One of the best Christmas stories. Evah.

Video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xtk5WgzZcYA

Text: http://proclaimhisglory.org/html/lesson_with_a_hairbrush.html

(Part 1 here.)  I found this book in the $.75 bin at Goodwill.  This Land of Strangers: The Relationship Crisis That Imperils Home, Work, Politics, and Faith.   By Robert E. Hall.  $17.50 new at Amazon.  $6 used, including shipping. (G.: pray about whether you should get this.  I’m going to give this to our EQ president.)

Chapters one through ten describe the problem.  Chapters 11 and 12 describe, in general terms, what some organizations are doing.  Chapter 13 describes, in very general terms, what can be done, or should be done.

If you already understand how human relationships — family, work, faith, politics — have gone to heck in our society, you can skip directly to chapter 11, or to chapter 13 if you want the distillation of it all.  (G: go right to chapter 13.) (more…)

From His Majesty.

(Following up on here, and here. )

Anyone else watch Venus and Jupiter in the dawning sky today? It was a good sight as my son drove with me to seminary.

In case you ever wondered what that looks like . . . (more…)

In  recent years we’ve seen tweaks and changes to the church’s formal missionary efforts or program. (more…)

Eleven years ago, we had arranged to spend Labor Day weekend at the beach, an end-of-summer recreation. A tropical storm arrived before we did and summer ended for us a little earlier than we had desired. Six years before that, we finished up three years living in Los Angeles just four miles from beaches that we enjoyed frequently year round. The muting of seasonal cues became stranger to my perception the longer I was there. I would strain to recollect milestones by which I could reckon the current month, much as I usually do to figure out the date of the month when a calendar is not at hand. A neighbor cut down a Norfolk pine, and I obtained a couple feet of the trunk to show the cub scouts its rings. It turned out that it didn’t have any distinct rings. Not even the trees of LA know what season it is. (more…)

Another in the prayer series. Following up from here and here.

Petitioner: Lord, may we/I please have X?  (more…)

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5053013/Devin-Kelley-outcast-preached-atheism.html

Other atheists blame Republcans.

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After the requisite soul-searching and angst and all that, Nephi cut off Laban’s head, snicker-snack. He probably did not know at the time that he was setting up a type of Christ. (more…)