A 12-year old girl is crying.  She says to her father,  “I don’t want to grow up.  I like being a kid.”

A man is crying.  He says to his wife, “I don’t want them to grow up.  I like being a dad.”

How unfair is it that 16% of the land of the United States is a majority in the House of Representatives?  Cmon, people, its 202X!

I am the Way, the Story, and the Life

-SV translation (loose)

Christ’s character in the gospels is very consistent – he’s generous to those who ask him for help, withering to those who accuse or contradict him whatever you understand “meekness” & “loving your enemies” to mean, you have to contend with an imperious & disagreeable Christ.

besides reminding the Samaritan woman that she was a serial fornicator, Christ responds to her (gentle) attempt to debate with him by telling her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about & her religion is wrong he loved the Samaritan woman; this was a loving thing for him to do

to the extent that there is any conflict in the Church over what it means to be “Christlike”, it is between Christ’s actual living example in the gospels, & a disingenuous & nonsensical misreading of a handful of verses in the Sermon on the Mount

-thus edJCB

If you are the kind who gets up to big plans for Christmas

Sooner or later you have to scale back this little hope or that one and say

There’s always next Christmas.

For this Christmas, being very happy will have to be enough.

I dreamed there was this family that moved up to the hills for the peace and quiet.  By choice they had no phones nor internet.  Instead in the evenings they would sing and the girls in the family would play the violin and cello.  There they would sit in the twilight playing the music.

Then I had a sense that somehow they were my family, this was my home, and the music would be there waiting for me when I came on home.

And then I dreamed that this place was the place Joseph and Mary were headed for the nativity and they were somehow also going home when they went there.  I saw a tired man and a tired woman on a donkey headed up a country road to a white house where they would be welcome in.  They were close enough now to catch a hint of the music of the strings and to see the dim figures on the porch.

On a day when there was a kind of electricity in the air and everyone and even the animals seemed to be more than themselves, a flock came over a hill.

A sheep paused there.  By some magic of the day his senses were heightened and he could see far down the plain.

(more…)

There is of course a meaningful arc to Jesus own life.

The innocent baby

The atoning sacrifice

the triumphant resurrected king

For this reason we celebrate Christmas.  It is the beginning.

But sometimes I wonder if the real significance of the Christmas story isn’t Mary?  There is something heroic in a supremely womanly way about her role.

I have done much of which I repent – since I became a Christian I have discerned and recognized this; and three of the worst of my sins were being a doctor, a scientist and a university teacher.

-from Bruce Charlton

Down, down, down.  From here.

Bonneville County is Idaho Falls.

Here is an interesting contrast.  I just picked whatever years came up first on a search.

1979 LDS Statistical Report

Members  4,439,000

Children of Record 107,000

24 children per 1,000

(Children of record is the number of babies blessed, which means its the birthrate among people who still have some connection to the Church.)

1986 LDS Statistical Report

Members  6,170,000

Children of Record 93,000

15 children per 1,000

2019 LDS Statistical Report

Members  16,565,000

Children of Record 94,000

6 children per 1,000

2020 LDS Statistical Report

Members 16,660,000

Children of Record 65,540

3 children per 1,000

What strikes me is that we have fewer children now than we did in the late 70s with a quarter of the Saints.

Sometimes when the kids are all piled in one place I feel like a dragon over his hoard.

-thus EDJCB.

Disobedience always is dangerous, but the most dangerous type is when you think you are being more virtuous than the apostles.  This ends in you being more Christian than Jesus.

Not to the same degree but there are also dangers in being more virtuous then the mass of the Saints.  One way to get around those dangers is to laugh at yourself when you are being sanctimoniously extra righteous.  Be extra righteous, but also laugh at yourself.

Not my own insight, but someone said that hookup culture is clearly a forerunner to ‘you will own nothing and you will be (un)happy’

And porn and easy divorce culture and  . . .