An internet resource provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that I spend a fair bit of time with is the old map page:
classic.churchofjesuschrist.org/maps
We have been entrusted before with the true story of the Emperor’s New Clothes and true story of the Good Samaritan (Not just one true Good Samaritan story, but lots of them! All of them true, true, true, and true.) Now we bring you the true story of the Grasshoppers and the Ants Bees.
Why bees, you ask? Hmm. Hard to say.
In the original story, the grasshopper fiddled and laughed, the ant worked and saved, and when winter came the ant thrived while the grasshopper starved.
The reality is more complicated.
With no further ado, my honies, the true story of the Grasshoppers and the Bees:
There are weeks left in the summer. We still have many days of swimming pools and glasses of ice on the front porch and heat waves and overgrown gardens and praying for rain and mowing the grass and trips to the mountains and swatting mosquitoes.
But I am ready for fall. Saturday breakfast with the clear light of a fall morning, toast from my wife’s bread, local chicken eggs, green chile, applesauce fresh from the stove where it’s simmering down.
From Jordan Petersen. Worth thinking about.
It’s amazing how many advocates for being non judgmental, reaching people where they are, being inclusive, etc. get uncomfortable when its not socially approved victim categories. Include . . . young men? Affirm . . . their identity?
We live in a golden age of gross hypocrisy.
(Btw, what is that background? A trendy cubicular display bookshelf and a stack of firewood)
Ezra and Nehemiah appealed to me in ways I didn’t expect.
First, there was the obvious care the princes and the rich had for their people, including feeling ashamed and voluntarily renouncing debts owed them when they were told that they had freed their people from one captivity only to bring them into another, including ruler and servant alike sharing tents and sleeping on their swords.
Second, the scene where they read the book of the law to the people who weep, and they celebrate the feast of the booths for the first time. I was overcome with the sense that for the very first time, never before in their history, they had become a people. Having their nation destroyed, living in captivity among strangers, and then the trek back to destroyed Jerusalem surrounded by hostiles. They finally became a people.
For us the pioneers were the ones who made us a people through endless troubles. I was very saddened yesterday to see not a peep about it on the Church website.
They are still worthy of honor and recognition from those who are still their people, and I do honor and recognize them.
If faith is what you still believe when you can’t see it, is hope only for when things seem hopeless?
Hope isn’t the same as optimism. Optimism is a belief that the probable outcomes are going to turn in your favor. It is like a very mild form of Napoleonic belief in one’s own star.
Hope is knowing there are miracles.
There is a book review on how humans evolved to speak. I can take or leave the theory. So can the reviewer.
What really got to me was the section on cradling. I think that got to the reviewer too.
Only humans cradle. Cradling means the mother and her child’s eyes are close together—they share each other’s gaze, called “intersubjectivity.” From immediately after birth, mother and child engage in a complex interaction, in which the child imitates the mother, and vice versa, sharing affect. This leads to “joint attention,” where they share perceptions of objects in the world other than mother or child, with their intersubjectivity making it possible for them to communicate they are seeing the same object. (This is different from “gaze following,” which does happen in other species.) This leads to the ability to “share intentionality,” that is, to cooperate. (Apes cannot cooperate or share to achieve joint objectives.) From this flow words,
If words don’t come from cradling, I bet sociality does. That is just as important. It’s amazing to me how important God made men and women and fathers and mothers.
I’m very grateful for the good discussion on yesterday’s post about the current state of the church.
Two thoughts. (more…)
Today all four Utah representatives voted to make gay marriage the law of the land. Three of them are Peter Priesthood LDS.
I’m sure they have their reasons.
But it makes me think of thoughts, and experiences, that I have been having for a long time.
If you believe that the Church is doing well, despite cratering birth rates, despite stagnant conversions, because we are building more temples, you have another think coming.
We are in crisis.
If you don’t think half your congregation are apostates or close to it, you have another think coming.
If you think that all the guidance you need even on issues of great public import you can get by putting your finger in the air and seeing which way the wind in Salt Lake City is blowing, you have another think coming.
If you think the Brethren are willing and able to trumpet out everything that needs to be said, you have another think coming.
If you don’t think the very elect can be deceived, without exception for rank or apparent success or outward measures of righteousness, you have another think coming.
[Elder Erastus Snow in the Logan Tabernacle, Saturday afternoon, February 2, 1884, as recorded in the Journal of Discourses v. 25, p 31]
The time was, in the infancy of this Church, when our minds were so narrow compared to what they are now, that we looked for the speedy coming of our Lord, and the accomplishment of His great work before this time. But as our minds grew, and our ideas enlarged, we began to perceive that we were only children in our views and feelings, our ideas and expectations. We had the views, ideas and expectations of children; and we see how the Lord has enlarged Israel and expanded His work; and now we behold so much more to be accomplished than what has been accomplished, that we are apt in our minds to put off the day of the Lord a great way.
The time was that we looked for one temple. The early revelations given to the Latter-day Saints predicted a temple in Zion, and Zion in our minds at that time was a little place on the Missouri River in Jackson County, Western Missouri—a town and a few surrounding villages, or a country, peradventure it may be as large as a county. When we first heard the fullness of the Gospel preached by the first Elders, and read the revelations given through the Prophet Joseph Smith, our ideas of Zion were very limited. But as our minds began to grow and expand, why we began to look upon Zion as a great people, and the Stakes of Zion as numerous, and the area of the country to be inhabited by the people of Zion as this great American continent, or at least such portions of it as the Lord should consecrate for the gathering of His people. We ceased to set bounds to Zion and her Stakes. We began also to cease to think about a single temple in one certain place. (more…)
I wed anew in April.
On the sweetness of sitting on the veranda of a little church high in the mountains. You look over the valley. Your daughter plays gospel tunes on an old piano.
Why do they keep lying? Just like with Nixon story.
https://mobile.twitter.com/herandrews/status/1547606629570424834
The lie doesn’t even seem to have a point, lynching is bad either way.
I hate how much basic stuff I learned in school turned out to be badly incomplete to the point of propaganda.
You are driving along and on the radio–do people still listen to the radio? Today you do–you hear Brian Adams, the Summer of 69. It’s a song about that one golden stretch when you were young. Those were the best years of my life. Simple but powerful.
So as usual let’s bury a normal and uncomplicated feeling under a heap of analysis. (more…)