A day for regretting eating a second helping of stuffing, for raking leaves with the rakes the red-clad elf left under the tree, for puzzling out your daughter’s new boardgame, for testing new firearms with your brothers, and for listening to the Spirit on how you can do good.

Our ward Primary President introduced the singing of “Silent Night” this way: (more…)

There is only one Christmas. Each year it comes a little more into view. (more…)

Christmas is fundamentally a family holiday. We should celebrate the Christ child, but we don’t need to be lugubrious about it. We don’t need to suppress family fun because the family is in the image of the Holy Family and pleasing to God. Your family relation is part of the deep spiritual core of Christmas, as two overlooked passages of Christmas scripture show. (more…)

Last night I had a dream. I lay it out in sequence below but the dream was all at once. (more…)

[Editors–we hope that this unusual account of a Church-run focus group, along with the ensuing discussion, will be of general interest]

The church was mostly quiet last night. Brother and Sister Markoff were in the cultural hall with their two younger children planning the stage arrangement for the Christmas program Sister Markoff has been rehearsing with Primary children for the past month. There was no sign of anyone downstairs around the bishop’s and clerks’ offices. Back upstairs, outside the Relief Society room, a few middle-aged parents sat waiting and talking. More arrived. Brother Fletcher joked that we were going to find we had came for a half hour presentation encouraging us to prepare for senior missions. Some continued along that theme that we had actually been summoned to discuss lowering the age for senior missionaries. A quarter before eight, the Relief Society door opened, and four priests and six laurels walked out. In we went, where a man in his young thirties sat dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and tie.

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I’m going to swim out into deep waters in this post. Stand by with lifesavers. (more…)

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An economist’s studies led him to the insight that failure and unexpected obstacles are major drivers of innovation and creativity. But innovation and creativity aren’t just virtues for the workday. Creativity–creation–is the fundamental attribute of God. What starts out as an economics principle becomes an insight into the fundamentals of life: it is when we are desperate that we become the most godlike. We blaze brightest when thrown into the fire. (more…)

“Due to an aging population, non-Hispanic whites last year recorded more deaths than births.” (link)

Today would be Betsey’s 12th birthday. This is what I wrote on her birthday eight years ago.
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The God who created worlds without number doesn’t seem too averse to grand ambition.
–Thus MC.

Elder Christofferson preached Sunday that the aim of the gospel is to draw down “perfect justice and infinite mercy” from heaven. The phrase stuck with me. Perfect justice and infinite mercy. (more…)

I saw the other day the Sphinx’s painted face.
She had painted her face in order to ogle Time.
And he has spared no other painted face in all the world but hers.
Delilah was younger than she, and Delilah is dust. Time hath loved nothing but this worthless painted face. (more…)

The flower of the pear-tree gathers and turns to fruit;
The swallows’ eggs have hatched into young birds.
When the Seasons’ changes thus confront the mind
What comfort can the Doctrine of Tao give? (more…)

Reading complaints a few weeks back that too many Latter-day Saints marry before completing courses of higher education, I felt concerned that a natural corollary of that is that people who don’t complete a college education shouldn’t marry at all. Perhaps the unfolding 21st Century for many will be less like the 20th Century abounding in middle-class families and more like earlier ages when bunk houses, barracks, brothels, servants’ quarters, convents, and monasteries absorbed many whose economic limitations put marriage and children out of reach, and those who want a different future will have to choose paths of their own bucking prevailing trends.

The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia has put out “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America” There is such discussion of the Great Crossover (mean age at first marriage passing age at first child), and a running theme is that delayed marriage plays out differently for the two-thirds of the nation that doesn’t complete a college degree.

A summary can be found at Washington Post: link. Coming at the topic from another angle, perhaps you’ll enjoy “Settle Down” by Kimbra. Or perhaps you won’t, if your tastes in song and dance don’t run that way.