On the sweetness
During sacrament you think about this symbolic passover and this symbolic crucifixion (the broken body, the blood) taking place on the day that is the weekly symbol of the Resurrection, Sunday.
The children sing “Gethsemane, Jesus loves me.” Like you do every time, you think those are trash lyrics. Like you do every time, you cry.
I’m going to give you a scenario and then ask you a question.
You walk into a building full of cells. Each cell has thick bars over the windows, if there are windows. The front of each cell is vertical bars. There is a kind of barred door, currently shut. The cells have a spartan bunk and a bolted-down toilet.
You walk up to one of the cells.
There is a man sitting on the bunk.
Here is the question.
Is he in prison?
There’s a hill near where my parents live that stands up out of the plain. It’s probably an old volcanic cone. An old family trust owns it and from time out of mind there have been three crosses on the top and the local Catholics hike up there on Good Friday. This year my father and a few of his cronies in the ward are going to join them.
Like this
Good Friday as the traditional name for the day of the Savior’s death is a bit ironically named given the traditions surrounding the day. In medieval Christendom, all Fridays were considered to be dark and unlucky because of Good Friday. They didn’t eat meat on Fridays, as a form of mourning fast. In their church services the candles were snuffed out. The processions were woeful.
Which was and is entirely appropriate. The rhythm of mourning on Friday and rejoicing on Sunday is right and natural. We are joining the early apostles and saints in their sense of defeat after defeat on Friday, with the wholly unexpected shattering victory on Sunday. Even with our knowledge that Christ’s agony and cross were essential to his work, you can’t easily think of death and torture as good.
But there is an important sense in which today’s Friday is Good Friday. There is an extremely important sense in which on this day Christ won victory after victory and Sunday is not an unexpected reversal but the climax win of a Man who has won and won and won again.
Sometime around now in Holy Week is when Christ delivered his Second Coming sermon in Matthew 25. The conclusion, the sheep and the goats, is so simply profound that we are still unlocking the implications today. Until that point he had been speaking in parables but at the end he speaks that way no longer. He simply says what will happen.
When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
We are so used to this passage that it is hard to understand it. We treat it as if it were just a beautiful way of saying ‘be nice.’ Oh, no no no. Let’s hit at least 4 of the astounding revelations that the Savior gave in this famous passage.
I’ve got a lot in my soul this morning. Forgive me if it comes out in a tumbling flood.
Today is Palm Sunday. Today Christ entered Jerusalem as her secular king. There is a kind of chiasmus of power in the Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem to great acclaim as her king, is successively betrayed and betrayed and beaten and tortured and killed, and then on Easter assumes total power as the king of all.
Conversely, there is a kind of inverse pattern of the trappings of power. He starts off with a pre-coronation triumphal entry, which then builds to where (at his actual nadir) he is presented to the people, crowned as a king, lifted up in sight of all with an inscription proclaiming him the king—but then when he has become actually king of all instead of ceremonies and acclamations he has small, quiet conversations with his friends. I don’t think there is anything per se wrong with the trappings of power. But I wonder how much unrighteous dominion comes from people wanting the trappings of power instead of actual lasting authority?
In Western thought, we think of Mind & Body as a duality. With the recent preeminence of Artificial Intelligence, I got thinking, what is the alternative? Turns out, it is far more complicated in many traditions. In many traditions, there are layers between the body and conventional soul. Others see the soul as united but distinct entities.
Many different traditions – Chinese, Indian, Native American, Ancient Egyptian, Jewish…
Jewish? Ok, that is interesting. There are three words that all translate to soul, three different kinds or parts of the soul: Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah.
(more…)
There is something unfakeable about catching someone laughing in their sleep. It’s as if in sleep they have fulfilled the Savior’s command to become as a little child.
Inspired by Zen’s wonderful fable of the Idols of Babylon
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Some atheists have argued that the apparent fine-tuning of our universe for life is explained by there being many, many universes, billions and billions, till one just happened to come along that had just the right variables.
In programming they have genetic algorithms–if you don’t know exactly how to achieve a result, try a bunch of variants, see which ones work, then try variants of the successful.
One approach to cracking a password is the brute force approach. Just try a billion possibilities.
—
Once there was a race of idol-worshippers. A missionary-monk came and mocked their idols. Then he cast them down. Nothing happened. The people began to reflect how unresponsive the idols had been. Yes, clearly the missionary was right. These were false idols.
