Professor Hugh Nibley once noted that the kingdom of God cannot endure if it indulges even the smallest sin: “The slightest taint of corruption means that the other world would be neither incorruptible nor eternal. The tiniest flaw in a building, institution, code, or character will inevitably prove fatal in the long run of eternity.”

(from Elder Christofferson)

It follows, conversely, if an incident does not prove fatal in the long run of eternity, it was not a sin.

Some wonder why God would punish people.  The answer is that it’s a kind of celestial engineering.  Sin making you unfit for eternity isn’t a consequence.  Its the definition of sin.  That’s what it is.  If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be sin.

I want to be careful because I am going to say something a tiny bit shocking.  It is true but not in every sense.  It is that sins you repent of are not even sins at all, anymore, because once you repent of them they won’t stop you from pursuing your course.

It’s as if doing something wicked in mortality isn’t yet sin.  It’s Schrodinger’s sin.  Whether it was sin or not remains to be determined by whether you repent of it later.

Like most Christmases, this Christmas we made an experimental ice cream.  Eggnog ice cream.   It was such a hit that we made some more batches for relatives.  I am now dreaming of a yellowish Christmas.

We made up the recipe ourselves.  Here it is.

This recipe is meant for a standard 6 quart ice cream freezer.

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A 12-year old girl is crying.  She says to her father,  “I don’t want to grow up.  I like being a kid.”

A man is crying.  He says to his wife, “I don’t want them to grow up.  I like being a dad.”

I dreamed there was this family that moved up to the hills for the peace and quiet.  By choice they had no phones nor internet.  Instead in the evenings they would sing and the girls in the family would play the violin and cello.  There they would sit in the twilight playing the music.

Then I had a sense that somehow they were my family, this was my home, and the music would be there waiting for me when I came on home.

And then I dreamed that this place was the place Joseph and Mary were headed for the nativity and they were somehow also going home when they went there.  I saw a tired man and a tired woman on a donkey headed up a country road to a white house where they would be welcome in.  They were close enough now to catch a hint of the music of the strings and to see the dim figures on the porch.

There is of course a meaningful arc to Jesus own life.

The innocent baby

The atoning sacrifice

the triumphant resurrected king

For this reason we celebrate Christmas.  It is the beginning.

But sometimes I wonder if the real significance of the Christmas story isn’t Mary?  There is something heroic in a supremely womanly way about her role.

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.