My CMS The View from a New City

The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most widely used scriptures in the Bible, and yet it continues to reveal truth. It occurred to me in the middle of the night, last night, that the prayer is in the plural. “deliver us from evil,” not deliver me from evil. Is salvation a family affair?

In his first address as the leader of the Church, President Dallin H. Oaks said the following: “We can truly say that the gospel plan was first taught to us in the council of an eternal family, it is implemented through our mortal families, and its intended destiny is to exalt the children of God in eternal families.”

The Bible says their is no giving in marriage in heaven. That is because marriage is a ordinance which must be performed on earth. Their is no baptism in heaven, but baptism is required to get to heaven. If it is not performed on earth, it must be performed by proxy in an earthly temple. it symbolizes death, burial and resurrection. Actions that require mortality. Where possible, the temples are constructed so that the surface of the water in the font is on a plane with the surface of the earth into which persons are buried and from which they are resurrected.

Similar issues apply with establishing and sealing families. See the phrase from President Oaks’ talk where he says exaltation in eternal families “is implemented through our mortal families.”

Yesterday I was discouraged, partly from the general effects of getting older, but partly from scrolling through the internet and seeing how “sinners ways prosper.” Then last night, my wife and I read the 121st Section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which among other amazing revelations, lists how the Lord will handle the unrepentant sinners. One element of faith is to realize that punishing sinners is not my job. I realized once again something I learned though my years practicing law; that educating jerks (teaching them that they are jerks) is a waste of time and resources.

In the middle of the night I asked AI whether the people of Missouri suffered in the civil war and got in response a very long narration of this answer: “Yes, the people of Missouri suffered intensely and in a variety of ways during the Civil War.”

Pete Hegseth said this about the motive for renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War: “We are going to go on offense, not just on defense; maximum lethality, not tepid legality; violent effect, not politically correct; we’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.” (August 6, 2025)

I served in the Vietnam War as an infantry lieutenant, advising the Vietnamese Regional Force, Popular Force units in 1970-71. One day, my sergeant and I were called to a village in our district. As we approached the village in our Jeep, we saw a Huey helicopter idling on the road next to the village. Just as we arrived, we saw a captain, with his wide-brimmed hat (which you would recognize if you ever saw the movie Apocalypse Now), running out of the village with both hands outstretched carrying a limp, bloodied and battered baby, tears streaming down his face. He jumped into the Huey and they took off.

An operation had been under way to attack a suspected Viet Cong site along a stream running next to the village. A helicopter gunship had been called to shoot grenades into the suspected location. As the gunship passed over the village, a grenade round fell short, landing in one of the huts and exploding. I never learned whether the captain succeeded in getting the child to the hospital in time to save its life, but I am proud to say I served with him and other soldiers I knew who served with care and humanity.

War policy should not be set by those whose concept of war comes only from their experience in the media. American policy should not be set by people with no humanity.

During my lifetime the inadequacy of scientific explanations for the state of the world has become apparent. Starting with evolutionists having to admit that the fossil record shows “punctuated equilibrium” rather than evolution. Next came the admission that 95 percent of everything that is consists of dark energy and dark matter, about which science knows nothing. Finally the Web Space Telescope put an end to the whole big bang explanation.

But scientists tell us not to give up on science. “This is the way science works,” they say. “Be patient,” they say, “and you will see there will be a scientific explanation for it all.” The Grand Unified Theory of Everything.

But I suspect that if we are fortunate enough to be able to be even more patient than that, we will find that all those scientific explanations will also be found to be inadequate. So this is how science works! Try to build a life on that foundation.

look at this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RAG7rJRae8

The Republicans are hate mongering. The Democrats are fear mongering. The despots weigh down and the revolutionaries burn up.

But if you think this is nothing but a cynical screed, I would say, this world is the perfect school for the righteous. It is the fire which purifies Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego into pure gold. In this world the good are good even with no apparent up-side. Hopefully God will be merciful if we learn this lesson by trial and error.

A little miracle occurred yesterday. While thinking about it last night the realization came powerfully to me that such miracles have been an almost daily occurrence throughout my life. I have not journalled them because I was certain no one would read such a journal, including me. But I now testify that there is no life without God’s help.

LINES LOST AMONG TREES
by Billy Collins from Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press)

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.

They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic

I devised to hold them in place-
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house

with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.

So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of syntax,
the jazz of the timing,

and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.

This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem-
not out into the world of strangers’ eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,

home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

“Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity — thou must commune with God.”
― Joseph Smith, The Teachings of Joseph Smith

There is a future and you are it.

Elder Dieter F. Uctdorf to the 2025 graduating Life Sciences College graduates of Brigham Young University.