Three Saints met.

I am the Prophet, said the first. I give guidance from God.

I am the Bishop, said the second. I am a Judge in Israel and a minister to His flock.

I am just the Nursery Leader, said the third. The Nursery Leader looked downcast.

The Bishop tried to offer some kind of reassurance but the Prophet hushed him.

All I do is . . . the Nursery Leader went on . . . All I do is . . . is personally hold and sing with and teach literal children of God at their earliest and most impressionable stages.

The Nursery Leader brightened.

The Nursery Leader then added, “and I wouldn’t be able to do any of it if it weren’t for the guidance from the Prophet and the calling from the Bishop!”

They all three were very happy together.

Nine months in, this is still the best comment of the year so far

Rozy I am going to start a traveling circus soon, a combination pageant, roadshow, riot, and YSA conference, hopefully your daughter can come along

From [] in the birth rate post.

Catholics believe that the sacrament literally becomes the body of Christ in a sense. I used to think that belief was grotesque. Just as every drop of water you drink is probably dinosaur pee, it would mean the communicant was — pardon me for being vulgar here — pooping out Christ. But the3 grotesqueness of that image is just a hangover from the false sectarian belief that the body and its functions are lesser. All that is really grotesque in Christianity comes from the Incarnation, where God Himself stunk into his nappy when he was a baby and squatted to poop when he was an adult.

Now I think that if I were a Catholic, I would relish the image of God slowly filling up the world as he was sluffed off from my skin, sweat from my pores, emptied from my bladder, and evacuated from bowels and nostrils. Bled from my hurts. Shed from my tears. Puffed out with my breath. I would be in awe that through me God was slowly making the world into divine flesh.

I would not give a hang about transubstantiation vs. consubstantiation, but this I would care a lot about.

I’m not Catholic. So lets bring this idea home. Let’s talk about substantiation.

(more…)

Happy Labor Day. It’s been a slow couple of weeks on the JG. Everyone’s been busy canning and vacationing, us included. Today happily brings those two concepts together.

Bodily labor is a gospel concept. Bodily rest is also.

I dreamed a city just beyond the edge of the LDS belt converted. Tucson, Albuquerque, Spokane, some place like that. 80-90% converted, Everyone is over the moon with excitement.

The church is rushing to build a bunch of small temples scattered around the city.

The city fathers, however, also want a big centerpiece temple to mark their new status as an LDS center.

Everyone is thrown for a loop. No one is quite sure how to respond.