On the sweetness of Mormon life.

The young man bashfully starts his talk by making eye contact with the lectern.  He says, I gave a really good talk two years ago for mothers’ day so the bishop asked me again.  The thing is, my mom wrote that talk.

On the sweetness of Mormon life.

You are driving to St. George probably for the first time when you see a sign for a town coming up.  Its called Kanarraville.

Hey, one of your daughters says, I think that’s where Elder Hollands talk happened.

She’s right, so you put it on.

The town is beautiful from the road.  There is a storm, the black clouds heaped up in great piles over the mountains and silver sheets of rain.  Meanwhile Elder Holland’s sonorous voice from the speaker.

Don’t give up, boy.  Don’t you quit.

 

 

A great little short short story about looking at maps.

I’ve been having flashes of a dream about an old dead hollow tree trunk in a fen; a swirl of bats issue from the hollow in the twilight. There was some kind of minor problem with it that I was addressing.

In my other dream flashes, we were preparing a church program at a small, flat rectangular building. Probably a small branch building, one of those where its just one room that gets used for church but also everything else. There was a grape vine that sprung up next to one of the walls and was causing some kind of trouble with the building, so I dug it up.

Last night, the dreams converged.

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16-year old G. was making fun of his mother’s singing by singing in an exaggerated operatic way when his mother happened to wander in. She listened for a bit. “You’re sounding better,” she said. “I knew if you stuck with it you’d get better.”  And he was better after that.

19-year old G. was at the MTC learning Spanish. He thought it would be funny to say something in class with an exaggerated Speedy Gonzales accent. “Hey,” his instructor said, “your accent is getting pretty good. That was pretty good.”  He meant it. (more…)

It’s time to play another round of wild guesses using calculation.  Let’s use LDS activity rate data to rough up a ballpark idea of what the LDS birthrate might be.

There’s an interesting study going around, using cellphone data to estimate actual church attendance as opposed to what people self-report.  Not very precise, probably only useful for comparing attendance across denominations.  The Deseret News has a write up.

(more…)

I was listening to a recorded speech and noticed the platform had an option for an AI-assisted summary.

Here is what I got

In today’s society, the dynamics of loyalty and commitment are shifting due to changes in the availability of certain proteins in food. According to Speaker 1, the body’s ability to produce these proteins has been affected, leading to a decline in loyalty and commitment. Unknown Speaker, on the other hand, argues that the rise of fragmentation in times has led to a growing inner Scorpion that stings even when it will lead to mutual destruction. Both speakers emphasize the need for social technologies to insource loyalty and commitment over the long term.

Knowing the original does not make this any more sensible.

It is either nonsense, or deep wisdom.

Your little daughter wanted to play a four-person card game this evening.  Everyone said, sure, some time … but now everyone is gone.  Busy family.  It’s just you and your wife and your youngest daughter.

So for the fourth player you substitute in a stuffed giraffe.  You pull his cards at random from his hand.

You get slaughtered.  Its not even close.  Giraffis wins going away.

My first series of dreams last night was a jumbled series of vignettes with me as an American kulak being hunted and harassed by a tyrannical revolutionary American regime.  It was not completely unjustified from their perspective.  Though an extremely insignificant figure, I was a thought criminal and had done some mild activism in opposition.

(more…)

We climbed a steep trail that was a mile long. The trail was wet and muddy.

At the top we could see for many miles all around. There were a hundred happy people and a dozen dogs up there. We used eclipse glasses to look at the sun.

When the moon completely blocked the sun, it was dark like it is an hour after sunset. I could see the planets Jupiter and Venus in the sky near the sun. Because the moon was blocking, the sun looked black with a white fringe all around it.
(more…)

The Church’s latest statistical report has 17,255,394 members as of the end of the year.  With 93,594  new children of record.

Taken at its face value,  that is a rate of 5.42 births per 1,000 people.  That is lower than any existing country, lower even than vanishing countries like South Korea and Japan which have achieved all time low birth rates.  The good news such as it is: we are up slightly from last year’s 5.24 births per 1,000 people.

However, you probably shouldn’t take it at face value.  What these statistics probably actually mean is that the actual number of members who have any relationship at all with the church is around 3-6 million people and that our birth rates have been dropping pretty badly.  If you assume even fewer actual members the birth rates look better and vice versa.

For comparison, in 1986 we had the same number of children of record with a membership of 6  million (link).

Here’s a more detailed analysis of what our membership and new children of record numbers could mean.

Just How Bad Is Our Birthrate

Machiavelli was exiled to the sticks for awhile, doing rural work.    He famously described that period this way:

When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely.

That’s how I feel about General Conference.

Your comments below.

I am not a gushy fanboy of President Nelson to any extraordinary degree.  So I think I can fairly judiciously say that its because of their merits that some of his talks have really stuck with me.

We all have our idiosyncratic little store of conference talks that we mentally refer back to from time to time.  Mine includes two from President Nelson.  One is his talk on the 8 keys to revelation.  The other is his recent talk on Think Celestial.  The catchphrase from the talk is appropriately catchy, but I just relistened to it yesterday and recommend the whole thing.

When discussing the judgment of the wicked, Christ said: ““For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and al that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts” (3 Nephi 25:1). However, when discussing the blessing of the righteous, Isaiah said: “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly” (Isaiah 33:13). Apparently, both the righteous and the wicked will experience “the devouring fire,” and will experience the “day…that shall burn as an oven.” However, the righteous shall ‘dwell’ with the burning and the heat and the light, while the wicked will be burned up. How much light can you endure?

Maybe the reason that we experience trials – the refiner’s fire – here on Earth is because that’s an opportunity to acclimatize ourselves to glory in increments that we can stand. We can experience that fire and become pure and conductive of light here on Earth, slowly, over a lifetime – or we can experience it all at once when Christ comes. “But who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap.”

I think the answer is simple: those that have experienced the refiner’s fire and endured. Those who have been faithful. Those who have sought light and glory and the countenance of Christ in all that they did. Those that have felt the burning of the Holy Ghost already. They are those who will abide the day of His coming, and who will dwell with the everlasting burnings of His glory.

Compare  the Burning Sight of God