Awhile back we all read the Boys in the Boat and went through an enthusiasm for it.    Around then we made a rare trip to the sea and I and the oldest daughter went on a little kayaking tour.  The rest of the tour paddled on sedately after the guide.  We ignored the guide and kept dashing off on sprints, pretending to be the boys in the boat.  We took turns being the coxun.  “Ten big ones!” we’d yell then we’d row as hard as we could for the indicated count.

We saw a whale surface within 10 yards of us.  We saw some dolphins not much further off.

That was several years ago.

But she was excited to tell me Monday that the Boys in the Boat was mentioned in the women’s session of General Conference.

Monday night I had an incredibly short dream.

I was sitting in a right-hand pew part way back in a church with a center aisle.  We were for some reason having a movie Protestant-style wedding; my daughter was the radiant bride.

As she got to the front my enthusiasm got to me and I yelled out, “ten big ones!”  She gave a dazzling smile.

Marriage is but the beginning bud of family life; parenthood is its flower. And that bouquet becomes even more beautiful when graced with grandchildren. Families may become as eternal as the kingdom of God itself.

-thus President Nelson

I’m reading a trash novel right now.  The Hero leads a band of faceless peasants through hordes and hordes of orcs/zombies/monsters, hack, hack, slash.  Sometimes the peasants die.  But sometimes  a light turns on within, they become endowed with power, and they also become heroes, with names and character and participation in the story.

Your trash novel, the Spirit whispers, is truer to life than great novels.

Brigham Young:

that act alone will ensure C. Allen Huntington, George W. Grant, and David P. Kimball an everlasting salvation in the Celestial Kingdom of God, worlds without end.

So let us now speak of Tanner Lund.

(more…)

The old mansion on the edge of the woods rambled on and on.  Room after room after room.  Passage after passage.

It was said to be haunted.

It was said to lead to treasures if you went in far enough.

It was said that deep in, it led to other times and other places.

One boy went exploring far in and came to a peculiar double door.  The door was ornate and carved round about.  It led to what looked to be a large dark hall.  Not a passageway.  A hall in the old manorial sense.  But it was hard to see because the room was nearly pitch black.  There may have been, the boy was almost certain he saw, a gleam far off.  Some intuition told him that through the hall was the way to marvels.

But it was nearly pitch black and as he progressed a little way he discovered it was full of obstacles.  Things  lying on the ground, furniture, whatever it was, he kept tripping and falling.  Worse, he didn’t know where the other side was.  But Determination.  Grit.  Willpower.  He pressed on.  When he fell too  many times, he groped his way back to the opening doors–thankfully he’d left them open–and fell again and tried again.  Over and over, because Never Give Up.  He might still be there today, except along came another boy.  That boy had brought a light.

Comment: This is a story about a lot of things, but one thing it is about is grace.  Or revelation, which is a form of grace.  Only the Light will get you through.

The enchantment in the world returns with the night.  It is dark, the moon has not yet risen, and in the cool grass and the cool air you push your daughter on the swing that hangs from the shade tree.

A time of joy, a time of power.

Please comment after sessions.

I ordered a large expensive rechargeable battery last week.  It cost several hundred dollars.  Monday it came, I found it left outside on our door step.  The box was a little crumpled, was an unusual size, and had a sticker on the side proclaiming that it was a battery.  I remember looking at the sticker and thinking, huh, I didn’t think they let you ship batteries through the mail, I thought the sellers would have claimed it as ‘parts’ or something.

I came inside and put the box down on a side table without opening it.  I didn’t need it right away.  Then it slipped my mind.

Yesterday morning I did need it.  But it was not on the side table.

We convened as a family, prayed, and then looked everywhere.  I even went outside to the garbage bin in case it had been thrown away by one of the kids during their clean-ups.  After all, the box was a bit crumpled, though the battery had enough heft that I didn’t think any one could carelessly think the box was empty.

No luck.

We prayed again, and looked again.

No luck.  I left to work.

When I came home the battery was sitting on my desk charging.

You found it, I said.  The wife and kids were sitting nearby.

Instant chorus in reply–No, no, no, it was delivered.

An hour or two before I came home the doorbell rang.  My wife opened it to find a delivery man out there with a box.  He said it was a battery and she needed to sign for it since it was an expensive, fragile part; they had to be extra particular.  He advised her to handle with care.

She opened it and put it on to charge.

I went and looked at the box.  It was the exact same box I saw on Monday, complete with the slight crumpling and the battery sticker on the outside.  I hefted the battery.  It was the same heft as I recalled.

Glories, glories, what are those?

Strifes turned to stories, in repose.

The abstract quoted below estimates the child car seat benefit to cost ratio at 57 to 8,000. Does this count as two posts in a row here connecting with La Llorona?

“Since 1977, U.S. states have passed laws steadily raising the age for which a child must ride in a car safety seat. These laws significantly raise the cost of having a third child, as many regular-sized cars cannot fit three child seats in the back. Using census data and state-year variation in laws, we estimate that when women have two children of ages requiring mandated car seats, they have a lower annual probability of giving birth by 0.73 percentage points. Consistent with a causal channel, this effect is limited to third child births, is concentrated in households with access to a car, and is larger when a male is present (when both front seats are likely to be occupied). We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.”

I am so flattered, I’m crying for joy.

I would like to thank all the little people who made this possible.

A man who read stacks of books needed a new bookshelf.  After some thought, he found the a space for the shelves on one end of a room.  They fit perfectly.  He put the shelves up and filled them with books.

But he had put them up in front of cupboards, which he could no longer get to.

Moral: Think about the problems you could be creating, not just the problem you are trying to solve.

I think faith is a virtue about the past. (more…)

“On the count of three,” the Mexican  magician announced, “I will disappear!”

“Uno.”

“Dos.”

But then–poof–he vanished without a trace.

My brain woke me up just before 3 AM, telling me that just as inertia was produced by the sum of mass in the universe (Mach’s principle), justice was the sum of agency in the universe.  Gee, thanks, brainy.

My brain is like a cat.  It drops dead birds at my feet for my approval.

A castle builder decided to get really analytical.

“Statistics show,” he said, “that 95% of the part of the castle defenders use in combat is the top 5 feet.  But the lower parts of the castle are the great majority of the time and the expense of building.”

He mused.

“Think of how much more effective I can build if I skip straight to the only useful part instead of being blinkered by hidebound traditionalism.  I will call it The Castle in the Air ™!”

Moral: Numbers are no substitute for wisdom.