A mouse fell into conversation with a stray heifer calf. “You cattle have your good points,” the mouse said, “but sometimes you aren’t always careful about watching where you step.”

The heifer calf was furious. “That’s not true, you liar. I hope you get crushed in the next stampede!” (more…)

To live with regret is to be whole.

tfw having beautiful meaningful experiences that can only be described with cheesy cliches

— ?bosco? (@selentelechia) December 9, 2022

having beautiful meaningful experiences that can only be described with cheesy cliches

Reply — https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1601174924340887552

I wonder if this is an inescapable problem or if we just have no shared artistic vocabulary for it

Serious Artists are well acquainted with how it can go wrong from their own sordid personal lives, seemingly no familiarity with the joys

Most folks who come across this site probably think I’m nuts. Oh, that guy who rants about glory. Really over the top. Even some of our dear friends think I go a bit overboard at times.

I have been blessed with a family that hits real highs in domestic happiness. Sometimes the coziness is indescribable. In trying to make sense of it, I ultimately decided there was no way to do it without connecting it to the transcendent element: ineffable glory, worlds uncountable spilling like jewels through your fingers.

These are true stories, though only partly factual.

There once was a small rural post office. One day the local postman heard something faint in the wind blowing from the far off sea. “The true king has landed,” he said. He closed the post office, went home, grabbed his shotgun and his horse and his pack of hounds. He then went to the town police department and attacked it with a shout of ‘long live the king.’ After burning it down, he then rode to meet the true king out of the west with his hounds trotting alongside him. He was hundreds of miles away. Nothing daunted, he attacked little government offices along the way that did not proclaim their allegiance.
(more…)

Fall, friendly rocks

https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/

Authority and command are just and proper.

They are not a last resort like there was something shameful or unhappy about them. They are not a necessary evil. They are good.

Let’s talk about the gospel paths.  Plural.  There is only one gospel path, but for each of us our path of faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, the gift of  the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end, will have its own particular vocations, techniques, callings, and practices.

If you are called to give up a promising career to become a schoolteacher, your family living in a blue collar neighborhood with rough edges, that is your gospel path.  Something you and your family is learning that way is the seed that will blossom into glory.  It is not everyone’s seed.

If obesity or bad skin or lack of confidence or something is hindering your path to eternal marriage, then the particular health regimen or confidence building mindset that works for you is part of your gospel path and may be for life.  But it isn’t everyone’s.

For  most of these particular gospel paths, you don’t have an authoritative source.  The church does not have a handy mega-chart by challenge and personality type where you can find your own particular course to eternity.  You aren’t going to hear the prophet begin his next conference address with the ringing announcement that, “while I invite all to listen to my message today with the aid of the Spirit, my remarks are particularly addressed to INFPs with allergies who are the children of divorce.”

As droll as that would be.

(more…)

Kent Budge’s friend and neighbor Gary Stradling wrote of Kent for the Los Alamos Daily Post.
(link)

An obituary for Kent was also published a few days ago.
(link)

If you were extraordinary, you could bring me up to be extraordinary with you.  I have that potential.

But you aren’t extraordinary.

If I were extraordinary, I could bring you up to be extraordinary with me.  You have that potential.

But I am not extraordinary.

Here. Don’t cotton to this new-fangled hyper-articulation, though.