Give Thanks...Share Your Talents

 Today, as I waited for the second hour of church to end and choir practice to start, I circled the Relief Society room that doubles as the Stake Center's baptismal room. The room is similar to others with framed artwork lining the walls.

I noticed a piece on one wall, on the north side. It wasn't the subject of colorful flowers in a vase that caught my attention, but the plague underneath. A plaque is there to draw attention to something. It tells the viewer there is something special with this specific work of art.

I walked over, read the engraved plaque.

The plaque worked. It caught my attention, drew me in, and gave me information that I would otherwise not have known.

This particular piece was created and donated by Hazel Rogers Call to the Relief Society of the Garland II Ward. Since I'm relatively new to the area, I have no idea who Hazel Rogers Call is, but the beauty of the situation is I don't need to know anything about her to have the artwork tell its story.

What I do know about her is that she was a giving person. The plaque doesn't tell me if Hazel actually created the artwork...I'm guessing she did. If she's the artist, then it's even more personal. If she didn't, well, she at least gave something to the building she didn't have to give. A selfless act.

Through the large church original paintings and copies of famous artwork hang in rooms and along hallways. They're all special, but for a certain piece hanging in the Garland Stake Center Relief Society, Sister Call's donation means a little bit more.

I'm grateful for Hazel for sharing her talents, be it creating or donating or both. Thanks, Hazel, for the gift.

Give Thanks...For Church

 It's Sunday. For some, it's the best day of the week. For other's, it's a bittersweet day because it's one day closer to Monday and returning to the grind.

I suppose I go back-and-forth between the two extremes.

Growing up, we went to church on Sundays, every Sunday. I can't imagine it was easy for my mom to get three children, three young children ready and take them each week. I remember we'd sit on the small pews, left side, closer to the front than the back. Those benches on the sides were not big, but we all seemed to fit. How many hours I'd look at the wood grains in the pews, see the paint flaking on the window seals, stare at the ceiling and follow the lines in the patterns...

And that mural. 

I stare at that thing for hours and hours and hours, imaging those kids sitting in supposedly same benches almost one-hundred years earlier.

So many hours in that building, and not just Sundays.

Mine is a story shared by millions, a childhood where religion is a building block on which a life begins. The past couple of years have been different. A few years ago churches--and pretty much everything else--were closed. Even if we wanted to go to church, it was not an option. I think that experienced changed us both collectively and individually. 

These days, I walk the halls of a church I'm still figuring out. It's full of people I mostly don't recognize...but it's still church, still a place of worship. I'm grateful I can attend, grateful so many sacrificed so much to build it and to maintain it. 

Years ago, as I sat on those hard benches (without padding...), I used to look at the ceiling, the floors, the walls. We had no smartphones back then. I wonder if the kids who attend the meetings now do the same thing. Do they stare at the ceilings, the floors, the walls, the benches?

Probably.