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
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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.
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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).
I accidentally came across this old draft post. It was the title and nothing else. The subject was interesting but I couldn’t tell whether I was for it or against it.
I guess it depends on what kinds of attacks we are talking about, and also and extremely importantly, whether the person doing the attacking is in fact more Christian.
Christ can attack me all he wants for being less Christian than He is (and He sometimes does, though not usually) and its all for the good.
People tied up in knots that I don’t have opinions about whether Christ broke his eggs at the big end or the little end, not so much.
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Milton’s Satan got it wrong. These were not his choices.
The earliest General Conference reference is 2007, in a talk by Elaine Dalton. She is quoting an article Elder Holland wrote for the 2006 Ensign.
2007 Sis. Dalton was quoting Elder Holland
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2007/04/stay-on-the-path?lang=eng
2006 Elder Holland https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2006/10/what-i-wish-every-new-member-knew-and-every-longtime-member-remembered?lang=eng#p16
References to the covenant path seem to pick up around then.
Google Ngram
The earliest reference in BYU speeches is to Sister Wixom in 2013
The Covenant Path | Rosemary M. Wixom | BYU Speeches
A date-limited google search suggests a bunch of results prior to 2006, but at least the first page of results were actually from dates much later.
The phrase doesn’t appear in the Journal of Discourses that I can tell.
I have a weird hobby. You could call my hobby political theory or political philosophy if you wanted to make it sound classy. I am interested in what power actually is in a simple, fundamental level. No brilliant theories to announce yet, but what I have concluded is that Joseph Smith had some intense level of insight that the modern world, and even me and the church, haven’t caught up to yet. The way love interacts with power. Everyone else goes wrong by separating them.
One of the brethren at a recent stake conference made an interesting connection between Mary and Martha–and snowballs–and social media. Of course we all remember Martha being busy about needful things, but neglecting the most important thing. He then told a story about snowball fighting with his young son. His son was a small and very energetic target. Hard to hit. So the man decided to pick up two snowballs. One he lobbed in a high, slow arc. His boy stood transfixed, eyes on the snowball, making sure he was edged out of the way–but meanwhile, the man threw a snowball directly at him. Smack! The boy was only 6, so the tactic worked over and over and over. He did a funny little gesture on the stand, bobbing his head up and down as if repeatedly watching the arc of the snowball. And when he had all our attention with the gesture, he suddenly added swiping his finger up and down along with the head, as if scrolling. Social media does the same, he said. It fixates our attention on what outside forces want us to be fixated on.
Instead, look to Christ.
I have two kids who have got into a contentious mode with each other. They fight a lot, and when they do their personality falls away. All that is left for the time being is the contention. They cease to be fully-realized humans.
For them, contention is a chain.
And what I’m wondering is, is that just because they are kids, or is it just easier to see in them because they are kids.
I will frankly admit that I was in the stickiest of wickets. I was dashed tight around the collar, if you take my meaning. But it’s always darkest before Jeeves solves the problem, as the poet guy says.
Due to an unfortunate concatentation of circs, I found myself engaged to a female specimen and was much afeared that my, ah, existing fiancee would take objection were the tea to be spilled to her about the fiancee of the second part. But just when the good ship Bertram was being tossed like nothing on this sea of troubles, out pops good ol’ Jeeves who explained to the young person that his Master was a dashing young man about town, gallant, handsome, and always inadvertently getting engaged to the opposite sex, merely as deep cover for being an incel. One can scarcely credit it, but apparently the gal in question was led to believe that my chic W1 flat is located in my mother’s basement. Dashed improbable, it seems to me, but Jeeves assures me that this particular fiction was the crowning fiction, the fiction that broke the engagement’s back and set me free.
These incel chappies seem to be rather disliked.
Elder McConkie’s parable of the debtor explains how justice and mercy are reconciled in that great sacrifice. The parable doesn’t get much into *why* the third party agrees to pay off the debts. Love, obviously, but that’s not the focus.
On Sunday we had a really excellent talk about repentance and it got me thinking about the motives of the third party in that parable, as a stand-in for the Savior. What if the Savior pays my debts because I am in a partnership with him and the goals of the partnership will fail without me–viz, making me as Himself. In other words, what if He bails me out for love because he sees great potential in me?
So here’s the parable of the movie actor.