But how to find true idols? No problem!
They set to work building every kind of idol they could. Every shape, every substance. They just had to try all the possibilities until they found one that worked. It was a huge undertaking. They had to mobilize their whole society. But once they found that one true idol, it would be worth it.
I have a vision of a great city, vast and ancient, with a wide central thoroughfare flanked by towering idols of gold and silver, stretching endlessly to the horizon. They rise like monuments to power and permanence—monolithic, gleaming, immutable. They must be immortal; they have always been there. But permanence is an illusion. The greatest of these idols, proud and unyielding, begins to collapse under its own immense weight. Its fall is not isolated. As it buckles, the force of its descent leans into its neighbors—lesser, but still mighty—who were never built to bear such burden. They too begin to falter, transferring the weight ever downward.
The pressure cascades, from the grand to the great, the great to the middling, the middling to the modest. Each crumbles in turn, passing on the impossible load. Eventually, the burden finds its way to the smallest and most numerous of idols—those the world barely noticed before.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on one’s view—there are a great many of these lesser idols. Their black-robed priests and priestesses, once obscure, now find themselves thrust into prominence. For a moment, they are treated as oracles, saviors, bearers of meaning. For a moment, the world believes they might hold the avenue together.
But the moment is brief. The expectations placed upon them are vast, unsustainable, absurd. The burden of Babylon, the cumulative strain of a collapsing hierarchy, proves too much. One by one, they too are crushed, not solely by their own weakness, but by the weight of all that fell before.
In desperation, new idols are sought, researched, invented. They are hurriedly placed where old idols once stood. But these fresh creations are fragile, unproven, and often misunderstood—especially by those who never grasped the old ones to begin with. This continues day and night, without rest.
Some hope that the weight might now be shared, distributed evenly across the field of idols, old and new. They believe such balance might save the structure. But this belief is born not of insight, but of blindness—a failure of imagination. They cannot conceive of a world without idols, without the avenue, without the golden towers.
But gravity lacks such limitation. It does not dream. It does not compromise. It only pulls.
And it is perfectly willing to reveal what the worshipers of idols could never fathom: that the avenue might one day lie bare, all idols fallen, the sky unshuttered, and the earth waiting.
Nothing left but footprints in the dust and a shattered plinth bearing the words: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.
There once was a man who always told the truth. It was not just that he never lied. He always told the truth. It was very peculiar talking to him–words and phrases we take for granted he found difficult and had to qualify or elaborate on. He could not function as a normal human being.
However, he never died. He continued to age but instead of growing weak and feeble like we do he just grew into further stages of adulthood, stages that we normal humans, contaminated by falsehood, have never seen.
Eventually his unending life grew weary to him. But that same thing that committed him to truth would not let him seek death.
Elder Soares talked about covenant confidence. That’s another phrase like ‘the covenant path’ that I never heard when I was a kid. It’s great.
It also appears to be of extremely recent vintage. I couldn’t find any reference prior to 2024.
We sat around last night swapping our favorite stories from conference while eating my experimental dessert. Conference was great, the dessert was not.
Elder Holland’s story of Easton, the deacon with muscular dystrophy bringing the sacrament to his father. It made a huge impression on my Teacher.
The three-year old and the five-year old who bit each other. A huge hit with many different family members.
Brother Lund’s story of Alan and his deacons.
Elder Soares burying his second child.
Brother Tai’s kids wondering if it was the same sky as the one they lived under.
Elder Kearon’s car was also a huge hit with our numerous Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang fans.
Brother Palmer’s fallen willow.
Elder Uchtdorf’s embarrassing branch.
Brother Theodoris-boom (not his actual name I’m sure, just what I heard) telling a pioneer story about his parents slowly winning back their family and friends.
By the way, did you catch that Brother McClune’s mother is still alive and has 200 descendants? What a winner!
A certain man found a pearl of great price in a field and he went and sold all he had and bought the field.
The pearl was indeed a great treasure.
It turned out that the the field was also. Rich, fertile soil that brought prosperity to his family for generations to come.
There may be pearls for you in this General Conference. Beautiful treasures of layered wisdom that will remain with you forever. Go and get rid of all your other time commitments to find them.
But don’t neglect the field. Even the talks that don’t stick with you for the rest of your life, which will be most of them in the ordinary course of things, are fertile soil for growth and fruits to come.