A certain lamb was being loaded onto a livestock trailer for the trip to the slaughterhouse.  As the tractor-trailer drove off, the lamb squirmed its way through the tightly pressed sheep to catch a glimpse out a ventilation hole, a glimpse of the pastures the lamb was leaving behind.

“At last, freedom at last,” the lamb exclaimed.  “No more fences, no more herd dogs!”

A boy built a sand castle on the beach to stand against the sea.  Every wave that ran far enough up the sand to reach it melted its walls and filled in the moat.  The only could keep up by furiously shoveling.  He fought for hours, deadly serious about his play the way a boy can be.  He kept the castle up and even grew it a little.  But when he left, he turned back for one more look.  He saw that the castle was already half melted away and waves coming in all the way to the horizon.

The boy was a man.   A hard-charging man with firms and farms and factories.  A subordinate came to him with a new enterprise proposal.  It would be delicate, complicated, amd maybe quite profitable.  “No,” the man said.  “No sandcastles.  Nothing you have to work at constantly or it will all fall apart.”

The man was old.  “They are all sandcastles,” he said.

The Syllogism
by William Ellery Leonard 

All men are mortal. Death marks every zone,
His low white cities gleam in every land,
The king goes down with peasant hand in hand;
Death hath all earth, all seasons, for his own.

I am a man, somehow to stature grown,
Somehow (as all) with feet to walk the strand;
Somehow with eye to see and to command,
Somehow with heart to suffer all alone.

And I am mortal; I too must be gone,
From hill or meadow smit of flame and sky,
Or from the shadow with the shutter drawn–
And long a watcher of the stars am I,
A listener at the sea from dusk to dawn,
And need no schoolmen, Death, to prove it by.

Via.

(more…)

A worker put some wood into the furnace of an unlit boiler then tried to light it.

“What are you doing?”  his boss said.  “Studies show that there is a tight correlation between the amount of the wood and the heat of the fire.  Corporate wants us to do nothing but add more  wood.  Everything else is a waste of time.”

Moral:  You cannot start a fire by adding more wood.

Related: Light a Fire that will Never Go Out

Earth’s joys grow dim,

Its glories pass away.

I was walking along thinking about the quest for physical perfection.  Physical perfection might be too highfalutin’ a term.  I mean people trying to lose weight, put on some muscle, clean up their diet and so on.  What I was thinking is that a lot of people fail.  Losing weight is hard.  They get injured and cannot lift weights for awhile.  Or they have a surgery or get depressed.  Or they get old.  I know a man in wonderful physical shape who developed dementia and withered away.

So when you set out to better yourself physically you are setting out to a goal you cannot guarantee you will reach.  But some people do, the goal is at least possible, and that makes the effort itself worthwhile and in a technical sense glorious.

In fact, I mused, that’s true of any kind of glory.  If you were guaranteed to succeed it wouldn’t be glory.  No risk of failure, no glory.  But if success is impossible, its just vainglory.  There needs to be some chance of success.  At least one person you can point to who set out on the path and made it.

Ahem, the Spirit whispered.  Jesus Christ.

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…)

as ordinary things get better, one must rise to higher things, which induce their own trials.

-plucked from the ether.

I don’t think Neil A. Maxwell said that, but he could have, word for word.

And thus we saw, in the heavenly vision, the glory of the telestial, which surpasses all understanding;

And no man knows it

There was a large heap of wood in the campfire ring. But when the man tried to light it, it would not light. The wood was laid too thickly. The flames choked out. Much of the wood was punky and would by no means take a light.

The man removed bad wood and more bad wood and overstocked wood until all that was left were a small stick and three twigs. But those caught the flame and burned with light.

(more…)

This is Part 3 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.

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.

In this part we are going to look at the plan of salvation and see if we can match its stages to the parts of a virtue set.

(more…)

That thar cayus Richard Branson is sashayin’ around full o’ beans on account of how he reached the edge o’ space.

Waaal.  Taint bad for a lil tot, pardner.  Shore, a papoose has gotten to start somewheres, so I give yew my full up congrattylations.

But I reckon when yur a grown feller, taint gonna seem so much.

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…)

D&C 59 v. 15 encourages a glad heart and cheerful countenance, but not ‘much laughter.’  WJT points out that this verse is specifically talking about ordinances and sacraments.  The implication is that some laughter is fine when performing ordinances.

That is the gospel I know.  I was recently down at the temple with family at a sealing performed by an old family friend.  He smiled a lot and laughed some and so did we all.

A gospel like this I am compelled to believe.

One of Our Favorite Poems, introduced to Us on this very blog, is Nothing in Heaven Works as It Ought.  That captures something real about heaven.  But my actual image of heaven is some combination of impossible blazing glory and genial garrulity out on the front porch.  Somehow the combination makes sense to me.

Let’s think about how we progress through the virtues.

A virtue set is static.  Here are virtues and vices that relate to each other.

Its true that real men and women tend to experience a mix of most virtues and vices to greater and lesser degrees all at the same time.   That mix changes over time.  We can become more or less virtuous.  Our existing virtues become stronger.  Our branches grow.  The real experience of virtue is growth, repentance, and change.  A virtue set is a terrain.  We move around on it.

There is a lot of precedent in the scriptures.

For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

-thus 2 Nephi 28:30.

That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day

-thus D&C 50:24.

We have the Plan of Salvation which moves us from stage to stage.  In mortality we have dispensations and the Law of Moses giving way or being fulfilled in the higher law of Christ.  We have the concept often preached in the Church and elsewhere that we need to move on from negative virtues (thou shalt nots, direct commands) to positive virtues (thou shalts, open-ended principles).  It is a wicked and slothful servant who must be commanded in all things.

What if for fun we rearrange the virtue set as a virtue chain?

(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.