Christmas Musings

The Christmas Season, as we celebrate it in our day, has come and gone for another year.  It is a season of joyous gratitude for the birth, the life, and the Atonement of our Savior, all to often dulled by an extravagance of material pleasures and pursuits or perhaps by feelings of inadequacy or apology as we fail to measure up to the standard imposed by a material world which only very vaguely comprehends the meaning of the season.

Today, as I was reading in the works of Neal A. Maxwell, I came across these words which caused me to reflect a little more deeply on the role of the Savior in our lives and the responsibility each of us has to be a beacon of light to those around us, both to illuminate and also to warn.

"The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe  has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits, so that we may, if we will,  illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warn them as well."

By Bart

Ancestors

I recently obtained a fan chart of our family ancestors going back nine generations.  This includes grandparents on both Dad's and Mom's side of the family.  It is not totally complete, but it does include a surprising number of our ancestral grandparents.  I was so excited to get it that I had a large poster made of it.  I have since discovered a way to get copies of this chart at somewhat less than I paid for it, so if any of you would like one, it might pay to let me help you rather than do it the conventional way at Staples or Fedex/Kinko's.

You will have to click on the chart to enlarge it enough so that you can read the names and dates.  I found this to be very interesting and motivates me all the more to research and do temple work for as many of our ancestors, including grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc as I can.  I hope some of you find this interesting and worthwhile as well.

You may have to copy this picture file of the chart into another application on your computer to enlarge it enough so that you can read it well on your computer depending somewhat upon the size of your monitor.

I'm sorry if this can't be easily viewed in this format.  I had to change the file from a pdf file to a jpg file in order to insert it in to this blog post.  It actually works much better as a pdf file so if anyone is interested in this let me know and I can send you the original pdf file which will be more usable, I think.

By Bart