Two boys set out at dawn on a hike into the woods.

They can around a hill and discovered a small stream-fed lake they had never seen before.  Mist was rising from the lake, the sun rose, and then gliding silently into their view they saw swans.

The one boy was awestruck.

The other complained, “where are they going?  There is nothing in this lake.  This is pointless.  Why aren’t they all in a line?  Why aren’t they forming a pattern?”

“I sometimes wonder,” the goose said to her gaggle, “how good I could have got at my career if I had just put off laying?”

Her friends were enthusiastic.  “It’s true!” they said.  “You were always so good at eating weeds.  And your honk!”  “You were always so good at pooping,” added another.

There once was a man with a withered hand who had four thick golden rings on the other.  He mourned when he acquired a fifth ring, because he had nowhere to put it.

At the edge of a wilderness, a wandering fox stopped to share gossip and news with another fox who happened to be there.

“Friend,” the wandering fox said, “back in that wilderness I saw many strange things and  I experienced a marvel.  As I was going I heard a bird call.  it was too complex to be a warning that I was present, because as you you we foxes are often maligned by birds as predators.”  The other fox nodded sagely.  “So I assumed it was a mating call.  Especially when the same call was repeated and repeated until I had heard it run through all the quarters of the wilderness.  But then the same bird, or another one much like, did a completely different call of equal complexity.  It too ran throughout all the forest.  As I traveled, the same phenomenon happened again, and then again.”

“This is easily explained,” the wayside fox said.  “It is had in memory among the foxes and the owls and the crows in these parts that once there was a great empire that ruled from where this wilderness  now grows.  No doubt you marked the ruins.  It is said they were great breeders and among other things they bred a kind of message bird.    They had pet ones that they would give a long message coded into song.  The bird would then sing it in the clear, carrying tones that you heard, and its compatriots that had been released into the wild would then repeat it and repeat it until it reached its destination.”

“Ingenious,” the first fox said.  “Do they taste good?”

The second fox, ignoring this interruption, went on.  “But now of course there are only ruins.  The birds make up nonsense to sing partly in memory of their glory days, but mostly because their breeding compels them to.”

(Based on real life examples)

There once was a small flock of hens.  One of these hens spent an inordinate amount of time each day finding her way out of her flock’s enclosure to carry on an affair with a rooster a couple of backyards over.  Another of these hens was, to the extent you could say it of a hen, lucidly and ethereally rational.  The hen seemed to spend a great deal of time considering everything around her with a skeptical eye, and when the poultry routines were interrupted would act as if it were beneath her to notice.  The last hen had something like dash or elan.  She would strut right up to dogs, give them the stare, and then fly into their faces.

A turtle lived in their backyard with them.  Sometimes they would perch on his back.

One day all three of them were perched there.  “You are all so distinctive,” said the turtle.  “What is the reason?”

The first hen said, “I’m committed to my heritage and living it out to the fullest.”  “Me too,” said the second.  “Me too,” said the third.

In chorus, they all cackled, “We’re french hens!”

Moral:  identity and heritage is not a straitjacket.

After a night away, the barn cat came slinking back to its stable, sleek and smug and full.

He told all the animals there-there were some humans there too that morning, he would have told them also if they could understand speech–“what a night I’ve had.  Let me tell you all about it!”

There was a great King, a ring-giver, a man-wielder, who ruled from his great hall where the the fire was never put out.  The strengths of his rule were two.  First, when he sat in his great chair in his great hall with his sword Life-and-Death laid across his lap, his judgments never erred and he never turned away a true petition.  Second, his war-band were all heroes and lords every one, from his mighty son the Prince to all the rest.  They were bound to him and he to them by great oaths.  They loved him deeply but he loved them even more, and rewarded them often.    Silver and gold and rings and treasures flowed from his hands.

Now it so happened that each hero of that band had a peculiar strength that belonged to him alone.  There was Bear, whose anger shook mountains.  The Fear-giver made foes tremble and flee.  The Cunning Man had riddled with a dragon three days and three nights at the end of which the dragon repented his sins and died.  The Truth-teller was terrible in war.  But among the greatest heroes was the one known as the Lord of Merry.  The very rumor of his jollity quelled disturbances.  He could make even gray days and iron-cold nights seem festive and a lone candle in a drafty steading like a haven of warmth and light.  Perhaps for this reason he went dressed in the red and white of snow and and late sunrises and holly and winter flowers and delighted in winter sights such as sun on dripping icicles.  He was strong and quick.  His metal mace was called the Dasher.  He laughed in the war dance.

