It was a liberating moment when I realized I didn’t have to keep a daily journal. Some people like that. Well and good. I don’t. Too much dull and silly that way.

Instead, I write occasionally for family events, stories, and for God’s dealings with me.

No surprise, then, that Elder Andersen’s talk on Spiritually Defining Moments delighted me. It had the best stories.

I reread is yesterday. There is a section where he talks about recognizing the Spirit and how we can know we are having a spiritually defining moment. Everything he says about recognizing the Spirit is about recognizing spiritual moments, and very worth your while. But how about recognizing spiritually defining moments? Only we can know if a moment is spiritually defining or not, because only we can decide if we will let some experience define us or not. We get to choose.

A doctor must first attend medical school. School is finite and much shorter than medical practice; but (If opportunities are grasped), that which is learned at school may have “permanent” and beneficial effects on the large future beyond.

Thus the benefits of medical school are best grasped when the student knows he is destined for a long professional practice.

Thus we are meant to be confident in our salavation, confident that we resurrect and go to Heaven after this life. Confidence is correct.

-thus Bruce Charlton. I was tempted to excerpt the whole thing, so you might as well go read it, it’s short.

A student could be motivated in medical school by the fear of failing and not becoming a doctor. Their ultimate motivation would still be becoming a doctor, but in an abstract and remote way. Getting through medical school would just be another hoop to jump through. Cheating would begin to look attractive. And if something came up to prolong their education, perhaps some remarkable new explosion of effective medical knowledge they needed to learn they would be angry. Haven’t I already worked hard? they would say. (more…)

What translations do you recommend for Homer and Horace and Virgil?

I prefer poetry that reads like poetry, I don’t like attempts to read ultra-modern, and I like translations that have a whiff of foreignness to them.

My freshman year in high school we read the Odyssey. There is a feast scene where they are roasting beefs out of doors and the scene and the poetry brought me a kind of sense of ancient greekness that has not quite left me since. I wish I could remember which it was.

Let’s talk about partial survivalism.  What if there were middle ground between business as normal and the collapse of everything?

Then you might worry about being flexible and starting with small and simple measures that could work for a number of different kinds of scenarios.

Things like physical fitness, getting your finances in order, having a family emergency contact plan, an evacuation plan, a 72-hour kit, then perhaps a 3 months supply, and so on.

You might worry as much about having passports in order and some portable wealth as you would your cabin in the woods.

I found this thread on ‘stack survivalism.’  Same concept.

https://mobile.twitter.com/vgr/status/1300205315598610433

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I’m reading Saving Faith right now. It’s about how to raise your kids to be strong in the gospel. So far the answer is, its pretty easy. You don’t have to have searing answers to gospel questions. You have to care, and pray and study scriptures in your home, and go to church. Simple as.

It reminds me of this revelation I got in General Conference in 2018.

Capering on the Walls

Consider this verse–

he was thus pondering—being much cast down because of the wickedness of the people of the Nephites, their secret works of darkness, and their murderings, and their plunderings, and all manner of iniquities

shortly followed by these verses–

4 Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not feared them, and hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments.

5 And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will.

6 Behold, thou art Nephi, and I am God. Behold, I declare it unto thee in the presence of mine angels, that ye shall have power over this people, and shall smite the earth with famine, and with pestilence, and destruction, according to the wickedness of this people.

7 Behold, I give unto you power, that whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus shall ye have power among this people.

8 And thus, if ye shall say unto this temple it shall be rent in twain, it shall be done.

9 And if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou cast down and become smooth, it shall be done.

10 And behold, if ye shall say that God shall smite this people, it shall come to pass.

Nephi had overcome the world. He had earned God’s trust.

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A man was sobbing by the side of the road. A passerby stopped and listened to him and hugged him. The passerby said, “I care for you. I feel sorry for you. But there are others out there suffering as much if not more, and I want to make it clear that I care just as much and feel just as sorry for them.”

cockiness distorts confidence.
cockiness contradicts humility.
timidity distorts humility.
timidity contracticts confidence.

