I have a new take on the nameless virtue. (First nameless virtue post here).

Let’s look at something President Nelson said.

Discover the joy of daily repentance. Cut short your misery. He loves us especially when we repent.
(more…)

There is an oft repeated notion that our Heavenly Father never punishes or curses anyone; instead he may just withhold his bounteous blessings from those not prepared to receive. Opening the scriptures anywhere and reading the next ten pages would disabuse us of this notion that God would never actively punish us, yet as I heard the hearty, triumphant song Moses and Israel sang after crossing the Red Sea, I considered verse 19:

For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.

The standard thing to expect driving forth on horse or foot into the midst of the sea would be to drown. The highly unusual thing was that Israel did not drown. Pharaoh mistakenly thought the miracle given Moses should be given him as well.

Not guaranteed to be word for word or even close.  The only guaranty is that they are in my notes.

April 2022

Elder Anderson — The internet is a blessing and a curse.

Elder Bednar  — Heed not what the wicked may say.

The foundation of our successful approach to having a long running blog.

Elder Gong —  Meaning comes from family.

The Brother before Elder Cook — Anyone can change.

Sister Wright — 91 isn’t too old to fix it.

Brother Ringwood — The plan is personal.  It is not a management plan created by committee based on expert consultation, procedure, and analysis.

Elder Rasband — A plague of attacks on religious influence in society.

President Nelson — Cut short your misery.

Elder Oaks — Bearing and nurturing children is part of the divine plan.  Satan discourages childbearing and distorts gender.

Elder Oaks — “family-centered” isn’t limited to this life.

Brother Klebingat — A God who makes no demands is one who functionally does not exist.

Brother Klebingat — the desperate decibels of the GSB.  

There were a number of references to the GSB this conference.  Lehi nailed our day, no doubt.

Rumors that we are low on badinage are categorically false and practically treasonous.

In other news, we regret to inform that Putin blew up our badinage warehouse and supplies will be temporarily limited.

By temporary we mean until the heat death of the sun.

The good news is that smiling and, heaven forfend, laughing, waste valuable energy.

Please resume your slack-jawed stupor.

From a fellow whose name I didn’t catch on Saturday morning (Captcher?) — the Jonah-esque story about the Nigerian stake president who tried to escape his calling by going on a trip, only to have the conference rescheduled and a near-fatal accident.

Saturday afternoon, another speaker whose name I didn’t catch, right before Elder Gong — the story about being worried about all the good things in his life he might lose if he went on a mission but he did.  “And that young woman, she married one of my good friends.”

Sunday morning, Ringwood — the story about the guy awkwardly bearing his testimony of Joseph Smith at an evangelical revival because he didn’t realize he was in the wrong church.  And rescuing someone else there because of it.  I’d like to think that my great many awkward acts and bumbles were actually part of some divine mercy to someone else who was around.

These stories all make me think that the divinity has a sense of humor, and not of the particularly safe kind either.

In honor of Elder Bednar

Peace, spiritual rejuvenation, and personal revelation.

In these days of corporate greed, its good to see a huge company take a stand for moral values. (more…)

Driving back from a family trip to some springs, the Lovely One and I had a conversation that clarified for me The Worth of a Soul.

Let’s say you have a couple of little kids, close in age. One is around 18 months, the other is around 3 years old. The three-year old is a little late in getting potty trained so you are working with her intensively now. It’s finally sticking. Meanwhile the 18-month old is watching you and her older sister and she amazingly just potty trains herself.

Which child has more worth? (more…)

Something we noticed recently when talking over the story of Peter walking on water (inspired by this talk).  Peter was fine walking on water, apparently, until he noticed the boisterous wind making the waters rough.

That’s something we noticed recently when talking over the story of him walking on water (inspired by this talk).

But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.

–Matthew 14:30

As if walking on calm waters was no thing.

This may be a case of Peter ‘looking back.’  Obviously to a fisherman in a boat the difference between calm water and rough water with buffeting winds is huge.  He borrowed that experience, so to speak, for the new context of miraculously walking on water where it did not apply.

What it made me think is that maybe we should be grateful for turbulence in our lives.  The turbulence makes us aware that we are engaged in doing something miraculous and need constant help.  Whereas when the waters are placid, we sometimes kid ourselves that its really solid ground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=xoTWeitx0nk%3Fauto_play%3Dtrue

Lyrics here, since the singing is as authentically muddy as any ol’ congregation on any given Sunday.

I don’t think it quite worked, but I admire the ambition.  I’m glad they tried.

What might have worked, same song, same lyrics–would be a liturgical chant affect instead of a congregational hymn affect.

With apologies to Mansfield.

Health ministers of the world, united only by one thing: their deep concern for your well-being.

i.e., flawed imitator and perverter.

Discovering that your desires and will and body are all misaligned is a fundamental part of the human experience.  Discovering and then becoming who you really are is essential to the plan.

The perversion of it is seizing on one desire, real or manufactured, and making that “who you really are.”

The plan is to bring all those misaligned things, body and soul, into harmony.

The perversion is to discard everything else about you in devotion to some monomaniacal personal or social plan.

You have a beautiful car.  Nearly every part is broken or worn.

You can fix it.

Or you can pull it apart into a deliberately ugly heap and call it modern art.

They say that Joseph Smith made the mistake of being a prophet in the modern era where all his foibles and hiccups could be recorded, and all the allegations and slanders against him could be written down.

Whereas everybody loves the old prophets because we only have the official story now.

Maybe.

But I think prophets are always shocking and controversial in their own times.  Its just that Joseph Smith is part of the same culture as we are.  We can feel what’s controversial about him in our bones.  We feel the shock.

Whereas for the old guys, we don’t.  The way they cut across the grain of their existing social consensus is either opaque to us or just something that doesn’t impinge in any way.

Yesterday morning driving to work, I heard a radio ad from IBEW Local 26. An electrician was telling listeners why they should think of joining an apprenticeship to enjoy the life he does. Featured were freedom from tuition debt and an attention to safety so that “you always go home at the end of the day.” Most attention-grabbing, though, was the electrician’s enticement, from memory, “I am able to support my family with a single income, so my wife is able to stay home and take care of our children.”