Continuing our trend of telling  you what to think after you’ve already formed your own opinion.

• Truth is fallen in the streets, pick it up. Isaiah 59 14

•  Isaiah’s consistent message is that we are oppressed and need to be liberated. Do you feel oppressed? Do you feel the need for liberation? We are so oppressed that we have internalized our oppression. The first liberation we need is to liberate our conception of what it means to be free.

•  The last few chapters Isaiah there are some startling differences in the reference to gardens and gardening across multiple chapters.  The garden is used as a symbol of God’s care for His people, as a symbol of the natural upwelling of goodness and righteousness when order and peace are restored, as a symbol of prosperity and abundance, and also associated with idolaters and people who are blatantly breaking the covenant. I feel like this isn’t just a coincidence. I’m like, there is some meaning that ties together into a whole.

• The need for righteous judgment is acute, the soul calls out for judgment, not just to liberate us from the evildoer, what a garden this place could be if the minority of tear downers for themselves turned down, but because we need to know how we fall shorts that we can receive a blessings.

• The blessings in Isaiah 58 for keeping the fast and keeping the Sabbath are astounding. Does anyone take them seriously? Can anyone take them seriously? They are, in effect, promises of healing, of radiance, of light, of power, of dominion. If I have received those blessings, it is only in a small part.  The challenge here is that, in this chapter, God does not call us to live the Sabbath more rigorously or to fast more rigorously (although most of us would be part of it), but to live the Sabbath better and to fast better. Those are different things.

• Put in one hand the paradise dreams of the world, and then in another the paradise dreams of the saints. They are very different. Look at Isaiah 65.. This is no lotus-eating paradise. It is a place to labor, but unlike in our world, “you shall not labor in vain.”

I will choose their delusions and will bring their fears upon them.

***

You’ve probably seen the Nothing Ever Happens meme.

Things seem to be on the verge of breaking out–Trump elected, riots in France, lockdowns in St. Petersburg…–and then nothing.

Nothing ever happens. (more…)

(50% longer than a normal month, out of respect)

Mayflower indentured servant John Howland was washed overboard in a gale but managed to grab a trailing rope.  He had 10 children and an estimated 2 million modern descendants (me among them).  Joseph Smith was his descendant.

One of the unique challenges of the current age, is a loss of identity and purpose. As much trouble as men are having here, women might be having a worse time. Women have gained opportunities their grandmothers lacked, yet many seem no more certain what those opportunities are for. I am not going to try to solve all problems here, but if we can just get a clearer view of the ideal, this will be worthwhile. I may not be able to get you to Paradise, but I hope to at least point in the right direction.

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A few days out from Conference I re-read my notes.  Something striking emerged.

A truly remarkable number of talks were about patience in suffering, and how the trials may not end how or when we wish.

Meanwhile a truly remarkable number of talks were about expecting miracles.

These two themes do not work with each other on paper.

But the feeling of these two themes combined is very holy.

Simeon, Anna, coming to the temple for 60 years, ‘waiting on the consolation of Israel’

Rioters, demanding in a vicious spasm what they do not believe they will ever receive.

In his recent posts, Zen has called on readers to stand independent with increased temporal self-reliance, and to make 2027 an Annus Mirabilis.

These calls came to mind as I happened to peruse websites of a couple of businesses in Panaca, Nevada. Panaca is 120 miles north of Las Vegas, 70 miles west of Cedar City, has 900 people and three wards of latter-day saints meeting in the stake center there. My personal experience with Panaca is limited.

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Always over too soon.

There was a lot about children dying.  A lot about trials.  A lot about knowing who we are, children of God, not meant for (endless) mediocrity and (lasting) misery.

The most winsome concept was from Saturday.  It was the concept of divine appointments.  It will probably enter my lexicon like tender mercies did awhile back.

The most startling concept was Elder Uchtdorf’s concept of “exponential spiritual growth.”  I don’t think I have ever experienced that.  I want to.

