The Warning

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Shannon looked up from the rock she was trying to pry loose from the hard-packed ground.

“Why not?”

Laurie took a moment to phrase her response. “Cause you’ll make a big hole and someone could trip.”

Shannon smiled.

“Perfect.” She went back to her digging.

The rock was approximately three feet across in all directions, and two feet deep. It was a relatively smooth one, and up until Shannon had started digging it had lain flat in the ground, its top parallel to the ground. It had always been one of Laurie’s favorites to hop from. She would try to jump from it to the next nearest rock without letting even a smidgen of earth touch her feet. It was the largest visible rock in the yard.

“Why start with that one, Shannon?” Laurie whined. Really, she would miss it.

“Don’t you ever wonder what’s under it?”

“No!” Shannon had unearthed more than half of the rock by now and Laurie was starting to feel a little hysterical.

“Shannon, wait just a sec, okay. Please? Please?”

Shannon paused once more and Laurie felt a small surge of hope. Maybe should could talk her out of it after all.

“Shannie, it’s just that I really like that rock, you know. And it’s so close to the house; I mean, couldn’t you pick one out by the fence where no one would see it. It’s going to be so ugly!” Shannon stood and placed her dirty hands on Laurie’s shoulders.

“Laurie, it’s… just… one…. rock.” She said the words very slowly, like she was talking to a person that wasn't completely "there." “Once I’m done, you can put it back for all I care.” She bent down and quickly finished the job. With Laurie watching unhappily, Shannon wedged her fingers under the rock, braced herself, and hefted it out of the ground. She rocked it back and forth a couple of times, her arms taut from its weight, and, finally, hurled it as far across the yard as she could. She turned to look back at Laurie who seemed on the verge of tears and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“It’s okay. It’s all over.” She guided Laurie back into the house and the two spent the next few hours playing games. Laurie could almost forget it ever happened.

_____

A week after Shannon unearthed that first rock, she went back and took a closer look at the hole she had created. She found, much to her surprise, that there were another two rocks whose edges met in the exact center of the hole. She, of course, couldn’t resist the challenge of digging them up too.

______

Three years later, what had started as a spur-of-the-moment whim, had turned into an obsession for Shannon. The ground around the house was nothing but a series of deeper and deeper holes, for she found, as soon as she dug up one rock, many more were exposed beneath the surface of the old one. The rocks were often bigger and bigger as well. At one point, the holes and rocks were getting so big that she had to buy heavy machinery to do most of the work. In fact, at that point, she found that she was not alone in her fascination with rock digging; she found an entire like-minded crew of people to help her.

Shannon and her team felt a real sense of purpose through their endeavors. The thrill of going deeper and deeper was intoxicating and Shannon doubted she’d ever stop. Sometimes they found real little treasures as they dug. Beautiful rocks. Skeletons of many small creatures. At one point, they even started to find seashells. It was all so worth it.

Of course, Shannon did have to get rid of the house at one point, about five years after that first day. There was just so much ground under it. And Laurie was long gone before that happened. Every once in a while she missed Laurie with an intensity she didn’t understand. But Laurie had been completely incapable of understanding what she was doing. In the early days, Shannon had tried explaining what she was doing many times, but Laurie had just never been able to grasp it.

“Look at all the things we’re finding!” she had shouted the day Laurie had moved out.

“Yes, but that’s not why you’re digging, is it Shannon.” Laurie had replied sadly, and shook her head as she walked away.

“Well at least I had the ambition to do something,” Shannon had yelled after Laurie’s retreating back. “All you ever wanted to do was sit around and look at the dumb scenery! You’re so ignorant!” She got postcards from Laurie from then on, and they were always predictably boring.

All those years later, however, she would still hear Laurie’s voice in her head every once in a while.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Well, you’re not me, Shannon would answer the memory, so you’ve gotta do what you do, and I’ve gotta do what I do. And it was true.

A funny video that reminds me of some of our recent comments...

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

technology and taking things for granted...

I'm going to put a link to a kind of funny, somewhat negative rant that aired recently. It makes me cringe but also makes me laugh, because I've felt the way he does sometimes, about people and their entitlement in this current world of marvels and technology. I won't embed it here, though... I don't think it's cool enough to deserve placement on this blog. Link, and warning: there is one bleeped out word and a reference to "taking a dump" and he uses the Lord's name in vain... so maybe don't watch it at all, I don't know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Anyway, it was refreshing to me to see that someone in pop culture feels the way that I do. I'm not completely off base, wacky, Mormon girl who's just angsty about pop culture... it really is a problem that even worldly people notice. If you'd rather not veiw it, the basic upshot of this clip is... we live in this world of amazing technology and the potential for so much good, and what does this generation use it for?

