I teach a Sunday School class that sometimes turns into a type of Spiritual Triage Unit. Last week our lesson was on the Millennium. That term is used by many different philosophies and religions but none are as unique as the view of the LDS church. To us the Millennium is a time of 100% commitment to carry out the requirements of Jesus and his Church. He will reign on the earth for the Millennium and in the end, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ. The buzz words are “will” and “every” and people wonder the why and how of such a statement. We have to keep in mind that our “life” began in the pre-mortal period of our existence, and now we are in the Mortal period of our existence and the post mortal is the time when we will receive our reward for our obedience to the eternal principles that God himself laid down in the pre-mortal realm, and we all were there and we agreed to it. The expectation that we will return to live with God is universal and the rules and laws to accomplish this are set down in the scriptures. The vicissitudes of mortality get in the way and we lose our perspective. One of my students literally fell apart when the question was posed “Is there something you would really really like to know? Something you would love to ask God to explain to you?” She dissolved in tears and triage had to take over. It seems that her little daughter has had to have two open heart surgeries and this lady cannot understand why it had to happen to her little daughter. It is the problem of suffering that has pervaded the philosophical and religious forums for centuries. To help her feel confident in God and his eternal plan, I abandoned the lesson on the conditions expected in the millennium and concentrated on helping her to understand the love of God, the need for trials in our lives and the promised outcome for all of us who follow the teachings of Jesus.
It is not easy to teach a class that has one member hurting so much and responding in such a manner, but it is very spiritual in nature and if I was able to meet her needs of the moment, then the class was a success.
We got our results back this week and two folders failed. Our triage at this point is to not be totally discouraged, but to go to it and re-do the work. One was for out of focus and one was for blurring. The out of focus I can understand, but blurring? Well, we are working with stationary books – not working with the moving cradle and since blurring has to do with movement, then how did we move the book so that we got a failed folder for blurring? The out of focus may be the last book we did before we decided to keep the surface of the book level with the camera, and we do that by passing a spirit level over the book every 5 pages and adjusting it to level, and by doing a focus every 50 pages so that the depth of field is within range. We only had 4 days this week to work, so we only have 15 folders to turn in. The most recent books have been only 200 pages whereas the big books have been as much as 800 pages.
It has been very very cold these past couple of days and the ice has built up on the river but not completely covered it over. It snowed about 3 inches yesterday but not enough to cause problems. Today is expected to be in the 40degree range, so the ice does not have a chance to become solid from bank to bank under that condition. In the paper today, they were bewailing the fact of no snow – nothing for the snowboarders to play in, no cross country skiing (too bad for those men on the rolly blade skiis practicing for cross country on the roads of Gardiner), no ski lifts in operation, no people getting their snow playing equipment waxed and re-ground or whatever they do and so the ski shops are hurting, the ski slopes are hurting and no outdoor hockey games on the ponds.
At the Archives, they have had a massive clean out of obsolete documents. I guess after so many years they have to reduce the holdings of non historical documents and so this was the week. There were seven oversized wheeled garbage cans filled to capacity with hanging files and their contents. These were all headed to the shredder. I wonder how the shredder handles metal fasteners and hanging file metal pieces. Perhaps it is a shredder that will eat just about anything – must be a heavy duty thing if that is the case – nothing like the namby pamby thing sold by Best Buy or Staples for home use! It must have produced a massive amount of shredded paper and I wonder what they do with such amounts as big as this lot must have produced.
Peter, whose office is on the first floor (underground in this facility – our floor is the third floor and is at ground level), does his best to sneak into our room to see how far he can get before we become aware of him. Yes, digitizing does become all absorbing – mind, body and spirit – and we do not detect him sometimes till he is well into the room. He loves to play word games and the word today was sneak. He asked if it was snuck, or sneeked or snack, or snickered or even snockered. How did we ever get to snockered? Such is the fun of word games. I can pretty much tell when Peter walks in the hall way because he walks on his heels - it makes a distinctive sound on the floor - much like someone wearing moccasins - but I think that the soles on his shoes are just well worn and perhaps thin but made of rubber like material....hence the distinctive sound.
The biggest problem of cold weather is Hat Hair. I am going to have to get used to having Hat Hair for the next two months or so. My hair is so thin already that to have hat hair for that period of time is going to be a trial I will have to get used to.
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