My CMS The View from a New City

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.

Browsing though the internet news apps and Youtube gives one a smorgasbord of stories about the evils occurring these days. This morning I have had an epiphany about this state of affairs. “You Can’t be Cheated.” I am here for the experiences, both good and bad. I am under no obligation to ingest the bad news stories and to then disseminate them to others. “Time wounds all heals.” It is not my job to point out to others what must be obvious to those with eyes to see. Rather I need to focus on my actual current state of affairs and to give thanks for the many glories I am privileged to experience.

Another very interesting video. I should link it to my mysteries app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McUvvaCMzk0

I just watched this and am moved to recommend it as good and true to everyone I know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGrYL0diuxo

When I was a soldier in Vietnam, one day our little column was moving through the jungle, somewhere between Saigon and the Cambodian border. As we came over a rise, I saw jungle stretched out before us with its meadows, rivers and streams. Even though the spirit of war and the threat of death hung over everything, the view was so beautiful that it still lives in my memory. Recently I had the opportunity to return to Vietnam and revisit the area where I served. The jungle was all gone, turned to a multitude of little rubber tree plantations. The place I had seen no longer exists. This experience has caused me to move from a view of the world as a collection of objects and toward the view of the world as a series of events. You can never step into the same river twice.