For whosoever shall save his life, shall lose it

Some guy who was an adjunct professor at BYU explains what he thinks is going wrong at BYU.

Caveats: (a) this is just one guy who was an adjunct professor at BYU’s opinion and (b) we only have his word for it that he was an adjunct professor at BYU (though I think he’s pretty credible).

The first link takes you to the first tweet in the series (no twitter account necessary).  The second link has all the tweets combined into one document.

Okay, here it is, the beginning of the epic "What's going on at BYU?" thread. pic.twitter.com/XONBn00CwM

— J. Whitebread (aka J. Hewitt, Travis Lee Clark) (@JWhitebread1) February 20, 2023

The combined thread

Summary and comments below.

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I was out of town this weekend, so I attended a different ward. Different, and yet so much the same. It was Fast Sunday there. (more…)

My wife knows an artist who is doing a piece for each of the days of creation.  She showed me pictures of the completed ones. They are lovely.

But, my wife said, she is having trouble with the seventh day. How do you portray rest?

At the time I racked my brain for a suggestion and nothing came.

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I’m thinking of doing an experiment for Sunday School.

I’m thinking of having everyone pick just one of the stories that we have in the reading from John–

• The wedding at Cana
• Nicodemus
• Driving out the money changers from the temple
• Healing the nobleman’s son
• The Samaritan woman at the well

–and and then just focusing on that one story from all sorts of angles. Metaphorically and spiritually but also temporal lessons. Looking at it from the point of view of each person involved. Seeing what it tells us about things past, things present, and the things of futurity.

What do you think?

I am worried that it sounds better in my head than it would work in practice.

No one builds boats any more, Noah.

That’s so last century.

The pain of unrealized lives. (more…)

For whom it may interest, the creator of Calvin & Hobbes has a new graphic novel for adults coming out titled, The Mysteries.

https://www.cbr.com/calvin-and-hobbes-bill-watterson-mature-book/

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On the sweetness of Mormon life.

Your daughter comes to you. She says, I read your post on how I’m spoiled rotten. (She never reads your posts.) She says, it was funny. You’re funny, daddy. Will you play with me?

You play with her.

The temple ceremony has got a lot more streamlined lately,  Less participation, quicker, easier to run more people through.  There is no more live endowment anywhere, for example.  The latest change I hear is eliminating the witness couple.

My wife and I have had some very spiritual experiences as the witness couple.  One was on our honeymoon.

Let’s riff.

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Ok, in all seriousness, this says far more about the quality of AI checkers than anything else. Really they are just a fig leaf to comfort educators.

Still, the humor of it all did not escape me.

A pal of mine who is some kind of nob invited me to a shindig last night at a gentleman’s club called the Old Cap.  Quite the impressive pile, one approves.  There were women among those present, one expects that these days, but without particular reference to the gentler sex one feels that the club’s committee needs to be a dashed sight more selective in accepting members.  Wield the old black ball with a sprightly hand, my dear selection committee members, forsooth.  I observed to my pal that the American style of architecture preferred its gargoyles inside instead of out, what ho, what ho.   He was a bit shirty about it.

The bash, or doings, were of the most peculiar kind.  Rather a ritual sort of thing, don’t you know.  After a good deal of this and that, a doddering old fellow, some kind of mascot one presumes, stood up and began a rather extensive recitation regarding the “state of the union” while acting in the character of the U.S. President.  One gathers the whole thing partook of the jocose.

This guy is mostly out to lunch, but still a fun read from an outsider about the style of our temples.

This came to me in a half-dreaming state, so it is somewhere between brilliant and ridiculous.

It is after World War 3. Not so much post-Apocalypse, as post-war boom, a kind of post-post-Apocalypse.

But the Earth’s population is now a tiny fraction of what it used to be. In contrast, technology has taken an incredible leap forward, if not moral righteousness. And the Resurrection Machine is created. At first it is just immediate family that is brought back. But then we start going further and further back. We repopulate the earth until it can no longer contain us. Then we begin to colonize space.

This is not a horror movie. This is genuine wonder and celestial dream, mixed with the Law of Unintended Consequences and humanity at its extremes. It is the Future meets the Past, and how we work that out, and both are understood and taken seriously.

That is my problem with Star Trek, for all its tech, you rarely see the consequences of really revolutionary tech, apart from an occasional transporter accident involving evil twins.

Alas, this all requires a knowledge of history, to do this properly, that far outstrips my own humble education.

There’s an idea I want to get down even in a rough form.

I have got unreasonable amounts of mileage over poking and prodding at some of the doctrinal oddities of the restored gospel.

Here are two of them:

1.  This world is the worst of all possible worlds, no other world would have betrayed Christ; and
2. Only the Jewish remnant of Israel in the 1st Century AD would have killed Christ, any other nation would have repented.

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I had a nightmare last night.  I was reading a book with the quote from President Woodruff about the prophet not leading the Church astray.  A finger reached over my shoulder to point at the line and a voice behind me said, “The Prophet will not lead the Church astray.”

When I woke up this morning I was pretty sure that the the actual Woodruff quote was phrased differently but when I looked it up, nope, that’s what he said, the prophet will not “lead” the Church astray.  So score one for my nightmare I guess.