Vort

Not that I disagree—because I think I don't—but paying half of your income each year as taxes in a modern, rich western society is a very great deal different from having soldiers show up at your door, swords in hand, to require you to give half of everything you own. Not just what you've produced in the last year, but all you have. I think the two probably aren't really comparable.

Here's one I drew when our youngest was five and was upset that he didn't get to carry the flowers to the bedroom to give Mama her Mother's Day breakfast in bed. He curled up into a ball and pouted, and one of his older brothers found a lot of humor in the situation. The baby is at least an inch taller than that older brother now, so I guess that's his revenge.

Here's another she did about the same time, drawn-to-order especially for her Daddy.

Here's a comic that my then-16-year-old daughter made to order for me. She was and remains a very talented, very funny girl.

When my mother was a girl, she thought that the hymn was saying yoo-hoo unto Jesus. "Yoo-hoo, Jesus!" She thought it a bit informal, but when you're a child, you just accept things as they are, or at least as you perceive them to be. EDIT: For the benefit of @Jamie123, @prisonchaplain, and other friends who may not be familiar with LDS hymns: The "LDS version" (if I can call it that) of "How Firm a Foundation" used to have the first verse as follows: How firm a foundation, ye Saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in his excellent word! What more can he say than to you he hath said— You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled? This was actually compounded by how it's sung; the "You who unto Jesus" part is repeated three times in the chorus before the final four words are sung. Since the release of the 1985 hymnal, this final line has been updated to "...Who unto the Savior for refuge have fled?" I'm sure it's exactly for the above reason, though I never actually thought about "Yoo-hoo! Jesus!", so I never understood why they changed it until my mother told us what she had thought. Then it all became clear.

Martha Beck was such a liar that her own siblings disclaimed her. My understanding is that they unitedly discredited her allegations of sexual abuse (and there's not much the Nibley siblings are united on). The woman is shameless. Have no fear, she will one day be held to account for her words. Until then, we bear such people, defending ourselves as necessary and working to find the grace and charity to forgive and pray that they return to the fold.

Oh, say, can you see it?

For our anniversary maybe eleven years ago, my wife took us to a little town on the Olympic Peninsula called Sequim (I'll bet you $10 you don't pronounce that right—no cheating!) to spend the night in an old railway car converted into a hotel room. As part of our agreement, we left cell phones and laptops at home. Walking to the train car, we passed a small pond with ducks floating on it, and my wife casually said, "I wonder where ducks sleep at night?" I spent the rest of our anniversary trip wondering where ducks slept. When we got home, the first thing I did was go to the computer and Google "Where do ducks sleep?" Here's a stickman comic I made for the occasion (after we got back, of course) (and I gave the correct pronunciation for non-local family and friends):

Yeah, booing women is just mean. Boos and booze. That's a good one. Now added to my list.

I've never heard that before, but I can see it.

FWIW, every book is a treasure. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, in its own way, Ingall Wilder's writing is as compelling, engaging, and thoughtful as Austen. I would recommend the entire series to you, despite its label as "juvenile literature" (probably "young adult" is what they call it now). In my opinion, it's as classic for American literature as anything, including Clemens or Melville (though obviously aiming at a different target demographic and a different kind of reading experience). I may be biased by my enjoyment of the family aspect of her writing, how much she obviously loves and cares about those closest to her.

nough-tay!

When you are going through hell, keep going. Okay, I can buy that.

Sure, I could believe that. But it's not obvious to me that it must be that way. I've never considered that our present book of Mosiah might actually have started before the first part that we have. But if Joseph translated the entire book of Lehi and just the beginning of the book of Mosiah before handing over the 116 pages to Martin Harris, I could believe that when he was forgiven of God and resumed his prophetic duties, he picked back up where he left off, ostensibly just into the book of Mosiah, and continued from there. The fact that the book of Mosiah begins in media res might indicate that it was so, that there was a part of the book of Mosiah that came before, so that Mormon was following his narrative and that's why Mosiah 1 starts as it does. On the other hand, I've always assumed that Mosiah wrote his Words of Mormon abridger's note immediately before he started abridging Mosiah's record, and that's why Mosiah 1 reads as it does: It just follows the end verses of the Words of Mormon, in writing sequence as well as in the Book of Mormon that we have. An even stronger reason (IMO) to suppose that there was no preceding "lost" chapters to Mosiah is that Mosiah is introduced in the second verse of the book of Mosiah, and I would think it strange if there were two or three chapters in a book named after Mosiah before his existence is even mentioned. But then, I have always assumed that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon in the same sequence we have it today, less the initial Book of Lehi. Some scholars suggest (or insist) that this is wrong. I don't know; I'm certainly no scholar on the subject. But I do prefer Occam's Razor, or at least my implementation of it, to help decide such matters, and Occam's Razor seems to suggest that our present order of the Book of Mormon most likely reflects the order of translation. I'm guessing there might be some linguistic clues that suggest something of the sort. I don't know what clues those would be.

Hi, Connie! You are remembered fondly here. Hope you come back some time. Good luck, in any case.

Funny you should make this somewhat random point. I agree; that is my understanding, as well. I suppose it doesn't really matter one way or the other, but it does sound like Mormon searched out the small plates and then physically inserted them in his growing abridgement. If so, that suggests that Nephi established a standard plate size that all plates thereafter were made to fit. Which would make sense.

