I had the odd experience stretching a tendon lately. I was talking to a trainer type who said my hamstrings seemed tight. Did I want help stretching them? Sure. (I don’t know that what happened next was actually a good idea, I am not recommending it). I laid down, put my leg up, and then he leaned into it. He pushed it to the point I normally go which is the point where it really hurts. Then he pushed it farther to a pain so intense it was all consuming, I had nothing to compare it with. Then he pushed my foot down. The pain became so much it was almost a transcendent experience. This is hard to describe. It was like I had gone beyond ordinary sensation to the point where I was almost dissassociated. Mentally it felt almost like transcedence, no joke. Then he stopped and something happened that has only happened before when I have done an exercise to the literal point of muscle failure where the muscle literally just won’t move any more. I burst out laughing.

I had the odd experience of resisting a temptation lately. (more…)

In the middle of an article about social media of all things, somehow something significant was written:

The idea that motherhood is a woman’s highest calling may not be unique to Mormonism. But Ann Duncan—associate professor of American studies and religion at Goucher College and the author of an upcoming book on women who view pregnancy as a spiritual experience—says the Mormon conceptualization of motherhood is truly distinct, and it’s one of the reasons Mormon women are so conspicuous online. They have a strong sense that their voices matter. (more…)

Bringing children into this horrible world would spoil your carefree happiness. Here, have an antidepressant.
-Screwtape

If you had invested one talent–let’s say around ten thousand dollars–back in the dawn of the Christian era, at a moderate rate of 1% real return compounding, you would now have $5.4 trillion dollars. Almost as much money as USG printed last year.
Haha, just a little joke, friends.

Of course you’d never get that sustained level of interest, not in mortality.

Always take your prescriptions. It’s all the fun of the lottery without the horrifying risk of unearned wealth.

I love the wind in the mountains

I love the wind in the hills

I love the ripple of water

over the high mountain rills.

I’ve made a bed near the willows

A bed on the sun-heated grass

I’ll watch the light on the water

and watch my thoughts ambling pass

and let the day ambling pass

and let the day ambling pass

(more…)

Dark under the trees

through the branches stars still seen

crescent moon rises

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

-Frances Bacon

I noticed this morning that there was the tiny tip of a thorn still there in my middle finger a little below the first joint. Late afternoon yesterday I had grabbed a thorny vine by mistake, but I washed the scratches and went on to other things. This morning that one spot still hurt, and with no blood obscuring the view there was obviously a little dark speck bedded deep. With tweezers I pulled away skin until the speck was exposed and the tweezers could grasp it and pluck it out. It is a marvel how immediate the change is when foreign debris is no longer touching a place it shouldn’t. Plying the tweezers to reach the thorn tip hurt more while I was doing that than the thorn itself had. Due to experience with such things, though, the immediate pain did not deter me from pursuing the relief I was confident I would gain.

Recall that the Saturday evening session was first cancelled then reinstated as just a fifth session. It will no longer be priesthood session or women’s session.

Hmm.  Taken together, a lot of these recent changes have collective side effects that make them ill advised in aggregate, at least that is my feeling.  But the SL Trib feels the same way, so I must be wrong.

The closest ordinary people get to “absolute power” in our time is fatherhood – which is also the most ennobling, sanctifying thing we can experience. Power is good – good is an incoherent concept without power.

-thus EDJCB

Also the converse. Power without goodness has no glory.

Alternate definition of glory–goodness plus power. Righteous dominion.

Life is a maze. You wander the intricate three-dimensional underground passages, sometimes twisting out onto the surface, sometimes through nets and ropes winding into and out of the trees.

Each person’s maze is their own. (more…)

Elder Christofferson is one of us.  One of the God is willing to yank your chain a little crowd.

Here

Angelo Codevilla, RIP.

The Instapundit says his best article on American Politics is this one the Ruling class.

I say unto you, the redemption of Zion must needs come by power;

For ye are the children of Israel, and of the seed of Abraham, and ye must needs be led out of bondage by power

–D&C 103:15-17