I read a book recently called a Month in the Country.  It’s billed as an idyll.  It isn’t, but it has parts that are.  Moments of peace, as the sun rises, seen from the belfry of a country church.

I think that writing an idyll is one of the most difficult tasks a writer can have.

The high-school book A Separate Peace is not an idyll, but it has its moments.  Those are what give the book its power.

The Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy are idylls in homespun.

Put your recommendations below.

I got it from here.  There’s source data there too.

If someone tells you all is well in Zion, punch ’em.

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

Some ruins have to be hunted by archaelogists.  Others stand out in the open.

There is one such that is barely even a ruin at all.  Inside there is nothing to be seen, only dirt and scrub.  But the walls still stand unfallen, as proud and erect as when they were built thousands of years ago.  The marvelous techniques the builders used still puzzle archaelogists.  There is nothing like it in the world.

Over the gate there is a beautifully wrought inscription.  Translated, it is believed to say something like, “I, the Farsighted One, built these walls to stand forever for the greater protection of my people and my family.”   Underneath it and to the side there is a straggling,less well-made inscription that has been ravaged by time.  It is reconstructed to say the following:

“He raised taxes for these cursed walls until the people fled.  He fought wars for tribute for these cursed walls until the people were died.  By arts he drew strength from the soil to sustain these walls by magic until all the strength of the soil is gone.  Where now are those abundant fields full of grain?  Gone, all gone.  He is dead.  We, his family, make this inscription before we too flee.  May this place be cursed.  May it be an inhabitation for dragons and for owls.”

The walls still stand, unfallen, as proud and erect as when they were first built thousands of years ago.  Inside there is nothing to be seen, only dirt and scrub.

Inspired by D&C 86:4.

The male archetype of evil is a specific being, Satan.  The female archetype of evil is a symbol–Babylon, the Great Whore.

The male archetype of good is a specific being, Jesus Christ.  The female archetype of good is a symbol–Wisdom.

So, concrete male but abstract female.  What does it mean?  I personally have no idea.

(more…)

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…)

But whoso breaketh this covenant [of the priesthood] after he hath received it, and altogether turneth therefrom, shall not have forgiveness of sins in this world nor in the world to come.

And wo unto all those who come not unto this priesthood

-thus D&C 84:41-42

It made me think of some of our work on progression through a virtue set, where refusal to take up power and authority is a sin, acquiring it and then rejecting it is a terrible sin, and so is acquiring it but not wielding it with the appropriate limits.

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…)

Three crows met to brag on a fence rail.

“Friends,” said the first crow, “friends, I am a world class deceiver.  I tell mostly truths, I work to get the details correct, and then I tell the Big Lie.  So huge that no one can believe I would make it up entirely.  They think there must be at least something there.  I get experts, I get emotional narratives, I get ordinary people to come forward as witnesses.  I have planned techniques and fallback positions for when people question the lie.  I am one fine liar.”  And perhaps the crow was telling the truth about himself, who knows.

“That approach is infantile,” said the second crow.  “I don’t say untrue things at all.  I just lie by omission.  I will paint the victim as the aggressor by leaving out who struck first.  I will get other groups to tell my lies for me, then I just quote them.  It’s so professional, the way I do it.”  Perhaps that crow was also telling the truth, who knows.

The third crow smirked.  Finally he said, “I just lie.  I tell big lies and little lies.  I tell lies constantly.  I contradict my former lies.  I say whatever would be convenient at the moment.  I contradict myself in the same sentence.  If someone calls me on it, I lie and say I didn’t.”

“Hey,”  one crow cawed to a nearby grazing cow.  “Which one of us has the best approach to get you to believe stuff?”

The cow ignored them.