Zion is the pure in heart. There are no poor among her. And so on.
These are the standard definitions of Zion. They are good.
I just found a new one.
“G,” the masses clamor, “do you have something you could share about D&C 81-84 after everyone except the clamoring masses are done with them?”
“Yes, my masses,” I reply. “Clamor no more.”
My newlywed daughter and her husband were at a garage sale looking at some furniture. One of them said, with emphasis, ‘I can’t put books on missing shelves.” Said that way, it came out like poetry.
On the family chat, they suggested we all try to make poems out of it. It was a lot of fun. Some were supremely silly, some had Mother Goose energy, one wasn’t doggerel, but my favorite was this one.
Cultural Christianity
You can’t put books on missing shelves
You can’t make saints of Keebler elves
You can’t have Christ without the cross
You can’t refine and keep the dross
I had a strange dream.
I dreamed that I was in a semi-rural area. Quite a few scattered houses. What used to be called ‘suburban’ before that came to mean tract housing. But the houses were all haunted. No actual ghosts, I think, but there was a malign influence that settled in these houses and would damage the inhabitants and in time would spread outside the house. Consequently, they had all been abandoned. The whole area had been abandoned. Everyone had retreated to the town. I was one of the last holdouts, perhaps even the very last.
And I was not living in a house.
We sang Jesus of Nazareth today in church. The first line caught my eye.
“Jesus of Nazareth, Savior and King.”
Jesus “of Nazareth” is a peculiar choice for someone’s title. It appears several times in the scripture. probably because there were lots of Jesus’s running around while he was the only one of note from Nazareth. Probably the only person of note from Nazareth of any kind, since it was a small rural town.
It still makes a piquant contrast. Jesus from Nowheresville, Savior and King. As if to say, Bob from Tooele or Doug from Hoboken.
On my mission, I heard a story about Pres Hinckley, that when he was on his mission, his father told him, “Forget yourself and get to work“. I have taken many lessons from my mission, but for some reason I thought this was only for time in the mission field.
But I am be to see the importance in daily life as well. If we put God first, then the other things fall in their proper place, or drop out of our lives.
We can clearly see that our birth rates are dropping precipitously. If we are to fix the problem, there are two groups we should think about. Those who don’t want children and those who feel unable. Trying to fight a culture obsessed with sex and money is mostly going to be a mostly fruitless endeavor. Go ahead and call to those people, but don’t waste most of your time on them. Rather, we would do better to focus on the second population and enable those who do want kids and feel unable.
Enable and assist married people to have children:
Preserve existing Families:
Divorce, in practice, if not in law, favors women. I can’t tell you how many women I have met that are happy just living off alimony and child support payments, mostly the later. Divorce laws have been unfairly biased for a very long time. Correcting this would give men a lot of support.
China just made it difficult for a divorcing woman to take her husband’s wealth. I am not sure they are wrong. This one is tricky, because we have to balance women who have been married many years and then set adrift (legit need), with women who want to exploit the situation, because they know they will be unfairly advantaged.
The vast majority of divorces are initiated by women. If we can introduce a level playing field, we can preserve some marriages.
Dating Culture:
This is a tougher nut to crack. I am proud enough to steady the ark, but I haven’t a clue how to fix this. If people are not dating, they aren’t getting married. From everything I hear, this is a toxic hell, for everyone these days, except the top 2% or so. It was hell when I was single, but that was at least partly because I was a single father and my height puts me closer to Gimli than Legolas. How would I fix this? Genuinely not sure, except to say it is increasingly important to live so that we can have miracles in our lives. Abraham was able to find a wife for his son Isaac, even though he was practically the last righteous man alive. Jacob managed to do it under equally challenging circumstances. Joseph likewise had an unconventional life path, that was only possible because he was righteous and had great faith in God. We need no less. This is a spiritual battle, so perhaps here a spiritual solution is best.
I probably would not encourage dating apps.
I don’t think it is as simple as complaining about hypergamy. Rather, it is porn-brain, or if you prefer, Brains Over-Stimulated by Dopamine Enabled by the Internet. Men have learned the hard way that what porn promises, it can’t deliver. Likewise Social Media and dating apps. They promise every woman a prince or a wealthy finance bro. Dating apps showed an endless array of men. Whatever the faults of dating apps, women had plenty of attention and variety. May be not the attention or variety they wanted, but it suggested there were a lot of men out there. If they could just find the right one. There were always more. Perhaps, just perhaps women are just beginning to wake up (maybe? hopefully?) to the realization that it was all a lie. It was a deception by people who wanted their time, attention and money.
This may not solve all answers, but if we can get rid of some of the more significant roadblocks, hopefully we can help families form, retain, procreate and raise children.
The Saints who trekked across the plains to the barren Great Basin did not suddenly become plush when they got there. They lived in scraping poverty.
They did not do it as refugees. They did it to build an empire in the dust.
They succeeded.
Their only true trial is us.
On the porch in the evening with your arm around your wife. Thunder and lightning and rain clouds moving.
There is something fine about watching your kids dance in the rain.
“Just one more song, Dad.”
