Four years ago, I lost my daughter, Penny, in a tragic accident.

The cliché is that a death of a loved one put your faith to the test

and why this may be technically true.

The actual experience is far more devastating than this little catch phrase lets on the weeks and months that followed my daughter's death. I desperately sought some kind of real, even tangible connection with her. I believe that if I could obtain this, that this would be the path back to the light.

I had friends and family that rallied with me, that encouraged me.

They told me, You'll feel Penny, you'll feel her, you'll feel God, you'll feel something. But her death had wrecked me. And I felt nothing.

I believe that the Sunday School answers of Read your scriptures, say your prayer, go to church, were inspired and true.

Yet I was doing those things and I was doing those things very earnestly.

Yeah. I was feeling nothing.

I had a sense that a critical aspect of spirituality was missing,

but I didn't know how to be inspired or guided anymore. I was lost.

Meanwhile, in the midst of this, my husband was also searching. He was looking for greater understanding , deeper knowledge, deeper connection, deeper meaning.

His searching had led him to question his faith,

to question the church and even its history.

One night he decided that he couldn't keep quiet about this anymore and that he would just lay it all on me.

Well, if you can imagine, this conversation did not go very well.

And in short, he told me that there was too many holes in the church that could couldn't be plugged up

and that he was seriously drifting.

So my situation was this I had lost my daughter.

I believe the only way back to her,

the only way to be with her again was to fiercely live the gospel as taught from the pulpit.

Yet now my husband was blocking our eternal progression by seeking answers outside of the church. I had lost my daughter. I was losing my husband.

We weren't doing very well. And according to my belief system.

I was losing my eternal family. Where do you go from this? What do you do?

I searched. I was doing the Sunday school answers. I was reading. I was I was doing everything I was supposed to. And I had some really big questions like, what does it mean that families can be together forever? I couldn't find the answer in a non fluffy way.

My husband had deep questions about literal interpretations of the scriptures or deep seated questions about the nature of God.

And we couldn't get him answered. My whole life I have worked with formulas.

I don't know what it is. I've seen formulas lay out in front of me and if I just follow them, they yield really good results.

When I was younger, I had an older brother and sister and I watched them as they went through high school. And I saw that. I knew that when I got in high school, when I was a teenager,

I didn't want a curfew. I wanted freedom as a teenager. So I saw the formula. So I just was a really good girl.

I earned trust in my with my parents. And by the time I got to high school, I had a lot of freedom. I had no curfew. In the later years of my high school years,

I really wanted to get married and have a family and I wanted to get married in the LDS temple and have a family. It was something I wanted from a very young age. So I just saw the formula. I went through the system, followed the formula. I got married in the temple and I had babies and life was good.

I even decided ten years ago that I wanted to be a photographer and not just any photographer. I wanted to be a film photographer in a dense digital age.

So I just started talking with people. I started asking them what they were doing and how other film photographers were being successful. And I found a formula, so I followed it. I just followed the formula. And guess what? I became a film photographer and I kind of did okay for myself. I traveled around the world. I got published in magazines nationally. Internationally, life was good.

But then I found myself in a situation where the formula wasn't so right in front of me.

I didn't know what to do.

But I'm here to share with you today that I found a formula. I found it. And I found it in a creative place. I consider myself a creative person, and I found the formula and I creative realm.

So I have to take you there to so that I can share this formula with you. So I want you to imagine. That you have. We have a master and this masters intention is to create Masters of Green.

Now, imagine that we, up to this point, have never experienced any colors before.

We've never experienced any colors. And so his intention is to create Masters of Green in us. So he has a couple options. One of the options and something that he might do is he would just plant us into a world of green. Well, if he did this, this would be great. We we experience green, except if the whole world is green,

nothing is great. Because the only reason we know green is because we know blue, we know yellow, we know red, we know its distinction. And so if the whole world is green, nothing is green.

So we'd experience cream, but we wouldn't even know what it was.

So the next option is that the master would say, Well,

you just tell us it's green. By the way, this is this is green. This is green. You got this. So then we know that it's green. Except that's how we teach our preschool students. We give them picture books and we point the pictures and we say, this is green.

So he would just teach us on a very preschool basic level.

Well, this isn't good enough for us. We want more.

We want to be masters of green.

We don't want to learn green on a preschool level.

So what would the master do then? I propose something that he might do.

He might plant us into a world of blue.

Now, if you've never experienced any colors before,

then we wouldn't even know it was blue. Right? The whole world is blue. Nothing is blue. It would just be. It is . So we'd be in those world of blue. And we think it's great. We'd love it. It would be a beautiful world.

