My week under the sea has ended, my first time under way though I have been serving the navy as a hydrodynamicist for the past dozen years. I may share bits of the experience if there is interest, but for now here are two experiences:

I: The last full day at sea was given to surface maneuvering off the California coast. Toward the end of the day, I requested and received permission from the chief of the watch to visit the bridge atop the sail. He assigned a sailor to help me into a harness, and I climbed up top, and spent a half hour standing there with two officers and one crewman, watching the sun lower and set as we cruised past a large island at 10 knots and the waves washed around us. Twenty minutes after going back down, I noticed some feeling within me and examined what it was. “I feel . . . serene.”

II: A couple hours after coming back in, I sat in the crew mess, eating pizza and listening to the World Series with a dozen crewmen. It felt American.

“Is there any particular scripture story you want to read tonight, bud?”

“How about the one where King David’s son gets his hair caught on a tree and is killed?” You rack your brain. King David’s son? Absalom? Is that how Absalom dies? Yeah, that sounds familiar. But we only read that story one time, and it was at least six months ago. How does he remember it? At first you feel pride at having such a bright little boy, but then it hits you: If he can remember that, what else does he remember? You resolve to start behaving yourself better, lest your misdeeds be recorded on your Permanent Record. (more…)

I just found out I am the first cousin of William Shakespeare, once removed.

John Knox, the reformer, is my 12th great grandfather.

Joseph Smith is my 13th cousin. Pretty good considering my parents are our first generation in the church.

This is, of course, in addition to my cousins, who include too many apostles, prophets, US presidents, authors, movie stars, and inventors to count. (more…)

For refusing to endorse any candidate for President, for the first time in recent memory, on the grounds that all are unacceptable.

We’ll have the national discussion we need, on the flaws in our nomination process and the dangers of giving so much power to an office that might be held by a Trump or a Clinton, when more people and institutions take this position.

The continued, or even increasing, focus on the supposed alleviation of material poverty in modern Western society (since Leftism became mainstream and almost universal it is indeed the main focus for many people, especially among intellectuals) – including in all types of liberal Christianity, and also to a disturbing extent in real-Christian churches – is a major error; because poverty is less of a problem in the modern West that at any other time and place in human history.

Our prime problems are quite different – and grossly neglected. (more…)

She’s having a baby is a John Hughes movie from 1988 starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern – and I would rate it one of the very best ‘romantic comedies’ ever made.

It is very funny and enjoyable – with many classic scenes (never to be forgotten), but also has a depth and sweetness lacking from most of the genre. I would say it is as good as the benchmark When Harry met Sally – not so tightly-constructed, but equally memorable and with much more heart.

Yet the movie was tepidly received at the time, did poor box office, and usually gets rather poor ratings. Why?

The answer, I am afraid, is that SHaB is a mature movie and a Good movie. Mature in that it is about a marriage, and Good in that the marriage is strengthened and moves on to family.

No wonder the critics disliked it!

Unlike the classical comedy – which starts with the characters meeting and ends in their marriage (or a ‘committed relationship…); SHaB starts with a marriage and ends with a baby.

Unlike most Holly wood ‘coming of age’ movies which are about adolescents; SHaB is about a typical modern pseudo-adult becoming a real adult.

Unlike most Hollywood movies about marriage which are about sexual temptations yielded-to and the personal growth arising therefrom – SHaB is about (shambolically-) resisting (multiple) temptations and the personal growth therefrom.

Kevin Bacon produces the best all round and multi-faceted performance I have seen from him – the lovely Elizabeth McGovern portrays a genuinely good person; and the two onscreen seem to be genuinely and relaxedly loving – consistent with their having been teenage sweethearts.

The movie is not at all religious – but has a spiritual quality – as the hero strives to synthesise marriage with his need for creativity and his horror of the soul-crushing and shallow materialism of the life around him in the suburbs and at work.

And being a comedy it has a very happy ending – in which all this is satisfyingly achieved; love, depth and creativity are all vindicated; and a strong basis for the future has been established.

Toward a double standard

There isn’t much I can add here, but in such a season of despair and hate, it is refreshing to get Tolkien’s take on things, and to remember, that God will overrule all these things for our good.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Vision of Sorrowful Joy
By Ralph C Wood

Stopped at an intersection, I heard a noise to my right, and there were four middle-aged women on the corner waving signs for the congressional candidate they favor, four weeks before election day, when it’s appropriate and good for citizens to participate in political campaigning. One of the weaknesses of the internet age is the weakening of local community, including newspapers and politics. Instead the nation obsesses inordinately on the one election choice we all have in common, electing the U.S. president, and does so for two years.

