, taking his name becoming his sons and his daughters. it is internalizing the atonement. someone in the class later said it is accepting the atonement--receiving it into our bodies. it's beautiful.

brother suryani quoted a moody blues song in his testimony. it's called the balance while he was quoting this part of it: 

After he had journeyed
And his feet were sore, he was tired
He came upon an orange grove
And he rested
And he lay in the cool
And while he rested, he took to himself an orange and tasted it
And it was good

And he felt the Earth to his spine and he asked
And he saw the tree above him
And the stars
And the veins in the leaf
And the light
And the balance
And he saw magnificent perfection
Whereon he thought of himself in balance
And he knew he was

i was thinking about roses. i have a rose bush. they are climbing roses and their colour is exquisite to me. i get lost in the perfection of their colour. the colours of my roses touch a deep well of joy in me. one of those roses was in my hair, and someone had brought roses from their garden. they were on the stand. they are so gorgeous and perfect and glorious in the artistry of their creation. and i thought about them while brother suryani was speaking. and i thought God's creations are so marvelously, shatteringly, heart-breakingly, lovely and just so divinely perfect. and yet his greatest creation is us. me and you. with all of our imperfections and uglinesses to ourselves and each other. little children in understanding, slow to remember and quick to be unkind. but he grows us like the most tender gardener with faith in what we will become. he loves us just as we are and washes our dirty feet and makes us clean every whit. he nips off our dead bits and encourages us to blossom. he is in the act of creating us still and we will be more exquisite than the most exquisite rose under his masterful hand.

and that is so beautiful.

ps jesaidy is the first person to notice that i got my hair fixed and that it is more curly and defined. she said that is how she does hair and how with curly hair you need lift! she gets it.