A beautiful woman, ice cream, little kids — the experience always exceeds your memory.

But if you have the experience often enough for your memory to be equal to it, the quality of the memory itself declines.

There is a way out of the dilemma. It is time and eternity.

God expresses Himself differently to some of us.  Whether because we can take more of Him than others, or whether because He has to condescend even further to our particular level, I cannot say.

Until Sunday, my latest example was in the temple, where laughing at myself brought me into harmony with the Spirit, who was also laughing at me. (more…)

A traveler on a long journey came to a ford.  Due to recent rains, the stream was swollen to a flood.  The traveler was perplexed to know what to do and exercised his mind for a solution. (more…)

The story of Adam and Eve, Mormonly understood, makes a mockery of the idea of salvation under the Law.

The standard Christian view is that Adam and Eve were given a strict commandment not to eat the fruit, the Serpent tricked them into eating it, so God in his anger cast them out of Eden. The Mormon view is that Adam and Eve were given two commandments which could not both be fulfilled, so one (don’t eat the fruit), had to give way to the higher one (multiply and replenish the Earth). Adam fell that men might be.

Elder Oaks explained, more clearly than I can ever hope to, the Mormon belief that what Adam and Eve did was a “transgression,” not a “sin”:

For reasons that have not been revealed, this transition, or “fall,” could not happen without a transgression—an exercise of moral agency amounting to a willful breaking of a law (see Moses 6:59). This would be a planned offense, a formality to serve an eternal purpose.

The obvious theological objection to our doctrine would be: “God is perfect and perfectly just, so why would he give a commandment knowing that it could not be fulfilled? How is that fair?” As Elder Oaks says, the need for such a transgression has never been fully explained, and I admit that this one used to bug me a little when I was younger. Eventually I shrugged it off; it was a one-off deal, so why think too hard about it?

Then I served a mission, got married, had kids, and realized that God gives impossible commandments all the time. (more…)

The gentlemen here have some interesting answers to prayers.  God, it seems, trusts us enough to unbutton a little. (more…)

At the end of my row was a Navajo man without much temple experience. The workers were helping him through the ceremony. Meanwhile I was going through the ritual motions in a particularly brusque fashion. I caught myself doing it. I realized I had unconsciously decided to affect being the old hand who has seen it all before. I laughed at myself.  (more…)

His Majesty was playing marbles with the cats this morning.

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11 years ago my first daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on her birthday that year, with slight updates since. Today would be Betsey’s 15th birthday. Happy Birthday, sweetheart, it’s been a long time and always getting longer.
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Overheard from a missionary:

Our families are worth the world to us.
We are worth the world to God.

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You know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes.  It ends this way:

“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.

“Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?” said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, “He hasn’t anything on. A child says he hasn’t anything on.”

“But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last.

The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.

Now you will know the rest of the story: (more…)

Knowledge is a form of love.  Knowledge without love is like sex without love. (more…)

Now, repentance could not come unto men except there were a punishment, which also was eternal.

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glennterryart.com

Adam and Eve were created from the dust, the scriptures tell us. We haven’t escaped that lowly origin. Dust is where we come from, dust is who we are, and dust is where we are headed. (more…)

Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath and told him to take his bed and walk. That must have been against the Sabbath customs, because the local Pharisees milked the guy to find out who’d told him to walk around carrying a bed, and then went after Jesus when the guy talked. (more…)

Friend of the blog SPDI wrote a post recently that starts with political science and ends with stirring the blood:

The answer is: everything is doomed, but the more interesting question is: “And then what?”  And the surprising answer is, “Well, then they get un-doomed.”   And what’s more: all the work put in before is not for naught:

The one raised to happiness according to his desires of happiness, or good according to his desires of good; and the other to evil according to his desires of evil; for as he has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall he have his reward of evil when the night cometh.

So: it is good that you’ve noticed a downward slide in society.  But that should not make you despair that it’s unrecoverable, or applies to every individual, and nor should it make you despair from seeing the far ending, because you haven’t looked far enough.

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