You are sad when you leave a place because it is yourself you are leaving behind.
Time amputates. The past is a lost limb.
Time is a wave of experience that moves through the water of eternity but the water remains.
The wave here is fleeting–mortal–and then it rolls on.
Behind it are great depths of love. Before it are great depths of love.
I realized that I am not a particularly nuanced thinker. It’s just that my simplistic way of thinking is orthogonal to everyone else’s.
In chapters 13-23 we see how the Lord intends to overcome Babylon. In this chapter, we see the Lord’s people again, but now from a spiritual perspective, both the Wicked and the Righteous. The corresponding chapters 17,18 condemn the Northern Kingdom for trusting in collective security. But here, we see Judah condemned for relying on themselves or just “eat, drink and be merry” – all of which is in contrast to relying on God.
In verse 1 Gileadi translates Valley of Vision as Arena of Spectacles. While I am not convinced by the translation, it does get at the meaning of the chapter – the people of God are more obsessed with sports, amusements, spectacle, partying, eating, drinking and making merry, instead of repenting.
Permacrisis v. permacreation. A useful way of thinking from friend Francis Berger.
I have opinions. Specifically on history. 54’40” or fight, Trist betrayed his trust, the Polynesians were too great in seafaring not to have contacted the Americas.
And so I have opinions on history’s follies .
A folly that seems to be a real pattern of the elite class in different times and places is throwing themselves into the dustbin of history in an attempt to avoid being thrown into the dustbin of history. Through injured pride they end up losing everything they were proud of. Through fear of losing their place they touch off the conflict that tears them from their place. They see a threat, and their attempt to end the threat causes the threat to become real. This is the classical tragedy of hubris except doing nothing would have worked. If they had bided their time, most likely the threat would never have happened.
They lacked strategic patience.
Let’s check out some examples. Japan, Germany, Mexico, the Confederacy, Germany again, Russia, Austria-Hungary. It will be a whirlwind tour.
Firing on Ft. Sumter. The Civil War begins.
Some passages of scripture have a powerful effect on you because they move you. They make a spiritual impression on you. That happens from time to time.
Some passages of scripture make an aesthetic impression. They move you with their grandeur and the vision of glory.
I don’t know that there is a big difference between this type of impression and the spiritual impression.
Can a scripture make you feel sick to your stomach? Can a scripture dredge up the pain inside?
I just listened to the Follow Him podcast discussing the Book of Daniel. Parts 1 & 2
One thing that surprised me, was that Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego were probably all Unix eunuchs. In our day of obsession over sexual identities, it seems interestingly apropos.
The guest also quoted Neal A Maxwell
“I have no hesitancy, brothers and sisters, in stating that unless checked, permissiveness, by the end of its journey, will cause humanity to stare in mute disbelief at its awful consequences”
That is not a prophecy I was familiar with, but I could feel the power in it.
The conversation then ended up on parenting, especially with children who do not follow the path. This was also very enlightening, considering my own results have not been as successful as I would have hoped.
The Brethren generously say that people of other faiths are Christian. But is this really true? When these people are speaking candidly, they will admit that they actually believe in a different Jesus, not the Jesus of the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Although we should treat everyone with love and respect, we have to admit that these so called “evangelicals” and “Catholics” actually believe in a different gospel than the Christian gospel we believe in. The book of Revelations says not to add to nor take away from the words of the scripture, but they do. Please witness to your friends so they can accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior!
C.S. Lewis once said something like the essence of myth is that the person who makes it doesn’t see it as an allegory, but the hearer keeps seeing hints of allegories in it.
He is technically wrong, but substantially right. A mythmaker can have an allegorical meaning in mind. But the myth has to be stronger than their allegory for it to work.
Take Mr. Lewis’ own allegory, Pilgrim’s Regress. Its nothing but allegory and pleasant enough in its way. I can speak, though, of three different passages which I keep coming back to. They have that kind of force. For some of them, I don’t even remember what the original allegorical meaning was supposed to be.
The first is the giant whose sight turns people transparent so that you can see their bowels and their bones.
The second is the parable of the man closely pursued by enemies. His wife sees him coming and is perplexed. If she cuts down the bridge that leads to their home, he will be stranded on the other side with his enemies. If she doesn’t, his enemies will cross with him.
Those two I don’t really recall the allegorical point Lewis was making, at least not off the top of my head.
The third passage proves my point the best, since it is the most clearly allegorical but is also a passage that I have *felt* many times. It’s about the home of Mr. Wisdom. He and his children live a quiet, sober life there. They dine on plain fare and are content. But at night, his children in a trance fly off to participate in witches sabbaths and bloody melees and the like.
The point is that a myth, to really work, has to have some weight to it apart from the message its supposed to be teaching. Which is why Mr. Wisdom and his children have come to my mind at times that had nothing to do with the message that rationalists subconsciously derive their emotional satisfaction from elsewhere.
My best parables can sometimes have a very clear message, but they have a power beyond the message.
Poet Head, for instance, is so self-consciously message fiction that I literally call the head poet heads and sober heads. But it still works.
The unholy trinity of modernity. Alzheimer’s is happening sooner and sooner, and these are apparently the cause.
Here’s a pretty weird post for you, let’s say that up front. I need to stop thinking about things, it takes me to some pretty stranger places.
Like brightly hulled steel ships at sea, we live in a spiritually corrosive environment where the most gleaming convictions must be mindfully maintained or they can become etched, then corrode, and then crumble away.
Elder Lund put something into words that I have been struggling to say in my charnel house post and elsewhere. Elsewhere in conference Elder Bednar talked about the power of parables. One of their powers is how much feeling and truth they convey in such short space. For example, should we withdraw from the world? Well, should a ship go to drydock? Yes, absolutely! But not forever, or what good is the ship.
The other powerful image he uses is one of Chesterton’s paradoxes.
The stalwart youth of Zion are voyaging through stunning times. Finding joy in this world of prophesied disruption without becoming part of that world, with its blind spot toward holiness, is their particular charge. About a hundred years ago, G. K. Chesterton spoke almost as though he saw this quest as being home centered and Church supported when he said, “We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.”
