A soul came to the great angel, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, as terrible as an army with banners.

What do you wish

The soul looked down and would not answer.

What do you wish

The soul steeled himself to answer though his courage fled.

What do you wish

(more…)

We have an extremely old minivan, 240k miles, that had basically stopped working.  The oil pan wouldn’t maintain pressure past a mile or two of driving, plus something or other seems to have gone wrong with the electrical system, it went for a couple of weeks of nonuse and when we tried to start it again it wouldn’t start even with jumping.

We also have a friend who is in a financial crunch right now and needs a vehicle badly.  She has quite a bit of experience driving truck and asked if she could maybe baby the vehicle back into being and drive it for a few days where she had a particularly acute need for transportation.  The lovely one has been giving her rides so we said sure.  She lives 10 miles out of town, though, so we warned her she probably wouldn’t even make it home.

It was one of those unaccountable things–as soon as she tried the minivan it started right up.  She made it home.

A few days turned into a couple of weeks.  One of our other vehicles went down and was going to be in for repairs for a bit.  We asked for our minivan back.  Of course, no problem, she said.  Our daughter drove it to the gym, where it promptly died.  It couldn’t be jumped.  Our friend happened to be nearby, heard about it, and came to help us get it going.  As soon as she turned the keys, it started right up.

Well, we can take a hint.  “Why don’t you hold on to it,” we said.  Yesterday at church she drove up with several other people without transportation who the ward had been giving rides to.  She’d been driving all over to get them.  “You sure know how to baby along this vehicle,” I said.  “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I haven’t done anything with it.  It just runs.”

P.S.  I think I have more spiritual experiences of this flavor because I’m willing to tell on myself.  It tickles my funny bone.  The Saga of the Minivan that Would Only Run When Given Away.

None can know how difficult it is to enter into the kingdom of heaven, but those who have tried—tried hard, and have not ceased to try. . . . Demands unknown before are continually being made upon the Christian: it is the ever fresh rousing and calling, asking and sending of the Spirit that worketh in the children of obedience. When he thinks he has attained, then is he in danger; when he finds the mountain he has so long been climbing show suddenly a distant peak, radiant in eternal whiteness, and all but lost in heavenly places, a peak whose glory-crowned apex it seems as if no human foot could ever reach—then is there hope for him; proof there is then that he has been climbing, for he beholds the yet unclimbed; he sees what he could not see before; if he knows little of what he is, he knows something of what he is not.

— thus George MacDonald

I have been pondering the abundance of child sexualization in the media, even in children’s cartoons.

And I realized, that if you have an identity that revolves around sex, then your entire worldview will be understood in terms of sex. Anyone who doesn’t do this, will have to do it very deliberately and with difficulty.

In this sense, once we have the sexual revolution (yes, heterosexual as well as homosexual and *-sexual), then child sexualization is inevitable. If you have destroyed the underpinnings for why not, then you can’t be surprised to see it happen.

Your inability to imagine it happening is an insubstantial barrier to it actually happening.

If you accept a premise, then you can’t be shocked that you also accepted the conclusion. Of course, these two are rarely packaged together.

Babylon is a jealous idol, as well as a cruel and duplicitous one.

There is beauty all around when there’s love at home.

Addiction is a very common metaphor for sin (or maybe addiction is just one type of sin).  What I want to do in this post is describe what is actually going on with addiction a little more clearly in a way that will help us with our own and others’ struggles with sin.  I am going to use terms from the psychiatric-medical complex but I’m using them from the perspective of my own experience and observation of sin; I’m not bothering to make them medically or psychiatrically accurate.

This photo of a tree growing out of a ruin is going to tie in at the end.

Let’s begin:  we believers have a folk  understanding of “addiction” as any behavior you have an unhealthy inner compulsion toward, so we call lots of sin addiction.

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Brother McConkie did a deep dive into the story of the man sick with the palsy. The story is not a parable but this talk felt similar to Elder Bednar’s.

