Working together as a family and having fun while you work is one of the peaks of human existence.

Watering each other and the plants.

Singing while washing the dishes.

Making charcoal for your garden and deciding among you to see if you could make a charcoal cardboard crown for no good reason.

Its a synthesis of virtues.

Getting there is not just a matter of will.  It takes a fair amount of slogging and sloth and labor without much fun and fun without labor.  The Plan of Salvation in microcosm.

By the way —

Slog + Sloth = Boredom

Awhile back I invented virtue charts.  Its a tool to think more clearly and systematically about virtues and vices.  It draws from the common-sense idea that there are virtues and vices that are opposites.  It adds the Christian insight that most vices are distortions of virtues.  And its adds in Joseph Smith’s deep understanding that even virtues have “opposite” virtues–all knowledge is proved in contraries.  The result is a square.  Put a virtue at one corner.  The two corners on either side of it are going to be vices.  One of those vices is the opposite of the virtue.  The other vice is the distortion of the virtue.  Then the opposite corner is the “opposing” virtue.  Remarkably enough, the vices will also link to it neatly.  The vice that opposed the first virtue will be a distortion of the second virtue, while the vice that distorted the first virtue will be the opposite of the second virtue.

For example–(I am using “bloats” instead of “distorts on this diagram)–

The two opposite virtues make a powerful combination when put together (and one that is very worth thinking about and exploring).  So do the opposite vices.

Comely Modesty is beautiful and testimonial.

Uglified flesh-flaunting is the direction so much pornography or immodesty is headed: tattoos, piercings, self-damage, mutilation.

But virtue charts do not have to be limited to virtues and vices.  They can be used to explore the good and the bad even if they are not the result of deliberate personal choices.

Take comeliness and ugliness for example (more…)

No, not this essay, goose. Another essay. Which will be revealed to you later.

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