Being Mormon in Happy Valley

The current presidential race has shone a lot of light on Mormons, due to the fact that candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon. While the light has been shone, it hasn't all shown truths. I really don't understand what it is about the world and media that devotes almost all of its energy on tearing other people and beliefs down, whether the stuff they are saying is true or not. Most of the time it's not. What blows my mind the most is that people don't see the hypocrisy of it all. If a Mormon is around a group of non-mormons who are drinking, more often than not, they will be asked why they aren't drinking. They give their answer. And then they get harassed about it (not all the time, I'm not generalizing, but a lot of the time). Think about if the roles were reversed. That Mormon, being around a group of non-mormons drinking could ask them why the ARE drinking, and then harass them about it. They could shove their point of view down the non-mormons' throats all night long. And guess what. That Mormon would be considered arrogant, preachy, judgmental, etc. So how come it doesn't go both ways? How come people who aren't Mormons can harass Mormons about their beliefs, openly and harshly, but nobody says anything? Why is it ok for people to shove their anti-religious beliefs down Mormons throats, but when Mormons try and say what they believe they are being judgmental, un-accepting, and arrogant? I really don't get it. The hypocrisy is ridiculous. 


I read a post on the internet that said "Mormons are arrogant". Come on. Really? You're going to stereotype every single Mormon on the planet because maybe you met a handful of arrogant Mormons? I have lived in Utah Valley my whole life, so I have obviously been around my fair share of Mormons. Are some Mormons arrogant? Yes. Are all Mormons arrogant? No. Generalizations and stereotypes are ridiculous. Try not to be in the high school mentality, okay? Realize that not all people are what ONE person is. That's like saying all Hispanic people are illegal, or all Black people are criminals, or all White people are racist, etc, etc, etc. It's ridiculous. There are endless amounts of stereotypes and generalizations that are completely FALSE. 


I've heard people say that being a non-mormon in Utah sucks. Well guess what. Being a Mormon in Utah sucks too. I can imagine what it would be like to be the minority somewhere. I've grown up in an environment where the majority of the people around me have the same beliefs. It's a weird way to grow up, considering that most of the other places in the US aren't like that. Except in the South maybe....anyway. I can understand why it would be hard for non-mormons to try and fit in in Utah. Mormonism isn't just a religion in Utah, it's a culture too, because it's so condensed. I'll tell you a secret. It's hard for Mormons to fit in in Utah too. The Mormon culture is definitely unique. There are a lot of desserts involved, along with a lot of overly friendly people and pot luck dinners. There's a lot of pressure. A lot of insecurities. But most Mormons really are just trying to be good people. Sometimes Mormons might come off arrogant, because they ARE overly friendly and cheerful. It might come off fake or condescending. But guess what. Every single person in this world is just trying to live life the best way they know how. Nobodies opinions and beliefs are exactly the same. Mormons try to be friendly because the religion focuses on service and helping the people around them. Cue the enormous amounts of food. And crafts. Some Mormons ARE self righteous. But a lot aren't. 


I don't understand why people have so many negative things to say about Mormons anyway. The religion promotes lots of service, families, education, travel, morality, health, ethics, etc. None of those things sound bad to me. When there are natural disasters, Mormons are usually a huge part of the people who volunteer to help. When people are moving, Mormons usually stop by to help whether they know the person or not. If your neighbor is a Mormon and they see your sidewalk covered in snow, they usually come shovel it. Mormons donate to charity. They visit old people. They travel to 3rd world countries and try to help the people there. I'm not saying all Mormons are good people, cause some aren't. But nobody is perfect. Mormons aren't polygamists. They don't wear weird clothes or eat weird food. They don't live on compounds. They are regular people. 


