This is the right stuff.
Christmas starts next week. Merry Christmas, friends. I haven’t met you all, but all of you make me laugh and feel tender at the same time, which is what being merry means.
Enjoy the season, enjoy your families, enjoy celebrating his birth. One day we will all meet with Him together beyond the North Pole.
For those who like that sort of thing, we have some excellent Christmas writing from over the years. We’ve made it into a page that you can get to from the top of the blog.
Those who do not aspire to a big family do not aspire to greatness.
I got up from reading about the Nephites’ slippery possessions at the computer. What would that be like? Sleeping with your stuff every night so that it didn’t get stolen?
I leaned over to run the virus checker and then went to lock the doors for the night. Was that the dog barking outside?
On the sweetness of Mormon life.
You drive a recent convert to Church. He is half drunk and reeking. His father just died. You say what you can.
You bear you testimony. You try to say, “Christ already won the victory, the Baby was already born”; you cry.
Your daughter plays O Little Town of Bethlehem on the organ.
Eventually.
Shez did remember the destruction of his fathers, and he did build up a righteous kingdom; for he remembered what the Lord had done in bringing Jared and his brother aacross the deep;
– Ether 10:2. He stayed righteous because he remembered the founding Exodus of his people, which was a miracle. (more…)
I just learned about 10 USC §253. It’s a big deal. Its like the Roman law of dictatorship but without any real checks or limits, in a law duly passed by Congress in 2006. (more…)
Wherever He is, there is beauty.
The media reports of a deceased voter casting their ballot in Newton County are inaccurate.
James E. Blalock, Jr. passed away in 2006 and was purged from the Secretary of State database that year. His widow, Mrs. James E. Blalock, Jr. has always voted under that name and continued to do so through this year’s election. (more…)
On the sweetness of Mormon life . . .
The Bishopric is dead–the chemical engineer, the cable installer, the janitor supply businessman, long live the Bishopric–the cable installer, the law enforcement sergeant, the corporate trainer.
Historic US Naval Jack
Veterans’ Day today, in honor of the stout myrmidons among us.
It only now occurs to me that the Lamanite atrocities in Mormon 4 where they sacrifice Nephite women and kids, well, those have the classic flavor of atrocity propaganda. Mormon never claims to have seen them personally. There is no reason to think they could not be–atrocity stories about the enemy are pretty nearly a human universal.
On the other hand, Mormon does say that he has personally seen awful scenes (Mormon 5:8-9). And atrocities and even gross atrocities also seem to be a near universal. The Holdomor. The Holocaust. The Mfecane (it has a very similar flavor to the Nephites’ end times). The grotesque sacrificial practices of the Aztecs were almost unbelievably evil.
