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.

For those who stick around, I am going to try a little experiment, starting tomorrow.  It’s going to be an episodic Christmas fairy tale, I’ll be posting one small episode per day from tomorrow until Christmas, and then 12 more for the 12 days of Christmas.  God willing.

I already have some concepts.  The plot will involve the Tree Son and the Star Maiden and, I think, the God Child.  Probably an ogre named Big Black Dack.  No guarantees.  Any suggestions or ideas?  Comment below.

The church announced that Patrick Kearon was ordained an apostle yesterday. He was baptized on Christmas Eve 1987 at age 26, so I went looking for the last time someone baptized as an adult was later ordained an apostle. I had to look back farther than I had guessed.

Ulisses Soares was a child when his parents were baptized, and he was baptized at age 8.
Dieter Uchtdorf likewise.
John Widstoe was baptized in April 1884 at age 12.
Charles Penrose was baptized on May 14, 1850 at age 18 and ordained apostle July 7, 1904.
Anthon Lund was baptized about 1856 at age 12.
Marriner Merrill was baptized April 1852 at age 19 and ordained apostle October 7, 1889.
Albert Carrington was baptized July 18, 1841 at age 28 and ordained apostle July 3, 1870.

So, the last apostle prior to Elder Kearon to be baptized at age 20 or older was someone born in 1813, when Joseph Smith was seven.

You have never not been on the cliff’s edge leaping.

General Conference Debrief–

Elder Cook’s talk on being a peaceable follower of Christ, despite what you’d think, was not about going around being nonviolent.  It was about the problem of evil and what to do about it.
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I just realized that ‘”rejoice” means “take joy again.”  I am swift on the uptake.

The point of gratitude isn’t to give yourself double the happiness.  But that is its effect.

Simultaneously the most American and the most universal of holidays.

We have much to be grateful for.

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.

Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. 

James 5.

The cankered gold that eats the flesh like fire is obviously a spiritual metaphor.  But in our prosaic way, we got to talking about what kinds of reactions can actually corrode gold.  We couldn’t think of anything and a little research shows there isn’t much under normal conditions.  Gold cleans up nicely.

Then someone mentioned Alas, Babylon.  There are some striking passages about irradiated gold which slowly kills the wearer.  If you want to really get what James is saying, read Alas, Babylon.

Long-time perusers of this web site may remember the birthday greetings issued here to Ken Mattingly following his 75th, 80th, and 85th birthdays. This morning at breakfast looking through the pages of the newspaper I noticed the photo above and knew why it would be appearing. (more…)

The obituary for Elder Ballard says he is survived by seven children, 43 grandchildren, 105 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild. So at first glance at least one of the Elder Ballard’s children had as many children as Ballard and his wife did. The ratio of great-grandchildren to grandchildren is 2.4. What might that ratio grow to with future births?

I am not interested in Elder Ballard’s family per se, but I find it a case put in my lap of a faithful Mormon public figure, who had several children and whose children had several children, that I might use to ponder what the drop-off in fecundity may be for the current generation involved in having children. It is also a big enough family that individual cases of involuntary limited fertility shouldn’t throw off the population-scale picture.
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https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-m-russell-ballard-dies

He was a window to an older Church run along family lines.

A founder of Spain’s rising anti-establishment party was shot in the face in an attempted assassination yesterday.

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I for one welcome our new Mongol Israelegyptistan overlords

https://nitter.net/BirthGauge/status/1720550649799077991#m

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzROOMRr0A7/

Quoted by Elder Oaks:

Mortal lifetime is barely a nanosecond compared with eternity. But what a crucial nanosecond it is!

-thus President Nelson

Infinities and eternities are mindwrenching when you really come to wrestle with them.  In comparison with infinite time, your  mortal life and the stillborn child’s life and Methuselah’s life are all 0.  A point on an endless line.  Infinitely small.

That is why mortality is so precious.  The  memories and associations and experiences you have here will be fresh in your mind, “before your face,” forever.  You will never, ever, ever again know what it is like to be a mortal under these skies.