One Touch With the Finger of His Love

 We spent the first two weeks of February in San Francisco, welcoming a brand new grandson to our family. Little William Wade Hollan entered the world on February 1, 2021. I looked at our daughter Jordan as the time approached. She was achey and exhausted, hadn't been sleeping well, and was just so ready to get the show on the road, so to speak. Labor and delivery, as all women know, was no cake walk either, but went relatively smoothly. There was inexpressible pain, and such taxing effort, and then suddenly, here is this new human that's forever a part of your life. And none of the symptoms of pregnancy remain. There's no heartburn, no nausea, whatever was bothering you is also swept away in that delivery. It's a miracle.

Talking to Jordan about this feat of nature reminded me of when I delivered her, a little over 26 years ago. It had been a really rough pregnancy. I was literally drinking water a teaspoon at a time in an effort to keep enough liquid down to prevent going to the hospital with hyperemesis and dehydration. Our brother and sister-in-law would stop by, and I would beg them: "If I EVER talk about having another baby, will you please remind me how hard this is?" Then, a few months later, after a relatively easy delivery, I held her in my arms, and said to my husband, "She's so sweet! Let's have another!" Just like that. 

In our reading of the Doctrine and Covenants two weeks ago I discovered the perfect line of scripture to go along with this conundrum of childbirth. We were studying two chapters of scripture, sections 12 and 13, about the restoration of the priesthood. In some supplemental readying at the end of Joseph Smith History there's a beautifully descriptive passage about the experience, written by Oliver Cowdery, who was Joseph Smith's scribe.

These were days never to be forgotten...

What joy! what wonder! what amazement!

I shall not attempt to paint to you the feelings of this heart, nor the majestic beauty and glory which surrounded us on this occasion;

Oliver then goes on to describe some of the persecution they had suffered, all the deceptions and falsehoods that exist in the world, then follows with this most beautiful sentence fragment...

--but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind.

There it is! That notion of the resultant joy making all the previous struggles completely worth it, to the point that the memory of the pain is swept away. He then concludes with this phrase that captures exactly how I feel:

I shall ever look upon this expression of the Savior’s goodness with wonder and thanksgiving...

If that doesn't describe the moment of becoming a grandmother perfectly, I don't know what does!

Creating a Sacred Space

Years ago, when I was in the presidency of our children's organization at church, I was assigned to make a decoration for the bulletin board at the front of the room. These bulletin boards are designed to help the children focus on a theme for the year, with words and pictures to beautify and liven up the room, and give the children something attractive to look at when their little minds start to wander.

Well, as a graphic designer and a fine artist, the very idea of a bulletin board kind of makes my skin crawl. I don't want to spend my time cutting out construction paper letters or corrugated cardboard scalloped borders when I can do that in a fraction of the time on my computer. More important, I don't want to create something busy and cluttered when there is real peace to be found.

I decided to create something truly beautiful for the room that would engender reverence--not by distracting the children with dozens of words and photos but by creating a painting of a beautiful, peaceful place--the sacred grove. I recruited a talented young friend, Katie Hamblin (now Kate Baxter), and we made a plan.

I bought big tubes of acrylic paint. I assembled photos and sketches, and then bought a piece of canvas big enough to cover the entire bulletin board. Katie and I rolled it out on my kitchen floor and made our initial drawing. But there were kids and a dog running through the kitchen, so we ultimately decided the best place to do the actual painting was in the cultural hall at the church.

So we schlepped everything over to the church the next time we arranged to work. We got the canvas rolled out and taped down, all the paints arranged and got to work, happily talking and painting. All of a sudden we heard the most horrific noises. Rattling in the rafters. Pounding on the roof. Shaking. We paused, hoping it would stop. But it didn't. Terrified, we grabbed everything and ran out of the building, expecting to see dark storm clouds and thunder and lightning. Instead, outside it was completely still. We looked for repairmen on the roof. Nothing. After we stopped to catch our breath we realized what forces were at work. It was very clear the adversary did not want this painting to happen.

Metaphorically, we had experienced the same kind of resistance Joseph Smith initially encountered when he went into the woods to pray. The next time we went to work at the church we said a prayer before we started. (I don't know why we didn't think of that before!) We were able to finish our mural to cover the bulletin board in peace. And the primary children had something beautiful in the room to remind them that you can pray to heavenly Father anytime, anywhere, and he will hear you.

That was over ten years ago. The painting we created is still in the room, with the canvas stretched on  framing boards and hung on the south wall.

Since then I have both encountered and created many sacred spaces. Places so beautiful it takes your breath away. Places so peaceful it could only come from God. Places where God has spoken directly to me. They are as banal as the chenille blanket on the bed where I knelt as a child. As grand as Capitol Reef National Park, where twice I've spent a week teaching students how to paint. As quiet as a trail alongside a stream where I walked in the early morning with a friend. As illuminating as the light streaming through a leaded-glass window in an otherwise dark parish church.