I have been a Mormon my whole life, and will always be a Mormon. I am sick of people telling me that I let other people make my decisions and think for me, BECAUSE I'm Mormon. Just cause I've grown up being Mormon doesn't mean it's always been easy to be one. We all go through stages where we try to figure out what we personally believe. We question things and try to make sense of the world around us. I questioned a lot of stuff. I studied scriptures, read articles, prayed, soul searched, you know the drill. I came to believe, BY MYSELF, that I believe in the LDS church (aka Mormonism). Nobody forced me to believe it or brainwashed me. I make my own choices. I'm not saying that I don't still wonder about stuff and question stuff, but everyone does. We are all just trying to find a belief system that works for us. I am not a lemming who just follows along with everyone else. So people, STOP SAYING MORMONS DON'T MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS. We are normal freakin people like everyone else. We just believe in stuff that maybe you don't. Big deal. You can go smoke, drink until you puke, sleep around, steal, do whatever, and I don't care. I seriously don't judge. It's your life. I don't want people judging me for what I do, so I'm not going to judge anyone for what they do. It's their life, and their decisions, and if they decide to believe in Buddha, Ra, nobody, the cult leader down the street, GO FOR IT. More power to ya. I'm not going to force my beliefs on anyone, but if anyone wants to actually have an open, intellectual, respectful discussion about religion or just beliefs in general I'm completely open to it. Just don't come bash my religion and beliefs when you wouldn't want me to do that to you. Simple enough concept, I think. 


If you come to Utah, don't automatically assume everyone is judging you if you're not Mormon. Or that they're judging you BECAUSE you are Mormon and you might not live up to their standards or expectations or whatever. Live your life however it makes you happy. Don't judge other people. We are all human beings on planet earth and that is one thing that ties us all together. You know the saying "I'm only human"? Well it means we all make mistakes. We all have things we need to learn. So stop judging people because of the ways they are different from you, and try to focus on what is the same. We can all learn from each other if we just try. 


And that is the end of this rant. It didn't quite go where I was expecting it to go since I just winged it, but you get what I'm trying to say. I hope. 

If Only I Were a Child Prodigy

Today, the crazy old lady I work with showed me a video of a child prodigy artist named Akiane. She is AMAZING. She started painting when she was only six, and she is completely self taught. Her paintings are all spiritual, which is interesting since her mother was an atheist. She started painting pictures of heaven and Jesus and told her mom that they were from visions and that Jesus IS real. She had never been taught anything about religion or heaven since her mother was an atheist, so it's interesting that these images would come to her. She has full, hour long time-lapsed videos of her creating her paintings from start to finish. It's amazing. She really is an inspiration. Plus, she sells her original paintings for $5,000-$3,000,000 so that helps. I would HIGHLY recommend going to her website  by clicking HERE and looking through her gallery. It shows her paintings by the age she was when she made them and it is incredible. Here are some of my favorites:

This is a painting of Jesus entitled Prince of Peace. It takes my breath away. A little boy who came back from a coma looked through many pictures of Jesus and said none of them looked like him. When he saw this painting, he immediately recognized him as Jesus and said this is what he looks like. I heard that from the crazy lady so who knows if it's true or not, but it's a good story. 

This poem, entitled Prince of Peace, was written to go along with this painting of Jesus. 

Perhaps I wanted to catch it
perhaps not

But one morning
an eagle dropped a diamond

And right then
with my faulty brush
full of my own hair
I wanted to paint

I wanted to paint the wings-
Too late - they flew away
I wanted to paint a flower
Too late - it withered

That night the rain
was running after me
Each drop of rain
showed God's face
His face was everywhere
On homes and on me

I wrung out the love
to make the red

I wrung out the stumps
to make the brown

I wrung out the trust
to make the pink

I wrung out my own eyes
to make the blue

I wrung out the seaweed
to make the green

I wrung out the nightly pain
to make the black

I wrung out my grandmother's hair
to make the gray

I wrung out my visions
to make the violet

I wrung out the truth
to make the white

Today I want to paint God's face
IT'S NOT TOO LATE !

This photo doesn't do the painting justice but it's the best one I could find. This is called Forbidden Fruit. The description Akiane gives for this painting was beautiful. Read it below. 

...One morning I woke up earlier than usual, and right away I decided to paint, but I could not find any canvas in my studio. My family was still asleep, so quietly, still in my pajamas, I searched my art closets and found one small canvas that I'd worked on a few years ago, but later gessoed it in black.

