An acolyte in an Asian monastery grew dissatisfied with the slow pace of his progress there and determined to make his own way in the world.  The sage who presided called the acolyte in and showed him a fire.  On it he laid a stick.  As it started to catch flame, the sage pushed it away from the main fire, where its flames soon went out.

Another acolyte was content with the teachings there.  The sage called him in also.  He showed a heap of sticks and logs.  Tightly packed, when the sage tried to light the heap, he could not.

A couple of days ago I passed on three great parenting metaphors from others and in the comments tried myself to make them into fables.  The results were good as fables but for the first and third weren’t obviously connected to the metaphors I started with. (more…)

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean

If the Galilean who conquers you is pallid, you were no great shakes to begin with.  Only the pale can be defeated by the pale.

The Galilean will overcome you, sure.  Be stout enough that he overcomes you in his fiery mercy and ruddy strength.

“When have I brought you joy?” the lovely one asked a week or two ago.  It was an unexpected question to just have like that.  I said what came to mind.  What came to mind were the spiritual moments.  The birth of our children and life with Betsey.

One of them was we two dressing Betsey’s body and combing her hair after she died.

Well, today was the day she died.  It s been many years ago.  It ruins grief to desire it, but it also ruins something when it fades away.  Today it feels a little bit fresh.

Her family on both sides were mostly able to gather throughout the day.  By car, by plane.

We were singing Jesus, Lover of My Soul when she entered the final bodily throes of her life.

Let me to thy bosom fly.

One big aha moment is when you realize that at least in this life the good (i.e., the righteous), the true, and the beautiful and I would add the heroic are not the same.  They are all good.  We all praise and value these things and seek after them.   But at least in this life they aren’t all the same thing.  They aren’t purely opposed to each other either.  In fact I firmly believe that ultimately they all become the same thing when we have grown into the fulness of our eternal return to God, but for now they are only partly lined up.   Some things are beautiful but corrupt.  Some heroism is pretty messy and ugly.  And so on. (more…)

Last night thoughts and images were drifting through my head as I was falling asleep until the image came of one man grasping another by the shoulder and in a reassuring tone telling him,

you have the infinity of godly asphyxiation

I startled myself fully awake.

On the sweetness of Mormon life with teens…

Friday.   One teen is texting you gospel insights from her hydroponics class.  You and your wife are struggling to get out the door for your date because one of your teens asking for a definition has turned into all you singing the word ‘mausoleum’ to the Abba tune Mama Mia and the suggestions for lyrics are getting more and more ridiculous.

There are almost no examples of Christ healing someone without someone asking him to or otherwise doing something to seek out the healing like the woman with an issue of blood.  The only two exceptions coming to mind are the widow’s son of Nain where Christ happened across the funeral procession and was moved to compassion and Lazarus who was a very good friend. Even his own disciples Christ usually didn’t help until they asked, like the storm that came up when they were out on the lake.

Perhaps this is because he has a different perspective than ours about what really matters.  Take for instance the man sick with the palsy where Christ’s first reaction was to forgive his sins and at least on the surface only healed him afterwards as a teaching point.

It certainly puts in perspective the message that Christ hammered home over and over again that we need to pray and ask.

My own wild thought is like this. Christ is divine so we think of them as going around Palestine with an unlimited omniscient view of everything that was happening there and elsewhere and all over the Earth. We think that God like he could have waved his hand and healed everybody. But maybe in some way he was embracing the mortal experience  we all have of limited capacity and limited information. He couldn’t have waved his hand to heal everybody and still have had a genuine mortal experience.

Whatever the explanation, there were likely hundreds of sick and afflicted people throughout Palestine that Christ could have tracked down and healed but did not. Something to chew on.

And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.

11 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?

12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

13 But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

-Matthew 9.

I didn’t set out this time through the gospels to have more sympathy for the Pharisees, but I am finding it anyway.  Its not that I am discovering they were right all along.  That would be absurd.  I am discovering the natural human tendencies they fell into like traps (at least, the better ones among them, people like Paul and Gamaliel).  For example, see this post on Collective Guilt for Killing Christ. (more…)

Someone asked me what value the Book of Mormon has for us now.

Here is the answer I gave.  I don’t pretend it’s the only answer or that the value in my answer can only be achieved via the Book of Mormon.  Only that this is the answer I gave and it was my true answer and it was and will continue to be a true answer.

1. The Bible gives us the spectacle of a people surrounded by foreigners. First other tribes and then the Romans. That is not our situation.   Wickedness and persecution come from people who may not be part of our church but they are our people.  Or they may be part of the church (Lord, is it I?).  The Book of Mormon scene is much more like that.
2. Part of the point of the Book of Mormon is that scripture doesn’t ultimately matter. Yes, its very important.  But if every copy of the Book of Mormon were burned tomorrow and blotted from every mind, God could recreate it in an instant, or other scripture, or something even more marvelous.  God is the thing.
3. Captain Moroni. So many distortions and perplexities about Christ’s wonderful New Testament message end when you consider that “if all men were etc.”  The best doctrine is the stories of the most righteous.

• What does it mean to “give glory to God”?
• Why stone Achan’s family?
• What was the cost of Canaanite cheap labor?

(more…)

Isaac Newton said that he was a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants. He meant so many basic discoveries that we all take for granted were genius, or even miraculous in their time. Things like the concept of the zero.

You also stand on giant shoulders. (more…)

I am going to walk you through an odd line of reasoning.  It may be a little shaky, I’m not too sure about it, but it ends in an interesting place.

Non-Protestants will often argue that you need to subject private interpretation of the scripture against “the tradition” or you might end up way off base.  (I believe this argument may map to what we say about personal inspiration and prophetic authority, or to secular experts appealing to “the consensus.”).   This argument is correct but it goes too far.  It means you can’t be more correct than that tradition either.  It reminds me of the secular efforts to smooth out the business cycle.  You avoid sharp declines at the expense of explosive growth.  I fully expect our Catholic and Orthodox friends to disagree, but to me it sounds like an appeal to safety that will put off the man of spirit.

A better argument for the person who wants to reach their personal heights is Newton’s statement that he was a dwarf standing on the shoulder of giants.  To the man who asks why he should be chained by these dead figures the better response might be that he will go much further personally by engaging with them than by trying to recreate everything from the ground up.

Your mind goes interesting places as the miles roll past you.

But what occured to me is Joseph Smith had the best response of all for why you need to commit to the Church.  “We without them cannot be made perfect.”  It’s not just more likely that you will get there as part of the group, its essential. Measuring how high you can go on your own misses the point.