Get buried in your temple clothing.

Elder Gong Ancient City posting live over the pulpit in General Conference.

My wife is ill and for whatever reason what has been on our minds and been sustaining us is our courtship.  It was storybook.  We were very young and naive and neither of us had known anyone else (biblical).  It could have worked out, but it would be less storybook, if we had.

One of my daughters just had her first kiss.  No guarantees she marries the guy but its possible.  That would also be storybook.

So much of our morality and commandments that we tie ourselves into knots about is really about giving yourself the opportunity for a storybook life.  It may not happen, but you are living your life in a way that it could.  You live in hope and yearning.

Most ordinary people who reject morality do it because they have implicitly written off the happy ending.

This is the same insight as All Things Before Our Face in a much more ordinary register.

Do not just believe in happy endings.

Live for happy endings.

Well, why not? 

Annus Mirabilis – Year of Miracles

Isaac Newton had one in 1665-1666, with his pioneering work on defining the law of gravity, inventing calculus and discoveries in optics. 
Einstein in 1905, when he published papers detailing photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and mass-energy equivalence (E=mc²).

Pres Nelson said in April 2022 General Conference, 

Suggestion number 4: Seek and expect miracles.

Moroni assured us that “God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.” Every book of scripture demonstrates how willing the Lord is to intervene in the lives of those who believe in Him. He parted the Red Sea for Moses, helped Nephi retrieve the brass plates, and restored His Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Each of these miracles took time and may not have been exactly what those individuals originally requested from the Lord.

In the same way, the Lord will bless you with miracles if you believe in Him, “doubting nothing.” Do the spiritual work to seek miracles. Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith. I promise that you can experience for yourself that Jesus Christ “giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” Few things will accelerate your spiritual momentum more than realizing the Lord is helping you to move a mountain in your life.

So, if we believe it, then why not do it? So, I propose 2027 as the Official Junior Ganymede Annus Mirabilis. Each of us will both seek for, and live our lives in such a way, that we can have our own Annus Mirabilis. We will deliberately strive to bring the power of God into our lives and move mountains. I know all of us, LDS, Catholic or Otherwise, on this site have great faith. I have interacted with you, and I have been uplifted many times. And I know you can do this. So let’s just do it. 

2027 as our Annus Mirabilis 

Our Year of Miracles 

On the inside I am still a 20-year old kid staring wide-eyed at a world of wonder.
But my joints and my eyes tell me we’ve run through decades of being that 20-year old kid.
So I should probably be embarrassed to say that this fall is the first time I’ve enjoyed reading Isaiah.
This fall is the first time I have started to understand.

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There once was a man so bleak and despairing and angry that he decided to kill himself.

So much so, however, that no ordinary suicide would do to fully express the depths of his contempt for everything.

He decided he had to build a tower higher than any tower ever had been built to jump off of.

It was an endeavor of years.   Raging, he learned architecture and engineering.

In pure spite, he found funders.  He savagely browbeat them into accepting his only marginally commercially-valuable vision for the tower.  After all, the point was not to make money.  The point was to show the world what he thought of them.

In grinding black apathy he cut stone and hauled it himself, when necessary.

He died of natural causes, full of years and honors, bitter to the end.  The tower was almost finished.  It sparked a revival in arts and culture.  Indeed, for the region round about, it helped to birth a great nation.

***
This is dark, I know.  I don’t know what to tell you.  This is how it came to me.

In line with our innovative trend of discussing Come Follow Me Isaiah after you’ve already talked about it in church, when there is no one left to impress–

• The absence of prophets is a curse, and their presence is a blessing. Isaiah 30:9-11, Isaiah 28:7, Isaiah 29:9-14.  So much so that it is a Millennial promise that God will put us in a hard spot but with teachers to warn us when we are making mistakes.  Isaiah 30:19-21.

Is it a problem that we haven’t been rebuked much lately at General Conference?

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The Young Matron and I were playing around with some virtue set concepts related to innocence.

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