After my prayer I began painting a young woman's portrait. next to a branch of fruit. Suddenly I felt God say, blend all the races, because this is Eve, the mother of all mankind.

Right then and there, I understood the meaning:
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is full of forbidden fruit: red for the knowledge of evil, the green for the knowledge of good. It was created to be tempting, fragrant and easy to be picked. Although the fruit resembles the grapes, it was not.

At first, Eve thinks that she will gain wisdom by biting into the fruit of knowledge, but unexpectedly she finds the deception as the red blood of suffering drips from the green fruit. The knowledge of good and evil is simply too much to understand and experience for a human, and now Eve is looking up to God for forgiveness and help...

This is her self-portrait called Co-Creation

This is a portrait of Mary and baby Jesus.

I painted Mary in a silky blue robe surrounded by a background palette of cerulean, cobalt and Persian blue. This is how I interpreted the vision of baby Jesus and his beautiful young mother. The robe connects both of them as if there were one.

Mary is the symbol of love, warmth, affection, tenderness and devotion. Her story is the story of love and faith.

Mary with her tender love embraced Jesus at birth, embraced him on the Cross and embraced him on his resurrection. That is why the lower hand in a shadow is her witnessing the crucifixion, and the upper hand in light is her witnessing both the birth and the resurrection.

The quality of pictures on her website are a lot better than the ones I downloaded off Google Images so I would recommend going to her website to look at them. She has more portraits, landscapes, poems, etc. and they aren't all obviously religious. GO CHECK IT OUT. You won't regret it. 

I Am Very Lucky

These last few weeks have been very eye opening for me. They have been hard, but I am grateful to have gone through what I have gone through. I feel happier than I've been in a while, which gives me hope for the future. I feel like it will only get better from here, and I will only get better. The trials I have been through have already pushed me onto a better path and I know it is God's way of pointing me in the direction I need to go. For that I feel very grateful and blessed to have His guidance. I don't mean to get preachy but I recognize God's role in my life and know I have Him to thank for everything I have. The good, and what sometimes appears to be the bad. In all reality though, all the bad is for our good. Sometimes it's hard to realize that, but it's true. 


I'm in love with Rascal Flatts right now. Always have been, but I always get more obsessed with country music in the summer. Here are some of my favorite songs of theirs right now:

No Reins

Mayberry

Banjo

Here are some quotes that I love right now:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." (The Serenity Prayer)

That quote has really really made a difference in my life. A lot of the time, people are unhappy because they feel like their life is out of control. When you actually think about the situations you are in and realize you can't control them, it brings acceptance and a sense of peace in some way. At least for me. And if you realize you can control it, then you are in the power position to change whatever it is that is making you unhappy. Either way, you can be happy no matter what is happening to you. Everything happens for a reason. 

Proverbs 3: 5-6

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. 

That is my favorite scripture of all time. 

I stumbled upon this quote by Marilyn Monroe and ordered a vinyl lettering of it and put it on my wall:

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” 

Also, now that school is over I have had time to work on my art. It makes me happy :) I will probably start posting some of my new stuff soon. I really need to get out and take some more pictures since I haven't done that in far too long. Keep an eye out :) Hopefully I can make it worth your wait. 

The Golden Rule

Alright. I need to get something off my chest that has been bothering me for a while. I am going to discuss equality. I want to start off by saying that I am completely accepting of all races and all religions. I want to make that very clear before I say what I need to say. I am not racist in the slightest and I feel that everyone has the right to choose what religion, if any, they want to be a part of. If you choose not to have a religion that's great too because that's your choice and I don't judge you in the slightest. You know why? Because I don't want anyone judging me for how I choose to live my life. It's called the Golden Rule people, do unto others as you would have them do. 

I am getting pretty sick of everyone trashing mormons. We are not brainwashed. We are not a cult. We do not practice polygamy. We are, in fact, Christians despite popular belief. We have our own minds and we do what we think is right. We don't simply do things because the church says its right and follow along blindly. We have our agency and we use it to make up our own minds. My sister is living out in Oregon right now and people are constantly asking her why she doesn't smoke and stuff like that. It's not because she thinks she's better than anyone because she doesn't smoke and they do. It's because she has made a personal choice not to, and people should respect that. Those people don't want her telling them not to smoke and openly judge them for it, so they should stop judging her for not doing and continually pressure her to smoke. It's ridiculous how so many people don't see that they are doing to other people exactly what they complain about people doing to them. It infuriates me actually. STOP BEING HYPOCRITES!!!

