I have had this idea percolating in my mind for a few years now.  I am just not sure where it goes from here.

Colonies in space have been known to fail because of pirates, invading armies or ancient apocalyptic doomsday devices. There are spectacular stories that you hear of valiant struggles for survival.
But most of the time, when a colony fails, it is far more mundane, if just as intractable. There are personal conflicts, and toxic group dynamics. Adultery, stealing, fighting. Those kind of things.
But often times, it is harder to pin what the real problem is. And as in all things, there are experts with experience in that.

As the ship finished rotating out of N-space, the constellations outside the window snapped back into a physically familiar form. Anabraxis was not fond of travel, which was a strange thing for a man who spent every other month on a different world. He much preferred to have something solid underneath his feet. Even if it were an ocean world, of a gas-giant, or any of the other millions of permutations he had visited.

This particular colony was having issues. There are engineering challenges and social issues, but nothing they shouldn’t have been able to handle. And yet, the colony was on the verge of collapse. That happened a lot. That is how you got abandoned colonies like the Planet of the Chili Peppers. He was the Master Engineer they called to help fix their problems. And his wife, Lakshmi  was the Astrologer.

And she was a very highly renowned Astrologer for most of the Virgo Cluster.

Astrology, off Earth, is not trivial. You have to really understand a world and what is spiritually significant. You have to understand the people, the culture and the seasons, and timekeeping. And of course, the stars and constellations, the planets and moons, planetary rings, etc. Which of those are important? Some worlds with rings, you spent a great deal of time pondering the portents in the planetary rings. Some worlds, you focused on the winds and the clouds.

It is easy to say such things didn’t matter. But of course, that is how you end up with the issues you had here.

I am beginning to think that the strongest argument against sexual sin, is what cowards it makes everyone. If people feel guilt, instead of repenting of their faults, they are compelled to find more and more faults elsewhere. No matter how stupid. And if someone says something stupider than you, you don’t dare speak against it.

On a lighter note, perhaps we should convince people that ‘bird’ with a hard ‘d’ is racist. You now have to say ‘birb’. My main hesitation is that it might be completely successful.

US ornithological society says dozens of birds will be renamed

The Magellanic Clouds must be renamed, astronomers say

That is all

The Messiah as the Suffering Servant

Spiritual Salvation and Judgement of Individuals
Ch. 40 – 55

In part one, we saw the temporal salvation and triumph of the kingdom of God. We saw the Messiah as the King of Jerusalem.

But here we shift from judgement and salvation of nations, to individuals. From Temporal to Spiritual.

It would be folly to pigeonhole the Savior as merely one or the other. His mission is much greater than that.
In deed, while we saw the Gentile nations mentioned earlier, here the thought is given greater expansion. The Gospel is for all nations.

Universal Gospel Message

Message to Israel (40 – 41:20)
Message to the Gentiles (41:21 – 42:17)

Promises of Redemption

Temporal Redemption (42:18-43:21)
Spiritual Redemption (43:22-44:23)

Agents of Redemption

Cyrus – Temporal (44:24-48:22)

Task and Servant: Cyrus (44:24-28)
Task confirmed: To Israel & World (45:1-7)
Response: Prayer (45:8)
Israel’s Disquiet (45:9-25)
The Lord’s Care for Israel, from the past to the future (46)
Babylon: from throne to the dust (47)
Redemption from Babylon (48)

The Suffering Servant / Atonement – Spiritual (49-53)

Task and Servant: Messiah (49:1-6)
Task confirmed: To Israel & World (49:7-12)
Response: Praise (49:13)
Israel’s Despondency (49:14-50:11)
The Lord’s Care for Israel, from the past to the future (51:1-16)
Zion: from dust to the throne (51:17-52:12)
Redemption from sin (52:13-53:12)

Universal Invitation

Invitation to Israel (54)
Invitation to all the World (55)

Church president Russell Nelson exhorted the saints to “Think celestial!” As one point of difference between what he was encouraging and its alternative, he taught, “Thus, if we unwisely choose to live telestial laws now, we are choosing to be resurrected with a telestial body. We are choosing not to live with our families forever.” Some detractors of the prophets and Christ’s church characterize this doctrine as a threat to take away from those who won’t toe the line something important to them. The more I see of non-celestial thinking, though, the more President Nelson’s words feel like a restatement of choices, explicit or implied, that people deliberately make. For some, family life is not a desired eternity.

Some righteous people through the circumstances of their lives and bodies are for now denied the blessings of spouse or progeny, and prophets have taught that these desires will be fulfilled in the eternities if they live faithfully. Others have these blessings in mortality, but do not value them, and will not be burdened or blessed with them in eternity.

Many choose to be “childless by choice,” or cheer on those who so choose. Many who are married decide to abandon wife or husband, and others do not seek marriage. Their like-minded friends who are happy enough with their spouses for now cheer on the separateds’ and singles’ lack of attachment. Older people declare that their retired, empty-nest years are “my time” and reject any notion that they will be wasting significant swathes of it fortifying relationships with six-year-olds. Married, single, separated. Five children or two dogs. It’s all the same to them, neither good nor bad, all a compound in one. And thus dead, or as President Nelson’s taught, not celestial and alive forever. Think celestial.

