Imagine you are having a dream. Imagine you dream  you are somehow transported to the distant past. You are a SF/F/TF fan so you know and like these kinds of scenarios. Modern-type person ends up stranded in a primitive world, like a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Martin Padway in Lest Darkness Fall, H. Beam Piper’s Lord Kalvan works. You know the tropes: natives are hostile but you establish communication and wow them with your technical knowledge which sometimes eventually creates a reactionary backlash against you from religious or superstitious types.

So in your dream you find yourself transported to a plain spotted with trees, you are given the dream knowledge that you are in the distant past, and while you are very scared you also feel a bit excited. You get to live out a scenario you have read about many times. You almost feel like a tourist making your first trip to a famous site you’ve long collected postcards for.

Your dream is a bit confused the way dreams can be. At one point you seem to be living with hominids. At another point you introduce monogamy. But the main thrust of the dream you are imagining is this.
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The Willie and Martin handcart companies left too late in the season. They thought the Lord would do miracles for them and they would come through, so to speak, on dry ground. They did not. The miracles they got were different and later and came along with a heaping of suffering.

A Ephraim Hanks biography reminded me of two reasons why they should not have expected the miracles they did.

First, Brigham Young and the first exodus of the Saints intended to make it out to the Valley the year they left Nauvoo. But they eventually decided to halt at Winter Quarters because it was getting dangerously late in the year to try the journey. So the handcart companies were in effect claiming a larger store of virtue and faith than the Brethren or the Saints (to their credit, they probably did not realize this). Miracles do not come as rewards for lavish displays of conspicuous virtue.

Second, when Brother Brigham first announced the handcarts one of his main reasons is that the handcarters could leave earlier in the season since they had less kit to assemble. Blessings are not likely to attend following a commandment contrary to its expressed intent.

The companies themselves I bet were not aware of any this. They were just ignorant and foolish like the rest of us. But facts are facts, and consequences attend our choices according to the choice that we made, no matter what our motives may have been.

Still and all, for my own well-intentioned choices I plead mercy.

Shez did remember the destruction of his fathers, and he did build up a righteous kingdom; for he remembered what the Lord had done in bringing Jared and his brother aacross the deep;

– Ether 10:2. He stayed righteous because he remembered the founding Exodus of his people, which was a miracle. (more…)

I had a strange dream about the temple lately, and now I may have found the key.

I recommend very much the book Plain and Precious Things.  Books, I think, recommended it awhile back and I finally got around to reading it.  Its a highly readable, plain language discussion of ancient temple ritual symbols and how they show up all over the Book of Mormon in a way that deepens your understanding of the message.  It stretches the bounds of probability a bit towards the end but the bulk is extremely compelling.

Plain and Precious Things describes two major ancient ordinances which seem to combine modern ordinances.  The Day of Atonement started with a baptism before moving on to the sacrifices.  The “Peace Ordinance” had initiatories, the sacrament, and an endowment all built in.

Plain and Precious Things says that the ‘throne’ was an important part of the temple worship and that the ‘rock’ was treated as equivalent with the ‘throne’.  We know that the Rock is a symbol for Christ but is also a symbol for the throne of Christ, the seat of his Majesty.

So now lets look at the dream. (more…)

I just learned about 10 USC §253.  It’s a big deal.   Its like the Roman law of dictatorship but without any real checks or limits, in a law duly passed by Congress in 2006. (more…)

John C. Wright is in fine fettle. His latest is as good as ever he has been. If you haven’t been reading it yet, rejoice! Now you can.

Each update comes with a comment from the editors (the conceit is that the text itself is a classic work that requires commentary of the sort you might see on an edition of the Odyssey or the Illiad). The updates are here. The story so far is here.

Because it seems some small requital of the pleasure the story gives me, I drop a few dollars into his patreon every month. But you needn’t, the story is free.

Wherever He is, there is beauty.

I love you like a bushel of apples,

like late harvest peaches still warm from the sun.

I love you like dew on the pasture,

like home Sunday dinner when the churching is done.

I dreamed of a temple built only by hand, and lit only by sunlight.

In it, for each new ordinance you did for yourself, you started back at the beginning and did anew every ordinance.

A young man came for his endowments.  He brought with him a building stone and his family.  He and his family had hewn out the stone themselves, and hauled it themselves.

From Newton County, Georgia:

The media reports of a deceased voter casting their ballot in Newton County are inaccurate.

James E. Blalock, Jr. passed away in 2006 and was purged from the Secretary of State database that year. His widow, Mrs. James E. Blalock, Jr. has always voted under that name and continued to do so through this year’s election. (more…)

On the sweetness of Mormon life . . .

The Bishopric is dead–the chemical engineer, the cable installer, the janitor supply businessman, long live the Bishopric–the cable installer, the law enforcement sergeant, the corporate trainer.

One of these bright, soft fall mornings, if you walk down the dirt road along the orchard, and take the turn where it bends out of sight in the haze… (more…)

College: 3 AM, 10 AM

Now: 10 PM, 6 AM

Historic US Naval Jack

Veterans’ Day today, in honor of the stout myrmidons among us.

From 1999 to 2016, average levels among the young men tested went from 600 to 400-450 ng/dL.

After accounting for confounders like obesity.

The times are out of joint.