Not My Favorite, But...

Okay, so I admit that when the church curriculum focuses on the Doctrine and Covenants I find myself lacking in enthusiasm. Maybe that's an indication that I don't know enough about it, and therefore there's no real love affair established. I can buy that. Still, it's harder to get into it.

The cool thing was, that when I started in, trying to figure out how to organize my approach, I stumbled on some interesting and enjoyable things. It was like I accidentally became interested.

I started reading in the Explanatory Introduction. When it got to the part where it talks about those, other than Joseph Smith, Jr., who received revelations that were included in the Doctrine and Covenants, I clicked on the magic links to look into it further. The next thing you know I am totally enthralled. I read the entire section. Then I click on the next one and away I go. That took care of my reading for several nights and I didn't even make it past the first couple of paragraphs in the Explanatory Introduction, for Pete's sake. In doing so, I learned quite a bit about some sections that I wasn't really familiar with. It gave me a deeper understanding and testimony of both the prophets who delivered the revelations to us and the revelations themselves. You may want to check it out yourselves!

Epiphany

While I was studying up on the lds.org online scriptures, in order to create my "ideal online scripture-study website" I began to actually discover what IS there. I found that there is quite a bit that I can do with what is already there. I discovered that I can mark the scriptures (up to 75 of them) and it will automatically save it for me. I love how I can click on the various links and go so quickly to something else. I also figured out that I can place the cursor over the footnote items and a box appears telling me what the footnote contains. That's a lot easier than actually looking it up in a footnote.

Even though I have to click through several menus to arrive at my reading spot, it's not too bad when I do it enough to become familiar with it. I can now go to my reading place quickly, if not efficiently. :)

So, by studying out how I could create my ideal, I found that after I was more familiar with the existing tools, I came to like them more. Now, I have read the Doctrine and Covenants online for three nights in a row (instead of doing sudoku) and I am taking my laptop with me to family scripture study in the mornings. (Sidenote: my scriptures were too small for me to read since I lost my glasses. With my laptop serving as my scriptures, I can increase the text size to suit my fancy.) End result? I crossed over the hump. I started actually reading and studying, and suddenly, I feel less urgency to create the fabulous, do-it-all and make it slick-as-a-whistle website that entices me to do my scripture study!

Sigh, I hate to admit these things, but there you have it.

P.S. My kids really like to sit by me at family scripture study when I am reading from my laptop. They can read from it too and it helps them stay a wee bit more interested.

Okay, so in my ideal world there's a web page where my scripture-study activities live. I have a collection of windows and links that permit me to preserve the context of my study, mark scriptures, make notes and write about my insights and track the various curricula of the church. Today, in our family scripture study I discovered that you can "mark" the scriptures and it will preserve them, up to 75 instances. In my imaginary website I would have a window that carries that function for the entire year's worth of reading.

I wonder what the components would look like...

Journal/scripture observations

Publications

Links

Scriptures

Church Magazines

Other church curriculum materials

Curriculum schedule and tracking device

The box that contains the scripture and other reading materials would have the option to be lined up side-by-side with the journal/scripture observations box. Then, I could read and write alternately with a page that presents both of those options and preserves my work to return to it and pick up right where I left off the last time I was there.

For now, I think I have some work to do to explore more carefully the websites that are available with similar features and see what I can find. To start with I will search the church's website and see how much is there that suits my purposes.

http://scriptures.lds.org/en/contents

New Year's 2009

Here I sit at 1:46 p.m. on the first day of the new year. I am so much enjoying interfacing with people on my little mac that I haven't yet had any motivation to do anything else and Chuck had to practically drag me to go eat breakfast. That was only about 30 minutes ago. You do the math. I am in my pajamas and robe and I am feeling so HAPPY. Silly silly girl.

I knew it was time for me to kick start a better scripture-study habit. So, I've conjured up the most enticing approach to the scriptures that I can imagine and see if it exists. I came up with the idea of a website where I could show up and it's like my scripture-study desktop. It has a way for me to read the scriptures, mark them and bookmark them (online) and to keep notes and write about insights and questions, a discussion forum, cool links for researching and web feeds about some of my favorite sites and forums. Hee hee. Doesn't that sound fabulous? So, then I launched into the deep and wide space of the internet. I've been tooling about ever since. Have I actually just opened the scriptures? Not yet, but I'm still considering it.

I did come across some great resources and food for thought along the way. Check these out:

http://lds.about.com/od/ldsscriptures/ss/scripture_study.htm

http:www.mormontimes.com/links_resources/?

On this last one, look for the story of the holocaust survivor who joined the church. That was a great article. There was also an awesome article about hindsight learning.