The heavens declare the glory of God.

It is an old truth that becomes new every time you go out in the twilight, or see the sky on a clear night, or witness the dawn.

I am half-persuaded that urbanization and the indoor life tracks with the rise of atheism.

From a dozen years ago in LDS Church News:

“Helen Green, 90, is the oldest living member of the first branch Sunday School started in Lubbock. She made the journey with other family members from her home in Orem, Utah, to attend the dedication. Musing outside the temple before her dedicatory session, she recalled the days when the branch Sunday School was held in a courtroom with west Texas Church pioneer and Texas Tech professor J.O. Ellsworth presiding from the judge’s bench, the speakers giving their talks on the witness stand and the rest of the congregation often fitting comfortably in the jury box.”

Bruce Charlton’s commenter Arakawa has derived his own version of the amphibious synthesis of time and eternity. (more…)

Love and glory are of the fundamental attributes of God and reality. Love is unconditional whereas glory is earned respect, or conditional love. They are deeply intertwined and complementary. (more…)

The man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.

Thus St. Paul.

He says it in the middle of some deeply reactionary stuff about women keeping their head covered in church and such so this particular teaching gets lost. But as with an illusionist’s trick, the part that draws the eye isn’t the important part.

So what does Paul mean?

I don’t know. But sometimes my life as a husband and a father feels like I could say ‘she is my glory.’ I feel like I do a lot of scutwork out in the world and a lot of discipline and order and stabilizing at home to make possible the little circle of domestic intimacy that she creates. Because of what I have to do to make it possible, or because I am the sort of person who does what is necessary to make it possible, I can’t fully be a part of it. But all the same that circle validates all my efforts, it seems to me.

On the sweetness of Mormon life. (more…)