My CMS The View from a New City

Yesterday, in order to fill our Covid-19 restricted day, we watched two movies: a 1938 movie called Pygmalion, and a 1960s musical called My Fair Lady. Both of these movies tell the story of Eliza Doolittle, a lower-class flower girl in London who is tutored by a language professor named Higgins and successfully becomes a member of high-class society by changing her manner of speaking. The part of these movies that struck me this time was how unrepentant and unchanging professor Henry Higgins is in his attitude of superiority and contempt. This morning, I have been reflecting on another old movie I saw some time ago called Maid to Order. This movie is a reverse Cinderella story where the Fairy Godmother changes the young heroin from a spoiled rich kid into a homeless orphan who has to take a job as a maid to survive. In Maid to Order, the young woman transforms from treating all around her with contempt, to realizing that the servant class of people are also good and valuable human beings. Fairy tales like Cinderella, The Prince and the Pauper and The Bear Coat all teach the real-world lesson that the ordinary people we meet and treat each day may turn our to be royalty in disguise: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40. The message these stories contain about the human potential for change is icing on the cake.

The problem is that the the convergence of the many conditions necessary for life to exist is so improbable that an explanation is required. If the two leading candidates are the anthropic principle (an infinite number of universes over an infinite amount of time requires at least one like this) and a purposeful creation by an intelligent agent, then Occam’s Razor requires that the second be preferred. Especially in a universe where at least billions of examples of intelligent, purposeful action exist.

The pandemic is raging in America. We don’t know if we are at the beginning, middle or end — no work, no restaurant food, no church. Something good will come from this: humility in the face of trials. We will find out if life in this world depends on our usual frenetic economic activity or something more fundamental.

Watched the movie, Jo Jo Rabbit, last night. This movie tracks the hero, a ten year old boy, from naive enthusiasm for a system (German National Socialism) to disillusionment and rejection of that system. In the process the hero suffers a full range of experience including fear, danger, heart breaking tragedy and a developing love. At the end of the movie the following quote appears from a poem by Reiner Marie Rilke:

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

In that spirit, today I read the following quote from the Doctrine and Covenants to an invalid in my neighborhood:

And if thou shouldst be cast into the ^apit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the ^bdeep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to ^chedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of ^dhell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee ^eexperience, and shall be for thy good.

The ^aSon of Man hath ^bdescended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

At Doug’s funeral, yesterday, we heard a lot about golf, which was Doug’s favorite pastime. Doug’s sons praised him for the amount of time he was willing to spend with them, but a lot was said about the time he spent playing golf. Death puts things in perspective, so I wondered what the total of Doug’s golf scores amounted to now. The same thing can be said about almost every human activity.

The phrase at the conclusion of the Lord’s prayer, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever,” reminds me that temporal success is like building sand castles on the beach. Real progress lies elsewhere.

I am grateful for some perspective.

After two or more days of frustration, today was one of progress. I connected Visual Builder to my always free database, created five applications, initialized Developer Cloud Service and saved all the applications to github.

75 and still alive.

Not just grateful, but grateful to God.

Saw the movie tonight. Hard to see a moral in that story. Too many villains. Not enough purpose.

Still struggling with program. One of these day there will be a breakthrough.

Grateful for my conviction that the world’s story will end with a reckoning and justice for all.

Almost no progress on my program yesterday but I am grateful that after a day of struggles, some progress was made at the end and the way seems clear to moving forward today.

Grateful for a beautiful wife.

Happy I can work today. Who wants to retire anyway?

Reading Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan and it has convinced me to start my own journal.

Doug Simpson had a stroke and died Saturday, so I am the last survivor of Peterson and Simpson and just grateful to be alive.

Mitt Romney voted to convict Donald Trump last week so I am grateful that there are still a few in the world who act upon their principles.

I am very proud of all my children and grandchildren.

This last week we saw the Tom Hanks movie about Fred Rogers called A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The movie was not so much entertainment as an argument for the proposition that all God’s children have value. This is surprising on at least two fronts: first because it has been a long standing principle that good literature should not be didactic and second because our culture is based on the principle of survival of the fittest. Nietzsche taught that the mass of humans were merely the pot of mush out of which the übermensch occasionally bubbled. We honor this doctrine everywhere in our society by our quest to be the best.

Fred Rogers was portrayed as a meek and unlikely hero for believing and teaching children and adults of all kinds to value themselves and others.

Mathew 11:
28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.