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I just wrote something for a new Latter-day Saint men’s site, some of you might enjoy it or one of the other articles on the site.

Brigham Age Mindset

What did you get out of reading the Book of Mormon this year?  I’ll probably ask it again at the end of the year when we have more time to think about it.  That’s what we talked about in Sunday School.  It was very nice.

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Friends, its that time of year when you have a million happy bustling things to do and so, in fear that you might have a free moment, we post our Christmas page.  Please see above in the header bar.  May we suggest that you particularly check out Holiest Madness?

Merry Christmas!

I personally am grateful for any time you spend here with me this season, and don’t begrudge it at all if the time you have to spare for your JG friends is not as much as you would like.

Last Christmas I did a long episodic fairytale.  This Christmas I plan a short parable for each of the 12 Days of Christmas.

One idea that will drive conventional historians screaming from the room is that civilizations have cycles. A lot of Americans have heard of the Strauss and Howe ?? theory on generational cycles. Peter Turchin is an actual historian doing work on historical cycles that you may have also heard of (He’s an elite overproduction theorist with a quantitative focus).  Or maybe you’ve just seen the meme HARD MEN GOOD TIMES or Thomas Cole’s paintings on the Course of Empire.

But these are only the latest of many. From antiquity on, a number of independent thinkers from different starting points have hit on surprisingly similar versions of an overall civilizational cycle. There is a rise where the civilization is on a growth swing. The confident civ gets experimental with various cultural standards. The original unity is lost and there is quarrelling over the spoils. This goes on until the weakened civ goes under during a crisis.

The Book of Mormon has a pretty clear reflection of this cycle that its writers mostly seem to be unaware of. (This overall civilizational cycle is different from the pride cycle, which can occur at a much faster rate and on a much more local scale.)

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We already discovered that the rapid Nephite cycles of repentance and sin make more sense when you realize that repentance is not total righteousness and falling back into wickedness is not total depravity. Each one just represents a course change. Just like with individual people, a society that is objectively in a bad moral state could be described as repenting and worthy of blessings if it has recently rejected some evil and is trying to do better, whereas a society in quite a high moral state is still falling into wickedness if it has recently discarded some good thing or embraced some new evil thing.

If you looked back over your last few years, it would not surprise you at all if the chronicler of the Book of You described you as repenting and righteous one year and wicked the next. It would not surprise you if the Book of You described you that way on a monthly, a weekly, or even perhaps a daily basis. Not that you have been transfigured and not that you were depraved, but just that you have seasons of change for the better and seasons of change for the worse. (Let the first predominate. I.e, let God prevail.)

But how does applying a common-sense understanding of repentance to the Nephites explain the rapid changes in their prosperity and levels of conflict each time they make a spiritual change for the better or for the worse? Is God just putting a thumb on the scales? (more…)

Sorry.  We are really quite sorry.  Sorry, sorry.

On Christmas morn

a mouse forlorn

At 12 it could speak

But now just a squeak

That hymn moves me greatly. When the choir sung in General Conference this last time I was rapt. I had a sort of a reverie or daydream.

There is a vast, corrupt empire. There is a little frontier war being fought. The center of the Empire hardly cares, but it is a desperate struggle for the ones fighting it. Their foe, a people of tribes and villages, is outnumbered but deadly. And of course in the way of things in a vast corrupt Empire, their strength isn’t being brought to bear. Funds and men are frittered away, bizarre orders are given, competent leaders seemingly reassigned at random.

But the Empire soldiers are far enough away and left enough to their own devices that over time they develop their own identity and even something like elan. Perhaps the single biggest factor is the enemy’s battle song. It is not a fierce song.  It is unspeakably sweet.  It is a song of the tragedy and glory of the fighting both sides do, and of respect for all who stand and fight in spite of fears. It points to something greater than this fight or even this war.  The song includes the Empire soldiers. They are greatly moved by it. They have a higher conception of who they are because of it. They act with greater valor, but also with greater kindness to their foe. They respect their foe. Unlike in every other imperial campaign, they don’t commit atrocities or tortures or brutalities. Even though they are engaged in a campaign of naked conquest for a nasty imperial center, in some ways the struggle has become noble on both sides.

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