Years ago, my grandmother smoked cigarettes. Even as a child, I knew this was bad for her, so I tried everything I could to convince her to quit. Eventually it killed her.
Would I have loved my grandmother if I hadn’t asked her to do something very hard? What if I had softened the truth, so as not to offend her? What if I told her the laws of health didn’t apply to her? Is there any possible way for me to have had real genuine love for my grandmother, without asking her to do what is difficult?
No, there is not.
Refusing people hard things to do, is refusing them the Grace of God. God will strengthen us, but not while we do not stretch ourselves.
Elder Bednar shares a story about a man who went into the mountain woods, to cut firewood.
So he decided he would cut and haul a supply of firewood for their home. It was in the autumn of the year, and snow already had fallen in the mountains where he intended to find wood. As he drove up the mountainside, the snow gradually became deeper and deeper. My friend recognized the slick road conditions presented a risk, but with great confidence in the new truck, he kept going.
Sadly, my friend went too far along the snowy road. As he steered the truck off of the road at the place he had determined to cut wood, he got stuck. All four of the wheels on the new truck spun in the snow. He readily recognized that he did not know what to do to extricate himself from this dangerous situation. He was embarrassed and worried.
My friend decided, “Well, I will not just sit here.” He climbed out of the vehicle and started cutting wood. He completely filled the back of the truck with the heavy load. And then my friend determined he would try driving out of the snow one more time. As he put the pickup into gear and applied power, he started to inch forward. Slowly the truck moved out of the snow and back onto the road. He finally was free to go home, a happy and humbled man.
Elder Bednar’s talk is excellent and I highly recommend it.
Again from Elder Bednar’s talk
Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is the absence of a load. But bearing a load is a necessary and essential part of the plan of happiness. Because our individual load needs to generate spiritual traction, we should be careful to not haul around in our lives so many nice but unnecessary things that we are distracted and diverted from the things that truly matter most.
That traction comes from a load, and we will need that traction at some point in our lives. If we are so short-sighted as to deny people a load, we also deny them the traction they will need later in their lives.
There are compensatory blessings, for obedience leading to other blessings withheld, such as the person who is chaste in an immoral world. Those compensatory blessings can result in enhanced spiritual growth and power. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the blessings. “Sacrifice brings forth the Blessings of Heaven.”
God enjoys blessing us. And He knows that what He asks is sometimes very difficult. But what he promises is out of proportion to what we do.
For thus saith the Lord—I, the Lord, am merciful and gracious unto those who fear me, and delight to honor those who serve me in righteousness and in truth unto the end D&C 76:5
There is no case where the Wicked suffer less than the Righteous. They might have more fun in the short term. Some suppose God enjoys suffering or is some kind of ascetic. Nothing is further from the truth. He is anxious to bless us, but He also understand what will and will not bring us happiness. God will bless the Righteous, or those who struggle to be with more than they can comprehend.
God can make our burdens light. All our burdens.
13 And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage.
14 And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.
15 And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.
Mos. 24:13-15
How close are we to the Savior? Some things are are shown by difficult experience, how close, or not, we actually are. But when we actually are close to him, He can make His commandments easy. By experience, I can say, this will involve a lot of prayer, repentance, dedication to the Lord.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28–30).
A yoke is a instrument of burden, but is is one that the Savior is with us, suffering with us. He can make it light, because He is pushing with us. And just as we feel God in us, the Savior feels us in Him. He feels, and continues to feel, all our suffering. He is with us when we suffer. He is not absent, merely coming by once a month to pick up the rent check.
The covenants God offers us, are not merely transactional, they are transformational.
And He is too loving to leave us as we are.
He will ask difficult things, and He will transform us.
More D&C thoughts once everybody else has moved on. For the cognitive aristocrats in the slow thinking movement.
The Vision of the Three Degrees of Glory (and much else beside) is powerful and beautiful.
It seems like it should have inspired LDS artists in aspects of it. Has it? Post below.
The art for this lesson in the manual was “Refuge,” picture below.
I like the painting–a lot–but the title makes it wrong for D&C 76. “Refuge” nowhere appears in the vision and at the eternal cosmic scope the vision deals with is more a terrestrial concept than a celestial one.
This Teichert painting was not inspired by D&C 76 that I know of, but it always makes me think of D&C 76:107
I have overcome and have trodden the wine-press alone, even the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God.
What art comes to your mind?
The main difference between a novel or a slice-of-life web serial/TV sitcom is the sense that there is an overall structure to the novel. New random stuff that happens in the novel isn’t random. It leads somewhere.
I submit to you that your life feels like the web serial, but is actually the novel.
He did not die for you in vain. He would not have agonized for you if He didn’t think–if He didn’t know–that you and He could put you right.
So right. Right beyond your ken. Right in your soul like an atom bomb, right in your happiness like a house on fire.
Unlike us mortals, He is not addicted to grand gestures and Lost Causes. He aims to win. Even in His moments of maddest passion in the Garden and on the Cross, there was iron calculation. The numbers added up. The sums cashed out. You are ROI.
https://x.com/InezFeltscher/status/1943744667675218301#m