-thus Bookslinger

I can’t upload images today for some reason. Otherwise, you’d see a virtue chart here.

But what is really interesting is the synthesis of the opposite virtues and the opposite vices.

Confident Humility sounds like a contradiction. So does Arrogant Timidity. But they are common enough that they are almost archetypes.

Perhaps this is what Helaman meant when he spoke of growing stronger and stronger in humility.

Bruce Charlton has a wonderful post on God’s purpose.

For me, now, this is the key to the specifically Christian concern with love; it is by love that unique individuals are able-to choose-to cooperate in harmony (as we can imagine would happen in an ideal family).

Culminating in this vision of eternity,

My favoured analogy for Heaven is with an idealised wholly-loving extended family of immortals; continually being added-to by new and unique people – by descent, marriage, adoption, and true-friendship; but always – because of their mutual love – working together, and cohering in their work; because they each work for each other, as-well-as for themselves.

As above, so below. Because that is also the ideal vision for this life. Penhurst the poem.

Ever larger, ever-loving, that is the formula.

but you should also read Bruce Charlton post for the intellectual tool of reverse causality. It is a potent form of inquiry.

Helaman 3 speaks of the Saints getting “stronger and stronger in their humility.” I’m sure the primary meaning is that they became more humble. But I also like to think that their humility made them strong.

Who is stronger, the man who boasts he doesn’t need to be planted to take a blow, or the man who looks for granite on which to brace his feet?

(Follow up: in Helaman 4, the people realize they have become militarily weak in their transgressions).

Vague or esoteric speech comes from a lack of confidence. Lack of confidence in oneself, lack of confidence in one’s listeners.

Often quite justified.

A boy was set to watch a flock. After awhile he saw a peculiar thing come creeping over the hill toward the flock.

It had a sheep’s skin and wool, slightly askew. But it walked strangely low the ground. There were glimpses of what seemed to be darker fur down below. It seemed to have sharp teeth. And its eyes were set straight ahead like a predator.

It’s hide could appear tilted a bit because of a spine condition, the boy reflected. The same spine condition could cause a peculiar walk. The darker fun could just be mud. The teeth, well, the animal is far away, perhaps I am mistaken. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if some few animals in the flock had far-away binocular vision like a predator the better to see predators sneaking up? Finally, who am I to judge? I must be charitable.

So,

“Sheep!” the boy cried.

A crow with a malicious twinkle in its eye suggested to a goat kid that it come play in some sewage run-off.

“But that’s sewage,” the kid said.

“Look on the bright side,” replied the crow.

“Well . . . it’s organic, and mostly water. I’d be 80% bathing in a stream. This is fine!” And in the kid went.

Moral: The wise man looks on the bright side of circumstances he cannot help. The fool looks on the bright side of circumstances he can.

There is an interesting passage in the Screwtape letters about folks who don’t think their appetites for food are disordered because instead of eating hyper quantities of food they are just hyper particular about the foods they eat. Vegans, basically.

Remember, appetites are good.

Babies won’t wait.

A feisty essay by a mother of 5.  Hardly a line it that I do not wish I had wrote.

For example,

There is no political ideology more vibrant these days than the baby-hating anti-natalist movement. It is pure No Lives Matter nihilism, dedicated to stopping humans from reproducing. It goes beyond abortion, even. Terminating children already in the womb is messy. This movement instead wants to convince you never to have them, and if you must, no more than 1.5. They wish to arrest potential children—those not yet conceived, the souls who exist as hazy figments in God’s imagination—from being willed into being.

 

It’s all the predictable result of 50 years of dual-income economic policies, anti-family social norms, abortion on demand, birth control pushers hooking prepubescents on the Pill, and climate harpies who see each baby as just another unwanted carbon footprint.

 

If you dare to visit mainstream millennial social media, like TikTok, you will encounter an army of self-sterilizing lunatics who shout their abortions, peddle their sex show livestreams, and brag about how many SSRIs they take. These young people, mostly girls, have been brainwashed into committing genetic suicide.

 

Even worse, they do it with joy. They are following the Pied Piper of Despair right over the cliff, along with the babies they’ll never have.

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