Reading complaints a few weeks back that too many Latter-day Saints marry before completing courses of higher education, I felt concerned that a natural corollary of that is that people who don’t complete a college education shouldn’t marry at all. Perhaps the unfolding 21st Century for many will be less like the 20th Century abounding in middle-class families and more like earlier ages when bunk houses, barracks, brothels, servants’ quarters, convents, and monasteries absorbed many whose economic limitations put marriage and children out of reach, and those who want a different future will have to choose paths of their own bucking prevailing trends.

The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia has put out “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America” There is such discussion of the Great Crossover (mean age at first marriage passing age at first child), and a running theme is that delayed marriage plays out differently for the two-thirds of the nation that doesn’t complete a college degree.

A summary can be found at Washington Post: link. Coming at the topic from another angle, perhaps you’ll enjoy “Settle Down” by Kimbra. Or perhaps you won’t, if your tastes in song and dance don’t run that way.

I am my father’s oldest child, born when he was 40. He died at 83, so while he lived he was even in memory always older than me. I’m now 46, and I remember having a 46-year-old father. I also have a child who is forty years younger than me, and thinking of him, I am glad for my father that I was born to him.

From mysliveroflife.blogspot.com

In Spring the gardener finds out death.
He finds which limbs did not o’erwinter.
Some stems twig and bud and bloom,
Some stems splinter.

I lost a limb some seasons back,
Of my flesh, my firstborn daughter.
Time dried the break, but I still lack
The fruits–a moiety of laughter.

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The LDS Church has announced the closing of another school, this one the 49-year-old Benemerito of the Americas in Mexico City. (link) This is said to be done as the only feasible option for providing training facilities for a surge of new missionaries, but it had probably been desired for some time to close the school. A drastic, permanent loss like that isn’t allowed merely to smooth over some facilities crowding issue elsewhere.

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Here is a feast of Christmas writings. Enjoy. (more…)

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

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Read this article by apologist extraordinaire Dan Petersen. (more…)

Today would be Betsey’s 11th birthday. This is what I wrote on her birthday seven years ago.
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Why is it Korihor who preached against original sin? (more…)

This Christmas we will take the sacrament together. The ordinance will be, or can be, bigger than the time and place. Bigger than the place, because it binds us to all the Saints who are taking it with us worldwide, and to God in his heaven. Bigger than time, because it brings us to the foot of the cross and to the times when we made our covenants. (more…)

This is the time of year for Christmas Devotionals. Here are a few of my favorite Christmas essays and thoughts: (more…)

Brigham Young had a lot of zest for life, but you wouldn’t know it from some of his preaching. He seemed to take the position that this life is the time to prepare to meet God and only valuable insomuch as it prepares us. (more…)

Today would be Betsey’s 10th birthday. This is what I wrote on her birthday six years ago.

I closed comments to this year’s post to keep the comments all in one place.

There are many theories about the Atonement. All are at best analogies. What Christ did matters much more than our explanations about it do. Especially on Good Friday, we should probably spend more time at the foot of the cross instead of critiquing concepts and philosophies. (more…)

Christ chose to let himself be in Satan’s power and in the power of the Romans. Its important that he chose, because it made him a willing victim. Its also important that he did not directly choose the garden agony or the cross. These were the choices of his tormentors. If he had chosen them himself, he would have been willing but not a victim. (more…)