I want to be direct about something suggested poetically before.

In Matthew 25 Christ tells us how the Judgment will go.

He will put his sheep on his right hand.  Because they fed him when he was hungry. Dressed him when he was naked. Gave him a place to sleep when he had no home of his own.

The goats he will drive out into the darkness at his left hand.

Both groups, he tells us, will be surprised.  The sheep will not think of themselves as having done something particularly virtuous.

“When did we feed you? Clothe you? Takes you in?”

Christ will reply, “Inasmuch as you have done it into the least of these my brethren, you have done it into me.”

Which we take to be a lot of rhetorical flourishes saying, “be charitable to the poor ” Except those times we help the poor are the times we feel ourselves particularly virtuous. None of us would be surprised the Lord gave us credit for our soup kitchen service.

So no. It is not rhetoric. This is literally what will happen.  We will get credit for literally clothing naked people.

In other words, for the children we raised.  We clothe them in flesh and then in clothing for decades. We feed them for decades. We house them for decades. An infant is the least of us.

Christ is literally saying, “if you raise a child, I will treat you as if you were my own father and mother. What I would do for Mary and Joseph, I will do for you.”

On the sweetness.

Our ward sang beautifully but absurdly today.  We still cannot sing together.  So we had some families record songs in advance.  Others had stations in rooms around the church building where they could sing to have it piped into the chapel.  It was beautiful but also absurd.  Much like, I suppose, God in a manger.

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.

We’ve had a lot of errands to run at night, around town and out into the empty.  We’ve been looking at the Christmas lights.  We have decided we have a lot of respect for the single strand of lights.  It usually runs along a fence or sometimes an eave or around a window.  It often looks a little tired.

But a street with single strands on nearly every house has more cheer about it than a street with one house lit to the nines.

I like a house lit to the nines.  My own house is an elegant and tasteful blaze.   Yet there is something affecting about that little strand of lights.

It is someone showing their devotion to a celebration and a standard even if that standard doesn’t make them look good.

It is the equivalent of what some sociologists call the decent poor.  It is the nameless virtue (#namelessvirtue)

It is the Christ deciding to become a mortal, starting out as a baby.

A long time ago, I dreamed about a sword. The dream was strange. It was told by the sword.

There was an Arthurian, elven style court. Noble knights and fair ladies who went forth from their shining walls into the happy green land to the sound of music. The king had a magic sword which narrated (?) the dream. They jousted, they chased the deer among the huge boles of the stout old trees. They may have had some foes scattered around that they could fight. (I have it all written down somewhere, but at this time do not recall.)

At one point there was a crack. A kind of restlessness set in. I think it was adultery but it may have been a personal affront. A quarrel. It made people angry. It didn’t really get patched up. The anger and bitterness widened. The knights and ladies started in on each other. There were killings. They fought little wars. The land was ravaged. Eventually the king turned into an orgy of destruction as did everyone who still left alive, destroying just to destroy. The magic sword could unmake things and raging the king unmade. It was the Jaredite end of the Arthurian legend. (more…)

Those who do not aspire to a big family do not aspire to greatness.

(more…)

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?

Mormon and Moroni 9 are the horror chapters of the Book of Mormon.

But they are necessary.

They show that God really does make us free.  We are free to choose for good or for evil.  Our choices matter.  We can make destruction happen if we choose.

No one prides themselves on not murdering, but in fact that is something you could do, it is something people have done, and it is to your credit that you don’t.  But only to your credit in a world where murders happen.

RIP Chuck Yeager, first man past the sound barrier.

Barrier breaker, sound swallower.
Sky soarer, yesteryear’s yonder.

“The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.”

Here is a historian doing a wonderful imagining of what a medieval charge would have been like.

Last night I was out under the stars splitting farm chores with a neighbor when I listened to the Christmas Devotional from the phone in my pocket. The devotional lacked those minor cringes that had crept in the last few years–at least in audio. It had Christmas beauty, and most of all the talk by Elder Holland.

He talked about the birth happening at night, and night as the time for dreams. He quoted Parley P. Pratt about revelation through dreams.

This morning as a I built the fire I was rueful about the long and tedious dream I had. “I love the cool dreams that have insights,” I thought, “but what is the point of those daily life ones where you do mundane things for hours on end?” I thought it was especially ironic after hearing the Pratt quote.

I heard the Spirit giggle.

Here was my dream. Summarized, because it really was that long and boring.

We were at a ward party of some kind at a picnic ground up in the mountains. From the look of things it was Indian summer. Everything was brown but it wasn’t cool. Only a few families had shown up and we awkwardly sat around trying to make conversation and go through the planned activities with barely anybody. This went on at GREAT length. Finally about half of the few families there left, having put in the requisite showing.

I went down the dirt road a bit with a couple of my kids, down the hill to the main campground where the entrance was. There was a long tedious sequence where we were walking on dirt and kicking rocks and such.

At one point–yes, my dreams are indelicate–we then pulled off to the side of the road so I could find a tree to pee on. About that point I saw several trucks and vans pulling into the main entrance and I remember thinking ruefully, ‘I bet they are coming this way, I am going to have to wait to pee.’ Sure enough, they did. It was all late arriving members of our ward. I waved cheerfully but somewhat antsily to each family as they drove by. I remember thinking ‘ha, those families that left forgot that everyone was going to show up around now [the time in my dream was about quitting time from work plus driving distance]’ Finally the last of the caravan passed me, I peed, and that was the dream.

It really was tedious.

But like I said, the Spirit giggled.

It quickly brought to my mind that sitting through the tedium but leaving before the fun really gets going was a strong metaphor for life.

Moral: Don’t leave before the party gets started.

Too many of us practice getting the medal but never practice the sprint.

In courtship and elsewhere, we see and ape the manners and methods of the victory parade and know nothing of the victory.

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.