I dreamed I was an American mining engineer in an airport somewhere in the US on my way to a job in Peru.  Do to snarl-ups, my luggage hadn’t shipped separately so I had a bunch of suitcases and such all piled up higgledy-piggledy on a long cart I was dragging with me.  Also on the cart were two fruit tree saplings that had been shipped to the airport instead of my home address by mistake.

At which point a couple of Brit security arrested me and took me to some sort of Brit enclave at the airport.  They said I shouldn’t be in Britain and was going to be deported.  The rest of the dream was me having great fun getting on my high horse about how I was an American citizen, passport and all, that I was not now nor was I going to be in Britain, and that actual illegal immigrants in Britain went unarrested and undeported their thousands.  The most fun was where I held up my passport so they could see it but wouldn’t let them hold it.  They kept shaking some kind of deportation paperwork in my face, but their hearts weren’t in it.

Your relationship with time gets weirder the older you get.  The days jam together so fast.  It’s as if there is a wreck at the end of time and your days are piling up behind it.

A look at over 900,000 insurance claims showed that the rate of serious medical problems after taking the abortion pill was about 10%.  More than 20 times what the FDA and the manufacturer claimed.

https://nitter.poast.org/EPPCdc/status/1916811619822113255#m

Why does it seem like the central pillar of modernity is lying to you?

Last night I dreamed that Ireland had these specially made windows and mirrors.  The thick windows would allow you to see not just the whole panorama but maybe one part of it in great detail and vivid color, and the mirrors worked with the windows to let you see views from even farther and farther off.

There was a place on the southeast coast*, a building made of brick with thick walls looking something like an abbey.  English people who had lived in Ireland had all been expelled, but they could step from the boat into this seaside building and look through one of its many cloistered windows so see the land they had loved.  There were massive tall thin mirrors set into thick round brick bases, like windmills, all over Ireland bringing the views of Ireland to this place.

I have nothing intelligent to say about President Trump’s specific tariff’s actions, nor about the ideal general tariff and free trade regime.  I meant to weigh in anyway but somewhat to my own surprise decided not to.

But I have changed my mind on the wisdom in principle of running free trade when trade partner countries are highly protectionist.

When I was a kid, I saw Milton Friedman point out that trade imbalances were China giving us stuff while we gave them green pieces of paper.  Which I was all in favor of.

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President Nelson wants virtue to garnish our thoughts.

Blog Friend Marilyn has been doing a study of virtue and has found some interesting things.   One that stood out is the dual meaning of virtue in the English language.

Mostly its used to refer to moral goods, but then you also see it used to refer to the properties of things.

Virtue — that substance or quality of physical bodies, by which they act and produce effects on other bodies

So we have scriptures about Christ’s healing where the “virtue” went out of him, or we can describe some effect happening by virtue of its cause.

It’s pretty easy to come up with a technical definition of love or glory, but these definitions don’t satisfy.  The scriptures talk about them almost as if they were a substance, some kind of spirit fluid.  Virtue seems the same.

On the sweetness

During sacrament you think about this symbolic passover and this symbolic crucifixion (the broken body, the blood) taking place on the day that is the weekly symbol of the Resurrection, Sunday.

The children sing “Gethsemane, Jesus loves me.”  Like you do every time, you think those are trash lyrics.  Like you do every time, you cry.

I’m going to give you a scenario and then ask you a question.

You walk into a building full of cells.  Each cell has thick bars over the windows, if there are windows.  The front of each cell is vertical bars.  There is a kind of barred door, currently shut.  The cells have a spartan bunk and a bolted-down toilet.

You walk up to one of the cells.

There is a man sitting on the bunk.

Here is the question.

Is he in prison?

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There’s a hill near where my parents live that stands up out of the plain.  It’s probably an old volcanic cone.  An old family trust owns it and from time out of mind there have been three crosses on the top and the local Catholics hike up there on Good Friday.  This year my father and a few of his cronies in the ward are going to join them.

Like this

Good Friday as the traditional name for the day of the Savior’s death is a bit ironically  named given the traditions surrounding the day.  In medieval Christendom, all Fridays were considered to be dark and unlucky because of Good Friday.  They didn’t eat meat on Fridays, as a form of mourning fast.    In their church services the candles were snuffed out.  The processions were woeful.

Which was and is entirely appropriate.  The rhythm of mourning on Friday and rejoicing on Sunday is right and natural.  We are joining the early apostles and saints in their sense of defeat after defeat on Friday, with the wholly unexpected shattering victory on Sunday.  Even with our knowledge that Christ’s agony and cross were essential to his work, you can’t easily think of death and torture as good.

But there is an important sense in which today’s Friday is  Good Friday.  There is an extremely important sense in which on this day Christ won victory after victory and Sunday is not an  unexpected reversal but the climax win of a Man who has won and won and won again.

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Sometime around now in Holy Week is when Christ delivered his Second Coming sermon in Matthew 25.  The conclusion, the sheep and the goats, is so simply profound that we are still unlocking the implications today.  Until that point he had been speaking in parables but at the end he speaks that way no longer.  He simply says what will happen.

Matthew 25:31-46

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

We are so used to this passage that it is hard to understand it.  We treat it as if it were just a beautiful way of saying ‘be nice.’  Oh, no no no.  Let’s hit at least 4 of the astounding revelations that the Savior gave in this famous passage.

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I’ve got a lot in my soul this morning. Forgive me if it comes out in a tumbling flood.

Today is Palm Sunday. Today Christ entered Jerusalem as her secular king. There is a kind of chiasmus of power in the Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem to great acclaim as her king, is successively betrayed and betrayed and beaten and tortured and killed, and then on Easter assumes total power as the king of all.

Conversely, there is a kind of inverse pattern of the trappings of power. He starts off with a pre-coronation triumphal entry, which then builds to where (at his actual nadir) he is presented to the people, crowned as a king, lifted up in sight of all with an inscription proclaiming him the king—but then when he has become actually king of all instead of ceremonies and acclamations he has small, quiet conversations with his friends. I don’t think there is anything per se wrong with the trappings of power. But I wonder how much unrighteous dominion comes from people wanting the trappings of power instead of actual lasting authority?

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In Western thought, we think of Mind & Body as a duality. With the recent preeminence of Artificial Intelligence, I got thinking, what is the alternative?  Turns out, it is far more complicated in many traditions. In many traditions, there are layers between the body and conventional soul. Others see the soul as united but distinct entities.

Many different traditions – Chinese, Indian, Native American, Ancient Egyptian, Jewish…

Jewish? Ok, that is interesting. There are three words that all translate to soul, three different kinds or parts of the soul: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah.
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