I picked up a young son for lunch.
I wish I had more sons. Mine are not enough. It was a joy to be with him.
Now that I am healthier, there are gospel-type experiences, family-type experiences, that are almost unbearably vivid.
Live in beauty in the sea breeze.
Live in the beauty under the trees.
Live in beauty where the mountain meets the air.
… in the meadows of the dead
there are whitesome daisies grow
There are roses climbing red
And the spirits sighing go …
16 years ago my little daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on the birthday she never quite made it to that year, with slight updates since.
Today would be your 20th birthday, Betsey. The full flower of young womanhood! Instead you are always not-quite 4.
Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.
We miss you. We want to see you.
We are a society now where people say, “sort of,”, “kind of,” “in a way,” “I mean ,” “I mean to say,” “you see,” all those things — over and over and over again — like the gossiping women who say, “She said, she said, she said …” They’re a kind of stuttering, a kind of self-imposed idiocy, a kind of pretense very often found in people trying to show that they are just like everybody else — quite stupid really. Stupidity in a democratic society as a whole produces pseudo-stupidity in its leaders, with appalling results. Once there is television in the House of Commons — and I hope it will never happen — everybody there will be pretending to be as stupid as their electorates. This kind of manipulative pretense at being more stupid than the other person was first noticed by Wyndham Lewis in the twenties and documented in the speech of Bertie Wooster.
–Arthur Henry King, The Abundance of the Heart
A crimson mask, or zits, but not both.
Following on from Part I, read it first.
The wizard lands were stagnant. Millions striving to create their own language, their own script, their own scales, and not succeeding. Some few succeeding in a minor ways. A mere handful truly achieving greatness . . . and then dying, and their greatness dying with them.
The land without magic was not stagnant. Gleaming towers were there; and gleaming rockets to the Moon, and to Mars; and gleaming teeth. They were not stagnant. But if an angel were to jerk back the veil on time, you would see that their trajectory was a curve. Up and then over and then down. It would take no angel to see the signs that were already there. Their arts were complex enough now that no one person could achieve much in the way of greatness. But they were so far removed from want that struggle and suffering were no longer spurs to them either. Their growth had slowed. Movements and ideas insulated from reality were starting to spread. Individuals who wanted greatness were fighting for preeminence and celebrity instead. They had grown slowly and then for a few dizzying decades had grown very quickly. Now they would decline slowly and then very quickly.
But if the way of magic didn’t work, and the way of the country without magic didn’t work, what then?
A new thing was seen in the land. A boy was inspired with a new language. In it there were rules that made the language individual for each speaker. It captured their experience and their character. Their words would be shaded by their relationships with their family and their friends. Their achievements were built in. Only they could speak it. But others could understand them. Each one who learned the rules was able to create their own language, and speak words of power. And the words they spoke together, the songs they sung together, were more powerful still.
Teacher Council Meeting last Sunday reminded me of a song I like and have replayed every day this week. (more…)
Anyone can become a wizard. They just have to create their own fully realized language to speak their commands in.
Anyone can write down their spells into spellbooks. They just have to create their own unique script to do it in.
(more…)
There once was a boy who was set to watch sheep. Some wolves gathered and he ran to the village for help. “Wolves! Wolves!” he cried. But shockingly, in describing the wolves he said that some of them were “bitches.” This was offensive. The villagers beat him a bit and then the village elder took him aside to counsel him. When the boy said that the wolves were already among the sheep right then, the village elder pointed out that the delay was entirely the boy’s fault. The slain sheep must be on the boy’s conscience. Finally the boy was let go to salvage the situation as best as he could on his own.
Wolves learn from experience even if boys do not, so the next time the wolves attacked they behaved and dressed in a very peculiar fashion, like an outrageous gay stereotype. The boy fought them but finally had to run to the village for help. He described the wolves as ‘acting gay.’ The villagers would have reacted badly in any case to this association of sexual minorities with vicious predatory beasts but they were even more concerned given the boy’s prior history of offensive conduct. They beat him thoroughly and lectured him long.
The next time the boy ran into town he said the wolves were painted in blackface and saying “n*****.” The villagers had put up with the boy’s antics for a long time, but saying “n*****” was really too much. They beat him almost to death and drove him out.
It was too bad about the sheep.
any American discourse that claims to be about race is actually about class any American discourse that claims to be about class is actually about race
< Thus Jesse Abraham Lucas
Below the break is a photo of pages 9 and 10 from this morning’s Washington Post. I don’t particularly care about these articles, but look at the headlines. The name of Jesus Christ may have caught your eye as it did mine.
Trust content from the Apostles
Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die
-D&C 42:45 It is false that the gospel requires us to believe that horrible things are not horrible. True, Christ overcomes them. The pioneers overcame the plains, does that mean the crossing was not harsh? It does not make his victory less to say that the things he defeats are terrible.
Thou shalt not be proud in thy heart; let all thy garments be plain, and their beauty the beauty of the work of thine own hands
-D&C 42:40
Clearly we no longer weave and sew our own homespun. Maybe we should. But let’s grapple with this a bit. (more…)
