From today’s Gospel Doctrine lesson:

• 2 Nephi 6:3-4.  General information can be as useful as tailored teaching.
• 2 Nephi 7:1-2, 11; 2 Nephi 18.  Sin brings its own punishment; or sometimes the punishment is God just leaving you to try your luck with the wicked, who can be extremely punitive.  What are some sins that bring their own punishment in your experience and observation? What protection from the wicked does God give you now?
• 2 Nephi 8:1-2.  Pit is usually a bad thing in the scriptures.  Hell, the trap laid by the wicked into which they fall at the last day.  Interesting to see it as a positive origin.  It reminds me a bit of what we were talking about recently with the water in Lehi’s dream, how it appeared to be originally clean (and in fact representing Christ) and then because dirty as it went along.  Your origin an ancestry is good, but trying just to go back to it is a trap.
• Why Isaiah chapters:  God wants us to seek the spirit of prophecy and the Holy Ghost.  Therefore the scriptures aren’t a manual and need to have more challenging sections.  This is  more important than getting all the specifics right.  We live in the  most unpoetic and ametaphorical society of all time.  Poetry and imagery sticks in your mind better.  Assume Isaiah was talking about the biggest events of salvation and world history.  Jot down the 8 or 9 biggest events: that’s his subject.  What are your 8 or 9 milestones, now or to come?
• 2 Nephi 2 and 9 are less an explanation of the atonement and more a statement of the principles about the atonement that an explanation must account for.
• The problem of leadership.  2 Nephi 13:1-7, 12; 2 Nephi 14:1.
• 2 Nephi 9:28-29.  Wo to those who are learned but not wise, etc.  Interestingly, there follows a long list of ‘woes’ but without the qualification that there is with being learned that there is a redeemable version of the trait.  There is no “wo unto the liar, but to be a liar is good if . . .”   Later, despite the earlier contrast between the learned and the wise, the chapter talks about the learned and the rich and the wise going to destruction because of their pride.
• There is a lot of stuff in Ch. 13 and later in  Ch. 15 (they call evil good and good evil) that sounds pretty crazy, but its 2024 and here we are.

On the sweetness of Mormon life.

You are sitting at your kitchen table making notes from the Book of Mormon.  Your youngest daughter finishes brushing out her hair and asks Dad, can I  brush yours.  You agree  She brushes.

Did you know, Dad, dust is partly made of human skin?

You do know.  You  are the one who told her.

She brushes some more.  Some dead skin is on the brush.  She blows it off.

Heavenly Father made us out of dirt but our dead skin is dirt, right?  Isn’t that weird?

A French movie, the Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir, was apparently panned by moviegoers and critics alike when it first came out. Since then it has acquired a reputation of being one of the best movies ever made.

It is terrible. The moviegoers and critics absolutely had the right of it. (more…)

I highly recommend these books (in translation) and these movies (with subtitles on).   By Marcel Pagnol about his childhood in Provence.  Very warm and family-focused and even stylish.

The books in particular are good enough to become part of our read-aloud rotation.

Age wise, your family’s average age needs to be at least a few years older than for, say, Laura Ingalls Wilder.

God shall give unto you knowledge by his Holy Spirit, yea, by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, that has not been revealed since the world was until now;

. . .  Nothing shall be withheld.  Whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest.

All thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, shall be revealed and set forth upon all who have endured valiantly for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

-thus D&C 121

What is your heroic narrative?  For you surely have one, whether you know it or not.

The problem with delusions of grandeur is the delusions, not the grandeur.

Most heroic narratives fail by being insufficiently heroic.  Yours should be broader in scope, further in time, higher in height, than you dare to imagine.

Elder Bednar — repentance isn’t a way of getting back on the plan.  Repentance is the plan.

Repentance is the plan.

Repentance is the way.

Repentance is the Way?

Christ was made perfect through suffering.  He repented more than anyone.  In the Atonement, He took on our sins, all of them, and repented of all of them.  Call it the Great Repentance.  “Perfect” can mean both flawless or complete/completed.  Christ was made perfect in both senses.

The people of the 1940s were apparently stark mad.  We just watched a movie from then called the Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.  The first half is slow and trying to be comic about something that doesn’t really seem comic: the distaff-half of a pair of quasi-sweethearts from a small town gets in trouble (pregnant) and is also probably married to a soldier but she doesn’t know who and has no proof.  T here is an obvious romcom direction for the plot to go but it doesn’t, hoo boy, it doesn’t, and the second half of the movie just rips the top off and goes wild, one insanity piling on top of insanity until the  big insane denouement.  You end up laughing a ton mostly because it is pretty funny but also partly from hysteria.

With my fatherly hat on,   I Do Not Approve of the film for what its worth.  Golly, what a thing.

Via Bruce Charlton, a real find: FadedPage.com, which has a number of excellent digital downloads of 50-year old works.

Unfortunately, only available for our Canadian or unscrupulous reader contingents.   We love our Canadian and unscrupulous readers, don’t we, folks?