Ah. The 1984 Theory of War. Personally, I disbelieve it. War is ruinous. It literally destroys everything and builds nothing—nothing of value, at least. The US Civil War put us into permanent bondage. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/

I think at some point it very much does. Not sure I can identify what point that is, though. My attitude is that if some aspect of the gospel is carefully explained to me in scripture and other sacred sources, it must be because that's something very important that I need to pay attention to. It must be something relevant for my understanding of God and ability to progress. Since the scriptures go to great pains (at times, not always) to distinguish between the Father and the Son, and since e.g. we are particularly instructed not to pray to Jesus Christ unless he is literally standing before us in the flesh, but rather always to the Father in the name of Christ, I assume that such identification is deeply important at some level and vital to my understanding of the divine. Now, whether it is equally vital that a little child or new investigator (I believe the missionaries today call them "friends") be aware of this important distinction is less obvious to me. I suspect that knowing that God is in his heaven and that we can talk with him is probably enough to start building your foundation, even if you're not completely clear on who is who.

Mary Ingalls in real life never married, though she did have a suitor who proposed to her. I think that we do not spend much time pondering how difficult life was for even our recent ancestors. We live with a level of privilege and comfort that I doubt any preceding generation could even have imagined, much less believed. Here is a photograph of Mary Ingalls, certainly a beautiful young woman. Here is the equally beautiful Laura, everyone's favorite 19th-century American frontier girl. Here is Carrie, the third daughter and baby in the TV series. Here is Grace, the youngest and least healthy of the sisters (and the first to die). Certainly a lovely family of beautiful daughters. I assume their brother Freddy was never photographed. And finally, here is a colorized photograph of Charles and Caroline (Pa and Ma) Ingalls. One can see why the family was especially proud of Pa's beard. Well, okay, not finally. Let's do one more, a family portrait with Pa, Ma, and all four daughters.

Maybe. It's something my wife told me. Maybe she remembered it from the books and I didn't. That's entirely possible. It may also be that she picked that tidbit up from another source somewhere along the way. The TV series started when I was eleven, a year or two after my fourth-grade teacher read the books to us. I didn't really watch the show very much. I did on occasion, and it was fine, but even as a child, I liked the books better.

Based on the original Provo/Ogden designs. I approve.

I just learned something from my wife a week or two ago that I had never known. Laura called her husband "Manly" because she had misheard his friends. His name was Almanzo, and his friends called him "Manzo", which Laura misheard as "Manly". She became aware of her error, but at that point she decided to just keep calling him Manly. I find it tragic that Laura and Almanzo had only one child to survive to adulthood, and that that daughter suffered a miscarriage and was subsequently unable to bear children. I think that, of Ma and Pa Ingalls' daughters, Laura's child was the only surviving grandchild. They lost their son Freddy when he was a baby. Mary, who of course was blind, never married or had children. None of the daughters produced an ongoing line, so Ma and Pa Ingalls' line ended with their granddaughter. Seems a terrible thing.

This is on everyone's list of favorite parables. Normally called "the prodigal son", the parable actually has little to do with the younger son's prodigality (that is, his spendthriftiness, or willingness to spend all his money). It's the third of three parables—more accurately, it is the third of three stories in the Savior's parable about the importance of retrieving that which is lost—and is the most moving. The strange part is that, while each story focuses on the value of the lost thing, whether sheep, coin, or son, the lost son story seems to put focus not on the son who was lost and then found, but on the faithful son. You could almost...allllllmost, but not quite...believe that the "lost" son was the one who stayed, and was lost in his own jealousy and bitterness. I don't know, maybe that's a subtext. What I find both curious and very comforting is the tenor of the father's words, the care and love with which he treated his elder son, and the mild way he responded to his embittered son's deprecations and accusations. The older son was out of line. We all recognize that. Yet he is portrayed almost sympathetically. Who has ever read the account and not felt the righteous indignation of the son? Who hasn't at least secretly agreed with the son to some degree? Who hasn't felt the father's love and concern for his otherwise faithful son? The whole situation is absolutely understandable to every human being. We sympathize with the older son, and even if we don't agree with him (which we shouldn't), we feel sympathy for him. Malachi's words come, almost unbidden, to mind: "Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered. Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name." The Lord remembers, much better even than we ourselves remember. Known to God are all our works, and not just our wickedness, but our strivings for something better. We are not justified in envying God's mercy to our brethren, but we are understood. We must do better. We need to do better. But we are not condemned for our weaknesses. Not yet. God understands. When appropriate, God weeps for us. God does not now condemn us; rather, he calls to us and asks us to join him. Only if we resist his love and turn our backs on him are we truly lost. I suppose that Jesus had in mind to offer a parable of hope, not only to the foolish prodigals wasting their strength with harlots, but also to those who try to be faithful and don't understand why there is no fatted calf slain for them and their friends who stayed home to keep the animals fed and the fires burning.

When you "break" a horse, the animal becomes docile and useful. A broken horse will carry loads, including you, pull what you need pulled, and in general obey your will. An unbroken horse will be pretty much useless to you. I believe this is the sense in which our hearts need to be broken.

It appears to me that you're utterly missing the point. It's not a matter of giving Christ sufficient praise, as if his glory depends somehow on my reverencing him enough. I will not be saved unless Christ saves me. I cannot be saved without knowing and accepting Christ's salvation. So yes, it matters that we "give credit specifically to someone named Jesus Christ."