President Nelson wants virtue to garnish our thoughts.

Blog Friend Marilyn has been doing a study of virtue and has found some interesting things.   One that stood out is the dual meaning of virtue in the English language.

Mostly its used to refer to moral goods, but then you also see it used to refer to the properties of things.

Virtue — that substance or quality of physical bodies, by which they act and produce effects on other bodies

So we have scriptures about Christ’s healing where the “virtue” went out of him, or we can describe some effect happening by virtue of its cause.

It’s pretty easy to come up with a technical definition of love or glory, but these definitions don’t satisfy.  The scriptures talk about them almost as if they were a substance, some kind of spirit fluid.  Virtue seems the same.

On the sweetness

During sacrament you think about this symbolic passover and this symbolic crucifixion (the broken body, the blood) taking place on the day that is the weekly symbol of the Resurrection, Sunday.

The children sing “Gethsemane, Jesus loves me.”  Like you do every time, you think those are trash lyrics.  Like you do every time, you cry.

I’m going to give you a scenario and then ask you a question.

You walk into a building full of cells.  Each cell has thick bars over the windows, if there are windows.  The front of each cell is vertical bars.  There is a kind of barred door, currently shut.  The cells have a spartan bunk and a bolted-down toilet.

You walk up to one of the cells.

There is a man sitting on the bunk.

Here is the question.

Is he in prison?

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Sometime around now in Holy Week is when Christ delivered his Second Coming sermon in Matthew 25.  The conclusion, the sheep and the goats, is so simply profound that we are still unlocking the implications today.  Until that point he had been speaking in parables but at the end he speaks that way no longer.  He simply says what will happen.

Matthew 25:31-46

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

We are so used to this passage that it is hard to understand it.  We treat it as if it were just a beautiful way of saying ‘be nice.’  Oh, no no no.  Let’s hit at least 4 of the astounding revelations that the Savior gave in this famous passage.

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In Western thought, we think of Mind & Body as a duality. With the recent preeminence of Artificial Intelligence, I got thinking, what is the alternative?  Turns out, it is far more complicated in many traditions. In many traditions, there are layers between the body and conventional soul. Others see the soul as united but distinct entities.

Many different traditions – Chinese, Indian, Native American, Ancient Egyptian, Jewish…

Jewish? Ok, that is interesting. There are three words that all translate to soul, three different kinds or parts of the soul: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah.
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There is something unfakeable about catching someone laughing in their sleep.  It’s as if in sleep they have fulfilled the Savior’s command to become as a little child.

Inspired by Zen’s wonderful fable of the Idols of Babylon

—
Some atheists have argued that the apparent fine-tuning of our universe for life is explained by there being many, many universes, billions and billions, till one just happened to come along that had just the right variables.

In programming they have genetic algorithms–if you don’t know exactly how to achieve a result, try a bunch of variants, see which ones work, then try variants of the successful.

One approach to cracking a password is the brute force approach.  Just try a billion possibilities.

—

Once there was a race of idol-worshippers.   A missionary-monk  came and mocked their idols.  Then he cast them down.  Nothing happened.  The people began to reflect how unresponsive the idols had been.  Yes, clearly the missionary was right.  These were false idols.

But how to find true idols?  No problem!

They set to work building every kind of idol they could.  Every shape, every substance.  They just had to try all the possibilities until they found one that worked.  It was a huge undertaking.  They had to mobilize their whole society.  But once they found that one true idol, it would be worth it.

Elder Soares talked about covenant confidence.  That’s another phrase like ‘the covenant path’ that I never heard when I was a kid.  It’s great.

It also appears to be of extremely recent vintage.  I couldn’t find any reference prior to 2024.

We sat around last night swapping our favorite stories from conference while eating my experimental dessert.  Conference was great, the dessert was not.

Elder Holland’s story of Easton, the deacon with muscular dystrophy bringing the sacrament to his father.  It made a huge impression on my Teacher.

The three-year old and the five-year old who bit each other.  A huge hit with many different family members.

Brother Lund’s story of Alan and his deacons.

Elder Soares burying his second child.

Brother Tai’s kids wondering if it was the same sky as the one they lived under.

Elder Kearon’s car was also a huge hit with our numerous Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang fans.

Brother Palmer’s fallen willow.

Elder Uchtdorf’s embarrassing branch.

Brother Theodoris-boom (not his actual name I’m sure, just what I heard) telling a pioneer story about his parents slowly winning back their family and friends.

By the way, did you catch that Brother McClune’s mother is still alive and has 200 descendants?  What a winner!

A certain man found a pearl of great price in a field and he went and sold all he had and bought the field.

The pearl was indeed a great treasure.

It turned out that the the field was also.  Rich, fertile soil that brought prosperity to his family for generations to come.

There may be pearls for you in this General Conference.  Beautiful treasures of layered wisdom that will remain with you forever.  Go and get rid of all your other time commitments  to find them.

But don’t neglect the field.  Even the talks that don’t stick with you for the rest of your life, which will be most of them in the ordinary course of things, are fertile soil for growth and fruits to come.

This month’s Going Against the Grain Award recognizes newly called Seventy Motoshige Karino and his Wife Merei.

“Motoshige Karino, 52, Togane, Japan; Representative Director, Modere Japan GK; currently serving as president of the Chiba Japan Stake; former bishop, mission presidency counselor and stake presidency counselor; wife: Mirei; seven children.”

Only such as those two ignore the scorn of the world, set aside fear, and realize the happiness and fullness available to those who want it.

You have heard of someone who is land-poor or house-poor.  They  have a great, big shiny asset, the kind that fulfills every dream of riches, but the owner neither feels rich nor always lives rich because the mortgage and maintenance eat up all their income.

Almost all the stately homes of England are open to the public or even owned by the public and its not because the British aristocracy is just that generous.  Maybe a bit, but mostly because the stately homes were stately millstones about their necks.

Blenheim Palace — the seat of what was one of Britain’s richest and most successful families — open to the public to help pay costs

Same with power.  All power costs something to maintain and someone can be objectively quite powerful but not feel it because almost all their power goes to maintaining their power.

In the New Testament  there is a centurion who gives us a very vivid image of power.   “I say go, and he goest.”  To the one going, its pretty obvious that the centurion is very powerful.  It may not feel the same way to the centurion.  He more or less *has* to tell the soldier where to go or he quickly loses the ability and its not exciting to give the soldier his orders.  It doesn’t feel like power.  It feels like responsibility.  Even delegation is hard and in some ways requires more effort than just doing it yourself or micromanaging.

So with power as with wealth, we might say that how it feels depends not on the total amount but how much you have left to use when all your obligations and debts and maintenance costs are accounted for.  Delta power or net power.

(Stick with us on this one until the end, the end is where they payout is).

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