We wouldn't know what it is. But some of us might think it's all that there is,

and some of us might feel a little unsettled that we might always think, Well, isn't there something more?

But we'll just continue in the world of blue.

Well, then next semester he would take us out of the world of blue,

and he'd plant us in the world of yellow.

Now, this is interesting because a couple of things would happen here.

You'd have one group of people that would love yellow. They'd love it.

It's full of new ideas and new perspectives and new feelings.

Who needs Blue anymore? Blue is old news.

I just want to stay in the world of yellow. This is what I want.

This is all that I need. So they.

They just want to abandon blue and stay in yellow.

Well, a second group of people might hate yellow. Oh, I hate yellow. It's too warm. It's too hot here. I hate these new ideas and these new perspectives and these new experiences. Take me back to Blue. I just. I just want to get back to what's familiar. And I just want to get back to blue. Get me out of here.

Then you'd have a third group of people.

And this group of people is interesting because they wouldn't abandon blue

and they wouldn't abandon yellow.

They would see something in front of them that just is not visually apparent with our minds eyes connected to our physical brains.

They'd see that the master gave them blue and yellow.

Why would the master give them two colors that seem so contradictory?

And then they would ask. Is there something more?

And in that moment they'd have an awakening as blue and yellow blue flowed through them. It was a part of them and it was a part of who they were. They experienced blue. They couldn't experience that. But now so is yellow. Yellow flowed through them. It was an experience and something that they have now experienced. They couldn't undo that. It now flowed through them.

And then they would see. Green.

And they would want to share this with their friends. So they go to the people in yellow and they'd say, Oh my gosh, I've experienced something so profound, you haven't seen it, but I want to tell you about it. So people in yellow, they'd ask them with yellow questions, they'd say, Well, is it warm? Is it yellow? They say, Well, yeah, it's warm. Yeah, it's yellow, but it's not about that.

Then they go to the people in blue and they'd say, Well, well, well, is it blue? Is it a cool tone? And they'd say, Well, yeah, yeah, it's blue. And it's a cool tone, but it's not about that. Well, we know. And that what they see and what they experience is is green.

Now, this is called a paradox. A paradox is self-contradictory.

It's two ideas or concepts that are both true, but in general cannot be true at the same time.

Now I realize that by definition, blue and yellow are not paradoxical, but they are opposite sides of the color wheel, one warm and one cool,

and they're helpful for illustrating how you can have two contradictory ideas or concepts that can lead to a transcendent concept that eliminates the apparent contradiction. Let me explain. You can have blue and yellow that seem contradictory

and that can lead you to a transcendent concept. Green.

That eliminates the apparent contradiction.

The idea here is to keep swinging from one pole to the other, to never rest on one and abandon the other.

To rest on yellow and abandoned blue or to rest on blue and abandoned yellow is to lose hold of the highest truth.

It's to lose hold of seeing things as they really are. Seeing them as the master intended. Seeing green.

Now, this is baffling for the human mind because the human mind works on the logical principle of contradiction that states that two ideas and concepts can't be true and false at the same time.

But this is where the highest level of truth lies.

It transcends the principle of contradiction and can only be grasped in paradox, in opposition, in all things.

In our world today, we see such polar views.

We see polar views in our world and our homes and our families. And we even feel them in our own lives. We want to have intelligent conversations about the nature of God or what political views we should have, or on equality or even on religion versus spirituality.

However, these conversations can only be done with our minds that's connected to our brains. These conversations are blue and yellow conversations. Was it blue? Is it yellow? Is it blue ? Is it yellow? So what do we do?

Well, I propose we start seeing green and we start seeing green together.

When we see green, we transcend blue and yellow ways of thinking.

These issues in our world and in our lives are still important,

yet they're not issues at all. At the same time.

It's beyond seeing green as beyond our thoughts.

It goes into the creative, spiritual realm where that is beyond thinking.

Now, blue and yellow can manifest themselves in our lives in many different ways, whether they're ideas or concepts or experiences that we have.

So I want to show you what blue and yellow looked like for me.

I was in a world of blue and blue was good.

I got married and I had babies and I had amazing babies. And I know that every mom says that, but my kids are they're really remarkable. They're really amazing. And from the very beginning of my marriage, we had decided that we wanted to raise our kids in Southern California

and not only raise our kids in Southern California, but we wanted to raise them right on the beach. So guess what? I took those babies and I took them and I raised them a half a mile from the beach. And one of those babies every single morning woke me up on the side of my bed and said, Bye bye, beach, momma. Bye bye, beach.