• There’s the chapters in 1 Nephi that are pretty clearly talking about Columbus and early European colonials.  Who had their faults.  Modern education is sometimes selective in presenting facts about the people it wishes to blacken, but doesn’t always invent stuff.  A lot of the dubious things they were up are dubious.  The Book of Mormon, though, presents them as blessed and to some degree on the Lord’s errand, even though later in the same chapter it says they err a lot because of their incomplete scripture.    With Columbus, one thing to keep in mind is that greatness is an aspect of righteousness.  A great man (visionary, energetic, and so on) who does wicked stuff is only partially righteous.  So is a commandment-keeper who is mediocre.  For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  For the settlers, another thing to keep in mind is that they are described as “humbling” themselves.    Righteousness isn’t really a matter of intellectual assent to a set of propositions, nor in this life is it a freeze frame of what kind of person you are holistically right now.  “Humility” isn’t abasement.  Humility is a recognition that something is lacking about you and a desire to fix that lack.  In other words, humility is directional.  Reading the BoM through the lens of Lehi’s Dream, humility is grasping the rod to move to the tree.

• the end of the world — should we interpret that as the end of the World?   Not the end of everything, but the end of this worldly system.

• There has to be some connection between Laman and Lemuel standing by the ‘chasm’ and the river of filthy water in Lehi’s dream, and his earlier comparison of them to a valley and a river respectively when they first left Jerusalem.

Someone smarter than me can tell me if this is a poem or what.

Proverbs 18:2

The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliver;

My God, my strength, in whom I will trust;

My buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

The horn of my salvation.

The horn of rescue.

The horn of the infantry are here.

The bugle of the cavalry coming over the hill.

Roland winding his horn and hearing, o blessedly near! the answering clarion.

The bell of the boxer’s round is done.

The church bell, the evening bell, the day is over.

The last trump.

Your surprised laugh when you find it all worked out in the end.

Your home greeting–Daddy!–at the end of the day.

Inspiration works in curious ways. I don’t feel like I get inspiration. Whenever I ask about some serious real world decision I invariably get an answer that is something like, “Yep, you are right that there are pros and cons and risks. What do you want to do?” So it wasn’t with much expectation that I prayed for some guidance on what approach to take to the Book of Mormon this year. I didn’t get any answers other than that maybe I should ask. I asked some friends, got a few ideas, and then a day or so later got a clear out the blue bona fide inspiration. Its funny and typical that the inspiration had nothing to do with anyone’s suggestion but didn’t come until I got the suggestions.

Anyhow, the inspiration came, I don’t know why, since I have all of 5 readers here, but those are the only sorts of inspiration I seem to get sometimes, gospel insights that no one cares about, the Saints seem to prefer either pablum or scholarship or official sources and good for them, none of which I am.

Oh well. The Lord knows what He’s doing I suppose.

Anyhow, the inspiration was to look at the entire Book of Mormon through the lens of Lehi’s Dream. That’s what I am going to be trying to do this year.

Here’s the first fruits of that effort.

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Warning: this is a dream.

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To recap:

The people who taste the fruit of the tree of life and stay have 4 differences from those who don’t stay

1.  Mists of darkness are not mentioned for them.
2. They hold on to the iron rod instead of clinging.
3. They fall down when they get to the tree.
4. After eating they are not ashamed.

In 1 Nephi 11, Nephi has an extended vision in response to his question about what the tree  means.

Here’s one bit (v. 24)

I beheld the Son of God going forth among the children of men; and I saw many fall down at his feet and worship him.

I dreamed that I was pursued into a great  hall by enemies.  It was a lovely hall, all brass and wood and high windows and a great roaring fire.  Comfortable elegant furniture all over. Highly polished.  I started to climb up the walls to get away from them.  They tried to throw things at me.  One of them climbed after me and when I pondered what to do I was reminded that I was a prince of Amber.  So I put points into climbing and acrobatics (I guess I was an RPG sort of prince of Amber), quickly scaled the wall, grabbed an enormous tasseled cord and swung across the wall, and willed that there be a secret entrance there and then through the entrance a roof exit there . . . a scaffolding . . . a rocky outcropping . . . a sheer granite cliff strung with vines . . .

It was fun.

Yesterday we mentioned that the interior of the building is hidden while the tree is open to view.

Today let’s talk about another difference.   The building experience is superficial–literally superficial, it happens on the superficie of the building–and relies on the non-building world to be meaningful.

When the building first comes to our attention, its because of all the people on balconies or windows in it mocking and pointing.

And I also cast my eyes round about, and beheld, on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.

27 And it was filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.

When people go into the building, they quickly appear on the exterior mocking and pointing too.

And great was the multitude that did enter into that strange building. And after they did enter into that building they did point the finger of scorn at me and those that were partaking of the fruit also;

Whatever secrets are in the interior of the building, they are apparently too boring and meaningless to occupy anyone for long.  There is nothing to do there other than to point fingers at people who aren’t.  What is hidden inside the building is almost literally nothing.  The physical building is founded on little to nothing.  The building experience is also founded on little to nothing.  There is no there there.

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