I noticed something in reading the scriptures.  There seems to be a distinct pattern where the kings of Israel and Judah sometimes start out well but always end with a caveat.  It’s not just David and Bathsheba and Solomon and his idolatrous wives, it seems to be pretty consistent.

Whereas the Nephite and Lamanite kings sometimes start wicked and get better, but mostly are just nasty or righteous the whole time.    I don’t see the same pattern of kings starting out in reform mode but falling off as they go along.

Real?  Did you notice the same thing?

(more…)

Out in a rough rural county there was a rascally young man who spent his evenings and late nights drinking and getting in fights at dive bars and roadhouses and collections of trucks pulled up around a bonfire out somewhere on a patch of dirt.  It was generally a rascally county with its share of rascally people so he had plenty of company.  As you might expect , the roads were also pretty rough.  Getting from spot to spot in the dark could be a bone-jarring and gut twisting experience–potholes, detours, poorly marked curves, uneven surfaces… But he was not the sort of young man who could much stay in one place, he never quite found what he was looking for.

One evening after a particularly bad set of bounces  one of which smashed his head into the steering wheel, he pulled over and just … quit.  No more, he decided.  He hated himself and the whole experience, he was sick of it, he was done.  He was going to go home, hug his mom, and tell her he was going to be a changed man.

With this resolution, he turned his car around to head home.  But the roads were still the roads and he once again started pounding through potholes in the dark, and once again smashed his head. He was outraged and betrayed.  Wasn’t he now doing the right thing?  Wasn’t he now headed home?

Moral: Good goals don’t patch potholes.

Any ideas what this phrase means?

10 And what cause soever shall come to you of your brethren that dwell in their cities, between blood and blood, between law and commandment, statutes and judgments, ye shall even warn them that they trespass not against the Lord, and so wrath come upon you, and upon your brethren: this do, and ye shall not trespass.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/2-chr/19?lang=eng&id=p10#p10

Greg Matsen had a discussion with Jacob Hansen about Strong’s new book, Torn. This was far more enlightening than anything else I have heard about Strong’s book. The thing that hit me the hardest was Jacob explaining how we are often wasting our time explaining things the way we have for the last two hundred years to Christians. But now we have an audience that either doesn’t believe in Christ, or doesn’t know how to receive His grace and inspiration in a serious way. The problem isn’t a doctrinal issue that merely needs to be cleared up, most of the time. It is an entire worldview built on different assumptions about reality, authority, and human purpose. It one that points people toward the wrong sources of meaning, authority, and happiness.

(more…)

Most of the dumb boomer solutions to social problems amount to “why don’t you simply unilaterally establish an enforceable cooperative equilibrium”

-thus EDJCB

Young Mr. Frog went a’courtin’ but in that region and at that time there were no eligible young misses in the Animal Kingdom who were interested in Mr. Frog.  In frustration he complained to an elder of his kind.

“Well,” the elder said, “have you tried dressing up in a tux, renting a church, and hiring a wedding caterer?”

“What good would that do?” the young frog said in exasperation.

“It sounds to me like you aren’t even trying,” his elder scoffed.

We live in a very feminized society dominated by managerial bureaucracy, but a great many people are miserable and struggling, both male and female. This is not to say it advantages women in the ways they need. It doesn’t appear to do that for anyone other than Elites, and their henchmen.

The current order is not governed by healthy feminine values. It selectively uses traits culturally associated with women—risk sensitivity, relational enforcement, therapeutic language, and aversion to direct conflict—inside institutions built around impersonal power. Used as armor to maintain power. But the more celestial aspects of womanhood are absent.

I am going to note a little history, and make some educated predictions. I fain no vision or prophecy, but I have a wild prediction, which I would like to discuss. I think things will shortly swing to the male-dominated (shortly, meaning within the decade-ish). As with pendulum swings, there will be many who swing too hard. I want to make sure as many of us as possible, end up in a healthier state. I want even the most extreme feminists, to agree that life was better after the correction pendulum swing. But in order for this to happen, we need a vision of what is possible, first.

Because if we don’t, then the pendulum will swing back again to an even more extreme feminized managerial bureaucracy.