From my perspective, the way the current US presidential election has shaped-up could not have been better calculated to reveal the reality behind the mass mainstream demonic mass delusion.

Things are much clearer now than they were even a couple of months ago – and this clarity is being forced upon almost everyone.

On polling day, there will be very few people who are at all happy with the choice before them.

By then, almost every voter – on both sides – will feel ashamed and soiled by their participation, and thereby somewhat opened to the possibility of a spiritual awakening; while every deliberate abstainer will be to that extent alienated from the political process, and significantly less complicit in the ruling evil conspiracy — a little more free, a little more independent.

I think the thing most needful – needful, that is, to reverse the individual and social decline arising from nihilism (meaninglessness and purposelessness) and despair… is not salvation and spiritual progression (they are several steps down the line, and the process must begin with things much simpler and more basic)…

But the thing most needful is perhaps imaginative awakening – that is the awareness and conviction that there is more to Real Life than what is ‘objective’: perceived by the senses and publicly-shared.

(Imagination here refers to that which is in the mind and from the mind; but not from the senses.)

Here and now, this cannot happen privately, by stealth: for us, imagination must become conscious and explicit if it is to have the necessary consequences. (more…)

From an interview with Dave Keuning, Killers guitarist:

In 2008, Rolling Stone said you were saving money to book a trip on Virgin’s first commercial space flight. Is that something you’re still wanting to do?

It’s something I’m still interested in, but Virgin has kept pushing that date back. They said it was going to be 2010, and then ’11, and then ’12, and they still haven’t done it. It’s actually made me a bit nervous about being on the first one. Whenever it happens, I’ll probably let other people do it first for a few years because I don’t want to be the one who blows up.

I’ve wondered about it.

It was finally explained by a pseudonymous blogger this morning.

(more…)

I have never been happy with, nor convinced by, the usual way of trying to persuade people to become Christians – which is either to terrorise them with fear of Hell Or Else; or bribe them with promises of paradisal happiness.

Except for the eternal dimension, to respond to such emotional incentives is hardly a moral act at all – it is not much different from obeying laws to avoid the lash or hanging; or to adhere to social norms in order to be rewarded with money and status.

My fundamental understanding of the choice (and avoiding prejudging the situation with loaded terms) is between ‘family and freedom’; between first joining (‘salvation’) then becoming a fully adult member (‘theosis’) of the Heavenly Family; or not.

I do not want to present this as a choice between reason and insanity – but to understand why people might (even though mistakenly, by my judgment) rationally choose to reject salvation, and to do so without referring to the hedonic consequences in terms of the balance between pleasure and pain.

(Minimally) the Christian choice is between:

1. Remaining-within the Heavenly family into which we were born as children of God; and

2. Leaving the family to set-up on our own, as individuals – which could be described as ‘freedom’ (in the sense of ‘freedom-from’ reciprocity, ties, duties, responsibilities etc.).

**

An analogy might be someone who is born into a loving, stable and expanding extended family-network of relationships: parents, children, spouses and all the degrees of relatives.

Suppose that (at adolescence) he had to make a decision whether to remain as a part of that family – participating fully in the network of loving relationships, but also the constraints of acknowledged family authority, seniority, responsibilities and reciprocities…

Or else he was able to cut himself off from the family, and live free as an individual; doing what he wanted; only having regard to his own preferences, pleasures and desires; believing whatever he most wants to believe – but in a situation where everybody else is also doing the same…

The family situation approximates to heaven, the individual state to hell.

**

By this analogy, we can see that the typical modern life approximates to hell – a situation when many teenagers and young adults reject and leave the family, migrate to the Big City, and participate in work, sex and leisure entirely autonomously; having regard only to their own hedonic state; and living among others doing the same.

This analogy helps us to understand why some people might choose hell – even when they know what heaven offers; because so many of us have been in exactly the situation of ourselves choosing (either briefly, or for long periods – perhaps even a lifetime) the ‘freedom’ (and costs) of individual autonomy; and rejecting that complex web of inherited loving relationships and responsibilities that constitute the family (even the ideal family).

***

The above way of understanding the Christian choice was, I think, first made possible by the Restoration of the Gospel message achieved by Joseph Smith.

Until then it was not clear, or not sufficiently clear, what was at stake with salvation; and it was difficult for Christians to go beyond – or deeper than – rather crudely ‘hedonic’ threats and promises.

By reframing eternal resurrected Heavenly life in terms of familial relationships (growing in numbers, richness, height, depth and strength – for eternity…), it became possible to understand what Christian Love meant, aside from its merely being equated with happiness; or what sin meant, aside from being merely equated with suffering.