There was a rich kid sitting by the side of a stream flipping gold and silver coins into the water.   (more…)

I’m thinking more of that vision people have of an ideal carefree country that has the same golden haze over it that we can see when we remember our own childhood or when we observe children.  (You don’t experience this much when you are an actual child until you are on the point of losing childhood, but the outside observer can see that it is very real).

The peach blossom country.

Never never land.

Going down under faerie hill for a night, or maybe a century, of happy revelry.

Arcadia.

The Garden of Eden.

There is of course a ‘bad’ version of all these.  A distorted destructive attempt to ape arcadia.

Faerie hill has a foot in both camps.

Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island.

The Land of the Lotus Eaters.

The Eloi from HG Wells.

The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas

(The Ones Who Walk Away is not a book I recommend.  Preachy, self important, and so on.  But a number of critics miss the mark when they complain that walking away doesn’t actually help the tortured kid.  True, but as literature its resting on the theme of transition from being a child to being an adult, which requires you to walk away from childhood.  You can’t remain a child while fixing the problems of childhood).

Generally the idea of some land of innocent fun sounds pretty good to people so the artist has to “cheat” a little by slowly revealing the dark underbelly, as in Omelas, the Eloi, or Pleasure Island.

But the best artists show that the problem isn’t the dark underbelly, its the thing itself.  Paradise can’t last and wasn’t meant to.  Attempts to make it last beyond its natural bounds are inherently destructive.  Tolkien is the king here.  It sounds weird to say that LotR is an epic about puberty blockers, but it kinda is.

But if we have a good thing, and a distorted version of a good thing . . . hmm, I feel a virtue chart coming on.  We think that virtues are just admirable personal characteristics, but the concepts work for anything good or desirable.

Lets try it out.  My antonyms here are tentative, feel free to propose alternatives.

(more…)

My daughter was listening to a song last night.

The telestial/terrestrial kingdoms are in the same mythic space that so much art and literature are.  Neverland. Under the fairy mound. Erresea.

Mad science isn’t dead, dash it! (more…)

The Sexual Revolution seems to make you fat, sad, and unlibidinous.  Its weapon is the pill.  The effect is to unwoman women.  Now there is a version for men that does the same thing, chemical castration.

It was there in the name all along.  The Sexual Revolution, i.e., the overturning of the sexes.

The children of Israel had slave mentality.  Probably not the way Nietzsche would understand it, but so what?  They had it. (more…)

I’ve been working to reconcile these two perspectives:

90% of mothering is showing up–getting married and having the kids and not getting divorced–everything else is gravy and probably only makes a difference at the margins.

vs.

The mother’s influence makes a tremendous difference in the life of each child.

Both of which I hold.  At first glance, being able to believe both is an amazing intellectual feat.  The contradiction doesn’t bother me that much–I am large, I contain multitudes–but it bothers me enough I’ve been thinking about it.

First, the reasons I believe each one.   We are pretty relaxed about our parenting (except for media) and its worked great.  We don’t let our children read until they are five, minimum, no early interventions.  They have quite a bit of free time.  There’s twin studies and a lot of other evidence saying that within the same broad social context (very broad, like the same country and the same decade), how you raise kids doesn’t seem to make much difference absent abuse, malnutrition, or divorce.  Except possibly in their level of religious commitment when they are grown.  (I made a big hit with the school board when I spoke against some proposed program on the grounds that probably nothing the school was doing made any difference).

G raising his kids —

But in a lot of ways when it comes to media and discipline and manners and dress and, I don’t know, gardening and stuff, we are that family.  Again, as far as I can tell, its working out great.  Everyone comments on how well mannered and happy our kids are, and our kids love being our kids, knock on wood.

Also G raising his kids–

Here are some possibilities. (more…)

Over the weekend, notorious social conservative firebrand Mitch McConnell raised the possibility of a national abortion ban.

Roe v. Wade is terrible.  Making evils invented parts of the Constitution is wrong in every way.

McConnell’s comments make it less likely to be overruled.

If overruled, his comments galvanize the opposition and make it more likely they will do extreme, dangerous things.

They also put off ordinary people and make it harder to make real progress on protecting the unborn when the issue is returned to the states.

Add to that Blackburn and others shooting off their mouths about how Griswold was wrongly decided.  It was, but it shows the political savvy of a drunk kindergarten teacher to highlight that particular abstract claim right now.

I am struggling to fight off the conspiracy-minded voice that says there is something more at play than world-historic incompetence.

The beauty of life is written into their flesh.

Because I am a gape-jawed lackwit, I just now realized that all the fancy clothes in the Book of Mormon are priestly clothes.

Exodus 30-40: Fine-twined linen, scarlet, jewels, gold, and silver.

1 Nephi 13:

Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church.

A lot of the stuff I have been reading in the Book of Mormon as a simple critique of the rich is more precisely a critique of the priestly castes, or of false priestly castes.  It’s pretty blatant.

The great and spacious building isn’t simply  high status, its specifically high-status in a priestly, temple way.  We should think of the GSB as a coterie of folks offering a gnosis, a body of knowledge that you have to go through their programs to acquire, that is then supposed to fit you for wealth and prestige.  Read your Nibley, I guess.

The one aspect of the tabernacle that is presented positively in the Book of Mormon is the curious workmanship.

Notice also that Nephi says the clothes and ornaments of priestliness are what they desire.  These are people who exchange the reality of power and authority for playing power and authority dress-up.  They will be ok being powerless functionaries if they get a corner office and  a car with a driver.

P.S. The notable differences between the tabernacle and the GSB are (1) silks and (2) harlots.  The harlots I get.  The silks, dunno.  Secular historians will say that silk didn’t hit the Middle East until after the Nephite Exodus, so I am not clear on what ‘silk’ even means in the Book of Mormon.  Curiously, if you search for ‘silk’ on the church website, it returns you a pile of hits for ‘linen’.

P.P.S. –sotto voce– doesn’t the tabernacle in Exodus seem kinda . . . garish  –sotto voce–

The Lord speaking to each people in their own tongue has *way* more implications than we think it does.

Seventeen years ago my little daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on the birthday she never quite made it to that year, with slight updates since.

Today she would be 21.

You would be 21, Betsey.  Little friends you had are all grown up now.

I miss the life you did not live, I miss your dates and your projects, someday your husband, your children.  But most of all, I miss you.

Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.

We planted a Pearl Apple for your birthday.

The years roll on, alas.

It’s all over that there is a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision recalling Roe v. Wade.

This is a major escalation into breaches of norms.  Everything old and venerable is being sucked into the war.

(Roe was itself an escalation in its day.  Its been around long enough that overturning it is also an escalation.)

Decadence is when everything good anyone tries to accomplish moves everyone closer to the brink.

Exodus 35 and 36 has a heart theme.

whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the Lord; gold, and silver, and brass [and other temple construction supplies]

And every wise hearted among you shall come, and make all that the Lord hath commanded;

And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up,

(more…)

Which do you think is more motivating to a young mother, or a woman on the cusp of motherhood–

That 90% of mothering is showing up–getting married and having the kids and generally being around–everything else is gravy and probably only makes a difference at the margins?

Or that the mother’s labors makes a tremendous difference in the life of each child?

I find that I believe both and I’m not sure how to reconcile them.

I dreamed that there were these woodland spirits of great beauty.  They did not have children in the normal way.  Instead out of the banks of the rivers they dug the shapes of rough beings of clay.

Animated, these crude creatures stumbled through the forests breaking things.  They shambled.

The spirits them subjected them to great force and pressure.  If they did not shatter altogether, they condensed and purified, more and more, until they were as the woodland spirits.