A man in Elders Quorum volunteered he was cleaning up after his kids.  The way he cleaned up their chicken mcnuggets is he popped them in his mouth.  An hour old, they were disgusting.  He says he craves fresh chicken mcnuggets, they are a real temptation for him, but no wonder they sit so heavy on his stomach.  Once they are no longer hot, he can taste how nasty they are.

Sin, he said, is chicken mcnuggets.

• Brother Waddell’s talk with its jab about hero worship of celebrities reminded me of The Contradiction of Celebrity

• In a real sense,  birth and death and resurrection are also ordinances

•  Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost.  This is one reason why non-baptized gentiles are still often full of the Holy Ghost.  One suspects that it is more of a natural law than a divine policy.  The Holy Ghost fills you because if you hunger and thirst after righteousness, the Holy Ghost cannot but fill you.  T0here is a divine greed to fill every corner with love that can so be filled.

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring

-Alexander Pope’s once-famous couplet

How deep should you drink?

I have a feeling the only way to drink deeply enough is to go under, so far that you cannot get back to the surface in this life.

Most descriptions of what the book of Job is about don’t match the actual book of Job.

No, its not an explanation of why God allows evil to exist, not really.  That doesn’t explicitly come up at all.  The beginning and end where Job loses all and then recovers all is basically a frame story for the disputation.

My own point of view, completely uninformed by scholarship, is that (1) its a poetic recognition that evil happens to good people and is evil and (2) its a long and poetic argument between people who don’t believe in a robust afterlife (Job’s friends) and people who do (Job).  The friend’s keep saying that God is just in this life and Job keeps saying, no, not in this life, so there must be a life to come.

It feels fictional to me.  The prophets say that Job was real and I’m going to believe them, obviously, so could one say it was a fictionalized account inspired by something that actually happened?

Wherefore, the land of Zion shall not be obtained but by purchase or by blood, otherwise there is none inheritance for you.
And if by purchase, behold you are blessed;
And if by blood, as you are forbidden to shed blood, lo, your enemies are upon you, and ye shall be scourged from city to city, and from synagogue to synagogue, and but few shall stand to receive an inheritance.
D&C 63:29-31

Two ways to redeem Zion, but only one way for us.

A passed-out drunk woke up in a field at night.  There was a UFO landed near him and a few aliens gaggling around.  One of them was looking at him.

”Hey!  Hey!” the drunk yelled. “What’s it all for?  Why are you here?”

“Yes,” the alien said.  “We are collectors. ”

The drunk’s expression cleared.  “Oh, hey, collectors.  Art!  I know art.  The Mona Lisa!  You should collect the Mona Lisa.  Hey!”

The alien looked blank. “What is this Mona Lisa?  We collect art creations of great worth.”  He proudly showed the drunk a child’s refrigerator drawing.

“Jesus loves this boy, and the boy loves this art.  Isn’t it wonderful to have something that will last forever?”

The party did not last.  It rarely does.

-thus Elder Uchtdorf, talking about the prodigal son.

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Elder Eyring at conference taught that “purity brings power.”

The easiest way to understand that is that if you follow God’s rules, He grants you power.  That easy understanding makes it seem like the connection between purity and power is arbitrary, part of a system of rewards and punishments.  While that kind of easy understanding is good enough for some purposes, almost nothing in the gospel is arbitrary when you get down into it.  We should ask ourselves,  how does purity inherently bring power?  How is power inherent in purity?

Step back and think about the word purity outside church contexts.  It can mean 100%.  Focused.  Concentrated.  If you described a boxer’s motion as “pure,” no one would think it odd at all that his actions were also powerful.   Pure here means no wasted effort, no inefficiency, no drag.

Everyone would instantly get why a “pure” drug is more powerful.

Be pure like a laser.

I can leap tall buildings in a single bound, Superman said.

I defeat villains using only my mind and my will, Batman said.

I bind on earth and heaven, Prophetman said.

What’s more, my power can spread.

We do not live in fear of the Lamanites.
We have not suffered from vicious Lamanite depravity.
The worst we, personally, have suffered from the Lamanites is some wicked good Indian Fry Bread.

The Nephites in the Book of Mormon had ‘good’ reasons to be angry with the Lamanites. Of course, I deliberately use quote marks around good in this instance. But my point is, we see things differently from the perspective of being 2 millennia later. All they knew was that their friends and family members were taken for human sacrifices.

But we also know the Lamanites, when converted, were FAR, FAR more faithful than the Nephites. The only reason the faithful survived at all, was because of the converted Lamanites. There is a good argument to be made that the Lamanites are the heroes of the Book of Mormon.

Now, let’s discuss current events. I will do this will all the grace I am capable of… so imagine rabid bulls in a china shop.

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