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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Power to get eternal life

-D&C 45:8

In this verse God does not offer eternal life as a reward.  He offers power to get eternal life as a reward.

That’s a big difference.

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D&C Bits

37:1  “And let every man choose for himself until I come.”  More there than meets the eye.

38:11  “All flesh is rotten before me.”  We are so used to this metaphor we don’t even notice it anymore.  We automatically translate it as “all people are corrupt.”  But what does corrupt mean?  It also means rotten.  You should read this scripture as “everyone is rotting flesh.”  The world is your charnel house.

38:17-20  These scriptures are promising land for a family inheritance, meaning for the children to grow up and farm, and the grandchildren, and on and on.  We don’t have or understand this mindset any more.  We live like nomads but without the willingness to get up and leave.  We are fettered by temporary things.  No generational ambition any more.

38:28  “but if ye are prepared ye shall not fear.”  “Ye” is plural.  We have to be prepared as a people.  If its just you who is prepared, you should fear.    We badly underestimate the degree to which the scriptures are collective, not individual.  Nephi says ‘liken the scriptures unto us’ and we mentall convert it to ‘liken the scriptures unto me.’

38:39 Interesting balance in the phrase about being the richest and about having the riches of eternity

Live in beauty in the sea breeze.

Live in the beauty under the trees.

Live in beauty where the mountain meets the air.

16 years ago my little daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on the birthday she never quite made it to that year, with slight updates since.

Today would be your 20th birthday, Betsey. The full flower of young womanhood!  Instead you are always not-quite 4.

Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.

We miss you. We want to see you.

We are a society now where people say, “sort of,”, “kind of,” “in a way,” “I mean ,” “I mean to say,” “you see,” all those things — over and over and over again — like the gossiping women who say, “She said, she said, she said …” They’re a kind of stuttering, a kind of self-imposed idiocy, a kind of pretense very often found in people trying to show that they are just like everybody else — quite stupid really. Stupidity in a democratic society as a whole produces pseudo-stupidity in its leaders, with appalling results. Once there is television in the House of Commons — and I hope it will never happen — everybody there will be pretending to be as stupid  as their electorates. This kind of manipulative pretense at being more stupid than the other person was first noticed by Wyndham Lewis in the twenties and documented in the speech of Bertie Wooster.

–Arthur Henry King, The Abundance of the Heart

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Following on from Part I, read it first.

The wizard lands were stagnant. Millions striving to create their own language, their own script, their own scales, and not succeeding. Some few succeeding in a minor ways. A mere handful truly achieving greatness . . . and then dying, and their greatness dying with them.

The land without magic was not stagnant. Gleaming towers were there; and gleaming rockets to the Moon, and to Mars; and gleaming teeth. They were not stagnant. But if an angel were to jerk back the veil on time, you would see that their trajectory was a curve. Up and then over and then down. It would take no angel to see the signs that were already there. Their arts were complex enough now that no one person could achieve much in the way of greatness. But they were so far removed from want that struggle and suffering were no longer spurs to them either. Their growth had slowed. Movements and ideas insulated from reality were starting to spread. Individuals who wanted greatness were fighting for preeminence and celebrity instead. They had grown slowly and then for a few dizzying decades had grown very quickly. Now they would decline slowly and then very quickly.

But if the way of magic didn’t work, and the way of the country without magic didn’t work, what then?

A new thing was seen in the land. A boy was inspired with a new language. In it there were rules that made the language individual for each speaker. It captured their experience and their character. Their words would be shaded by their relationships with their family and their friends. Their achievements were built in. Only they could speak it. But others could understand them. Each one who learned the rules was able to create their own language, and speak words of power. And the words they spoke together, the songs they sung together, were more powerful still.

Anyone can become a wizard. They just have to create their own fully realized language to speak their commands in.

Anyone can write down their spells into spellbooks. They just have to create their own unique script to do it in.
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There once was a boy who was set to watch sheep. Some wolves gathered and he ran to the village for help. “Wolves! Wolves!” he cried. But shockingly, in describing the wolves he said that some of them were “bitches.” This was offensive. The villagers beat him a bit and then the village elder took him aside to counsel him. When the boy said that the wolves were already among the sheep right then, the village elder pointed out that the delay was entirely the boy’s fault. The slain sheep must be on the boy’s conscience. Finally the boy was let go to salvage the situation as best as he could on his own.

Wolves learn from experience even if boys do not, so the next time the wolves attacked they behaved and dressed in a very peculiar fashion, like an outrageous gay stereotype. The boy fought them but finally had to run to the village for help. He described the wolves as ‘acting gay.’ The villagers would have reacted badly in any case to this association of sexual minorities with vicious predatory beasts but they were even more concerned given the boy’s prior history of offensive conduct. They beat him thoroughly and lectured him long.

The next time the boy ran into town he said the wolves were painted in blackface and saying “n*****.” The villagers had put up with the boy’s antics for a long time, but saying “n*****” was really too much. They beat him almost to death and drove him out.

It was too bad about the sheep.

When you are old, what sacrifices would you be willing to make for another year of health to enjoy your children & grandchildren?

What sacrifices would it require to create that year now, by having them earlier?

-thus “XD JCB”

Follow up, from “Spectral Theorem”

How much would your family & each person in it be diminished if you’d never had your youngest kid? How many joys, observations & insights missed? For what convenience/$ would you trade him/her existing? You’re making that trade by not having 1 more.

This haunts me too.  My blessings are less then they could be.  I have left winning lottery tickets of happiness untouched on the table.

Introducing

the Society for the Encouragement of Faith Transitions

Faith transitions are the hot new trend.  All the performative people are having one or at least being exquisitely compassionate and understanding to a friend who is.

You’d love to be part of this exciting trend.  But there’s a problem.  You aren’t having one.  Neither is anyone you know.

Don’t worry, SEFT is here to help.  With our easy 6-step program, you’ll be transitioning like gangbusters in no time.

Even if you start like this

just

Pray

Act on Inspiration

Get Involved at Church

Love your Family and Neighbors

Study Scriptures

Fill your Heart with Gratitude

and your faith will transition like this

Faith transitioning is easy, anyone can do it.

Faith transitions–they aren’t just for people who are decreasing in faith any more.

Take care, and be SEFT out there.