And thus we saw, in the heavenly vision, the glory of the telestial, which surpasses all understanding;

And no man knows it

There was a large heap of wood in the campfire ring. But when the man tried to light it, it would not light. The wood was laid too thickly. The flames choked out. Much of the wood was punky and would by no means take a light.

The man removed bad wood and more bad wood and overstocked wood until all that was left were a small stick and three twigs. But those caught the flame and burned with light.

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D&C 59 v. 15 encourages a glad heart and cheerful countenance, but not ‘much laughter.’  WJT points out that this verse is specifically talking about ordinances and sacraments.  The implication is that some laughter is fine when performing ordinances.

That is the gospel I know.  I was recently down at the temple with family at a sealing performed by an old family friend.  He smiled a lot and laughed some and so did we all.

A gospel like this I am compelled to believe.

One of Our Favorite Poems, introduced to Us on this very blog, is Nothing in Heaven Works as It Ought.  That captures something real about heaven.  But my actual image of heaven is some combination of impossible blazing glory and genial garrulity out on the front porch.  Somehow the combination makes sense to me.

Let’s think about how we progress through the virtues.

A virtue set is static.  Here are virtues and vices that relate to each other.

Its true that real men and women tend to experience a mix of most virtues and vices to greater and lesser degrees all at the same time.   That mix changes over time.  We can become more or less virtuous.  Our existing virtues become stronger.  Our branches grow.  The real experience of virtue is growth, repentance, and change.  A virtue set is a terrain.  We move around on it.

There is a lot of precedent in the scriptures.

For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

-thus 2 Nephi 28:30.

That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day

-thus D&C 50:24.

We have the Plan of Salvation which moves us from stage to stage.  In mortality we have dispensations and the Law of Moses giving way or being fulfilled in the higher law of Christ.  We have the concept often preached in the Church and elsewhere that we need to move on from negative virtues (thou shalt nots, direct commands) to positive virtues (thou shalts, open-ended principles).  It is a wicked and slothful servant who must be commanded in all things.

What if for fun we rearrange the virtue set as a virtue chain?

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There is glory (earned love) and unconditional love.  What does their synthesis look like?

Atonement and repentance.  Unconditional love that cares for you even though you don’t deserve it yet.  Earned love, that is offering you another chance to deserve love.

The arms that are always open for you, no matter how prodigal.  The arms that guide you towards your potential.  The insistence that you are always valuable.  The insistence that you live up to your potential.

Whether or not we identify earned love with the male principle and unconditional love with the female principle, we can see that family expresses this same synthesis.  Caring and growing.  Safety and learning at the same time.  I suspect that on some deep level, family and atonement/repentance are metaphysically identical.

This may seem like a short toss off post.  It is.  I also suspect it may be one of the most important things found on here.

If there are two types of virtues, maybe the two types are male and female. WJT says maybe, though he’s just trying the idea on, he’s still working it through.

Only later did I realize the correspondence between Ahuric/Devic and male/female. By simply exploring these models of good and evil, without thinking of sexual identity at all, I had inadvertently arrived at a possible explanation for the eternal nature of sexual identity — the necessity that good be expressed in two complementary forms rather than in a single asexual Supergod.

-thus WJT

Looking at lists of Ahuric and Devic virtues, I found that the first list made me think of Jesus Christ and the second of Our Lady. This led me to the tentative conclusion that these two types of good corresponded to masculine and feminine, and that the Ganymede model helped to explain why the two sexes were necessary and eternal.

–thus WJT.  He also discusses some problems with the idea.  This post is one you will definitely want to read.

Also this one on the two types and eternal sexual identity.

Let’s mull it over.

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The Lord praises sheep, wheat, tame olive trees, etc bc they take no thought for their own nourishment – everything they get they give away If there is no Cultivator obviously this is a very stupid way to live.

The parable of the olive trees in Jacob 5 introduces gradations of tameness & wildness The lord of the vineyard doesn’t just kill the wild & save the tame – he gradually prunes away the hard, woody, wild portions of each tree.

But we also learn that tame branches are prone to decadence & decay – & the solution is to graft strong, wild root systems with hungry, tame boughs that will draw out their strength It’s not just “tame good, wild bad”, both are necessary which is why both are allowed to persist

-from ExDeJCB

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The only true virtues are the combination of hot virtues and cool virtues.  Things like prudent courage.  Or courageous prudence.

The true virtue is not a moderation of the hot and the cool.  It is not lukewarm.  It is a synthesis of the two where each is enhanced.  Ice cold bravery.  Hot, unrelenting calculation.

The true model of manhood will be an archetype that combines the two.  Or a combination of two archetypes.

Every man a holy pirate king.

Or every man a priest and a king.  (Thanks, Zen.)

Or righteous dominion.   (Thanks, Joseph.)

What is it about us, how could we misunderstand righteous dominion for so long?  How is it that I didn’t understand the plain meaning of that passage of scripture until late last night while musing in the bath?

