On the sweetness of Mormon life.

Testimony meeting.  A young returned missionary–handsome, dapper, charismatic, deeply spiritual, normally well-spoken–gives a long rambling testimony about The Office

Your young teenage son gets up.  Paul, he says, doesn’t get talked about much, then he instantly starts talking about what you told him last month about the continental divide.  Then, teenager-like, he can’t think of how to end.  “Yeah, well, so, uh, inthenameofJesusChristamen”

You get up.  To your surprise, what you feel to say is “I have a testimony of the Saints.”  And you discover that you do.

Testimony meeting.  You never know what you will get.

I decided to borrow All Saints’ Day this Sunday.

We are going to spend some time remembering our Saints who weren’t pioneers, looking at the testimony of some post-Pioneer prophets and apostles, and, who knows, maybe having some jello and funeral potatoes.

When you have a teenage son you spend time trying to boil down your inchoate thoughts and high flown thoughts about manhood into simply pithy counsel for the young man.

One of those is on the question of excuses.  His excuses have been bugging me, even when plausibly justified, and what I eventually told him was that men were about success or failure.  Excuses are for children.  There is no curve and no grade.  Only the deed and the outcome.

So I’m musing a bit about it.  There are three ways to never have to offer excuses.  The first way is to never screw up.  Unrelenting perfection, all variables accounted for.  This is probably beyond any mortal.

The second is to screw everything up so comprehensively that minor failures along the way don’t matter.

The third is to dare so greatly and succeed so fully that minor failures along the way don’t matter.  So greatly and so fully that all former failures are revealed to have been minor.

It occurred to me that God has chosen the third.

There is no good answer to the problem of evil in this life because it hasn’t been answered yet.  It will be.

Jeremiah preached doom and was hated for it.  Reputedly eventually stoned to death *after* his prophecies had all come true.  Cassandra had nothing on Jeremiah.

But nowadays preachers of gloom do pretty well by themselves.  So much so that its hard to tell who is sincere and who is a grift.

Meanwhile in the middle of dozens of undeniable social and political ills, some of which have serious catastrophic potential, church leaders are markedly NOT preaching gloom.  We seem to be in a reverse Jeremiah situation.

So what gives?

(more…)

I went on a rabbit hole on the word ‘stocks’ in the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 3.

And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.

In context, its disparaging idols by referring to them as utilitarian everyday objects and I had a vague recollection that in older English a stock could be an upright wooden object, like a post but more substantial–our only survival of which would be

I was on my phone, nothing serious.  It turns out that other translations use the words tree, wood, or stocks, so not extremely helpful.

But while I was noodling around, I saw a translation of Jeremiah that put it in poetic lay out, something like this

In the lightness

of her whoredom she defiled

the land,

and committed adultery

with stones

and with stocks.

It was wonderful.  But I can’t find it this morning.  Anyone know of anything like that?  It might have been a layout of the NIV but I am not sure.

I was reading Elder Gong’s talk from conference.  He mentioned the importance of being consistent in good habits and it put me in mind of something that a firearms instructor told me a couple of days ago.

He said that consistency is the most important thing.  If someone is consistent but inaccurate he can easily figure out the problem and fix it.  But if someone sometimes accurate, sometimes notm all over the map, it’s almost impossible to know what to do to help them.

The metaphor here is that if we are being consistent in our righteousness, consistent in good habits, but we’re still not getting the promised blessings it’s probably not going to be too hard to identify that spiritual component we’re missing, be it prayers or service or stillness; but if you’re constantly beginning and dropping habits, beginning and dropping sins, you’re a mess and who knows why, you’re just a mess.

But for all that the good habit it’s most important to be consistent at is repentance.

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.