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Agreed. And I do indeed pray over my food now, every time, even junk food. But you won't hear me asking God to make my donut nourishing. Talk about hypocrisy, or something. And if anything, I'm now more grateful for all the food I eat, and more mindful of how nourishing it, in and of itself, may be. (Those were questions I was asking myself, not asking the group - though I appreciate feedback on that, too, since I've resolved to always be open to changes that improve my spiritual experience.)

I want to see if more people have thoughts before I share my own, but I'll share someone else's - one of the speakers in our Stake Conference. It goes back to verse 4, where Christ says to his mother: "Woman, what wilt thou have me to do for thee? that will I do". It seems clear we're missing something between verses 4 and 5 because she doesn't answer him. An example of the speaker's take away can be seen in Ether with the story of the brother of Jared: When asking the Lord for something, be specific. Don't just say, "please solve all my problems" (or even "this one problem"). You're less likely to get that. And you'd be lucky if you got what the brother of Jared got: "You can't have these options, so, other than those, what would you like me to do?" It seems like a good lesson to me. It's pretty easy to ask the Lord to "help us" or "help [some person]" and be awfully vague about it. "Bless so-and-so with what she needs to get through this trial" or some other vague wording, because, ya know, what do we know about what she needs to get through this trial? I mean, really. But I think that was the point of the talk and one take-away from this lesson - listen, observe, do hard thinking, test out your theories, and then go to the Lord and ask for something specific, not, "please light my barges". (And no, I haven't forgotten that the Lord solved the other problems more easily. But clearly, we shouldn't always just hand off our problems and say, "please fix this for me, cuz I dunno how".)

Thread-jacking my own thread here, but... This is one of the many things that I really re-evaluated a couple years back. "Blessing the food" (and prayer in general) was way too consistent / repetitive and irrational. It was also something that my mind associated with gatherings (multiple people). Living alone for most of my life, it was hard to develop a habit of praying over meals. It felt just plain weird. So I started to really, seriously think about why we pray over food at every meal? Should we? How should we? In case it's not obvious, this phrase has been dropped from my prayers and if I'm ever asked to pray over food at a Church gathering, folk might be shocked by what they hear.

Part of me wants to agree with you. There's more than enough scriptural evidence that this phenomenon repeats. The children of Israel, under Moses, literally said, "God's too scary for us. You go talk to him and tell us what he said." And in my BofM study a few days ago, Nephi said this: There's no reason to think we are immune. But a lot of the changes I have seen in recent years have actually helped me. Perhaps what seems to you as the Lord dumbing things down is actually the nudging that will help us to grow through personal revelation rather than relying on the collective revelation (received via the Prophet and shared with the church - not that I think we're lacking in that). Perhaps this is us getting the opportunity to step up. I'm reminded of the Lord explaining why he taught in parables. I think of the wheat and the tares. Perhaps this is a case of allowing the "tender wheat" to survive long enough to grow strong. Perhaps it will strengthen the more mature wheat*. Perhaps it will be enough to convert a few tares to wheat... * I think of the most recent things: Hear Him, emphasis on strengthening your ability to receive personal direction from the Holy Ghost, Come Follow Me - home-centered, Church-supported. Etc. Not going to Church during COVID-19 helped me. My efforts to hear Him and learn directly from the Holy Ghost are helping me. The lack of more lesson material, thereby forcing me to choose between going without or seeking more personal learning, is helping me. I expect there are those who are content to surf along, not making any greater effort. I suppose there are those who will still be offended even if they never hear the specific words which offend them. I dunno. I guess it seems to me like Christ's followers are no worse off today (as far as availability of the truth) than they were when I was a child, even though things are very, very different today... Can it be both? I suppose it can be. Things held back generally, and yet incredible opportunities extended through the Spirit personally? I suppose it's always been that way though. (This is my non-answer. )

Last week we read John 2:1-11 (below, with JST on v4, for convenience). I wonder if anyone has thoughts about this event, things it teaches, etc. I have my own thoughts, and something new learned in Stake Conference last weekend, but would like to hear from others (Sunday School isn't long or frequent enough, so I thought I'd try here). One thing I've been trying to do this year in my scripture study is to abstract out lessons in two basic areas: 1. What does this tell me about the character and behavior of God / Christ? 2. What does this teach me to think / feel / say / do? ...and I write such things in my journal - which greatly enhances my study. It often also expands my understanding of things I already knew, deepening faith or conversion in the process, or just widening application.