My question to you now is this: Where are your sacred spaces? Where have you gone to talk to God? Where has God answered your cries?  Where do you feel a divine presence? Respond with a comment, a story, a picture, anything to represent your sacred space.

Peace At Any Price

Liz Shropshire was one of my first close friends after moving to Los Angeles. She was studying music at USC at the same time my husband, Jeff, was in USC's cinema school. We instantly found lots of common ground...music, service, movies, and adventure. Together we sat side by side frantically copying orchestra parts for an assignment due, we ventured south of Los Angeles to visit the famous Watts towers, we served in the youth center at this beautiful Santa Monica site, a bastion of peace for us both, and one day we even helped rescue an old woman whose apartment was on fire in Liz's building. We've been through a lot together.

Amazingly, each of these stand-out activities that originally bonded us as friends now stands as a symbol of something bigger in both of our lives.

• I wasn't a music major, I knew only piano-lessons level theory, and I'd never copied parts before in my life. But somehow Liz believed in me and helped me believe I could do it too. She had the big vision. I just contributed my part. We did it together, and it worked.

• When we climbed and took pictures of ourselves on the Watts Towers, little did we know that the riots that tore apart the community of Watts in the 1960s would repeat themselves as the Rodney King riots in the 1990s, and our USC apartments were inside the first (most dangerous) curfew zone. We were survivors of a major outbreak of violence.

• Working at the youth center taught us not only to love teaching, and to love working with children, but that beautiful sacred space taught us what peace really is, what it feels like when you're standing on holy ground, and what it feels like inside your heart.

• The woman didn't even realize her apartment was on fire—something had combusted inside her kitchen cabinet—until Liz smelled smoke and pounded on her door.  I wonder how many other people smelled smoke and walked on by, but Liz is never afraid to act. She has a skillset I deeply admire—the ability to sense a need, and ACT—calmly and responsibly.

So it shouldn't surprise you that in 1999 Liz heard an NPR story about children in Kosovo, innocent victims in a war-torn country, and felt moved to act. That story tugged at something deep and compassionate inside her with such power that she decided to sell everything she had and buy a plane ticket to Kosovo. She didn't really have a plan in place at the time. She had a music degree and a ton of teaching experience in some rough, inner-city Los Angeles schools. And some loose ties to a service organization there. A Los Angeles friend encouraged her to "do what you do best" and take along some musical instruments, for the heck of it. By the time of her departure she had raised enough funds to arrive in Kosovo with $5000 worth of musical instruments to take to the children there. The Shropshire Music Foundation was born: Teaching Peace Through Music.


Liz has devoted everything she has over the past 16 years to teaching children peace—first in Kosovo, and later opening programs in Uganda and Northern Ireland—with a hope to expand to benefit the Syrian refugees in 2016. She is, without a doubt, one of my biggest heroes.

Last month Liz was in town for a conference. I dropped everything when I heard she was in town. I hadn't seen her in person since she was packing her bags for Kosovo in 1999. I went to listen to her speak, then we took her out to dinner with some friends the following night so our kids could also hear her amazing stories—how little children who used to wake up screaming every night because of the horrors they've witnessed now sleep through the night because of the soothing power of music;—how Ugandan youths who were turned into soldiers at age 5 are now learning music and leadership, and the true meaning of power and peace;—how 95% of their youth volunteers go on to attend college;—how Liz is guided by a Higher Power that continues to open doors and work miracles. It was one of the most motivating and inspiring evenings we've spent in a long time.

I tell parts of Liz's story on our latest Living Room show, "Peace, Be Still." There's a link at the top of the page where you can play it right from this site. Hear about Nelson Mandela's widow, Graça Machel, and how her research backs up Liz's programs—that children heal best through the arts, and teens heal best in a teaching capacity. Liz and her children across the globe are living proof.



In the past month we've seen so much violence and disruption, drawing ever closer to home. It becomes more and more apparent how desperately we all need peace on earth, and peace in our individual homes and hearts.

"Peace at any price" is a saying my mother-in-law uses to encourage us to let go of pride and selfishness in favor of peace within the family. Liz has taken that a step further and has literally given up everything she has—including a place to live—in order to work for peace. To her there is literally no pricetag too high to teach and further the cause of peace.

Our family has chosen the Shropshire Music Foundation as our charity of choice this giving season. I may not be able to do what Liz does, but I can help her teach and spread peace. We are donating a portion of all our online shopping through smile.amazon.com. And we are looking at other ways to contribute financially and in kind. I hope you'll join us.