The second thing I need to vent about is racism. It is getting pretty old how people are racist against Caucasians, yet it isn't seen as racism. There is Black History Month every year. There were Latinos in Action at my high school. And there are constantly movies released that have an all African American cast. Is there a Caucasian History Month? No. Because people would get sued until the day they died for suggesting it. Are there Caucasians in Action groups in schools? No. Because that would be "racist towards all other races" according to society. Are there movies that are purposefully made with an all Caucasian cast? No. Because that would be "discriminatory" and "unacceptable". I don't get why it's okay for people to be racist against Caucasians. We are still a race, and people are discriminatory against us. People talk about wanting equality all the time, but often they are the ones causing the inequality. 

Anyway, that's all. 

Not Everyone Is a Jerk

It's times like these that I have to remind myself that not everyone is a jerk. Today it just feels like everyone I care about is getting screwed over in some way or another by other people in my life. It makes me so angry. All I want to do is make things right, and help the people I care about be happy again. But certain jerks keep making that pretty difficult. If people stopped being so selfish and started caring more for other people, the world would be a better place. 

I know it might sound kinda dumb to say WWJD (aka What Would Jesus Do), but I actually think that to myself sometimes. Jesus would never be an inconsiderate jerk, so neither should we.

All I gotta say is these jerks better stop hurting the people I care about or I might flip out on them.

So here's a goal I'm gonna put out to anyone who might be reading this: Instead of focusing so much on what you want and how you feel, stop for two seconds and try to put you in another person's shoes and focus on how they are feeling as well. It just might change the way you act, in a good way. I think everyone could be a little bit happier that way.

Scriptures are More Interesting When They are Artsy

This is sweet.

It is the Pocket Canons series, with book jackets designed by Angus Hyland. Basically it is each book of the bible separated into its own book. 

I would like to get it someday :)

Just a Couple of Bikers in a Barn

So......my latest Illustration project was to create a collage to go along with an article. My teacher emailed us six articles to choose from, and I chose one about these bikers and cowboys who go to church in a barn. 

Here is what I came up with:

The building in the back is the Harley Davidson building in Lindon which fit, cause it looks like a barn. 

The picture of the guy, other than the edits I made, is from the Sons of Anarchy t.v. show and I give them full credit for that so I don't want anyone trying to sue me for copyright or whatever.

And the cross/wings design on the back is from a random Google search so there ya go. I edited everything though, and the whole thing was done on photoshop. 

This is one of my favorite projects, just cause there were so many things I could do with the subject matter. I also really liked the color scheme, I think it fits together well. 

Anyways, enjoy :)

There's No Easier Way to Say This: I Love God

I usually don't get too personal on here but this is something I need to say. I've gotten pretty lazy when it comes to my religion and my testimony. I have never stopped believing everything I've been taught my whole life, but I've stopped acting and thinking the way I should. It's time to step up my game.

It has recently hit me very strongly that I'm happiest when I'm doing what I know is right, even if it just seems like little things. I just read my scriptures for the first time in too long and I already feel a million times more positive and calm. I started praying again and I feel a million times happier. These aren't huge changes I'm making but they are making huge changes in my outlook and my attitude. 

My favorite part I read today was Enos 1:15 where it said "Whatsoever thing ye shall ask in faith, believing that ye shall receive in the name of Christ, ye shall receive it." I believe this with all my heart. 

It's funny, for the past like, 5 years of my life I had completely convinced myself that Utah was NOT the place for me. But the more I see and hear of other places I realize how lucky I am to be in Utah. I'm grateful to be in such a clean, safe place even if at times it seems like a sheltered bubble. 

I'm starting to feel truly happy for the first time in a very long time and I have God to thank for that. I would be nothing without him. 

This is one of my favorite church paintings.

"Lost and Found" by Greg Olsen.