Thinking about the historical development of the term virtue made me realize something about virtue sets.

Think about the scripture where the woman touches Jesus’ hem and “the virtue went out of him.”  It wasn’t His righteousness that fled.  It was some inner power.

Or think about the phrase that is a holdover from an older English where we talk about “the virtues of a course of action.”  We don’t say that because we are evaluating its morality.  We just mean the benefits of the course of action.  And of course virtue as everyone knows comes from the Latin “virtus” which just meant qualities that were good to have in a man, whether they were chosen or not.

With our emphasis on free agency, we put a strong emphasis on choice and those “virtues”–old sense–that are freely chosen, i.e., also virtues in the modern sense.    But even there the ultimate goal of a choosing a virtue is that it becomes automatic, written on the fleshy tablets of the heart, no longer something chosen and now just a good quality.

And lately we have been recovering the full extent of the Atonement.  It applies not just to sins but to flaws, imperfections, struggles, obstacles.  There is no hard and fast dividing line between virtue (new sense) and virtue (old sense).

That is why you can have a virtue set using virtue (old sense).

D&C 49
D&C 49:8 It is my will that all men repent. Properly understood, this is formally the same as his work and glory being to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

49:8 “Holy men ye know not of.” Extremely intriguing. Who or what are these people?

49:16 “One flesh”=sex. This and the immediate verses are one spouse => sex => “fulfill measure (i.e. children)
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The reason we do not forgive only the deserving is that until we forgive we are unable to tell rightly who is deserving.

(Inspired by reading doctrine and covenants section 64)

The highest and best use of manhood is making and protecting his family.

The highest and best use of womanhood is bearing and caring for her family.

“Beachcombing” sung by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, opening track from their album All the Roadrunning

And speaking of time to head on home, try this bootleg YouTube video from the 5m20s mark to 16m13s. Warning: if going ten minutes without checking something on your phone is difficult, don’t bother with this video. It probably isn’t for most others either.

Emeritus general authority Tad Callister recently published an essay in the Church News called A Fence at the Top or an Ambulance at the Bottom making a fairly standard LDS point:

 you were asked, “What is the greatest challenge facing our nation today?” how would you respond? The economy, national security, immigration, gun control, poverty, racism, crime, pandemics, climate change? While each of these is a valid concern and deserves attention, I do not believe that any of them strikes at the heart of our greatest challenge — a return to family and moral values. To put our prime focus on other challenges is to strike at the leaves, not the root, of the problem. It is, as some have noted, to put an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff rather than a fence at the top.

Later he took it up several notches.

 He [Satan] disguises his plan of attack with alluring labels such as “pro-choice” for abortion, “love and compassion” for endorsement of same-sex marriage, and “environmental emergency” for promotion of a zero-growth population agenda.

There was an online brouhaha from online brouhahaers.   And the editor of the Church News responded to them favorably.

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Traveling. The AC unit in our hotel was a sound engineer’s dream. It grunted, it howled, muttered, moaned, gibbered, giggled, cussed … (more…)

Michel Houellebecq essay at Unherd, beginning:

“I look on every side and all I see is darkness.”

I use that quote from Pascal (Pensées, 229) because I am not setting out to assert positive truths nor to defend opinions. I see a situation which — as Pascal writes in his next sentence — “offers nothing but cause for doubt and anxiety”.

In asking me to give an opinion on the now celebrated “Letter of the Generals,” UnHerd‘s Will Lloyd rightly notes: “What seems most extraordinary about the furore that followed is that so few people questioned the premise of the letter — that France is on the point of collapse.”

The two ways to experience a landscape are just to see it in the passing moment.  Cherry blossom beauty not meant to stay.

Or to own it for generations, secure that it will always be yours and knowing you are rooted there, will always live there.

I don’t think this second kind of beauty is available to us moderns.  We aren’t secure enough in what we own, and we aren’t tied enough to what we own.

The two kinds of landscapes that call to me are alpine and placid rivers.  I don’t think the two are to be found together anywhere.

A few days ago we were talking about how the cool earthly virtues seemed chthonic and the hot heavenly virtues seemed apollonic.

Today I read this verse.

Behold, I am from above, and my power lies beneath.

-thus D&C 63:59

Can anyone expound for me the logic of the following sentence from yesterday’s announcement? “This change [ending priesthood and women’s sessions of General Conference] is being made because all sessions of general conference are now available to anyone who desires to watch or listen.”

What would a dwindling, a withdrawal of priesthood from the world and the church look like that is different from the ministry of Russell Nelson as president of the church? A sad, inglorious task to be given, but in sad, inglorious times some obedient son oversees the withdrawal of gifts.

Eight years ago: “The Singing Won’t be the Same”
Four years ago: The Singing Wasn’t the Same”

D&C Bits

45:

45:6 — the time called today?  Is this a hint at an eternal perspective?

45:8 – wisdom that he is going to show.  But what is it?

45:35 — growing darkness is a sign of the fulfillment of promises

45:63 — “near, at the doorstep, within a few years” = 3 decades.  A few years less if you include Bleeding Kansas.  How long ago was the Proclamation?

46:

46:7 — Interesting that the doctrines of men and the doctrines of devils are treated separately.

46:17-18 — Is the punctuation off?  It makes sense to me that the gifts of wisdom and knowledge combined would lead to “that all may be taught to be wise and to have knowledge.”  But the existing punctuation suggests it is only the gift of knowledge that accomplishes this.

48:

48:4 — save all you can, get all you can, so in time you can buy land, and a city, for your inheritance.  From time to time an alien world view peaks through the scriptures.  Modern Christians think its dirty and moneygrubbing and unholy to get all  you can.  The moderns who are OK with that are shocked by the idea of trying to create an inheritance.

Personally, the idea of a city as an inheritance has captured my imagination.  What a concept.

SPDI has a eulogy for femininity and a girl he knew.  I was touched.

It made me think of Barfield’s idea of the second consciousness–you start off innocent then you wise up then you wise up even more and intelligently and consciously work to reconstruct a non naive version of your innocence.

What would second femininity look like? I think it looks like trust.

Trust in people who are trustworthy. Trust in your family. Trust in your husband. Trust in your God.

And without need, there cannot be trust.

I had two dreams.  One about Abinadi and the other about a bloodline aristocracy. (more…)

D&C 42

D&C 42:2 — Don’t let your goals and your focus get in the way of alert watchfulness.  Optimizing to take 100% advantage of current circumstances is a trap.

42:45 — Weep for those who die.

42:52 —  Those who believe enough to ask for a blessing but do not have enough faith to be healed will receive exaltation.

I suppose from the eternal perspective the healing that we so long for is basically a parlor trick.

42:68  Wisdom and answers to prayers are described as two separate things.  Wisdom is like glory, its all over the scriptures, seems to have some transcendent meaning beyond the ordinary use of the word, but doesn’t get a lot of attention

42:80-81  Pretty old school take on adultery.  Not a lot of sympathy and ‘we love you, man’

43:33  “And the wicked shall go away into unquenchable fire, and their end no man knoweth on earth, nor ever shall know, until they come before me in judgment.”

Huh.  I certainly thought we knew the fate of the wicked.  Could it mean that we do not know the fate of any one wicked person until the judgment because we do not know their heart and their potential for redemption?  The idea that our picture of the afterlife is still simplified and leaves stuff out tastes good to me.