And what have we come to expect, what is our entitlement like?

I was thinking about the previous question. We have so many amazing things in this world, so many technologies that make our lives much easier, save time, make our taskload much smaller. In addition to the phenomenons mentioned in the video, I'm thinking of much more revolutionary things like supermarkets and refrigeration and trucking (you don't have to grow your own food anymore—huge load lightener) telecommunications (including the internet), transportation (he mentioned this, but even trains were huge. When Salt Lake City got the railroad through, that completely changed the city.)

Sometimes these things bring bad along with the good. What do all of you think these technologies are for?

I've been looking for a long time to find a quote I heard once. I think it was by Brigham Young, and the basic point of the quote had to with these labor and time-saving technologies. He inferred that it was to give us more time for temple work, and to find our ancestors and perform their ordinances.


This clip is certainly not an example of godly use of technology itself... the man is entertaining. But I thought it was an apt illustration of how we take what we have for granted. Perhaps this is what leads to improper use of it, and the ability for Satan to turn these things to his purposes?

Thoughts, anyone?

The Door to There

The first time Randy stepped through the door to the other world it looked just like this world. Except there were no people there. Randy’s house was just the same, there was the same food in the refrigerator, the phone worked, but no one to call. Randy spent the day there, a very nice quiet day.

Later in the week Randy had a day off, so he went through the door for a second time. The other world looked the same as this one, and there were no people. Except the morning was much nicer and sunny, and the slightest breeze stirred the leaves. Randy spent a while in the garden, reading, dozing. Then he walked to town, visited the shops, but there were no clerks to pay. No one to steal from.

Randy went often now through the door to the other world. All of the objects there were just like they had been in this world at the time he left it, so he never wanted for anything. There were no people, so he had absolute tranquility, complete privacy. He went everywhere, went into houses, drove cars, swam and played and hiked and napped, and found himself enjoying that world very much--much more than he enjoyed this world.
. . . .

When Randy stepped through the door for the one hundredth time, the other world still looked like this one but something was happening. Stark clouds raced across the sky and a brisk wind blew the trees all about. A storm was brewing. It was the first storm he'd ever seen there, in fact, the first bad weather of any kind. Randy found it unsettling and was about to return home, when he heard music, piano music. It was something beautiful and morose. Was it Kavovsky’s Prelude in C Flat Minor? Though Randy was uneasy, he decided that he must follow the sound, reach its source. If he was not really alone in this world, he certainly needed to know it.

The wind blew Randy's hair and shirttails around violently as he made his way down Sixth Street to an old house where the music played. The clouds by now were much darker. Hello? Randy called into the house. Inside he could see but little, and the music itself was thick and dark. Randy had to move slowly and deliberately as he made his way through the halls of the mansion--to the music's source. And there, finally, he saw: the music was coming through an open door, but he recognized that kind of door. It was a door that led to yet another world.

Randy stepped through the door into the other world but it did not look like this world, because, as it turns out, it was no world at all, for there was nothing there, nothing to stand on, nothing to hold onto, no way to turn around, no way to step back to the door, nothing there, nothing but the music, and, no, it was not Kavovsky's Prelude in C Flat Minor.
. . .

Randy was not dreaming. He was awake. This is his world. Randy had always imagined it just as he pleased. But today something he himself had not planned had entered into it. How could this happen? Was it a Dream that came into the daydream through that other door? Did it come in much earlier than that stormy day? Was it there hiding, watching, when he first walked to town, when he first sat out in the garden, when he first checked his telephone? When, really, did Randy leave off making his world, and when did the Dream begin making Randy? What was the flaw in his creating that it should all end like this? How could Randy have kept himself safe?
. . .

Randy stepped through the door, and it looked just like his favorite place, and the waves were breaking, the sun was glistening over the ocean, and the others were splashing and calling to him. Come on Randy! The water's not cold!

Communicating with Christ

Is it OK to talk/pray to Christ? I know that we pray to God in the name of Christ and that we can thank God for our Savior and His Atonement, but is there anywhere in the scriptures/modern revelation that tells us we shouldn't talk to Christ?

In Alma 36:16-19 it talks about Alma's experience when he "cried out" to Christ. Alma is telling his son Helaman about his experiences while he was "passed out" for three days.

He says, "And now, for three days and for three nights was I racked, even with the pains of a damned soul. And it came to pass as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.

Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death. And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more."

Alma cried unto Christ within his heart. Alma talked to Christ. And I bet that Alma continued to have some form of communication with Christ for the rest of his life. I'm sure that he wanted to thank Christ for taking his sins away.

My main point is that I'm interested to know what everyone thinks about open communication with Christ. I believe it's a life-long goal to want to have a stronger personal relationship with Christ, and I feel that when I study his life, I'm drawn to want to address him more. I'm not saying that I kneel and pray to Christ, but that I want to speak/address him more frequently.

Thoughts?

Counterfeit Sweets

So in church on Sunday, the talks were about the Word of Wisdom. Between going in and out of the chapel with a noisy baby, one of the speakers caught my attention. He asked the question (and I think he was quoting someone he knew with this whole idea):

Why don’t vegetables taste better if they’re good for you??

Now, I’ve long held my own opinions on this topic—it’s a question I have woefully considered most of my life. I even proudly came up with the motto “Nothing good was ever easy” to motivate myself because of such unfortunate twists of fate. But the speaker’s response was not what I was expecting!

He said… they do!

His claim was that they do taste good—or at least they did until the adversary’s counterfeit version came around.

When I heard that, I must admit I thought it was rather silly, and I would have been the first to argue that vegetables just don’t cut it. And how could chocolate muffins have been invented by anyone but the kindest person in the world? But throughout the week I’ve been thinking about this idea a little more.

Before processed foods and partially hydrogenated oil and ice cream sundaes, there were fruits and vegetables. Fruits are sweet, undeniably. Pineapple, strawberries, watermelon, oranges. Mmmm. Vegetables make you feel good when you eat them. They add flavor, they satisfy the needs of your body. There are even some vegetables that I am starting to appreciate as I get older (shhh! don’t tell anyone I said that…). But if you are surrounded by donuts and orange soda, it's hard to recognize any of that. It's hard not to be distracted.

I wonder if I would have loved vegetables had I been born in a day and age without Reese’s Pieces??

Yes, I think there is some merit in the idea that Satan is trying to distract us from what our body really needs. More sugar, more fat, more salt, more flavor! He wants us to pay attention to instant gratification when it comes to food, just like when it comes to anything else. And he doesn’t want us to observe the way our bodies feel after we come home from a burger joint and all that fried food is making our stomachs do flips. He doesn’t want us to notice just how many handfuls of snacky items we are shoving into our mouths while staring at a screen.

Josh and I have been trying to listen to our bodies better. We want to eat what our body feels like eating instead of what our taste buds are shouting. I don’t do very well, but I’m going to keep at it. And maybe someday, someday! my taste buds will beg me for a little more zucchini.

Planning in advance to sin and then repent

1) If a person sins (say, for example, he/she steals), planning at that time to later repent of that sin, he/she is committing a second sin also--the sin of planning in advance to sin and repent, and thus, trying to manipulate the atonement to facilitate sinning. This second sin might be harder to repent of than the original sin of stealing--and a person could get caught in a cycle of insincerity, or in ambivalent layers of intention and mis-intention within one's own mind and soul. Now, is such a condition really very unlikely? Isn't it true that most of the time, when we knowingly sin, this is exactly what we are doing?

2) If, then, when we commonly commit sin, we can't avoid admitting that we aware in advance that we will need to repent later, then aren't we also aware in advance that we will have to face repenting for this second sin, too?--so we are planning in advance to repent of the second sin, as well, when we commit it--and wouldn't we, then, be committing a third sin--the sin of planning to repent of planning to repent of a sin? And can we avoid admitting that we plan to repent of this third sin, and aren't we then committing a fourth sin, that of planning to repent of planning to repent of planning to repent of a sin? And, similarly, aren't we also committing a fifth sin, and in fact an infinite regression of sins? Well, this line of thought seems unrealistic, but it is not too different than some explorations of the idea of self-awareness (I'm aware that I'm aware that I'm aware . . .) which has been thought to be a defining aspect of consciousness. Or it is not too different than some analyses of relationships between two people where an infinite regress is seen as an essential part of the dynamic (I'm aware of you being aware of me being aware of you being aware of me. . . ). Indeed, these types of things might be thought to be a feature of being human, and some say a fundamental difference between us animals, and certainly between us and a computer--the computer will get stuck in an endless loop and cannot process the issue as a whole.

3) Whatever the case may be as regards an infinite regression of sins, it is nice to note that the atonement of Christ is described as an "infinite atonement." (See 2 Nephi 9:7; 25:16; Alma 34:12)