I’m very grateful for the good discussion on yesterday’s post about the current state of the church.

Two thoughts. (more…)

Today all four Utah representatives voted to make gay marriage the law of the land.  Three of them are Peter Priesthood LDS.

I’m sure they have their reasons.

But it makes me think of thoughts, and experiences, that I have been  having for a long time.

If you believe that the Church is doing well, despite cratering birth rates, despite stagnant conversions, because we are building more temples, you have another think coming.

We are in crisis.

If you don’t think half your congregation are apostates or close to it, you have another think coming.

If you think that all the guidance you need even on issues of great public import you can get by putting your finger in the air and seeing which way the wind in Salt Lake City is blowing, you have another think coming.

If you think the Brethren are willing and able to trumpet out everything that needs to be said, you have another think coming.

If you don’t think the very elect can be deceived, without exception for rank or apparent success or outward measures of righteousness, you have another think coming.

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[Elder Erastus Snow in the Logan Tabernacle, Saturday afternoon, February 2, 1884, as recorded in the Journal of Discourses v. 25, p 31]
The time was, in the infancy of this Church, when our minds were so narrow compared to what they are now, that we looked for the speedy coming of our Lord, and the accomplishment of His great work before this time. But as our minds grew, and our ideas enlarged, we began to perceive that we were only children in our views and feelings, our ideas and expectations. We had the views, ideas and expectations of children; and we see how the Lord has enlarged Israel and expanded His work; and now we behold so much more to be accomplished than what has been accomplished, that we are apt in our minds to put off the day of the Lord a great way.

The time was that we looked for one temple. The early revelations given to the Latter-day Saints predicted a temple in Zion, and Zion in our minds at that time was a little place on the Missouri River in Jackson County, Western Missouri—a town and a few surrounding villages, or a country, peradventure it may be as large as a county. When we first heard the fullness of the Gospel preached by the first Elders, and read the revelations given through the Prophet Joseph Smith, our ideas of Zion were very limited. But as our minds began to grow and expand, why we began to look upon Zion as a great people, and the Stakes of Zion as numerous, and the area of the country to be inhabited by the people of Zion as this great American continent, or at least such portions of it as the Lord should consecrate for the gathering of His people. We ceased to set bounds to Zion and her Stakes. We began also to cease to think about a single temple in one certain place. (more…)

I wed anew in April.

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On the sweetness of sitting on the veranda of a little church high in the mountains.  You look over the valley.  Your daughter plays gospel tunes on an old piano.

Why do they keep lying? Just like with Nixon story.

https://mobile.twitter.com/herandrews/status/1547606629570424834

The lie doesn’t even seem to have a point, lynching is bad either way.

I hate how much basic stuff I learned in school turned out to be badly incomplete to the point of propaganda.

You are driving along and on the radio–do people still listen to the radio? Today you do–you hear Brian Adams, the Summer of 69.  It’s a song about that one golden stretch when you were young.  Those were the best years of my life. Simple but powerful.

So as usual let’s bury a normal and uncomplicated feeling under a heap of analysis. (more…)

If you look at a bunch of virtue sets, the opposed virtues in each set tend to fall into two main types.

I wonder if there’s a connection to a different line of thought I’ve been having.

In so many things, I have noticed, there is some way of being carefree, passionate, vital, powerful, in the moment, free. But those ways aren’t practical.  They can go wrong pretty badly.

So you have the carefree virtues and the care-taking virtues.

What this feels like from the inside is something beautiful and passionate and strong that keeps getting killed by problems, pain, fears, and worries.

The only way out is to face it. The free passionate thing can no longer be the whisp that flits through the cracks of gray reality.

It must become the master of the realities and the practicalities.

Do not flee. Make your empire of consequences.

Puberty is hard these days.  It happens earlier and with far fewer onramps to adulthood.  And with bad physical and mental diets and self destructive models for how to respond.

All bad.

I think at the root is that when you enter puberty is when you discover you are missing half.  You discover you are incomplete.  Before you weren’t grown up enough to know.

We rather enjoyed the appearance of the four lepers in 2 Kings chapter 7, those low-class stumblers-upon of big happenings. If I were staging this chapter, would I portray them as Dogberry, Touchstone, C3PO, and Peregrin Took? Or maybe Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Groucho?

The Leviticus temple rites are quite clear. No unleavened bread.

I have a few thoughts about that. Not comprehensive. (more…)

The Israelites on Exodus keep getting in trouble for hankering after the flesh pots of Egypt.

They should have been willing to let them go. They should have been less attached to earthly things, one thinks. Indeed, that seems to be a strong message of the Exodus. Do not settle down too much, be willing to up stakes and leave, the Christian is a wanderer and a pilgrim in this life.

But the Israelite exodus had a destination, Canaan, which is very much part of this mortal life, and they are promised it for an inheritance forever. There they get in trouble too, for not making the place sufficiently their own.

I do not know what to make of it. (more…)

Knock knock

Who’s there?

You are a rotten cupcake

Gails of laughter

Grrrrr I pretend to growl.

Oh no you are a nice cupcake!

We describe a certain skies or memories as golden. As if they were valuable because they remind us of gold.

In truth we value gold just because it reminds us of them. Summer sun going down is the true gold.

Every mountain is sacred, my daughter says

Each mountain is a mountain of the Lord