Perspective....What it means to me

Two of my favorite bloggers, have lately written posts that have made me think. Mike posted a link to an article about context that I think more people need to read and understand. Michelle, on the other hand, wrote a post about Stake Conference. I will address the context issue in another post, at another time. But really, you should read the article. Today, for now, I want to talk about perspective.
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I came into this world with a pretty strong sense of right and wrong. Many issues that people see as "gray area" are plain black and white to me. I have never had trouble expressing my opinion or my view -- and held my beliefs to be "right." Then I married. My husband is without doubt an educated, intelligent man. He is well-read, well-spoken, thoughtful, and wise. We had been married perhaps one month when we got into a rather deep discussion one night over dinner. I was explaining to Daniel about a situation that had transpired at my workplace and what seemed to me to be the obvious problem and solution. He was quiet as I finished my story. Then he said, "Well, that's all true, I'm sure, from your perspective."

What? "No," I recall saying, "It's just true." He laughed. We then had one of the most memorable conversations of my life, wherein my husband began to teach me about perspective.

As our family grew, so did my perspective. Having five children has taught me that I know less than I ever thought I did, and furthermore has widened my perspective as I try to help others that my heart loves so dearly but whose thoughts and actions are private and as unique as the children themselves. Moving repeatedly has helped open my perspective as well. Westerners approach some things so very differently than Easterners. Neither is right or wrong in many cases -- they just approach from a different perspective. Instead of becoming more narrow minded and closed as I've aged, instead, I find my perspective grows to a wider angle lens than ever and the pictures I take with my mind are more varied and beautiful than the limited perspective I saw with my childish eye.
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So, Michelle wrote about stake conference. When I was a little girl, growing up in California, stake conference was not my favorite meeting, but in some ways it wasn't so bad. It was shorter than regular church and it was always a wonderful treat to find and get to sit with my Grandpa and Grandma Farnsworth, who attended another ward in my stake. Grandma always smelled like lavender and she had butterscotch lifesavers in her purse. I hate butterscotch lifesavers, but anything coming from my Grandma Farnsworth tastes good. Grandpa always had minty breath. He would kiss my ears and say funny things. Grandma would tell me to count the number of hymns written by so and so or think up other diverting games to help me stay quiet and entertained. Our stake center was easy to get to and had a parking lot with ample parking. Although it was a big stake, we could always find a seat.

I grew up. Stake conference in Utah, where I chose to go to college, was no big deal. The stake center was about the same distance away as the chapel -- or maybe a mile farther away than our regular meetinghouse. Yes, after we had Emma, wrangling a baby in a longer than usual meeting was less than delightful, but it wasn't awful either. It just took a more skillfully packed diaper bag.

Then, we moved to Philadelphia. Getting to stake conference was quite difficult. The building was an hour car drive in each direction. A clever mother had to pack and prepare 2 meals plus a diaper bag fit for a trans-continental airplane ride. Although, the stake center in the suburbs offered plenty of parking and seating. Because we were on the very edge of the stake boundary, we literally knew no one in the stake outside our ward -- so there was no other socializing to be had. It was just an all day event for that two hour meeting.

But stake conference in New York... stake conference here is another experience altogether. When we first moved here, our first Sunday in the ward was stake conference. Because there are 11 units in our stake, half of which are Spanish speaking, the breadth of the meeting is wide. But our stake doesn't have a stake center. Our stake offices are in Scarsdale, a village we neighbor. But that church building is not big enough for any stake meeting and the parking situation there is dismal. So, we have stake conference in the Bronx. The adult session, on Saturday night, is like manna from heaven. The talks are so good, so well prepared and so relevant, to miss the adult session is to miss blessings poured out directly. But to get to that session let me tell you what I go through: Daniel must leave for the priesthood training session hours before, so on my own (as usual) I ready 5 children for a night without mom. Then I get the babysitter, who usually has to be a non-member (like finding a four leaf clover). Then I drive to the Bronx -- about 30 minutes and endeavor to park. If the parking garage in the bottom of the church building is still able to take more cars, I park there, usually requiring backwards maneuvering of the car into a ridiculously tight space. Daniel is generally helping with the parking of cars in that garage (because he's nice like that) so I leave him in the parking garage while I go try to ferret out some seats for us. If I'm lucky, I find us seats in the pews -- next to English speakers so that I don't have to listen to the translation of the entire meeting. Maybe Daniel will make it upstairs to sit with me before half of the meeting is over, as he has to often wait for the late stragglers down in the parking garage. After the meeting, we have to wait a long time for our turn to get out of the garage. After driving home, I have to take the babysitter home and pay her -- we have to pay about 12. an hour here. So, that's the evening session.

Now, the next day, we have the general session of stake conference. This session also requires a lot of management. To get a seat, we have to leave our house an hour and a half before the session is supposed to start, if we are driving. If we are taking the train, we have to leave around 2 hours before to give us time to walk up to the building from the train station with 5 kids. All the same parking issues apply as did the night before, because of course there are even more people attending the general session. The building we meet in is not particularly clean. So, letting a baby crawl around is not an option. Keeping the one year old and two year old quiet for the whole process is not possible. After all the time in the car, they don't want to sit on a bench for hours. But, Daniel and I take turns.

I called my mom once after one of these stake conference experiences. I wanted her to tell me that going to stake conference was not important. I wanted her to agree with my assessment that it was all just too hard and not at all what the Lord intended for me. "It's just too much," I whined into the phone. "Yes," she responded, "It sounds hard. But you got there by car, and safely didn't you? No one had to walk. No lives were lost along the way. And was there spiritual food to be had?"

"Well, yes..." I drawled, "Yes I guess there was. Okay mom, I can see where this is going."

Mmmm, perspective.