It wasn't likely a fountain pen as we know it (pen with ink contained in the pen). Those weren't really made until the 1850s and it would have taken a while for them to become commonly used. It's far more likely that it was either a quill (possibly with a steel nib) or the old style fountain pen which we now call a dip or calligraphy pen. Either way, it would have involved dipping the nib into a bottle of ink (aka ink well). (From the site, that was written in 1854, so it could have been an early fountain pen, but it seems less likely than a dip pen.)

I was not suggesting you or @Vort be banned.

Just for fun, I read this SL Tribune article you linked. That article linked to this article about a 1993 case involving the same man. The second article, and the KUTV.com article you linked include this statement (or one virtually identical), a ways under the video in the KUTV article: It has taken me more time to figure out how to politely call you and @Vort jerks than to find, copy, paste, and properly cite the article(s). Of course, perhaps you use a phone for your interwebbing and are hindered by the absence of a nice big screen and keyboard... The articles also say this: IMO, your conclusion (the bit I quoted at the start of my reply) assumes facts not in evidence. Perhaps @Just_A_Guy can come and bang a gavel, or at least a ban hammer. I'm going to go now to the fountain pen forums and renew my faith in Jesus Christ, because it doesn't seem likely to happen here.

Welcome, @Striving to be like Him! I'm glad you've joined us and hope you can find peace and joy on your journey.

This is the part I disagree with, completely. Fine, OK, you want to have a fictional discussion, whatever. But if you want to discuss the realities of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then the argument does not hold, at all.

You can find that in the D & C.

I'm OK with said paradigm: ...scriptures talk about the elements obeying God, not being manipulated by Him. Sure, maybe that's just a linguistic or cultural thing, but I tend to think otherwise. I rather like the idea of dirt having some element of intelligence and agency - though whether every particle of dirt or every electron is its own entity, I don't venture to guess. And I can't quite say why I like it beyond it being consistent with (a literal interpretation of) scripture and my own tendency to talk to inanimate objects... Back to A&A's proposal, I think the sequence is right - God has and offers (we did not come looking, God came to us). IMO, the Joseph Smith quote I cited and Abraham 3 support that conclusion. But I don't see it as God asking for anything from us, but doing as He does now: "Here is the covenant, you can accept it or reject it." I can imagine there are intelligences who rejected it, just as there were spirits who rejected it (assuming intelligences have will or agency, which is a guess since we really don't have a clear understanding of what is meant by intelligences as a pre-spirit entity or substance or resource or energy or whatever).

Hmm. I'm waiting to learn what power these folk have that they can offer to God and potentially later take away from Him. The answer to that determines whether the concept removes God's power or just gives people the ability to remove themselves from God's rule. A&A's wording makes it seem as if he imagines them having some power God doesn't have - and I'm sure you've already followed that into the Lectures on Faith conclusion - if He's lacking one power, how do we trust in him completely?

I'm so happy for you, Ashley! Congratulations.

I'm curious what you find attractive about it. When I start pulling it apart to think about what it would suggest, about the consequences of such a reality, God pretty much ceases to be God.

What power do you imagine they had to give? If you mean "we will choose to obey you as our God, unless..." - your wording doesn't convey that well. Otherwise, what power? Either way, I think Joseph Smith disagrees with you: If God (resurrected, exalted) is more advanced than mortal, and mortal is more advanced than spirit, and spirit is more advanced than intelligence, then your logic escapes me. It would be more like Joseph Smith describes, the more advanced offering a path to the less advanced.

