How Hollow Can Also Be Happy

In high school, they made me read poetry. They made me learn lines and stanzas and rhyming and free verse, but they never taught me how to like poetry. They never convinced me that I could love it, either. Just when I believed that poetry would be the bane of my love for literature, I found a poet whose broken style and dark imagery suited my taste perfectly. That poet is well known, but special to me: T. S. Eliot.  

Oxford Dictionaries Blog

Peace in Passing

Nina "Nan" Johnston

Life is filled with experiences that mold us into the interesting creatures we become. Through these experiences we are changed -for the bad or for the better and it is often our choice. I had one such occurrence and was faced with a decision to make. This choice was heavily influenced by a song I happened upon whose lyrics, written by David Warner, changed my life forever.

Let peace then still the strife,
The loneliness and grief,
Come still the piercing silence of passing. 

She left us on Mother's Day. I'll never forget that day as long as I live. I was heart-broken that my own children would never know her like I did.  I hated that they would have no memories that included her home, her warmth, her light.  They would never know her cooking, her laugh, or her smile.  A part of me, of who I was and what had shaped me, was gone.

Oceans of Adventure

I’ve been staring at the edge of the water

‘Long as as I can remember, never really knowing why

 

Thus sings newest Disney Princess Moana as she stares at the ocean from the shores of her home island. Moana the film, (definitely one of the top ten best movies ever produced by Disney) hit theatres just one month after I returned home from serving my mission to Canada. As most individuals in the church are aware, recently returned missionaries are awkward and have no clue how to move forward with life. I was no exception to this rule. Though I do feel that I’ve made a lot of progress since then! (I’m actually still pretty awkward and have no idea what I’m doing with my life, but at least I’m not in quite as deplorable a situation as I once was). Anyways, the point is that Moana is, in many ways, exactly the same as your typical recently returned Mormon missionary.