And I walked her down to the beach almost every day and we played in the sand as we watched her older siblings play and surf and the ocean.

My business was going really good. I took that same baby to Australia.

Italy. Napa Valley, New York. Lake Powell.

I was working with amazing people. I was being published.

People wanted to hire me like. Like important people. Life is good.

But since very early on in my life, I have always sensed that there was something more.

So one day I got yanked out of the world of blue and I got thrown into the world of yellow, and I face planet there.

And I'll tell you what group I was. I hated yellow. I hated that.

It was full of grief and pain and suffering. My daughter wasn't there.

Is full of new ideas and new questions that I never thought I would have asked before I had experienced yellow.

All I wanted to do was go back to blue. I just wanted to go back to blue.

Because isn't that the real test?

I thought, well, the real test is if you get exposed to yellow and if you can make your way back to blue, then you've done okay.

So that's what I tried to do. I just tried to go back to blue. I tried to.

I tried to I tried to go back to my everyday life. And I remember this first time that I was like, if I could just go back to my everyday life, if I could go back to blue,

then I'll be happy again. I'll find happiness then.

And so I remember the first time I went to the mall,

I stood in the mall and I looked up and I thought.

I just found my daughter in a swimming pool. What am I doing here?

Blue no longer seem blue anymore. Those things that once seem so blue to me no longer felt blue because.

Once you've experienced yellow, blue will never look the same.

It no longer it is. We now have the distinction of blue and yellow

and blue will no longer look the same. So I try it again. I thought, you know, I'm a creative person and getting delving into my creativity has always helped me. So at the time I wasn’t really shooting anymore. And I just thought, you know, if I go back to photography and I start shooting again, well, then, then I'll definitely find blue. So I started my business up again.

I started shooting again. And being out in those shoots, it just it didn't feel blue to me anymore.

And I remember one night I was up late at night answering emails to clients.

And I remember I came across this one email and I thought,

I am trying to find out the mysteries of the universe.

I am questioning my eternal nature.

I'm trying to feel what it means to feel my daughter who has died.

And you want to know what dress you should wear for your engagement shoot.

And I'm not saying that those things aren't important, but what I'm saying is that that email once would have once excited me.

And it didn't feel blue to me anymore. Well, also, what was my option then? Well, I guess my world is yellow now. That's what it is.

And I'm not finding the answers that I'm looking for. So maybe if I can just endure, if I can just endure yellow,

then one day I'll die. And the answers will come.

Well, this didn't resonate with me because you don't know me. But I don't take no for an answer. Very easy.

So I started searching and I started reading and.

I started a daily practice of mindfulness and meditation,

and I found something. I found that I had experienced Blue,

who was a part of me. I couldn't escape it. But now I've experienced yellow.

Yellow also was a part of me, and I couldn't escape it.

So I started to provide a space that blue and yellow.

Could exist together with an inside of me.

And I did this. And at first it was very uncomfortable. Blue and yellow was pounding back and forth. And it's uncomfortable. It doesn't feel good at first.

But as I provided this space, something amazing happen.

I realized the master gave me blue and the master gave me yellow.

Why would the master give me two contradictory colors or experiences?

Maybe there's something more.

And in that moment, I saw something.

I saw something very profound and very beautiful. I saw Green.

Now. People ask me, Well, are you still happy? Do did you find happiness again?

Did you. Did you go back to blue? Did you find happiness again?

Or do you still suffer? Do you still pain? Do you still suffer?

Well, what's interesting about green is these are blue and yellow questions.

Yeah, I'm still happy. Yeah, I found happiness. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I still suffer and know it's not just happiness. And no, I don't suffer at all at the same time.

So where are we now? My husband, because this was a journey that we did together, my husband and I. So where are we? We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. And we see green.

Why did we stay in a religious tradition or organization?

Because we saw that you could see green here. And not only can you see green here, but you were never intended to stay in blue and yellow. We found more.

We found more than even happiness.

We found more than even the apparent split between happiness and its opposite. Down this path. We found green. We found oneness, unity.

We found each other. We found God. And I found my daughter. I found her.

God and my daughter were in green the whole time.

So if you're searching for more, you're searching for deeper understanding, deeper truth, more knowledge. You're searching to transcend your current suffering or struggle you can see. GREENE And not only can you see green, but there is a place for you here.

And not only is there a place for you here, but you're needed.

Green thinkers are needed here. Thank you.