Holy.  Pirate King.

Priest.  King.

Righteous. Dominion.

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Inspired by friend of the JG WJT, lets apply virtue set concepts to some of our work with manhood and womanhood.

I’ve tried my hand at capturing the essence of man and woman before.  Never perfectly.

Women are love (unconditional love), men are glory (earned love).

Men are agents, women are ends.

My favorite: Every man a holy pirate king.  Every woman a luxury and a necessity.

Glory is clearly a hot virtue, its hard to say where love fits in.  Being an agent is a hot virtue, being an end, its hard to say where it fits in.  But for me what’s interesting is my favorite one.  My ideal man and my ideal woman are both combinations of hot and cool virtues  (I more and more think that the synthesis of a hot and cool virtue pair is the only actual virtue).

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I am too indulgent a father.  I killed two of the kids’ roosters for them this morning.

Afterwards I spontaneously asked God for forgiveness for killing them.  I didn’t think about it, it just happened.

It felt right to do.  But I did not and do not feel guilty.

Go figure.

Thinking about the historical development of the term virtue made me realize something about virtue sets.

Think about the scripture where the woman touches Jesus’ hem and “the virtue went out of him.”  It wasn’t His righteousness that fled.  It was some inner power.

Or think about the phrase that is a holdover from an older English where we talk about “the virtues of a course of action.”  We don’t say that because we are evaluating its morality.  We just mean the benefits of the course of action.  And of course virtue as everyone knows comes from the Latin “virtus” which just meant qualities that were good to have in a man, whether they were chosen or not.

With our emphasis on free agency, we put a strong emphasis on choice and those “virtues”–old sense–that are freely chosen, i.e., also virtues in the modern sense.    But even there the ultimate goal of a choosing a virtue is that it becomes automatic, written on the fleshy tablets of the heart, no longer something chosen and now just a good quality.

And lately we have been recovering the full extent of the Atonement.  It applies not just to sins but to flaws, imperfections, struggles, obstacles.  There is no hard and fast dividing line between virtue (new sense) and virtue (old sense).

That is why you can have a virtue set using virtue (old sense).

Emeritus general authority Tad Callister recently published an essay in the Church News called A Fence at the Top or an Ambulance at the Bottom making a fairly standard LDS point:

 you were asked, “What is the greatest challenge facing our nation today?” how would you respond? The economy, national security, immigration, gun control, poverty, racism, crime, pandemics, climate change? While each of these is a valid concern and deserves attention, I do not believe that any of them strikes at the heart of our greatest challenge — a return to family and moral values. To put our prime focus on other challenges is to strike at the leaves, not the root, of the problem. It is, as some have noted, to put an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff rather than a fence at the top.

Later he took it up several notches.

 He [Satan] disguises his plan of attack with alluring labels such as “pro-choice” for abortion, “love and compassion” for endorsement of same-sex marriage, and “environmental emergency” for promotion of a zero-growth population agenda.

There was an online brouhaha from online brouhahaers.   And the editor of the Church News responded to them favorably.

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A few days ago we were talking about how the cool earthly virtues seemed chthonic and the hot heavenly virtues seemed apollonic.

Today I read this verse.

Behold, I am from above, and my power lies beneath.

-thus D&C 63:59

SPDI has a eulogy for femininity and a girl he knew.  I was touched.

It made me think of Barfield’s idea of the second consciousness–you start off innocent then you wise up then you wise up even more and intelligently and consciously work to reconstruct a non naive version of your innocence.

What would second femininity look like? I think it looks like trust.

Trust in people who are trustworthy. Trust in your family. Trust in your husband. Trust in your God.

And without need, there cannot be trust.

D&C 42

D&C 42:2 — Don’t let your goals and your focus get in the way of alert watchfulness.  Optimizing to take 100% advantage of current circumstances is a trap.

42:45 — Weep for those who die.

42:52 —  Those who believe enough to ask for a blessing but do not have enough faith to be healed will receive exaltation.

I suppose from the eternal perspective the healing that we so long for is basically a parlor trick.

42:68  Wisdom and answers to prayers are described as two separate things.  Wisdom is like glory, its all over the scriptures, seems to have some transcendent meaning beyond the ordinary use of the word, but doesn’t get a lot of attention

42:80-81  Pretty old school take on adultery.  Not a lot of sympathy and ‘we love you, man’

43:33  “And the wicked shall go away into unquenchable fire, and their end no man knoweth on earth, nor ever shall know, until they come before me in judgment.”

Huh.  I certainly thought we knew the fate of the wicked.  Could it mean that we do not know the fate of any one wicked person until the judgment because we do not know their heart and their potential for redemption?  The idea that our picture of the afterlife is still simplified and leaves stuff out tastes good to me.

Everyone wants to know about what happens after this life.  Everyone wants to know about the Judgment.

It is simple.  You see God.

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