I was wondering today what use gratitude is to a God? Who does God have to be grateful to?

Well, for us at least, supposing we are one day exalted to reign on high, we will have Him to be grateful too. Every glory will be the sweeter knowing we owe it to the Father and the Son.

So that’s one use of gratitude.
But there is another. We don’t usually call it gratitude, but it is the same emotion. It is when you see someone you love do something kind and good, especially for you. God gets this a lot. That overflowing of love when you see your children do right.

The child is wailing and they look at you to stop it, but you can’t. You can’t.

On the sweetness of Mormon life.

The speaker at church says he’d had some time to stare at all the scuffmarks at the base of the podium. He imagined all the speakers, all the testifiers, all the youth and adults and men and women who had come up there one way or the other to speak or to testify or to sing. He says that is a precious piece of wood.

You are not surrounded by peace, rhythm, order, and loveliness. These strip malls, these asphalts, these barren places, these gross landscapes and gross people–perhaps, saddest of all, it is even your face that apes you from the mirror.

Why bother? No one cares. You don’t care. Weary minute after weary minute, gray, dull, plodding. Why are you so sad?

The loss of a child.

You hesitated, but not long enough. You took the plunge and the Holy Ghost withdrew. You feel rage and horror, hollow winds in the soul.

You just don’t feel good.  You don’t move like others do.  That fresh joy which comes so much from the body doesn’t come to you much any more.

We have two chunks of garden, beds with paths in between. Both of them got overgrown with grass and weeds towards the end of the season, including the paths. This year we plan to put down weed tarp and wood chips, but first I decided to burn the weeds around the edges to make the tarp easier to lay down. I wanted to burn the whole garden but decided it would be too much trouble.

My thought was that the weeds I torched would burn and no others. This is how it has worked for me in the past.

I started with one lick of flame in each section and it caught. it spread like… fire. I had to scramble to get a hose up and call my son out to get the other hose. We barely suppressed it before it reached the wooden fence and the grape vines.
But it turned out what burned was exactly what I was wanting to have burned. Except that I hadn’t removed my drip lines first so they all melted down in the general combustion.

I was thinking on this–I had plenty of time to think as I stood there hosing everything down afterwards–and something inside me whisphered, “You don’t plan for wild success enough. Nor pray for it enough.”

Aw, spring!  There really are days in this season that are the best days.  When bad poetry is no longer bad poetry.  Soft breezes, tender grass,  flowers in bloom.   But not for you.  Your eyes itch, your breath cramps down, the snot starts up.

There are foods you can’t eat.

There are clothes you can’t wear.

No reason why, but the body sullenly revolts.

You feel so tired and your stomach hurts. It isn’t even hunger you feel, just a gnawing at your gut almost the same as illness.

You are ignorant and you know you are ignorant, but you just don’t know how or what to do about it. When you try, you don’t know where to start and what you find makes no sense. You are lost. Why? who? What? How? You hear no answer.

You are tired. Your brain is pushing through a fog. Your body staggers. You don’t exactly hurt, but you do hurt.

Here’s the third dream of the set–no real point to it, but it has an interesting feature to it.

So, I dreamed that on some patriotic  holiday we stopped at some kind of expansive roadside rest stop or roadside attraction.  It had a swimming feature so we splashed around for a bit and then we decided to go to the bathroom before we left.  this was a big place, so they had several small bathroom buildings all together, laid out roughly in the over all shape of the US, and each bathroom building was labeled by a region.  There was a small access road to the left running diagonally up and away, and across it there was another small building that represented the Northwest broadly speaking, and there was a little sign saying something about the geographic center of the United States being represented by this building.*  We were feeling patriotic so we decided to go there for our bathroom break, though my son kept saying ‘it’s a small lake, it’s some kind of small lake.’  There was a little group of us waiting to go in until the current group had cleared the building, which I thought was odd for a bathroom. (more…)

Frustration–with yourself. There is a lesson you need to learn, a repentance that needs to occur, and you just don’t. The wabbling finger keeps wandering back to the fire.

That which I would do, I do not.