Teddy Roosevelt. The older I get the more I admire the man.  Though he was a ham and a showman, like a better Donald Trump for a much better age.

Here he is on reading.  Some excerpts:

Now and then I am asked as to “what books a statesman should read,” and my answer is, poetry and novels — including short stories under the head of novels.

…

why! there are scores and scores of solid histories, the best in the world, which are as absorbing as the best of all the novels, and of as permanent value.

The same thing is true of Darwin and Huxley and Carlyle and Emerson, and parts of Kant, and of volumes like Sutherland’s “Growth of the Moral Instinct,” or Acton’s Essays and Lounsbury’s studies

Parts of Kant!  Ha ha ha ha.  Oh, Teddy.

 I still read a number of Scott’s novels over and over again, whereas if I finish anything by Miss Austen I have a feeling that duty performed is a rainbow to the soul. But other booklovers who are very close kin to me, and whose taste I know to be better than mine, read Miss Austen all the time — and, moreover, they are very kind, and never pity me in too offensive a manner for not reading her myself.

Here is a historian doing a wonderful imagining of what a medieval charge would have been like.

From 1999 to 2016, average levels among the young men tested went from 600 to 400-450 ng/dL.

After accounting for confounders like obesity.

The times are out of joint.

I’m reading a trash novel right now.  The Hero leads a band of faceless peasants through hordes and hordes of orcs/zombies/monsters, hack, hack, slash.  Sometimes the peasants die.  But sometimes  a light turns on within, they become endowed with power, and they also become heroes, with names and character and participation in the story.

Your trash novel, the Spirit whispers, is truer to life than great novels.

Brigham Young:

that act alone will ensure C. Allen Huntington, George W. Grant, and David P. Kimball an everlasting salvation in the Celestial Kingdom of God, worlds without end.

So let us now speak of Tanner Lund.

(more…)

Glories, glories, what are those?

Strifes turned to stories, in repose.

Righteous dominion is power + love.

Power + Love.

This is the formula.  This is the insight I had.

Both are necessary.

***

Men among the Saints work for the love but flee from the power.  They practice unrighteous dominion because of it.  That’s the irony.  They maintain their power just because of their ordination.

Oops.  “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood.”

They think that ordination=authority=power.

The ordination makes your power legitimate and loving.  It should not be the basis of your power.  Imitate Christ.

[“Instead of just standing there watching, can you get me more popsicle sticks for my important STEM work?”]

Coming home from work today, my daughter greeted me with, “Daddy, look what I made in STEM today!” This year the kids have been attending a 2-day/week homeschool co-op. “STEM” is one of their subjects, and yes, it stands for “Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.”.

What she made was a little caterpillar marionette, constructed of colored fuzzballs on a string, draped from a popsicle stick. It was cute, and I am a proud papa. It’s the perfect sort of activity for a six-year-old. It was also what in a more innocent age would have been called “arts and crafts” rather than anything to do with “STEM.”  (more…)

They were all poets and cavaliers.  If you asked them a question, they would respond with a flight of fancy. 

“What is the weather like?” 

“Whether the weather likes what the weather is like I am not disposed to say.  Yet I vow my sunny disposition is brightened by this sun, which steadfast glow shall never be put out, be it enclouded or endarkened to our view.” 

You could not break them out of it.  If you pressed them hard enough for a straight answer on some practical point, they simply switched and let their other head talk to you. 

You see, all these creatures had two heads. (more…)

The Governing Ones is one of the more unusual and interesting conference talks I’ve read.  Still chewing on it, to be honest.

Brother Bradford starts with the principle that priesthood is a government.  The rights of the priesthood are rights to govern. (more…)

“Is there any particular scripture story you want to read tonight, bud?”

“How about the one where King David’s son gets his hair caught on a tree and is killed?” You rack your brain. King David’s son? Absalom? Is that how Absalom dies? Yeah, that sounds familiar. But we only read that story one time, and it was at least six months ago. How does he remember it? At first you feel pride at having such a bright little boy, but then it hits you: If he can remember that, what else does he remember? You resolve to start behaving yourself better, lest your misdeeds be recorded on your Permanent Record. (more…)

The story of Adam and Eve, Mormonly understood, makes a mockery of the idea of salvation under the Law.

The standard Christian view is that Adam and Eve were given a strict commandment not to eat the fruit, the Serpent tricked them into eating it, so God in his anger cast them out of Eden. The Mormon view is that Adam and Eve were given two commandments which could not both be fulfilled, so one (don’t eat the fruit), had to give way to the higher one (multiply and replenish the Earth). Adam fell that men might be.

Elder Oaks explained, more clearly than I can ever hope to, the Mormon belief that what Adam and Eve did was a “transgression,” not a “sin”:

For reasons that have not been revealed, this transition, or “fall,” could not happen without a transgression—an exercise of moral agency amounting to a willful breaking of a law (see Moses 6:59). This would be a planned offense, a formality to serve an eternal purpose.

The obvious theological objection to our doctrine would be: “God is perfect and perfectly just, so why would he give a commandment knowing that it could not be fulfilled? How is that fair?” As Elder Oaks says, the need for such a transgression has never been fully explained, and I admit that this one used to bug me a little when I was younger. Eventually I shrugged it off; it was a one-off deal, so why think too hard about it?

Then I served a mission, got married, had kids, and realized that God gives impossible commandments all the time. (more…)

They say that marriage and fatherhood takes away your fire and turns your blood to water.  Daddies, they say, play it safe.

Ha! (more…)

Here’s a parody blog making fun of Russophile paleocons:

http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/paleocon-diary-16

The parody unfairly lumps Russian Orthodox Christians like Rod Dreher in with Putin-adoring Lew Rockwell types, although the writer’s voice resembles nothing so much as one of those neoreactionary bloggers for whom Russophilia is just the next logical step after they’ve gotten bored with Dungeons and Dragons.

I find myself sympathizing more with the paleocons over time. While Putin is not a good man, and Russia is not a place I would like to live, the affinity for Putin’s Russia didn’t come out of the blue. I think I can demonstrate this with an economy of examples. (more…)

[Note: I did a Google Image Search for “Mickey Mouse Evil,” and it came up with this image, which is more apropos for this post than I could have hoped for.]

This is not a Robert Ludlum novel. These are some thoughts, hopefully not too disjointed, about Mormons and The Benedict Option.

I.     “Eeek! A Mouse!”

A few months back, we went to Disneyland with my side of the family. It’s a cliché among BYU fans to note how much BYU gear one sees at Disneyland. Now I know why; even if you aren’t looking for them, Mormons are EVERYWHERE in the Magic Kingdom. You might think that I only noticed the because I’m Mormon. But my undergraduate school is one that, based on size and distance from L.A., you would expect to be on rough parity with BYU at Disneyland. Instead my college was outnumbered probably 10-to-1.

So yeah, Mormons love Disney. Back in the days of Walt himself, this would hardly warrant mentioning. Christians like good, clean family fun, and Disney = good, clean family fun.

But not all Christians like Disney. (more…)

Our esteemed JG co-blogger John Mansfield has a theory that Mormons are retreating socially into their extended families, and worries that the Church is turning into something like a confederation of clans (have I got it right, JM?). He goes so far as to posit that the custom of cousin marriage might make inroads in a more insular Church.

I don’t really see the trend of extended families becoming more important than other Church associations, possibly because I live in a far-off land where most Mormons are transplants without extended family around. But I do observe a trend that might be related. (more…)