You can download it from the Church's media library. Here's the page for this video.

You can go on the website and work through the password reminder system. I think it now just emails you, like most sites.

The login piece is a separate service that the church apps and website use, as far as I can tell. So it could be that the login service is having issues, or that the app's interface to the login service is having issues. It could also be a DNS or similar problem local to your area. Checking now.... Well, Windows Gospel Library (GL), the Church website, and Android GL & Tools all work and allow me to log in and sync. So, I'd guess either you're not using Windows or Android, or that it's a local DNS or similar networking issue. Sorry, can't say more, but am willing to test more, if there's something specific you'd like me to test.

I have attempted to access this thing, but apparently my hours are everyone else's hours. Next time you're on, see if it knows the true name of Quintus, the Fifth Wizard - because until I know his true name, I can't write the scene where he links to his sentient wizard's staff and learns her name. (I know her name, but not his true name.) (If you're so inclined. Thanks.) Looking forward to hearing whether pizza ice cream is any good. (More looking forward to having pizza to end my fast later...)

This does not surprise me. I'm the reverse - Codex Alera is up my alley, Dresden Files, not so much. Either way, the guy's a good writer.

No time to explain further - gotta get ready for church - and not sure I really can, but I think faith is much more foundational (basic, simple) and much more profound, extending far beyond the idea of "belief-driven action" (while that the same time, being exactly and only that). Without faith, none of us would or could do a single thing. With it, we can do far greater than most of us, myself included, do.

I think I'm more impressed by the imagination of the questions than by the computer-generated answers, fun as they were. This brings two thoughts to mind (demonstrating how a good story can start with the craziest ideas): 1. Sorry, but I wasn't there for the whole story, so I have to, um, butcher it: Jim Butcher was once challenged to write a story combining Pokémon and the Roman legions. The Codex Alera series was what he did with that idea. (This is the only Jim Butcher series I've read, and I like it.) 2. I started doing (fountain pen) ink reviews in 2020. When researching to figure out my "format", I noticed other ink reviewers would commonly use "The quick brown fox..." This seemed absurd to me. The point of that pangram was to teach typing, by giving you all the letters of the alphabet. You don't need a pangram to test a pen or ink. So why? Well, I decided to have fun with this, by mixing up pangrams. To mix them up, I needed more pangrams, and among them I found: "The five boxing wizards jump quickly." and "Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow." This led us to the character of Quintus, the Fifth Wizard, and later Makhabesh (a cat-sized sphinx trapped in a sphinx of black quartz (the size of the one in Egypt)). And I stopped doing (mixed up) pangrams, and started telling a story. Eventually, I added Essri, a smol snek with a lisp. (ESSRI is short for Ecclesiastical Stationery Supply Registrars Ink - an ink I reviewed and source of the idea to have a character named Essri.) (Your fluffy snake thus triggered thoughts of my own snek - who, though not fluffy, is cute.) ETA: If anyone decides to read, it would be useful, eventually, to know who Marcel Bich and László Bíró are (the Wikipedia intro text is sufficient knowledge).

Sorry for your suffering, Crimson. May the Lord help you endure.

Certainly, if one doesn't know there is an enemy, or one hasn't been taught how to fight against that enemy, then one is more vulnerable. That makes perfect sense to me. It also makes sense to me that choosing, e.g. against the Light of Christ, something you know is less / worse / not good, will increase your risk, while choosing better will decrease it (not the risk of attack - quite the opposite - but your risk of being overcome). I've always thought this bit in Moses 1:20 was revealing (emphasis mine): I believe some of Satan's power comes when we fear him - it suggests, in a sense, having faith in his ability to harm us - after all, if we didn't believe it, why would we fear? If we can overcome that fear - e.g. by turning to God, remembering His power - then Satan loses his power over us. Sounds simplistic, but I believe there's something in there, even if I can't express it well.