A man who read stacks of books needed a new bookshelf.  After some thought, he found the a space for the shelves on one end of a room.  They fit perfectly.  He put the shelves up and filled them with books.

But he had put them up in front of cupboards, which he could no longer get to.

Moral: Think about the problems you could be creating, not just the problem you are trying to solve.

I think faith is a virtue about the past. (more…)

“On the count of three,” the Mexican  magician announced, “I will disappear!”

“Uno.”

“Dos.”

But then–poof–he vanished without a trace.

My brain woke me up just before 3 AM, telling me that just as inertia was produced by the sum of mass in the universe (Mach’s principle), justice was the sum of agency in the universe.  Gee, thanks, brainy.

My brain is like a cat.  It drops dead birds at my feet for my approval.

A castle builder decided to get really analytical.

“Statistics show,” he said, “that 95% of the part of the castle defenders use in combat is the top 5 feet.  But the lower parts of the castle are the great majority of the time and the expense of building.”

He mused.

“Think of how much more effective I can build if I skip straight to the only useful part instead of being blinkered by hidebound traditionalism.  I will call it The Castle in the Air ™!”

Moral: Numbers are no substitute for wisdom.

One of the most interesting parts of a virtue chart is where we explore the synthesis of apparently opposed virtues.

Here is something I came up with that unfortunately I did not have the time to do the build-up for. The end result just came to me, I’ll have to try to reverse engineer it later.

But in short, it seems to me that there are virtues related to the past, the present, and the future. And that integration is the synthesis of them.

(more…)

My daughter dreamed she heard a song on the radio. They were singing,
“I am a cloud and I’m blowing away. My heart is a cloud and I want it to stay.”
***
One of the sister missionaries in our ward dreamed recently that she was going to be sent to X town with X missionary (that she didn’t know, but had heard us talk about) as a trainer for other sister missionaries. She had the dream several times and told us about it. Two days ago, her Mission President called to send her to X town with X missionary as a trainer for other sister missionaries.
***
I dreamed that the hubbub in the marketplace slowly died and the crowd slowly parted. Over the heads of the crowd you could see five flags approaching. Eventually the crowd parted enough that you could see five crippled and injured men slowly carrying their flags forward to the king who was seated on his throne at the end of the market plaza. The backstory, which I knew in the way of dreams, was that months before the king had sent 5 regiments out to deal with invading orcs or some such. They had fought in running battle after running battle. As one flagbearer was killed they passed on to the next until this was all that was left–their last fight had been just the five of them using their flags as pikes. They were returning to report they had won. They had stopped at a stream outside the city to clean up as best they could and the senior one told them to “make a show, make a show. This is for all of them.”

In my dream, the king came down from his throne crying and threw off his crown and his robe.

The unedifying spectacle of both parties seamlessly switching their position on Supreme Court nominations during elections.

Democrats threatening packing the Court, packing the Senate with DC and Puerto Rico statehood, and ending the filibuster.

Republicans threatening to skip the customary hearing.

We are not assigning blame. We are not even lamenting the individual norm; not all norms are good.

We are recognizing that norms are toppling.

We all have a vague notion of where we seem to be headed, but its different when its detailed out in black and white.

Of what use will guns be when the Regime can, say, cut us off from access to credit? Covid has accustomed us to buying and selling electronically as our ordinary means of exchange. I don’t know about you, but almost all of the transactions I do now are by card; some stores will only accept cards, as a health measure, or because they don’t have enough coins to make change. What happens when that becomes mandatory, and all our purchases can be tracked? When the Regime can cut us off from access to our money by the flip of a switch, because it could tell from our smartphone’s GPS data that we went to a dissenting church on Sunday, or bought a book that had been forbidden?

–thus Rod Dreher today

What is needed now, he thinks, is honesty and fellowship.

Only in small communities could people feel free.

Rant.

Pulp writers, foment is a transitive verb. If you want to purple up your prose, purple it up right!

I’m sick of reading breathless ominous descriptions that say “treason foments.” No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You can have a sallow, evil-eyed priest fomenting treason; or a waddling aristocrat with tiny eyes buried in his porcine face and sybaritic jewels flashing on each wabbling finger, he could be fomenting treason. But treason doesn’t foment. If you want to write in the bedamned half-passive intransitive, write manuals.

Christ atoned for our sins because He loved us, each of us.  That would have been motive by itself and is the motive we talk about.  Less frequently we mention His motive of obedience.

But there are other motives. (more…)

Wherefore, I command you again to repent, lest I humble you with my almighty power; and that you confess your sins, lest you suffer these punishments of which I have spoken, of which in the smallest, yea, even in the least degree you have tasted at the time I withdrew my Spirit.

I think we have all experienced that kind of flatness of sin.  But this verse is particularly poignant for me because of a very brief and pointed withdrawal I experienced in answer to a prayer.

Repentance is the theme of D&C 19.

Then there is this:

And of tenets thou shalt not talk, but thou shalt declare repentance and faith on the Savior, and remission of sins by baptism, and by fire, yea, even the Holy Ghost.

32 Behold, this is a great and the last commandment which I shall give unto you concerning this matter; for this shall suffice for thy daily walk, even unto the end of thy life.

General Conference is the way it is for a reason, my biddies.  But also notice the word ‘tenets.’  Tenets . . . like creeds?  It may be that a creedal Christian who is really interested in homoouisia or whatever foofara is doing just fine if he is praying and repenting and such.  I don’t think false doctrine is harmless for any of us, it will have to be sorted out sooner or later, but for some people later is fine.

I felt prompted to read D&C 19 this morning.

And surely every man must repent or suffer, for I , God, am endless.

…

Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment.

…

Eternal punishment is God’s punishment.

Endless punishment is God’s punishment.

The least satisfactory reading of this is that the scriptures about eternal punishment are a verbal sleight-of-hand.   (more…)

A voice cried from the woods, “A year and a day, the cloaked devil comes!” and said no more.

The man who heard it took it as a warning.  “I will build a wall,” he said.  “No, a keep.”

So he did.

It was very hard to lift and place the stones.  He got stronger.  His hands got gnarled and tough.  But as he got stronger he also had to work faster and harder, because time was passing by.

A year and a day passed, perhaps more.  He stood on top and surveyed his work.  It was rough but strong.  It would be difficult for anyone to scale those walls.  “It will have to do.”

Something tapped his shoulder.  He turned and saw a grey lizard visage in a black cloak and hood.  The cloaked devil!  He was already inside.  The devil grinned.

The man hit him.  Arms brawny from lifting stone drove hands hardened into the devil’s face.  A look of shock and pain passed over the devil’s face momentarily before he fell backwards off the wall. The man looked over.  There was the imp, splayed out, quite dead.

“Now what am I going to do with this keep?” the man wondered aloud.

***

He was probably not expecting an answer.  But the voice in the woods told him, all the same.

The Nephites baptized before Christ.  At the time of 3 Nephi 11, they would have been practicing baptism in a tradition and with authority that traced back at least to Alma.

Yet Christ gave Nephi and the other disciples authority to baptize.

And the Lord said unto him: I give unto you power that ye shall baptize this people when I am again ascended into heaven.

And again the Lord called others, and said unto them likewise; and he gave unto them power to baptize.

Christ gives them the sacrament which is usually something that would only be done for the already baptized.  Why did Christ renew the grant of authority and require rebaptism?

(more…)