September 11, 2001. 25 years have passed—25 more nails in the cross—but we remember. (more…)

Charlie Kirk was murdered one year ago today.  I drove by UVU for the first time in a couple of days a couple of days ago. I was surprisingly affected by it. The transsexual Antifa milieu that encouraged his assassination and may have been more heavily involved than just encouragement has had nothing happen to them and it seems unlikely they ever will.

I had an extremely peculiar thing happen to me a couple of days ago. Although it was meaningless in itself, it had deep spiritual significance and an interesting lesson.

We were visiting some family and we get up earlier than most so we have had an hour or so in the morning where we are just quietly dinking. A son had found two dice and was rolling them. He got a double and crowed softly, “A double!” He rolled some more and got another double. “Two doubles!” Just to mess with him I said it didn’t count because it was his second double and he had rolled two threes. Then he got his next double and it was two twos so I told him that didn’t count either.

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A lot of guys want to be intimate before there is intimacy, romantic before there is romance, peace before victory

Cryptic entries from my notebook. The meaning is lost in time.

* The most important part about the temple is the home

* Joe Blow, by his lights, turns on the charm

* The right wing needs more thought terminating cliches

* Story: procrastinating hero

There is no context. You have here the sum total of each entry.

The strength of youth is is trying to do things you don’t know how to do.  We call it ‘potential,’ but that it what it comes down to.

We are all of us young, in that sense.  The advantage the actual youth have is that they know it.

The new youth program rollout was today.  One could quibble about aspects of it.  There was the cringe trend of always naming girls first and putting boys second.  There was the description of mission and then family as if it were standard for all, not just the young men.  But  there was a great deal of good and above all there was the wonderful phrase, “focus on future family.”  Wonderful.  More please!

On the sweetness of Mormon life

You are walking your wife down the hall at church.  She is ill and is holding on to you.  Her footsteps are small and hobbled.

“I feel like I am a spectacle,” she says.

What she is is faith in every footstep.

Two weeks ago my brother-in-law invited me to a concert. Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. The rest of our families were doing other things on a Friday night, so it was just him and me. I asked my wife, who is from New Hampshire, if she knew this place in western Massachusetts I’d been invited to. “Of course,” was the response, so I knew it was well-known in the region, at least among people who think a lot about music. Physically the place was lovely: dozens of acres of lightly-trod grass parking, and the “music shed” a roofed, open-walled, 90-year-old structure with seating for thousands surrounded by more grass for picnic blankets and camp chairs. Similar to the much younger Wolf Trap in Washington DC’s Virginia suburbs. Earlier rains diminished attendance on the grass; we arrived not many minutes before the program began and set up our chairs in a fine spot near center-front.

My brother-in-law looked at the printed program. “There will be ballet dancers.” That turned a wheel in my memory. That’s right: Appalachian Spring was originally composed as a ballet. I had never seen it performed that way, only as an orchestral performance. I enjoy dance immensely, so this would be a special treat. (more…)

The last dream of my recent dreams was long and involved and I will only able to recall a few of the details here. It is the setting that stuck most in my mind. Here’s the setting. We–meaning me and some vague unspecified other people, probably family members, although the only one that I ever specifically interacted with was my mother–are on a high ridge line looking west over the south end of the Utah Valley.  Though the geography is not what you would see if you were actually there; instead its a slope up from the foothills and then the middle third becomes very steep, almost an escarpment although it is climbable mostly not using your hands so not completely vertical, maybe more like a 60° slope or 50° slope.  This very steep slope ends in kind of ridgeline and then the mountain continues beyond that but at a more normal slope, not nearly as steep.    I’ll also note that the the flora and fauna actually don’t seem typical of Utah valley nor the rock.  The rock is a dark brown that I think is probably basalt and there are junipers and cedars.

In this dream there is at the base of the mountains some kind of BYU extension campus or secondary facility–call it BYU-Spanish Fork for convenience–and then up at the ridgeline where we’re at is a semi-independent facility or organization but it’s associated in some way with the BYU satellite campus or satellite institution below us.   It is our parent institution in some way.

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Only prophets can understand prophets.

There is, of course, the obvious reason, the same divine source is able to give understanding much better than your own attempts to understand the divine source as filtered through another person. But the main reason is different. The main reason is that to understand someone we have to be able to put ourselves in their shoes. We have to wrestle with what they wrestled with, grasp what they grasped, be surprised and overjoyed by what they were surprised and overjoyed by.

The gospel is process knowledge, not a formula. Becoming a prophet is more or less something like an initiation and you have to follow the same initiation to receive the same results. Lehi cannot stand at the tree shouting to you how good the fruit is and you feel the savor in your mouth.

Saturday night, I had a horrifying dream.

There was a city, and either because of the heights of the buildings or because of the hills in the city, the church had a site people could visit where you could walk out on these walkways that were high above the ground, maybe 100 to 200 feet. The walkway started altogether in a little reception area and a flat space, and then branched out and meandered a bit. Each walkway had a color and a spiritual theme assigned to it, and you’re supposed to think about that theme as you walk the walkway. It was a bit low rent, frankly. The walkways were just concrete floors and rough, waist-high, whitewashed concrete walls (white except for the color coding). The view directly down wasn’t anything spectacular, just a couple of layers of road, a freeway, and an overpass.

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My brain’s favorite 3:00 a.m. thoughts are the ones that make it hard for me to get back to sleep.

Here’s the doozy it woke me up with in the wee hours this morning.

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One valorous rabbit decided, admirably enough, that it would no longer simply flee wolves.  It would take the fight to them!

The angel of rabbits appeared and approved.

Then the angel asked, “how?”

The rabbit said it would cute ’em to death!

This would not work, the angel said.

The rabbit sulked.  It just had to work!  That was the only weapon the rabbit had!