Let’s talk about the story. But first, let’s give one answer to the question Brother McConkie starts off with.

How do you show God you love him?

Answer: you spend time with him. Most of all in prayer when you pray in such a way that we can call “talking to God.” Sometimes you just need to talk to God. I love it myself when my kids come to me and say, Dad, I just want to talk to you, I don’t care what about.

And now for the story.

(more…)

Owen Broadcast give the longest possible variation of the correct answer to the question, “Are Mormons Christians,” which is

Yes, but . . .

its been a minute since we had a thread about a nice semi-electric topic. therefore, it is time for another

?? american theology thread:

ARE MORMONS CHRISTIAN

[and why. an actual poking into this that isnt just fishing for likes and in group pat on the backs] pic.twitter.com/IJnoMdvm5D

— owen cyclops (@owenbroadcast) January 24, 2023

We had just one of the guys at Elders Quorum teach the lesson.  It must be his time, he gave a talk in December.  I don’t know exactly what he does for a living but he’s a driven business type, and when he gets up to talk he’s feeling stiff and formal, kinda driven.

One of the other guys raises his hand before he can even say anything.  He’s startled but calls on him.

The brother is grinning as he talks.  “Hey, I was just wondering how your presentation went.  Did the big bosses stare out the window like you thought?”

The context here is that in his talk last month, this guy told us about how he had to give this big presentation he was working night and day on, but in the past the big bosses at the national level this presentation was for usually just fiddled on their phones instead of paying attention.

The teacher’s eyes lit up.  “No!” he says.  “They were alert to it!”  There’s some laughter, some more conversation around the room, a  couple of jokes.  2-3 minutes later, the teacher takes us back to the lesson.  But now as he starts talking about it he’s relaxed, and the presence of the Spirit is instantly palpable.

Why does a little chewing the fat invite the Spirit like that?

This is another dream post, so skip it if you aren’t in the mood. Also, my Puritan conscience impels me to tell you that this dream does not have social value, great wisdom, or an improving message. (more…)

Poor C.S. Lewis, he had to write the Screwtape Letters by himself, before ChatGPT was around.

The machine has the perfect tone of unctuous smarm for Screwtape, Jack Lewis could have fired off a few queries and then zipped over the pub.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/america-it-s-time-to-pay-the-demographic-piper

in 2024, the Historical Reversal of America’s age structure is expected to occur, i.e., when persons aged 65 and older outnumber children under the age of 15. That demographic milestone represents a significant and far-reaching transformation of the U.S. population. It will usher in a new demographic era unlike much of the country’s youthful past when approximately one out of three Americans were children under 15.

Ladies,  I’m going to share some cute decorating tips for protecting your egg from marauders.

A young man went climbing the mountain to speak to the guru at the mountain top.  On his way up, he met a wiry man in a robe climbing down.

“Did the guru give you wisdom?” the young man asked.

“I am the guru,” the other man said.

“Then why . . .?”

The guru nodded.  “Because I saw another mountain peak over there higher than this one that I’m going to ascend.  Because a voice said to me, ‘you are not the guru at the mountain top.  You are the guru climbing the mountain.’  And because I don’t know if any mountain top can be high enough.”

The guru took his leave and continued on down, but when he  looked back the young man was following him.

“Why are you following me?” Then the guru grinned and the young man grinned.  They both knew why.  They  continued on their way. (more…)

This is the true church.  I believe that through revelation and experience.

At the same time, well, look at all those other guys.  They aren’t LDS, they probably aren’t gonna be anytime soon, and sometimes they do some things that seem pretty cool.

I am of the opinion that we cannot heal the breaches in religion in this world and we really do need to find effective ways to live—if not together then apart. The old idea that not everyone converts during the Millennium means something interesting is going on that belies our expectations

-un amigo.

I’ve been gnawing at that for awhile, and it led me in the same direction. (more…)