(more…)

I have seen the claim, more than once, that if you are an aristocrat you spend as you see fit and then work out how to acquire the means to pay for it.  Whereas if you start with your income and then decide what to spend based on that, you are bourgeois (aka middle class, but the term also includes business owners and such).

One theme of our exploration of virtue sets is that there are certain virtues that are obscure to our society. (e.g., the nameless virtue).

There are certain other virtues that have a strong class or sex link, and so are obscure with respect to the other classes or the other sex.  This is often because the same virtue takes on a somewhat different form across these boundaries and so the assumption is that the virtue must not apply at all across the boundary because it doesn’t apply in exactly the same way. (more…)

I found an old note to myself that reads

“Philosophical dialogue in the Gulags. Generationship. Blog this.”

Neither I nor anyone else will every know what this means.

In the torch-lit castles of old Europe, the Jester had a reputation as a truth-teller.   He could say painful true things because he was so fake.  Ha ha its just a joke.

I don’t know how people are going to take this–I can see an angle for folks to get mad of almost any political persuasion–but I think the same phenomenon is part of Donald Trump’s appeal.  He has a reputation both as a very funny guy and as a blowhard–whether either reputation is justified or not we leave as an exercise for the reader.  Even some of his most ardent supporters will say we take Trump seriously but not literally.  But because of this a big part of his appeal is  he is the guy who will take on third rails and say things that everyone is thinking, that need to be said, but that no one will say.    His people love him because he keeps blowing through the dirty little conspiracies of polite silence.

Children especially young children are the same.  Out of the mouths of babes and little children as the scripture says.  Little children in particular will just say things.  You look fat.  I don’t like your warts.  He’s mean.  But at the same time, they live in a world of play and whimsy.  The same child who told his Aunt she needed to lose a few pounds will also tell her that they are both pink sharks in the lemonade ocean.

Mulling this over, I eventually realized we are looking at a form of the synthesis of two competing virtues  Fact and fiction.  Truth and play.  The synthesis of these virtues reaches its highest form in pageantry, ritual, and sacrament.

Whereas the Devil gravely lies.

I think we have found yet another meaning of the Savior’s teaching to become as a little child.  One of his most inexhaustible sayings.

||
Very strong bolo-tie game

I am glad to see that I am in good stead when I dress up for Pioneer Day by throwing on some Western/Southwestern gear and calling it  a day.

Pioneer Day is a good day to feel filial piety.  Our ancestors were great.  They may not have thought so.  Greatness, from the inside, is a lot like humans from the inside: hot, messy, bloody, gross.  From the outside, they were great.

In a superficial way, the popular understanding is the Old Testament is about the national salvation of Israel and the New Testament is more about individual salvation.  The restoration synthesized that–they built Zion because they wanted their kids to grow up in Zion.

More precisely, the Old Testament is about individual and group salvation in the form of the nation, and the New Testament is about individual and group salvation in the form of a new thing called a church.  Because the pioneers were a church, they built a nation.  And because they built a nation, we still have a church.

• “A ship in harbor is safe, but ships weren’t meant for harbors”–this is a saying about the Fall.
• There are colors you can see only at twilight.

On the sweetness of Mormon life

The  girl reads her talk artlessly then puts her phone up on the podium.  It plays–cheap, tinny–Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.  She sings the first verse.  She looks down the whole time. She is shy but also–you are close enough that you can see–she is fighting back tears.  Your own tears start.  You first heard this song on your mission when you needed streams of mercy. They came and never ceased.

Our big church camp family reunion got shut down due to fire threats.  We scrambled and were able to pull off a shorter smaller one at another church camp.

I get far more irritated than I should by any whiff of bureaucracy and safetyism at church, but nonetheless I am very grateful for church camps.

On the sweetness of LDS life.

I got a Manifest Destiny t-shirt and was wearing it around this week-end feeling just a bit edgy. I had a background mental dialogue that was something like, ‘if only they knew, wouldn’t they be shocked,’ etc.

Then I went to Church on Sunday and my staid respectable congregation, part Anglo part Mexican, sang with gusto,

Pushing on the wild frontier,

Forging onward, ever onward,

Blessed, honored Pioneer!

Well!