I am currently reading Brandon Sanderson’s most recent tome, Wind and Truth, the final book in the first five book arc of his massive Stormlight Archive. This book is nearly as long as the Old Testament. That is not hyperbole, nor a complaint. 491,000 words vs the Old Testament KJV 609,425 words. Probably the last Sanderson book I will ever read. There were some issues like lame dialogue and bloat, but that isn’t my concern here.

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A drum corps was providing the rhythm for a great military review, led by two drum majors, one snazzily dressed in pearl gray and the other in ivory.

All went well until one drummer started doing his own beat.  Some of the marchers got off.

The major in pearl gray signaled for louder beats.  Surely this would drown out the errant drummer.  But the errant drummer continued to play in the pauses between the beats.  The chaos continued.  The drum major in pearl gray shrugged and asked his colleague if he had any ideas.

The drum major in ivory signaled for creativity and improvisation.  By varying the patterns within the basic structure of the marching rhythm, the drum corps would not only keep the marchers going but also provide an attractive experience that the out of sync drummer would want to enjoy, thus luring him back into rhythm.  It didn’t work.  The out of sync drummer simply played louder so it could still be heard that he was doing his own thing.

But then the first drum major signaled for louder beats and the second signaled for continued improvisation on the basic rhythm, and this combination ended the sound of the different drummer, whether because he rejoined the group or because he could no longer be heard, and the review went on.

The Clan Chief’s piper played badly out of tune.  The Clan Chief, who had the Benefits of an Education, was not worried.  ‘I’ll just get in more pipers,” he said.  “Lots more pipers.  Given that being out of tune almost certainly varies in statistically standard ways, if I get enough pipers the average will be in tune.”

It didn’t work.

Holiday time is often family travel time.  We were shuffling bedrolls from the cartop carrier to a sibling’s guest room, or from a sibling’s guest room back to the car top carrier, I forget which, with a spectacular view of distant mountains, when I realized that finding beauty and joy in these ordinary moments is of the essence.  Because even extraordinary things mostly just consider of ordinary moments organized and directed toward some great end.  The ordinary moments never end.

As we approach the end of the Christmas season, it is worth considering that the biggest holiday of the year is the one celebrating a birth, something that happens everywhere everyday, and not the one celebrating the Resurrection, a much less common event.  I expect that the Resurrection holiday will become a much bigger feast when the event it celebrates has become less out of the ordinary.

There was a young lord, rich, handsome, happy, admired, well-liked, and with a number of good friends much like himself.  Perhaps because of all these blessings, out of the lightness of his heart instead of walking in to a grand reception he leaped over the threshold.  The other young lords took it up.  It was quite the fashion of their set.

But one of the young lords grumbled to another.  “It’s an arbitrary fashion,” he said.  “We only do it because he who leapt first is the apple of every eye.  There are a thousand different ways we could express our gaiety and show we belong to our group.  We could, I don’t know, whistle after meals!  It’s all arbitrary!”

“Then whistle after meals,” said the other young lord he was talking to.  “But wouldn’t that be just as arbitrary?”

“Pfft,” said the first lord.  Then sighed.  Then laughed.  Then leaped.

At a dance, the ladies were chatting.

I’m here, one said, to attract a man.

That is a good reason, her partner in conversation said, but I’m afraid I am here just because I love to dance, and her eyes shone when she said it.

That’s very nice, the other said, but in her mind the lady wondered, how will she ever attract a man with an attitude like that.

The lady needn’t have worried. She attracted a man.

The first step in charting where you are going is knowing where you are and have been.

I think it would be very helpful for all of our LDS friends if they took a few minutes to reflect on

1.  What  they learned from reading the Book of Mormon this year
2. What, if anything, helped their study to be more valuable?

It would also be very helpful if you were willing to share some of your reflections.

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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