The loss of a child.
We have two chunks of garden, beds with paths in between. Both of them got overgrown with grass and weeds towards the end of the season, including the paths. This year we plan to put down weed tarp and wood chips, but first I decided to burn the weeds around the edges to make the tarp easier to lay down. I wanted to burn the whole garden but decided it would be too much trouble.
My thought was that the weeds I torched would burn and no others. This is how it has worked for me in the past.
I started with one lick of flame in each section and it caught. it spread like… fire. I had to scramble to get a hose up and call my son out to get the other hose. We barely suppressed it before it reached the wooden fence and the grape vines.
But it turned out what burned was exactly what I was wanting to have burned. Except that I hadn’t removed my drip lines first so they all melted down in the general combustion.
I was thinking on this–I had plenty of time to think as I stood there hosing everything down afterwards–and something inside me whisphered, “You don’t plan for wild success enough. Nor pray for it enough.”
Aw, spring! There really are days in this season that are the best days. When bad poetry is no longer bad poetry. Soft breezes, tender grass, flowers in bloom. But not for you. Your eyes itch, your breath cramps down, the snot starts up.
There are foods you can’t eat.
There are clothes you can’t wear.
No reason why, but the body sullenly revolts.
I got curious about the journey the Jaredites took, since they are so different from the rest of our Hebrew and Greek scriptures. And because their journey appears to have taken place near the end of the Ice Age.
The account in Ether is highly abbreviated. It appears they traveled eastward, in part because Hugh Nibley pointed out that the Book of Ether resembles early Chinese historiography in form.
Siberia / Northern Asia doesn’t match well. There were no long stretches with “many waters”. Seasonal freezing would severely limit repeated barge use. And continental interiors do not produce sustained, dominating wind systems. Ether does not describe prolonged cold, frozen travel, or famine.
The Tibetan Plateau/ Central Asia was my first guess, but it doesn’t work well either. Extreme altitude and hypoxia are never mentioned, nor is river travel. Surface water on the plateau itself is sparse. Travel logic favors rapid crossing, not repeated habitation. Winds are strong but episodic, not system-scale and entraining. This might have been easier in terms of overland travel, but this suggests the Lord deliberately placed them in environments where they gained repeated experience building barges, because they would need that practice when they built their final ones.
What does work, is a journey across Iran, India, south of the Himalayas and ending in Southern China or Southeast Asia, like Vietnam.
One of the things that I believe will precede the fall of Babylon, or our collapse in general, is a crisis of meaning. Specifically, this mean our myths and heroes are hollow or not taken seriously. This is fundamentally a spiritual crisis.
The Jedi Church may be laughable, but a society incapable of even that… that is terrifying. A society without heroes or myths is spiritually dead. It can still move, still function—but only on momentum, like a corpse that hasn’t yet realized it’s dead.
And related to this, is a crisis in telling stories. You can’t have a compelling story without meaning.
It is interesting to note, that of the Eminent Men and Women who appeared to Pres Woodruff, said they laid the foundation of liberty for us. Besides the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the majority were artists and authors. What we might call mythmakers.
On the sweetness of Mormon life.
You are at a tiny little branch in a tiny town on the snowy plains. You are there with your father-in-law. None of you have been here before, you are visiting him while he is a on a work detail in this place.
You left with plenty of time because of the snow, so he gets into a long discussion with the Branch President. Two texts come in–the two speakers for the service are snowed in. Why don’t you talk then, the Branch President asks him. He does.
Friends, its that time of year when you have a million happy bustling things to do and so, in fear that you might have a free moment, we post our Christmas page. Please see above in the header bar. There’s enough there for one or two books, and probably we will publish them, maybe as soon as next year.
May we suggest that you particularly check out our two fairy tales from last year? Here is a tale of a princess, and here is a tale of a knight. The first one is in the classic style whereas the second one has more of a Norse flavor.
Merry Christmas!
I personally am grateful for any time you spend here with me this season, and don’t begrudge it at all if the time you have to spare for your JG friends is not as much as you would like.
We all know the evidence that sex tendencies are innates. Baby chimp girls play with dolls, baby chimp males play with trucks. And so on and so on and so on.
But also clearly there is a lot of social construction going on.
What we all overlook though is how the social construction occurs. We think of social construction as something, probably oppressive, that “Society” does.
I think in truth a lot of it is done by your children.
the villainous mastermind of social construction
This being All Soul’s Day, I found myself thinking about Vader while in the temple. I think about him a lot. I will write a post and wonder what he would think about it. In a way, he is still the audience in my head.
He got in his accident in late October a few years ago and then died in early November.
Rest in peace. Until we meet again.
The national declines in marriage and childbearing are understandable for historic reasons, but Latter-day Saint values and practices should improve—not follow—those trends.
-President Oaks
The prophet is calling us to have more children. That means he is calling us to be extraordinary. We have to find a way to not be swept along with national or global trends.
Last night I had a dream.
There were dozens of youth handcart treks that all converged in the same place. Once they had arrived at the same mountain valley, under the direction of their leaders they joined together to build a temple out of rammed earth and long straight pine logs. The earth they dug from the soil there, the logs they cut themselves.
In the way of dreams, when it was done it was a conventional temple inside but also was just one big hall where the whole group could meet. They all gathered in and some of the Brethren came and sealed them all together as friends.
On the sweetness…
A very obese man who joined a few years back–he was in and out of jail at the time, has made a remarkable turn-around–gives his very first lesson in church Sunday for Elders Quorum. He is very nervous, especially since the Prophet had just died. He struggles to talk about what President Nelson has meant to him. His sincerity and goodness shines through. The Spirit is present.
Afterwards, you and he and a couple of others are standing on the church porch, watching the rain. You talk about President Nelson. You talk about the dead in Michigan. These are heavy topics. After a pause you ask him what he thought about his first lesson.
“It was good,” he says. There is a short pause. “When you feel the Spirit, it feels like floating on a cushion of air,” he says.
Father Time in his wisdom made me too old to be interested in Charlie Kirk. I had heard of him, that’s it. But some of my kids I found out are fans and my daughters in Utah County had gotten out of work/class and were on their way to his event at UVU yesterday when we got the news. Perhaps for that reason, it has affected me a lot more than I would have thought.
https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1964469113352573401
https://xcancel.com/charliekirk11/status/1964469113352573401
Covering Sections 89 through 97.
* I think the most important verse in the Word of Wisdom is verse 2. This section can only be understood by revelation and wisdom; and God cares about temporal salvation.
* 90:17 suggests a virtue chart. This verse is advice to the First Presidency on how to be the First Presidency.
Be not ashamed, neither confounded; but be admonished in all your high-mindedness and pride, for it bringeth a snare upon your souls.
In particular, I think the implication that shame is what leads to being confounded, whereas being admonished in some way complements being unashamed and not being confounded, is psychologically astute.
We are driving across some of the flat, open parts of the country so trains are on my mind. You can see them coming from a long way off.
Hence this parable.
There once was a newly-built train. At the switching station, it looked out on its first track all the way across the gleaming plain to the distant white city in the far, far horizon. The train was full of enthusiasm. “I am going to roll on all the way to that city!” it said.
An old worn-down train nearby wearily set about tempering the new train’s expectations. “You have no idea how far that city really is,” the train said. “Nor how difficult it is. You feel good now, but wait until you are trying to get your wheels to turn in sand. Or in swamp, heavens, oh man, swamp.”
“Why would I do that?” the new train said cheerfully. “I will simply stay on the track.”
The older train was aghast. “Stay on the tracks! Are you crazy? Live a little!”