The beauty of life is written into their flesh.

Because I am a gape-jawed lackwit, I just now realized that all the fancy clothes in the Book of Mormon are priestly clothes.

Exodus 30-40: Fine-twined linen, scarlet, jewels, gold, and silver.

1 Nephi 13:

Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church.

A lot of the stuff I have been reading in the Book of Mormon as a simple critique of the rich is more precisely a critique of the priestly castes, or of false priestly castes.  It’s pretty blatant.

The great and spacious building isn’t simply  high status, its specifically high-status in a priestly, temple way.  We should think of the GSB as a coterie of folks offering a gnosis, a body of knowledge that you have to go through their programs to acquire, that is then supposed to fit you for wealth and prestige.  Read your Nibley, I guess.

The one aspect of the tabernacle that is presented positively in the Book of Mormon is the curious workmanship.

Notice also that Nephi says the clothes and ornaments of priestliness are what they desire.  These are people who exchange the reality of power and authority for playing power and authority dress-up.  They will be ok being powerless functionaries if they get a corner office and  a car with a driver.

P.S. The notable differences between the tabernacle and the GSB are (1) silks and (2) harlots.  The harlots I get.  The silks, dunno.  Secular historians will say that silk didn’t hit the Middle East until after the Nephite Exodus, so I am not clear on what ‘silk’ even means in the Book of Mormon.  Curiously, if you search for ‘silk’ on the church website, it returns you a pile of hits for ‘linen’.

P.P.S. –sotto voce– doesn’t the tabernacle in Exodus seem kinda . . . garish  –sotto voce–

The Lord speaking to each people in their own tongue has *way* more implications than we think it does.

Seventeen years ago my little daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on the birthday she never quite made it to that year, with slight updates since.

Today she would be 21.

You would be 21, Betsey.  Little friends you had are all grown up now.

I miss the life you did not live, I miss your dates and your projects, someday your husband, your children.  But most of all, I miss you.

Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.

We planted a Pearl Apple for your birthday.

The years roll on, alas.

It’s all over that there is a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision recalling Roe v. Wade.

This is a major escalation into breaches of norms.  Everything old and venerable is being sucked into the war.

(Roe was itself an escalation in its day.  Its been around long enough that overturning it is also an escalation.)

Decadence is when everything good anyone tries to accomplish moves everyone closer to the brink.

Exodus 35 and 36 has a heart theme.

whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the Lord; gold, and silver, and brass [and other temple construction supplies]

And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the Lord hath commanded;

And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up,

(more…)

Which do you think is more motivating to a young mother, or a woman on the cusp of motherhood–

That 90% of mothering is showing up–getting married and having the kids and generally being around–everything else is gravy and probably only makes a difference at the margins?

Or that the mother’s labors makes a tremendous difference in the life of each child?

I find that I believe both and I’m not sure how to reconcile them.