New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year to all! It's a great time to remember that all we have is the present. So let's focus on a few things we should be doing to make the most of life.

1. Develop and show more empathy.
Nothing will make human existence better faster than trying to sincerely understand what others are going through. Empathy pacifies and unifies. We're all safer and happier with empathy.

2. Show more gratitude.
Gratitude requires a dose of humility. You have to slough off the notion that you earned and deserve everything you have and instead recognize the roll others have played and play in your life. Life gets better with gratitude.

3. Keep your nose out for bullshit.
A sucker is born every minute. Bullshitters are born every few seconds. We're all prone to make shit up and pass it off on others, but we can curb that tendency. Question others and question yourself. What you've been told is gospel truth very well may not be. What you tell yourself is true might very well be false. Keep an eye on the rhetoric people use to convince you one way or another. Take the time to engage with serious research. Some rational skepticism can go a long way in keeping the bullshit away.

4. Have some fun.
Life is short. Moments are fleeting. Have a laugh.

Temple prep - New Era "Feeling the Spirit more Abundantly"

Ashley Tuft, 20, Texas, USA

Before I went through the temple, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Because no one tells you. It's secret. I read the booklet Preparing to Enter the Holy Temple and took a temple preparation class. Neither of which told you jack shit because the temple is too secret. That helped me be more prepared for receiving my own endowment. I can't imagine how. It certainly doesn't tell you what to expect. When I went to the temple for the first time, I was not nervous like I thought I would be, because I felt peace. I had the opposite experience. I went in confident and became increasingly nervous and humiliated as the charade of madness progressed. The temple workers were all very friendly and made sure I knew where to go the whole time I was at the temple. Friendly, yes, but they only tell you what you have to do as you have to do it.

During the endowment, I made covenants with my Father in Heaven and in return was promised many beautiful blessings and gifts of knowledge. Beautifully vague promises (it makes it easier for you to "discover" them later on). Like other ordinances, including baptism, the endowment ordinance is very symbolic. Mormon symbolism is the most profound. Before I went through the endowment session, a temple worker told me that I may have many questions by the end of the session. Did you? What were they? Because there are so many symbols, it’s impossible to understand everything at once. That’s why I think it’s so important to return to the temple as often as possible. Polly want a cracker? Did anyone explain the symbolism during the subsequent visits? Did you have a nice detailed talk about Freemasonry? No.

Since I’ve been to the temple, I’ve felt the Spirit more abundantly in my life. Feelings are awesome! I’ve felt the words that I heard in the temple sink into my heart, and I know that if I do all that I covenanted with my Heavenly Father to do, then I will be blessed. Aren't they the same things you promised at baptism? This ordinance has helped me understand how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love each individual person, because we are taught in the temple how to be happy. What? We are? You mean by learning how to banish Satan and await "further light and knowledge from Father"? Well, y'know, if it make you happy...

God and our moral sense

If God exists and has the power to intervene in nature, and on occasion apparently uses that power, they [critics of religion] ask, why does God fail to intervene in so many other cases of horrific injustice, cruelty, and suffering? Why, for example, did God allow Agatha to be tortured, abused, and mutilated before miraculously healing her through a vision of St Peter? Why would god allow some to be killed by volcanic eruptions and plagues, while bestowing special protection on the inhabitants of Catania? Why, in any case, does God need to use the powers of an object such as St Agatha's veil to achieve this protection, rather than acting directly to prevent the eruption or the disease in the first place? More generally, why is one person miraculously cured while another of equal faith and virtue suffers and dies? We might say that God moves in a mysterious way - which certainly seems to have been the case if we are to believe the many religious tales of wonders and miracles through the ages - but is that a good enough response? If God created us and our moral sense, then why do God's own ways of acting in the world seem to us not to meet our own standards of what is just and good?

Thomas Dixon Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, pg. 56.

Mormon vocabulary

Here's a wonderful update to a wonderfully light-hearted post over at By Common Consent illustrating the difficulties of navigating the Mormon world.

Heavenly fatherliness #38 - With the times

According to popular wisdom, a good father does not try to maintain some gold standard of his own time - he allows his children to be citizens of their day and age.

Out of date parents and grandparents are an extremely common comic trope. Technology's a bitch to keep up with. Pop culture is impossible. Political correctness is a huge headache. There's a lot to keep up on.

Asking anyone to stay completely up to date is, I think, a very tall order. We spend our whole lives trying to figure life out and by the time we hit a certain age or place in life we like to think we have a certain understanding. We know what we like and what we don't like. We find good things, work hard and made sacrifices to get them. We become interested in preserving what we have instead of deciding what we want. We go through a lot of shit and learn a lot of life lessons. We see people get hurt, hurt a few ourselves, and develop an idea or two about how to be nice. We might even feel clear on what's right and wrong. How are we supposed to give that up? How do we stay loose and adaptable?

Thankfully Heavenly Father's standard of being is an eternal standard. We just don't fully understand those standards, that's why he defines earthly, cultural standards according to the immediate needs of his children - so we can understand them. Kind of. He's a little hard to figure out, as the number of doubts expressed on this blog might indicate.

What we understand to be godly changes constantly. Much of what is considered to be godly is by today's standards horribly unethical. I doubt the whole "eternal standard" argument is a good approach any more. How do we arrive at ethical behavior through observance of  God's standards when they're so clearly man-made?

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Heavenly fatherliness #15 - Fighting in front of family

According to popular wisdom, a good father does not fight with his wife in front of their children.

Heavenly Father doesn't do anything with his Wife in front of his children, so I guess he gets a point on this one. Then again, we don't know anything about Heavenly Mother. God keeps her from us. 

But when it comes to family fights, we do know that God has a very strained relationship with most of his children and fights with them daily. Maybe we should give our Father in Heaven a half point instead of a full one when it comes to domestic aggression.

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.