Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, then, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided. During their understandably temporary association, the ‘married’ couple will typically consume a large quantity of merchandise and a large portion of each other.

-thus Wendell Berry

Happy Last Day of Christmas to everyone, great or small.

Odd thing.  This is been one of the happiest Christmases I can remember.  But also one where I am having less melancholy that is is ending than is usual.

Professor Hugh Nibley once noted that the kingdom of God cannot endure if it indulges even the smallest sin: “The slightest taint of corruption means that the other world would be neither incorruptible nor eternal. The tiniest flaw in a building, institution, code, or character will inevitably prove fatal in the long run of eternity.”

(from Elder Christofferson)

It follows, conversely, if an incident does not prove fatal in the long run of eternity, it was not a sin.

Some wonder why God would punish people.  The answer is that it’s a kind of celestial engineering.  Sin making you unfit for eternity isn’t a consequence.  Its the definition of sin.  That’s what it is.  If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be sin.

I want to be careful because I am going to say something a tiny bit shocking.  It is true but not in every sense.  It is that sins you repent of are not even sins at all, anymore, because once you repent of them they won’t stop you from pursuing your course.

It’s as if doing something wicked in mortality isn’t yet sin.  It’s Schrodinger’s sin.  Whether it was sin or not remains to be determined by whether you repent of it later.

Like most Christmases, this Christmas we made an experimental ice cream.  Eggnog ice cream.   It was such a hit that we made some more batches for relatives.  I am now dreaming of a yellowish Christmas.

We made up the recipe ourselves.  Here it is.

This recipe is meant for a standard 6 quart ice cream freezer.

(more…)

A 12-year old girl is crying.  She says to her father,  “I don’t want to grow up.  I like being a kid.”

A man is crying.  He says to his wife, “I don’t want them to grow up.  I like being a dad.”

How unfair is it that 16% of the land of the United States is a majority in the House of Representatives?  Cmon, people, its 202X!

I am the Way, the Story, and the Life

-SV translation (loose)

Christ’s character in the gospels is very consistent – he’s generous to those who ask him for help, withering to those who accuse or contradict him whatever you understand “meekness” & “loving your enemies” to mean, you have to contend with an imperious & disagreeable Christ.

besides reminding the Samaritan woman that she was a serial fornicator, Christ responds to her (gentle) attempt to debate with him by telling her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about & her religion is wrong he loved the Samaritan woman; this was a loving thing for him to do

to the extent that there is any conflict in the Church over what it means to be “Christlike”, it is between Christ’s actual living example in the gospels, & a disingenuous & nonsensical misreading of a handful of verses in the Sermon on the Mount

-thus edJCB

If you are the kind who gets up to big plans for Christmas

Sooner or later you have to scale back this little hope or that one and say

There’s always next Christmas.

For this Christmas, being very happy will have to be enough.

I dreamed there was this family that moved up to the hills for the peace and quiet.  By choice they had no phones nor internet.  Instead in the evenings they would sing and the girls in the family would play the violin and cello.  There they would sit in the twilight playing the music.

Then I had a sense that somehow they were my family, this was my home, and the music would be there waiting for me when I came on home.

And then I dreamed that this place was the place Joseph and Mary were headed for the nativity and they were somehow also going home when they went there.  I saw a tired man and a tired woman on a donkey headed up a country road to a white house where they would be welcome in.  They were close enough now to catch a hint of the music of the strings and to see the dim figures on the porch.

On a day when there was a kind of electricity in the air and everyone and even the animals seemed to be more than themselves, a flock came over a hill.

A sheep paused there.  By some magic of the day his senses were heightened and he could see far down the plain.

(more…)

There is of course a meaningful arc to Jesus own life.

The innocent baby

The atoning sacrifice

the triumphant resurrected king

For this reason we celebrate Christmas.  It is the beginning.

But sometimes I wonder if the real significance of the Christmas story isn’t Mary?  There is something heroic in a supremely womanly way about her role.

I have done much of which I repent – since I became a Christian I have discerned and recognized this; and three of the worst of my sins were being a doctor, a scientist and a university teacher.

-from Bruce Charlton