The conventional approach is to get  help when your marriage has trouble.  But why worry about your marriage when its awesome?  Its already awesome.

Wrong.

When your marriage is awesome is precisely when you should be working to make your marriage better.  You are that close.

The conventional approach seems to me to like a horticulturist with plenty of tips on how not to fall off the ladder, but nothing more, as if being on the ladder were the summum bonum.  It is not.  Stretch out to the edge of your fingertips to pick the fruit.

General Conference Debrief–

Elder Cook’s talk on being a peaceable follower of Christ, despite what you’d think, was not about going around being nonviolent.  It was about the problem of evil and what to do about it.
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On the sweetness . . .

The man who prays at Church looks nervous.  “Dear kind graceful heavenly father . . . “

I just realized that ‘”rejoice” means “take joy again.”  I am swift on the uptake.

The point of gratitude isn’t to give yourself double the happiness.  But that is its effect.

A young man had remarkable spiritual experiences and was very happy.  But one morning he woke up and found that he just didn’t believe.  There may have been reasons for it–he thought of some himself–but he eventually decided that if ti was possible for a mood like to come on to you, everything you experienced was just moods, including the spiritual experiences.

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Simultaneously the most American and the most universal of holidays.

We have much to be grateful for.

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.

Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. 

James 5.

The cankered gold that eats the flesh like fire is obviously a spiritual metaphor.  But in our prosaic way, we got to talking about what kinds of reactions can actually corrode gold.  We couldn’t think of anything and a little research shows there isn’t much under normal conditions.  Gold cleans up nicely.

Then someone mentioned Alas, Babylon.  There are some striking passages about irradiated gold which slowly kills the wearer.  If you want to really get what James is saying, read Alas, Babylon.

Long-time perusers of this web site may remember the birthday greetings issued here to Ken Mattingly following his 75th, 80th, and 85th birthdays. This morning at breakfast looking through the pages of the newspaper I noticed the photo above and knew why it would be appearing. (more…)

Does the Garden of Eden story tell us anything about the types of social pressures that men and women are most vulnerable to?  Eve was hit by general social pressure and an appeal to increase her status, whereas what got Adam was a pretty woman and/or domestic appeals.

Does that generalize?  Dunno.

Yes, I know there are profound doctrinal truths and mythopoetic insights to be garnered from the Garden of Eden story, but I happened not to be thinking about any of those.  I happened to be thinking about this instead.  So sorry.  Our normal insight suppliers have experienced 48% YoY cost increases, so we are offering these substitutes instead.  ICantBelieveItsNotInsight!

I reckon as how I owes my pard  Elon a apology.  Yessirree, I’m right sorry.  I was out doin’ a mite o’ bird huntin’ and maybe took a shot that I oughtn’t to have took.  It shore is tough being as quick on the draw as I am.    I jest ain’t never poached a rocket before.

The obituary for Elder Ballard says he is survived by seven children, 43 grandchildren, 105 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild. So at first glance at least one of the Elder Ballard’s children had as many children as Ballard and his wife did. The ratio of great-grandchildren to grandchildren is 2.4. What might that ratio grow to with future births?

I am not interested in Elder Ballard’s family per se, but I find it a case put in my lap of a faithful Mormon public figure, who had several children and whose children had several children, that I might use to ponder what the drop-off in fecundity may be for the current generation involved in having children. It is also a big enough family that individual cases of involuntary limited fertility shouldn’t throw off the population-scale picture.
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Hebrews 10 contrasts Christ with the Judaic priests. They have to sacrifice every year, whereas Christ did it once. The argument is that Christ’s sacrifice was obviously more effective. Are you really sin free if you keep sinning and need a new atoning sacrifice every year?

The yearly atoning sacrifice makes sense from the childish view of sin that it’s a question of debits and credits with the sacrifice periodically topping off your account. This forensic view is not totally wrong but it is badly incomplete.

Hebrews 10 talks about how the Mosaic sacrifice was meant to compensate for violations of the law but Christ’s sacrifice makes you holy.  The New Perspective on sin is that it is primarily a state of being. It is who you are. Sins are a reflection of your inward weakness and malice, and pay the price of your existing sins all you wish, if the inside of the vessel is not cleansed, you are still in sin.

Christ pays your debts, to be sure, but only incidentally. He spends freely to do something much more difficult and lasting–to make you the kind of person who is not a debtor.  We might extend Elder Packer’s old (and good!) LDS parable of the debtor in this way:

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Thereby have some entertained angels unawares.

For me, the best application of this scripture is to be open to reproofs from people who aren’t just echoing Great and Spacious Building propaganda.

All criticisms gratefully accepted.

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On the sweetness…

In your unusually quiet family ward sacrament, one young fellow abruptly stands on the bench and gives just one bellow.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-m-russell-ballard-dies

He was a window to an older Church run along family lines.