A man who read 30 minutes of scripture a day decided he could easily read 45, nay, 60 minutes a day.

One Sunday morning he forgot to set his alarm clock and woke up late.

He realized that his 60 minutes would mean being late to church. So he missed the sacrament that day.

Fully operational extended family.
That is all.

From “The False Gods We Worship,” Engsign, June 1976, Spencer Kimball, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

“The Brethren constantly cry out against that which is intolerable in the sight of the Lord: against pollution of mind, body, and our surroundings; against vulgarity, stealing, lying, pride, and blasphemy; against fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and all other abuses of the sacred power to create; against murder and all that is like unto it; against all manner of desecration.

“That such a cry should be necessary among a people so blessed is amazing to me. And that such things should be found even among the Saints to some degree is scarcely believable, for these are a people who are in possession of many gifts of the Spirit, who have knowledge that puts the eternities into perspective, who have been shown the way to eternal life.

“Sadly, however, we find that to be shown the way is not necessarily to walk in it, and many have not been able to continue in faith. These have submitted themselves in one degree or another to the enticings of Satan and his servants and joined with those of “the world” in lives of ever-deepening idolatry.”

From “Statement on the Signing of the US Respect for Marriage Act”, December 13, 2022, Elder Jack Gerard, General Authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and currently Executive Director of the Church Communication Department, who participated in the celebratory White House signing of the Respect for Marriage Act:

“We extend a heartfelt thank you and our congratulations to all who played a part in the passage of the amended Respect for Marriage Act. Their efforts to protect religious freedom as Congress sought to codify the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision are both historic and commendable.

“The amended Respect for Marriage Act specifically recognizes that ‘diverse beliefs about the role of gender in marriage are held by reasonable and sincere people based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises.'”

“The Church has been pleased to participate with many others in the difficult but worthy work of civil engagement that accompanied the passage of this bill. Like the Church-supported Utah law in 2015, our efforts are helping the nation pursue freedom, fairness and respect for all.”

The villagers at the mouth of a deep defile watched with concern as it rained and rained and rained on the mountain. Years before a landslide had blocked the defile much further up but now water was building up and up and up behind it.

It occurred to a village genius to imitate the landslide. He told the other villagers to strew boulders in the defile to slow the rush when it came and to build a kind of lined channel in the landslide to at least put off the catastrophe. Meanwhile, he himself would build a second landslide. He called it a dam. He had the whole thing envisioned in his mind, the stone foundations thick and anchored into the surrounding rock, the combination of logs and earth, the diversions to allow a moderate flow through. But the foundations were very important, he believed, to hold the weight of the water. He spent a lot of time figuring them out and constructing them very carefully. When the villagers asked for help, he told them ‘not yet.’

Meanwhile the floods built up and scarcely had he finished his foundations but everything, foundation and village and all, were washed away.
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Hard to finish:

At an institutional level, we are creating a cursed generation of females expert at every imaginable permutation of sex with an infinite number of partners, while largely shunning the other thing, the main thing, the only thing still emitting any heat in the cold, merciless hearth of contemporary life: the dream of forming a family.

Exaggerated, I hope.

Preventing tyranny and oppression by removing the capacity for tyranny and oppression is just a microcosm of Satan’s plan, I realized. it is the same trick of eliminating the bad by eliminating capacity for anything, good or bad.

Which makes sense of a certain line in the temple that has always puzzled me.

A mouse fell into conversation with a stray heifer calf. “You cattle have your good points,” the mouse said, “but sometimes you aren’t always careful about watching where you step.”

The heifer calf was furious. “That’s not true, you liar. I hope you get crushed in the next stampede!” (more…)

To live with regret is to be whole.

tfw having beautiful meaningful experiences that can only be described with cheesy cliches

— ??? bosco ??? (@selentelechia) December 9, 2022

having beautiful meaningful experiences that can only be described with cheesy cliches

Reply — https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1601174924340887552

I wonder if this is an inescapable problem or if we just have no shared artistic vocabulary for it

Serious Artists are well acquainted with how it can go wrong from their own sordid personal lives, seemingly no familiarity with the joys

Most folks who come across this site probably think I’m nuts. Oh, that guy who rants about glory. Really over the top. Even some of our dear friends think I go a bit overboard at times.

I have been blessed with a family that hits real highs in domestic happiness. Sometimes the coziness is indescribable. In trying to make sense of it, I ultimately decided there was no way to do it without connecting it to the transcendent element: ineffable glory, worlds uncountable spilling like jewels through your fingers.

These are true stories, though only partly factual.

There once was a small rural post office. One day the local postman heard something faint in the wind blowing from the far off sea. “The true king has landed,” he said. He closed the post office, went home, grabbed his shotgun and his horse and his pack of hounds. He then went to the town police department and attacked it with a shout of ‘long live the king.’ After burning it down, he then rode to meet the true king out of the west with his hounds trotting alongside him. He was hundreds of miles away. Nothing daunted, he attacked little government offices along the way that did not proclaim their allegiance.
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Fall, friendly rocks

https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/

Authority and command are just and proper.

They are not a last resort like there was something shameful or unhappy about them. They are not a necessary evil. They are good.

Let’s talk about the gospel paths.  Plural.  There is only one gospel path, but for each of us our path of faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, the gift of  the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end, will have its own particular vocations, techniques, callings, and practices.

If you are called to give up a promising career to become a schoolteacher, your family living in a blue collar neighborhood with rough edges, that is your gospel path.  Something you and your family is learning that way is the seed that will blossom into glory.  It is not everyone’s seed.

If obesity or bad skin or lack of confidence or something is hindering your path to eternal marriage, then the particular health regimen or confidence building mindset that works for you is part of your gospel path and may be for life.  But it isn’t everyone’s.

For  most of these particular gospel paths, you don’t have an authoritative source.  The church does not have a handy mega-chart by challenge and personality type where you can find your own particular course to eternity.  You aren’t going to hear the prophet begin his next conference address with the ringing announcement that, “while I invite all to listen to my message today with the aid of the Spirit, my remarks are particularly addressed to INFPs with allergies who are the children of divorce.”

As droll as that would be.

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Kent Budge’s friend and neighbor Gary Stradling wrote of Kent for the Los Alamos Daily Post.
(link)

An obituary for Kent was also published a few days ago.
(link)

If you were extraordinary, you could bring me up to be extraordinary with you.  I have that potential.

But you aren’t extraordinary.

If I were extraordinary, I could bring you up to be extraordinary with me.  You have that potential.

But I am not extraordinary.