Down, down, down.  From here.

Bonneville County is Idaho Falls.

Here is an interesting contrast.  I just picked whatever years came up first on a search.

1979 LDS Statistical Report

Members  4,439,000

Children of Record 107,000

24 children per 1,000

(Children of record is the number of babies blessed, which means its the birthrate among people who still have some connection to the Church.)

1986 LDS Statistical Report

Members  6,170,000

Children of Record 93,000

15 children per 1,000

2019 LDS Statistical Report

Members  16,565,000

Children of Record 94,000

6 children per 1,000

2020 LDS Statistical Report

Members 16,660,000

Children of Record 65,540

3 children per 1,000

What strikes me is that we have fewer children now than we did in the late 70s with a quarter of the Saints.

Not my own insight, but someone said that hookup culture is clearly a forerunner to ‘you will own nothing and you will be (un)happy’

And porn and easy divorce culture and  . . .

The reason why swearing in this way is bad is because it is a lie.

Strong recommend.

Summary: swearing is usually a very emotionally loaded form of lieing.

Whereas cursing someone is angry and aggressive.

Me: Swearing can be done to comic effect.  That isn’t a lie.  But it does degrade the linguistic commons.  It takes the power from the swearing.  Ironically, it is people like us who conspicuously avoid those words who give them their remaining power.

Mississippi has a law that mostly bans aborting babies after the 15th week of pregnancy.  The Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments about it yesterday.

How the voting and logrolling among the justices will go I have no idea.

Jens and the Pond is my favorite story, bar none, from conference.

Jens of Denmark prays daily to live the gospel and notice promptings from the Holy Ghost. He has learned to act quickly when he feels directed by the Spirit.

Jens shared the following: (more…)

I had one of those jumbled meaningless dreams you have when you are waking up.

It appears that some beloved legendary British fighter commander from WWII had died.  I forget his name.  It was something extremely Scottish.  But everyone called him “Truno.”  None of the obituaries mentioned why.  I wondered if maybe it had something to do with with “true north.”  Anyway, this fella died and there were news reports and obituaries and such.  And everyone called him “Truno.” That was the dream.

Then I completed the process of waking up.  As soon as I came awake, my brain said,  “you should worry that the idealization of WWII reveals the fundamentally apocalyptic bent of Anglo-American secular culture.”

Thanks, brain.  I guess I will worry about that now.

The Great Ruler’s towering, massive fortress complex overlooked a wide plain.  There nobles and others vying for his favor would come with their personal armies to contend with each other.   The Great Ruler himself would sometimes watch them from the walls.  Leaders who succeeded in these battles could gain great favor and even high office in the Great Ruler’s invincible endless hosts or in his magistracy.

The Lord of Yan showed great promise.  He was sure to make it to the plains and do well there, so they said.

But instead he left his home and estates and went wandering alone.

Over time he acquired three followers.  They were cripples.  One was blind.

In the public square of a large market town he proclaimed them his army.  With them, he said, he would prevail.

He and his three-cripple army then marched towards the  fortress complex and the wide plain.

The Lord of  Yan had a reputation, both because of his early promise and because he had gone wandering.  His announcement made a minor sensation.

People came out to see him and his three cripples all along the route.

Many volunteered to join him.  He said no.

Commanders and leaders offered to join him with their skilled, trained bands.  He said no.  The minor sensation became bigger.

Some of the most famous names of the continent sent him letters offering to meet him in battle on the plain.  He did not reply.

Many nobles and their troops gathered there, waiting to see what the Lord of Yan would do.

He and his cripples arrived.  They marched up to the main gate of the fortress complex.  There the Lord of Yan denounced the Great Ruler as a bloody tyrant and declared war.

The Lord of Yan and his three cripples won.

***

This is a dream I had many years ago.

I remembered it again today when I read these two verses.

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One of our friends has a light review of Ender’s Game.    Some good incisive points and you should read it.

There are two main claims I’d like to make.

1.  None of the other books besides Ender’s Game are canon or should be treated as such.  I can give reasons for this but the assertion came first and the reasons came second.  Mostly you just either get it or you don’t.
2.     Ender’s Game is a sympathetic book about Faustian man.  Amazing capabilities married to juvenile maturity.  It is a Faustian tragedy in two senses.  The first sense is that it showcases the real successes but also limits of the Faustian approach.  Not every concern is a discrete problem with a sociotechno solution.  But Ender’s only hammer is to analyze a problem, find the areas in solution space that have been ignored because of convention, and then exploit them ruthlesslessly–so that is the hammer he uses over and over again.  It is also a Faustian tragedy in that the Faustian world view tries to push to the very limits, including in the tragic form.  Whereas the classical tragedy considers someone who is flawed, Faustian tragedies explore how good intentions and good actions can still cause disaster.  Faustian tragedies explore how the same thing that makes the character great also leads them to their fall.

