The Western way is to define a term. The definition should be as exact as possible. There is another way, though, which I got from the ancient Greeks. You define something by looking at the ideal or the paradigm of that thing. Then whether you call something similar but not quite ideal by the same term depends on whether making the connection in context is useful or not.
So lets talk about what a covenant is. We usually casually define it as a contract, but it would be better to think of it as a contract with enhanced features. As opposed to the ideal contract, a covenant is a mutual agreement that
You don’t escape to Narnia
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mereorthodoxy.com/you-dont-escape-to-narnia
An interesting juxtaposition of CS Lewis’s Narnia vs more modern media, like Harry Potter or Les Grossman’s The Magicians.
Throughout the whole saga, one point is made piercingly clear. There is no sense in which one loses themselves in Narnia. One does not go to Narnia in order to explore, out of a sense of sheer curiositas. Instead, one is meant to find something there, something beyond and beneath the surface level of experience, and the physical limits of Narnia all exist in service of that pedagogical end.
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Narnia, that is to say, is not an escape. By its nature, it cannot be. Rather, adventures in Narnia are conditioning experiences by which individuals come to see reality properly. As The Last Battle concludes in eschatological splendor, the faun Mr. Tumnus remarks to Lucy that “you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”[18] Exactly so.
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Indeed, I get the feeling, that too much modern fictional media has a seemingly unlimited world, with stunted limited viewpoints, while Narnia is a deliberately limited small world, where the people come out with more expansive views. That in fact, was the reason the children came to Narnia in the first place.
Fantasy at its best (Lewis, Tolkien, etc) is not an escape. It is a preparation for the real world.
King Mosiah institutes the rule of the judges in about 90 BC or so. He does it because he believes that it is less common for a majority of the people* to go wicked whereas a ruler like King Noah can certainly go wicked and then drag a bunch of people down with him. Therefore King Mosiah believes it would be better to have a system where the people were formally the ultimate backstop.
By somewhere in the range of 40-20 B.C., the Nephite system of government is totally corrupt and the majority of the people support wickedness. The number of chapters in Alma obscure for us how little time has passed. 50 to 70 years.
In contrast, after King Noah’s death his people quickly rebounded to righteousness.
There’s a puzzle there.
Ice gets less cold and less cold but is still ice. The changes are literally just a matter of degree. Than a degree or two more—and it is no longer ice. It’s water. That is called phase change.
You keep growing and changing throughout life, but sometimes you go through a phase change. A discontinuity. You look around at all the same things as before and recognize nothing.
Svalbard, Arctic Ocean.
The first time you go to school.
When you move out of the house.
When you marry.
Your first child.
And then as a parent you go through equal phase changes yourself when your children do these things, especially the first child. (more…)
For behold, after the Lord God sent our first parents forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground, from whence they were taken—yea, he drew out the man, and he placed at the east end of the garden of Eden, cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the tree of life
-thus Alma 42:2
Drawing out is an interesting phrase. It suggests getting someone who is shy or inert to participate in an activity. For a tool, like a sword, it means getting it out to use. In the sense that ‘drawing out’ means unsheathing the Lovely One thinks there may be a sexual metaphor or at least a reference to Adam and Even discovering their ‘nakedness.’
In the sense of ‘unsheathing a sword,’ there may be a small chiasmus
- he drew out
- the man
- he placed cherubim
- and a flaming sword.
I would love to know more.
Its interesting to read old popular fiction. You get a better feel for what makes popular fiction popular fiction. (By popular fiction I mean fiction that is meant to appeal to the public taste, not necessarily fiction that sold well).
I just finished readering C.S. Forrester’s 3rd Horatio Hornblower novel. Really good book, but also pretty informative about how such books work. (more…)
Inspired by the conference theme on wearing your garments–
To riff on Chesterton, everyone has an identity. When they reject an identity, they don’t cease to have one. They just start conforming to a different one.
You always dress to belong. The only question is, to what group do you dress to belong
How many people have you killed?
Disclaimer: the following is the middlebrow blog version of a ghost story. Not intended for brooding purposes.
Years gone by my first little daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on the birthday she never quite made it to that year.
Today you would be 23.
Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.
We put flowers on your grave.
It’s another photo album birthday for us. I don’t know how birthdays go where you are.
Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.
General Conference Retrospective
Elder Gong talks about being buried in your own temple clothes. One of the not yet entirely lost customs of the old Church was making your own temple clothes and then laying out your dead in theirs. These little acts are very meaningful.
Brother Dushku had the Spirit make a powerful impression on him by one day telling him to sit down and shut up. It is one of his treasured spiritual experiences.
My point is that there are many ways to receive heavenly rays of testimony. These are just a few, of course. They may not be dramatic, but all of them form part of our testimonies.
Brothers and sisters, I have not seen a pillar of light, but, like you, I have experienced many divine rays. Over the years, I’ve tried to treasure such experiences. I find that as I do, I recognize and remember even more of them. Here are some examples from my own life. They may not be very impressive to some, but they are precious to me.
I remember being a rowdy teenager at a baptism. As the meeting was about to begin, I felt the Spirit urge me to sit down and be reverent. I sat down and stayed quiet the rest of the meeting.
My own treasure house contains many such. I have also been blessed that way.
General Conference Retrospective
Elder Holland quoted G.K. Chesterton on gratitude.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
— thus G. K. Chesterton
General Conference retrospective
(The title is with apologies to Elder Holland, whose talk Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet is still the best talk for listening to on a Sunday while making dinner)
In marriage and business there is a concept called commingling of assets. At its fullest, the idea is that you have two nominally separate people or entities but they are so mixed up with each other that you can’t really sort out where one ends and the other begins. Legally the court will then throw up its hand and declare them to be one entity. Its not just that their assets now belong to both. For legal purposes, they are one entity.
