The Nephites and the Lamanites have a complex history. They split, they merge, they have dissenters, they have converts, they split again…
In 4th Nephi they apparently completely merge and become just one people. Then when they become wicked again they become Nephites and Lamanites again. But it’s even more specific, they split into their individual varieties of Lamanites and Nephites–the old tribes that they used to belong to. (more…)
Goodness is always underrated.
It can’t be overrated.
Think of the goodness you know in your family and friends. There is nothing better.
I dreamed Miss Swan went gliding along the sparkling water, white and sinuous and effortless, and as she came by Mr. Stork she gave a demure and graceful bob of her head.
Mr. Stork, he bowed. His stilt legs pushed back and his stilt body pushed forward.
And just like from her, from him I had an impression of great beauty. In his own way. It was not curved and elegant. It was angular. But it was a real bow with real grace–his body lent itself to the essence of bowing–and it was distinctly like a stork.
Moral: achieve the glory that is yours.
I used to think that freedom should be afforded to all who were willing to afford it to us, i.e., pretty much everybody except for literal Communists and the like.
I still think the same thing, except now I worry that its actually boatloads of people whose sights are on us.
I have this idea that beautiful things are more likely to be true. Friend of the JG Tanner Greer over at Scholar’s Stage has written a very beautiful piece, and I think a true one, about the best of the old America that was. The 19th C. America where everybody had an ambition in their pocket; the 19th C. America of a 1,000 voluntary associations.
We are in a kind of twilight now.
G. once told us the rest of the story for the Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s good. I went back and it predicts Black Lives Matter.
I want to talk about the back story.
Swindlers come in, talk up their new clothes, tell lies about how only good people can see the cloth, and then social pressure and lies do the rest. Everyone pretends to see it and half-believes that everyone else has.
You can believe that in a story. It wouldn’t happen that way in real life.
Unless the court were already used to lies and manufacturing opinions and fashion and trying hard not to be caught out with the wrong set of beliefs. (more…)
I saw a motorcycle followed by a tiny truck followed by an old van going down my street. Close enough it was almost a procession.
It caught my eye.
But the real unusual thing is the people, no matter what car they drive.
Each one a little world, an unfinished symphony, an avatar of themselves.
Every passerby is a parade.
It’s a baptismal talk for a new convert and its interactive. (New converts haven’t always had the interactivity sluiced out of them.) So in the interaction a picnic comes up awhile back where the new convert and a bunch of us were there and one of the missionaries brought a tightrope thing to winch up between two trees. We spent most of the hours trying it.
The next thing in my talk is ‘strait is the gate and narrow the way’; so I liken it to the tightrope. But that’s bad, because none of us made it across the tightrope. So I add that the way may be narrow but we’ve got plenty of tries. Each and every sacrament. Then I move on.
But I keep thinking about walking that narrow tightrope and walking the narrow way of salvation.
I gave this talk in Church a few weeks ago.
There are things going wrong that we all know about.
-Fires breaking out around the world
-lockdowns and disease
-Massive debt and deficit
-gender issues, gender identity issues
-secret combinations, the Book of Mormon says
-BYU infected
-an aggressive China
-Coronavirus exposing how dysfunctional the US is
-all time low birthrates
-declining IQ
-trust levels in our society keep going down
-obesity is at an all time high, we are less healthy than we have ever been
-social media is more addictive and more soul-destroying than ever
-pre- Corona but death rates were going up and life expectancies were going back down
[I elaborated on some points a little but I still went through it like a list, boom, boom, boom. I had a number of people afterwards tell me it was a really disturbing list, they knew about all or most of these things but hadn’t put them together] (more…)
Let us say that the coronavirus were real. Oh, of course its real. But I’m talking about the coronavirus of our hysteria and nightmares. What if 5% or 10% or 25% were dying?
What kinds of measures would be appropriate?
My wife and I talked about this back in February. We agreed that this disease wasn’t going to be it, but in the event of another plague, we would do things like utterly isolate, living off our stores; if I had to go to work I would never come back inside, I would eat and sleep out on the lawn; if one of us got sick we would house that person somewhere else and nurse them wearing improvising hazmat suits made out duct tape and garbage bags. We would do things like that and so would you. Extreme measures are not extreme in the face of extreme threats.
Now consider this. We live in a spiritual plague land. The dead souls are strewn everywhere. They lay stacked in the streets.
What kinds of measures are justified?
When people tell you, ‘don’t be extreme’ because you don’t voluntarily hook yourself up to the IV of lies, what they are really saying is that the threats are mild. Pornography, divorce, childlessness, mobs, gossip, wrath, depression, desolation–“It’s just the spiritual flu, bro.”
Remember life in a charnel house.
One small prayer for a boy, Elder Asay says, referring to the 1st vision, one great prayer for mankind.
The moon landings were great. They almost seem greater because we receded and can’t do them anymore. But in reality they would have been greater if they were a beachhead. If they led to hundreds of other footsteps, workers’ footsteps, settlers’ footsteps, fathers’ and mothers’ footsteps, babies’ footsteps . . . .
The great glory of Joseph’s prayer is that millions can and do follow his footsteps.
You can soar. You can reach what is out there. You can span the heavens.
Until the Eagle has landed, and Christ welcomes you home.
Marilyn Nielson A harvest of mercy
One of our missions is to recover the central place and meaning of glory in the gospel.
To that end, this popular article on the classical Greek concept of thumos.
October 14, 1066. Nearly 1000 years of the Norman Yoke.
Signs of old age:
People tell you a movie is bad, and then you don’t go watch it.
People tell you a restaurant is bad and then you don’t go and try it out yourself.
Elder Bednar brought up a teaching Elder Holland gave a decade or so ago. He said we are on a river that is flowing stronger and stronger towards disaster and we have a choice about which direction we are going to paddle.
Elder Oaks said something similar a few years back if I recall.
You can choose to drift with the current. You can choose to paddle against it. What you cannot choose is to paddle across dry land.
The trend of your society is what it is. The constraints on your actions are what they are.