(The review is mostly right but goes a little too far trying to counter the yay total war view of Ender’s Game (and ignores real America’s own very Jacksonian character).  The thing with the Faustian bargain is that you can’t unmake it.  Once you  see the buggers in terms of threat analysis eliminating them entirely as a threat is probably the “right” solution even if the buggers sincerely assure you it was a misunderstanding.  In a real Faustian tragedy, there is no ‘if only the hero had done X, everything would have been better.’)

C.S. Lewis talks about ‘trough sexuality.’  The idea being that most human things go through peaks and troughs.

Trough spirituality is a great gift.  It is the gift of integration.

The spirituality you experience when you are not feeling the burning fire helps you tie the ordinary things about you into your spiritual life.  If your only spirituality were peak spirituality, you would be a divided person.

the tares shall be bound in bundles, and their bands made strong, that they may be
burned with unquenchable fire.

No fire fueled by straw is unquenchable.

The flame that burns the tares is not a flame from the tares.

Left to themselves and their own fire, tares would burn out and turn to ash.

Left to themselves, the wicked would become colder and smaller and darker and ever more nothing.

But the flame goes on.  So . . .

The flame is either the flame of reality itself, the burning light of God that cannot be turned off.

Or is something actively provided by God, in which case we must assume it is a kind of a mercy. That being ever colder and darker and smaller is worse.

We are all supposed to be a little amused at the fundy types who won’t drink cokes because tea and coffee have caffeine.

(Actually there’s no bad reason to not drink coke.)

The fundy approach is assuming there is a general principle behind the specific rules from the Word of Wisdom, trying to figure out what the Word of Wisdom general principle, and then applying it generally.

That’s their logic with caffeine. They reason that coffee and tea should be avoided because they contain lots of addictive caffeine and therefore maybe we should avoid other products with high levels of caffeine. And we are supposed to think this is stupid and low class. How ignorant to think that the commandments are unknowable and arbitrary. How nekulturny to trying to be an agent instead of just doing exactly what they are told and only what they are told. How pharisaical.

Whereas the Pharisees were doing something in the opposite direction. Putting a hedge about the law means making extra sure you try not to violate any arbitrary commandment. Generalizing means assuming they aren’t arbitrary.

The reality is that treating the commandments as arbitrary and unknowable is stagnant and small. Whether its in big areas like sex roles or the male priesthood or in little things like coffee and tea.

The real problem with the fundy approach is they don’t generalize enough. Instead of just looking at coffee and tea they should be looking at the entire thing. (more…)

The Dark was rising. It spread its influence over the land. It captured institutions, customs, lands — it put more and more peoples into its thrall.

When this had happened before, each time a Champion had arisen. Blessed with power and light from the Great God of Light and War and Justice, the Champion led the people with his blazing sword in driving back the lords of the Dark.

But this time no Champion came. One by one the peoples fell into the hands of the Dark powers.

Finally, of all the free peoples all that was left was a little band of a few hundred gathered around a hill to where they had been driven, awaiting the final assault of the Dark hordes in the morning.

They would fight and die.

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I keep discovering that all my most bouncin’ ideas turn out to be pale echoes of stuff already found in the scriptures.

For instance, the home as a fortress from which we sally out to wreak havoc on the devil.

Proclaim it abroad.  You are the knights of the spiritual feudalism.  The vikings have been looting the spiritual landscape unchecked.  Have been.  But now you are erecting extraordinary fortifications of the soul, such castles as the world has not seen, from which you sally.  Beat the drums, counsel together, your family is going to war.

Against the current

Comrades on the wall

I sat down to read D&C 88 because I like the verses about establishing a house of order, and God chuckled.
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A bull was gazing longingly over the fence into the next pasture.

“What’s the attraction of that pasture?” asked a pigeon on the fence.

“It’s greener,” said the bull.

“But look at all the hills,” said the pigeon, “they are greener too.”

The bull looked around. “Yes” he said, “now I want to roam all the hills, grazing there too.”

Moral: The vignette came to me first. I am undecided if the moral is something about ambition and desire being limitless. Or if the moral is that you need somebody to help you elevate your ambitions.

The light of truth. The light of Christ. He is the light of the sun and the power thereof. He is the light of the moon and the power thereof. He is the light of the stars and the power thereof. The earth also, and the power thereof. The light in all things, even the power of God which sitteth upon the throne.

-thus D&C 88:5-13.

Now, one might say truthfully that glory = power plus light. Righteous power = power plus light. But the scriptures say that you cannot even really separate the two concepts. Power without light is ultimately not actually power. Light without power is ultimately not actually light.