We got this weird off-breed of chickens that are maximized for egg production while wandering around eating bugs and scraps and such.  They are not broody at all.  They will lay an egg on top of a post and then just walk off.

But one just got it into its head to be broody anyhow.  The chicks hatched this morning.  Cute, yes.  But the sense of joy and the miraculousness of life is palpable.  We are all just fizzing around grinning at each other.

Some people in our ward just had a baby boy have a temporary heart failure.  They thought he was going to die but instead he is in a coma.  The thing is, he’s deeply beautiful that way.  It’s as if stripping off all the movement and interaction make you appreciate how beautiful just life is.  The purity of seeing someone in their sleep is the purity of seeing life in its essence.

One of my heathen has a journal that she has titled “My Banalities.”  Because, she said, all she ever writes down are ordinary things.  She is very wise.

“That glory by which your bodies are quickened“

Sexual temptation can be pretty strong sometimes, especially when the desire is new and in the full flood of youth.

This is a post about desire. Any desire. But we will do that literary thingo, synecdoche or metonymy or whatsit, where we focus on a part to stand in for the whole. So we will be looking at sexual desire and sexual temptation.

Let’s look at the teenage years or early adulthood, when the desire is strong but chastity still means celibacy. I am writing from a guy’s perspective but I think, mutatis mutandi, you could translate it into a girl’s perspective too. (more…)

On the sweetness of Mormon life.

A sort of impromptu testimony meeting. A sister has a sweet moment to share. Youth temple trip, dinner, everyone got their phones out to compare family history.   The old game–who is related to whom? The app has that function now.  Some surprising cousins, not everyone related, but all having fun.

What great energy. We need more of this, not less.

Friday will be the release of the Killers’ next album, Pressure Machine, so here is one more highlight from Imploding the Mirage.

Here is a link to a video for the opening track, “My Own Soul’s Warning.” Three questions for the listener and viewer: Who is the singer addressing when he says “I just wanted to get back to where you are”? Where is he or she? And wouldn’t it be cool if you presented your recommend to enter the temple and it was examined by Bro. Flowers serving at the desk that day, wearing the same clothes from the end of this video, tuxedo labels and all?

Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven’s at hand

The Kingdom of heaven is always at hand.

Either misery or happiness are always in front of your face.

You that have not passed through the trials, and persecutions, and drivings, with this people from the beginning, but have only read of them, or heard some of them related may think how awful they were to endure, and wonder that the Saints survived them at all. The thought of it makes your hearts sink within you, your brains reel, and your bodies tremble, and you are ready to exclaim, “I could not have endured it.”

I have been in the heat of it, and I never felt better in all my life; I never felt the peace and power of the Almighty more copiously poured upon me than in the keenest part of our trials. They appeared nothing to me.

-thus B. Young

A couple years ago I shared in this space “The Killers: Songs for a Future Widower.” Last year’s album added another for that category, “Lightning Fields.” This one could be taken as a fulfilling, decade-later follow-up to “Goodnight, Travel Well.” It also connects with Battle Born’s “Heart of a Girl.”

Working in the rock music genre as he does, Brandon Flowers’ lyrics, especially those since Battle Born, generally revolve around a man in love with a woman. For a religion whose pinnacle ordinance is sealing a husband and wife eternally in a temple of the Lord, that genre requirement is not so limiting as it might appear at first glance as a mode for expressing a desire for holy things. (more…)

A  friend sent me this link to an article on the topic of men whose idea of masculinity is a cartoonish caricature.

Cartoon men are gross.

I basically agree that there is a cartoon version of masculinity that is circulating these days.  Some of its just for fun, but a lot is folks taking themselves seriously.  Gross.

But I sympathize with them.

(more…)

Last August the Killers released their sixth album, Imploding the Mirage, and since they couldn’t tour, they created a seventh that will be released in a couple weeks. There is a long, detailed essay on the Killers’ music with quotes and links that has been going through my head that will never be properly written, so I am going to dash off some thoughts with the time that I have. (more…)

This is a musing inspired by the recent three-part series on virtue sets and progression.

Part 1 was Virtue Upon Virtue.  There we discussed that your standard virtue set could be disassembled and we could see the four different parts as stages or levels.

Part 2 was In My Father’s House are Many Virtues.  There we tried to match the parts of a virtue set with the four afterlives and roughly succeeded.

Part 3, The Plan of Virtue, mapped the Plan of Salvation to the virtue types.

The Risks of Progression

he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation

–D&C 82:3 (more…)

This is an add-on to the three-part Virtue series.

Part 1 was Virtue Upon Virtue.  There we discussed that your standard virtue set could be disassembled and we could see the four different parts as stages or levels.  Seen this way, they wouldn’t even necessarily be vices, if they were necessary parts of progression.

Part 2 was In My Father’s House are Many Virtues.  There we tried to match the parts of a virtue set with the four afterlives and roughly succeeded–in particular, its eerie how well the astronomical symbols for each of the afterlives works.  Outer Darkness = cool vice; the Celestial Kingdom = hot vice; the Terrestrial Kingdom = cool virtue; and the Celestial Kingdom = hot virtue.

Part 3, The Plan of Virtue, mapped the Plan of Salvation to the virtue types.

Here we are going to match the parts of the virtue set to the parable of the sower.  With mad glee we will mash up the great parable and the virtue set. (more…)

This is Part 2 of a series.

Part 1 was Virtue Upon Virtue.  There we discussed that your standard virtue set could be disassembled and we could see the four different parts as stages or levels.  Seen this way, they wouldn’t even necessarily be vices, if they were necessary parts of progression.

In My Father’s House There are Many Virtues

There are four poles in a virtue set.  There are also four kingdoms in the afterlife.  It is tempting to try to assign them.  Let’s do it.

(more…)

Section 59

God keeps promising material rewards in this section.  Much more than we would like to think when we think of ourselves as spiritual and above that sort of thing.  Almost prosperity gospel level here.

Vv. 2-4.  Inheriting the earth, literally not metaphorically.  Also the good things of the earth.   Also strength.  Along with spiritual blessings like revelation.

Vv. 16-19.  The fulness of the earth, animals, fowls, herds, orchards, flocks, produce, barns, gardens, vineyards.  Everything to delight and please and strengthen.

The gospel is intensely physical and materialistic.  It is not only those things, and many of those things you have to be willing to give them up to have them.  But it is those things.

Which brings us to loud laughter, or in this verse, much laughter.  V. 15 —  “And inasmuch as ye do these things with thanksgiving, with cheerful hearts and countenances, not with much laughter, for this is sin, but with a glad heart and a cheerful countenance.”  I don’t know what to make of this passage.  I have definitely experienced fake laughter, mocking laughter, or even laughter that was in a way addictive and you were *stuck* trying to keep up the humor with your pals when you should just be going to bed.  But neither the loudness nor the muchness of the laughter has seemed to be the difference.  I don’t know how I would describe the difference, so maybe loud laughter or much laughter is good enough.

I recently read an interesting exchange about having servants.

To Hire or not to Hire

Who Needs Hired Help

Why Parents Need to Be Able to Hire Help for their Kids

My sympathies are with the no-servants side.  Most decent people cannot count on being able to afford it.  I certainly don’t see it as an evil for people who can do it to do it, but our society already sets up way too many expectations for running a household that price most people out.  The key is to reject the expectations.  Also the desire of upper middle class people for cheap help is a real problem for our society.

That said, I recently took my wife on a work trip.  Nice hotel, nice area, all that.  She took dresses and for a few days blossomed into real chic elegance.  She is usually classy, but being away from burdens made a real difference to her.