My CMS The View from a New City

I am neither rich, nor famous. I have published no books, nor won any great awards. It seems the headwinds of life have been blowing throughout my career. I had to sue my longest term client to overcome its breach of contract and get compensated for years of faithful work. etc… Sometimes I feel like reciting Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum; verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
……..

But when I do, I know it is a lie. Our first child was born when I was making a dollar an hour, milking cows. I had to check our third child out of the hospital using a credit card. Without patron or much in the way of visible means of support, my wife and I raised, clothed and educated six children. We are now the proud progenitors of twenty five ( soon to be twenty six) souls. And there appears to be no end in sight. Truly an eternal blessing that flows without compulsory means forever. Even in hindsight, I can’t account for how we pulled it off. Only by the grace of God.

See this discussion of numbers that demonstrate the wisdom of the last post. Listen for the quote, “…one day but not now.”

I recently watched a YouTube commentator waxing wise about the things people fret over during their lives which they realize, upon reaching 70, were not worth the effort. The list included such things as social status and career.

The other day I was talking with a neighbor who is suffering from several age related maladies. I commented that we would obviously not be running any more marathons together. I noted that as those words came across my lips , i felt not a hint of regret. I later reflected upon the point, in my last marathon, where I was suffering the pain that inevitably comes toward the end of that race. I said to myself, ” you better enjoy this last three miles, because you are never going to be twenty-three miles into a run again in your life.”

The later stages of life reveal certain truths. One such truth is that their are things which can only be accomplished by the young. Obviously, you have to bear your children while you can. To my descendants I would say, if you have a choice and if you waste that period of your life only pursuing worldly status, or a ‘career,’ you will eventually have regrets.

Joseph Smith was a prophet. His view into truth and the future is revealed in this quote:

…while one portion of the human race is judging and condemning the other without mercy, the Great Parent of the universe looks upon the whole of the human family with a fatherly care and paternal regard; he views them as His offspring, and without any of those contracted feelings that influence the children of men, causes “His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” He holds the reins of judgment in His hands; He is a wise Lawgiver, and will judge all men, not according to the narrow, contracted notions of men, but, “according to the deeds done in the body whether they be good or evil,” or whether those deeds were done in England, America, Spain, Turkey or India. He will judge them, “not according to what they have not, but according to what they have,” those who have lived without law, will be judged without law, and those who have a law, will be judged by that law. We need not doubt the wisdom and intelligence of the Great Jehovah; He will award judgment or mercy to all nations according to their several deserts, their means of obtaining intelligence, the laws by which they are governed, the facilities afforded them of obtaining correct information, and His inscrutable designs in relation to the human family; and when the designs of God shall be made manifest, and the curtain of futurity be withdrawn, we shall all of us eventually have to confess that the Judge of all the earth has done right.
Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, page 218.

When Job complained to God about how he was being treated, God replied that Job did not even know what God was trying to accomplish.

1. No person should obey or enforce unlawful orders.
2. Each person must decide for themselves what is lawful or unlawful, giving appropriate weight to lawful authorities.
3. Each person must decide for themselves the likely consequences of disobedience and act accordingly, but some sacrifice of personal interest or convenience is appropriate in support of the rule of law.
4. Violent resistance to unlawful orders is no more lawful than violent enforcement of unlawful orders.

Few things are as pathetic as a billionaire who is still trying to make more money.

Young people aspire to a career. Then, after many years serving their employer, usually a corporation, they are forgotten the month after they retire, if they are not laid off before that.

At the end of the Lord’s Prayer, the Savior says, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever.”

Too bad it takes a lifetime to realize that the popular paths to power and glory are inevitable dead* ends.

• pun intended.
  
  

In her stump speech, Kamala Harris makes the point that the strength of a leader is not “who you beat down” but “who you lift up.” Some are fixated on winning—on being the national champion, on dominating the market. This stems from a philosophy of survival of the fittest as promulgated by the anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche and others. This may be ok for comic book characters and children’s games like football and basketball, but it is a terrible perversion of the real purpose of life which is learning and growing. We should rather be focused on helping God with his stated project of bringing to pass “the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39) The word man in this context means every person who is willing. We should be in the business of building up, not beating down.

[they] struggled with one another in envy, for there the power of evil rules, and envying about trifles.
Ascension of Isaiah [After being escorted to the seventh heaven, Isaiah witnesses the Christ descending into the world in which we live which he describes here.]

“To me, in this our life,” says the professor, which is as internecine warfare with the Timespirit, other warfare seems questionable. Has thou in any way a Contention with thy brother? I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this: “Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the world, something from my share; which, by the Heavens, thou shalt not; nay, I will fight thee rather.’ –Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a ‘feast of Shells,’ for the substance has bee spilled out– not enough to quench one Appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them! –Can we not, in all such cases, rather say: ‘take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou wantest; take it with a blessing–would to Heaven I had enough for thee!’

Thoma Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

I had the opportunity last Saturday to ask a very smart humanities professor to make an argument for a liberal education. The best he could do was state that it was good as a hobby. I guess, in my old age, I tend to agree. Even in its hay-day, a liberal education was the pass-time of a financially independent and very small elite. Now that secondary education is a must, even to scratch out a living, it probably should focus on marketable skills. It is surprising that I was able to major in English as an undergraduate since I was as penny-less as one could be.