Recall that the Saturday evening session was first cancelled then reinstated as just a fifth session. It will no longer be priesthood session or women’s session.

Hmm.  Taken together, a lot of these recent changes have collective side effects that make them ill advised in aggregate, at least that is my feeling.  But the SL Trib feels the same way, so I must be wrong.

Christofferson, the Covenant Path

Obedience can be good.  Independence can be good.  But there is a tension between them.

They both have bad versions–unthinking conformity, prideful rebellion–and it should interest you that Satan appears to aim for both.  The conformist rebel is one of the defining archetypes of our age.

Covenants reconcile the tension between obedience and independence.

(more…)

There once were two men who had to duel using fish.

It was not easy to figure out how to do.  They were the miserable butt of jokes for months as they tried out and discarded various fanciful notions.

Particularly miserable was the man who had been challenged.  He and the challenger had both been pretty worked up about whatever it was, so he accepted the challenge through clenched teeth and then drew himself up to announce his choice of weapon.  He wanted fish spears, the barbed nasty little things.  He drew himself up and said, “FISH [dramatic pause]” then one guy there snorted and everyone around burst out laughing, big honking laughs, and no one heard him say “spears.”  They just would not shut up with the laughter, by the time he could make himself clear it sounded like he was making excuses and everyone agreed it was too late.  He was so angry he challenged some of them to a duel but they just laughed him off.

At the time the challenger was furious at the man who said fish.  He thought the man must have done it on purpose, he was in no mood to make allowances (you rarely are when you fight a duel), and he wanted to call the whole thing off as a mockery.  But everyone advised him he had to.  They insisted solemnly that it would clean impinge on his personal honor to back out now.

You never believe in society quite so much as when everyone you meet knows all about your affairs and spontaneously coordinates to keep you the butt of the joke.   (more…)

The closest ordinary people get to “absolute power” in our time is fatherhood – which is also the most ennobling, sanctifying thing we can experience. Power is good – good is an incoherent concept without power.

-thus EDJCB

Also the converse. Power without goodness has no glory.

Alternate definition of glory–goodness plus power. Righteous dominion.

Life is a maze. You wander the intricate three-dimensional underground passages, sometimes twisting out onto the surface, sometimes through nets and ropes winding into and out of the trees.

Each person’s maze is their own. (more…)

Elder Christofferson is one of us.  One of the God is willing to yank your chain a little crowd.

Here

Angelo Codevilla, RIP.

The Instapundit says his best article on American Politics is this one the Ruling class.

I say unto you, the redemption of Zion must needs come by power;

For ye are the children of Israel, and of the seed of Abraham, and ye must needs be led out of bondage by power

–D&C 103:15-17

Taking off from WJT’s efforts here,

Every man a holy pirate king

Every woman a luxury and a necessity

On the sweetness . . .

A strange ward.  A woman gets up to speak.  It’s a full on blue collar ramble.  She’s talking about her alcoholism, taking a shot at her addict exhusband, boasting about her lawn ornaments (!), and talking about service and repentance, all mixed together  She says she was floored when they ask her to be Relief Society President.  I am in the back laughing and laughing but also crying by the end.  It was pure and beautiful.

There was joy in heaven when my servant Warren bowed to my scepter; and separated himself from the crafts of men;

Therefore blessed is my servant Warren, for I will have mercy on him, notwithstanding the vanity of his heart

D&C 106

Can all that be twenty years ago? It seems not long ago that I used to ride on my shaggy chestnut pony along the old fence of our garden, and, standing up in the stirrups, used to pick the two-coloured poplar leaves. While a man is living he is not conscious of his own life; it becomes audible to him, like a sound, after the lapse of time.

Oh, my garden, oh, the tangled paths by the tiny pond! Oh, the little sandy spot below the tumbledown dike, where I used to catch gudgeons! And you tall birch-trees, with long hanging branches, from beyond which came floating a peasant’s mournful song, broken by the uneven jolting of the cart, I send you my last farewell!… On parting with life, to you alone I stretch out my hands. Would I might once more inhale the fresh, bitter fragrance of the wormwood, the sweet scent of the mown buckwheat in the fields of my native place! Would I might once more hear far away the modest tinkle of the cracked bell of our parish church; once more lie in the cool shade under the oak sapling on the slope of the familiar ravine; once more watch the moving track of the wind, flitting, a dark wave over the golden grass of our meadow!

–Diary of a Superfluous Man, Turgenev

Mediocrity is the Great Filter.

We have met the stagnation event, and it is us.

There was a farmer with land that had been in the family for years and generations.  Every day he walked the land with his boys.  He checked on the pasture.  He watched each one of his cattle.  He knew them by name.  He checked the brightness of their coat and the brightness of their eye, so he could tell if they were less than at their peak.  He repaired fences.  He drained wet spots and pulled noxious weeds.  He tried slow and careful experiments here and there, introducing a new clover in one field, growing chestnuts in another with grazing in the understory.  But his fathers had created deep rich pasture so he was slow and careful to modernize too much on every whim of theory.  He milked and drank the rich cream with his boys.  He told them stories as they did their rounds.  “This is where we went ice sliding the year the creek ran over.  That dead stump there?  That’s where Grandpa killed a bear.  No, not the bearskin by the hearth, that’s a different bear.”  He educated them that way, and by being with him as he did his work.  They were also taught by the storms and the sun and the stars at night.

There was a lord with a small city that had been in the family for years and generations.  Every day he walked the city with his boys.  He checked on the roads.  He smelled for sewer or pollution.  He talked to the shopkeepers and police and families.  He knew them by name.  He knew their houses and their way of dress and could tell if they were less than at their peak.  He would step in and direct traffic if he saw a snarl.  If the kids at the school seemed restless and quarrelsome, he would declare a holiday and put on a parade.  He found lifeless areas of empty buildings and rebuilt them for families and little shops and home industries.  He did experiments here and there.  A neighborhood nuclear generator over here.  A community managed homestead as the center of an HOA over here.  But his fathers had built a happy and prosperous people so he was slow to modernize too much on every whim of theory.  He collected his taxes and decorated his ancestral home with beautiful art made by his own people.  He told his boys stories as they did their rounds.  “This is where your great great grandfather–our founder– and his neighbors confronted a gang.  This is where we had the wrestling exhibition when I was a young man and our city stood off every challenger.”  He educated them that way, and by being with him as he did his work.  They were also taught by the storms and the sun and the swirl of human life healthily lived around them.  And even by the stars, because this was a town that cherished its darkness at night, and where everyone was safe even without lights.

From TV station KTNV in Las Vegas:

“History’s greatest question is a little closer to being answered and the best answer gets half a million dollars.

“Back in February of this year, Las Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow announced he was offering over $1 million in prize money for the best answers to the question about life after death. (more…)