I was wondering today what use gratitude is to a God? Who does God have to be grateful to?

Well, for us at least, supposing we are one day exalted to reign on high, we will have Him to be grateful too. Every glory will be the sweeter knowing we owe it to the Father and the Son.

So that’s one use of gratitude.
But there is another. We don’t usually call it gratitude, but it is the same emotion. It is when you see someone you love do something kind and good, especially for you. God gets this a lot. That overflowing of love when you see your children do right.

The child is wailing and they look at you to stop it, but you can’t. You can’t.

On the sweetness of Mormon life.

The speaker at church says he’d had some time to stare at all the scuffmarks at the base of the podium. He imagined all the speakers, all the testifiers, all the youth and adults and men and women who had come up there one way or the other to speak or to testify or to sing. He says that is a precious piece of wood.

You are not surrounded by peace, rhythm, order, and loveliness. These strip malls, these asphalts, these barren places, these gross landscapes and gross people–perhaps, saddest of all, it is even your face that apes you from the mirror.

Why bother? No one cares. You don’t care. Weary minute after weary minute, gray, dull, plodding. Why are you so sad?

You hesitated, but not long enough. You took the plunge and the Holy Ghost withdrew. You feel rage and horror, hollow winds in the soul.

You just don’t feel good.  You don’t move like others do.  That fresh joy which comes so much from the body doesn’t come to you much any more.

You feel so tired and your stomach hurts. It isn’t even hunger you feel, just a gnawing at your gut almost the same as illness.

You are ignorant and you know you are ignorant, but you just don’t know how or what to do about it. When you try, you don’t know where to start and what you find makes no sense. You are lost. Why? who? What? How? You hear no answer.

You are tired. Your brain is pushing through a fog. Your body staggers. You don’t exactly hurt, but you do hurt.

Here’s the third dream of the set–no real point to it, but it has an interesting feature to it.

So, I dreamed that on some patriotic  holiday we stopped at some kind of expansive roadside rest stop or roadside attraction.  It had a swimming feature so we splashed around for a bit and then we decided to go to the bathroom before we left.  this was a big place, so they had several small bathroom buildings all together, laid out roughly in the over all shape of the US, and each bathroom building was labeled by a region.  There was a small access road to the left running diagonally up and away, and across it there was another small building that represented the Northwest broadly speaking, and there was a little sign saying something about the geographic center of the United States being represented by this building.*  We were feeling patriotic so we decided to go there for our bathroom break, though my son kept saying ‘it’s a small lake, it’s some kind of small lake.’  There was a little group of us waiting to go in until the current group had cleared the building, which I thought was odd for a bathroom. (more…)

Frustration–with yourself. There is a lesson you need to learn, a repentance that needs to occur, and you just don’t. The wabbling finger keeps wandering back to the fire.

That which I would do, I do not.

Frustration–there is a thing that needs doing and you just can’t do it. Others can–but you can’t. Whatever that magic spark of skill is, you don’t have it. And so it goes undone.

I dreamed that someone had  lovingly taken her child or grandchild’s drawing of monsters and made them into patchwork stuffed animals.  They were adorable.  Here’s one of them: bright red polkadot angular bizarre body, lumpish semi triangular sky blue head, odd sized eyes, big arms sticking out at odd angles with their own little cloth coverings.  They were all like that.  I loved everything about them.  They were cute.  The kid loved them too.

I was left wondering whether our very real fears are like a kid’s fears of monsters under the bed–can it really be that fear of death, of cancer, of betrayal, attack, injury, poverty, that all these are nothing more than figments?  I can’t believe that, but to the kid the boogey man in the closet is also real and terrifying.

Or are these terrors real enough in their way, though expressed through the childish mind of a real mortal, but someday we will find them transformed into something bright because they are cherished by a divine parent for our sake?

Frustration–the people around you just won’t reach for greatness. They are stiff-necked. They persist in their follies and will not repent.