Like the sacramental ordinance, many sacred experiences seem to transcend time and place when we experience them.

My first son was born this year. His birth was a sacred experience like that for me.

Every birth is a nativity for the family involved. Every newborn babe unmans us, because against our settled expectations we see innocence and holiness existing in a fleshly vessel. Births are a miracle.

In this way every birth is like Christ’s birth. His birth does to all of us what individual births do to individual parents. He unmans all creation.

And because we experience innocence, in a sense we are spiritually reborn when we are at a birth. For we individual parents, at the birth of our children. For all of us, at Christmas, at Christ’s birth.

That was the conclusion I came to at a sacrament while thinking over Christmas and rebirth. I had remembered that baptism makes us born again and that the sacrament “renews our baptismal covenants,” which is the matter-of-fact Mormon way of saying that every week in the sacrament we are born yet again as new sons and daughters of Christ. It was while I was thinking about this that I realized I had experienced that rebirth. At least, I had sometimes experienced something when I took the sacrament that I had experienced on witnessing my daughters’ births or on standing as a Christmas witness to the timeless birth of Jesus. I had felt the value, hope, freshness, and vitality that slowly drains out of everything come flooding back in. Nothing looked the same in those times. I’d only seen before with dead eyes. Now I was alive.

This rebirth experience, I realized, has happened to me many times. I was baptized once. I’ve often taken the sacrament efficaciously. I’ve seen four daughters and one son born. And every Christmas in my heart I’ve gone to the stable to glory in the Infant. All those were rebirths for me and remembering them was a sweet accompaniment to the sacrament.

Then, as I was sitting there with the bread and water, I suddenly saw myself in contrast to Him. I have been reborn and will be reborn many times. He was born but once.

Certainly we celebrate his birth every year. But we don’t do it, I think, as if he were being reborn. We do it as if his birth was for all time and therefore ever present. It is as if he were the Lamb slain and born from the beginning of the world. But now can a birth, how can anything, be timeless? The answer came. His birth continues–the joyful promise of it is as good today as it was then–because he has never blighted it and therefore has never ceased to be what he was. The omnipotent Jesus is in some sense still the child.

Every baby grows a little crooked as it grows. Every sacrament goer leaves the meeting touched, if still only lightly, with stupor. Every Christmas brings its quarrel. Every new leaf stiffens in the summer and sickens in the fall. He alone–the Christ–was born and lives an evergreen.
—
Comment at the Junior Ganymede.
—
Adapted from prior versions found here and here and here.

The sky is smoke. Red sun at morning, red sun at setting. When the Stake planned this youth pioneer trek in remote western New Mexico, no one planned on the forests to the west burning down.

The same wind that blows the smoke blows the dust. It blows in eyes, onto straw hats and bonnets, in and through the handcarts. But enough dust remains on the ground to drag down your wheels on the steep slopes of the cedar-covered hills.

At night the bonneted and suspendered youth dance in a wash to Gangstas Paradise before doing a square dance.

Your legs are sore and your hands are raw. You apply chapstick religiously.

A woman in full pioneer dress invites you to join the Jacob Hamblin Facebook group.

You belong to the self-proclaimed orphans’ cart. You are proud–your handcart ‘family’ is proud–of being scraped together from the odds and ends of other carts, having the fewest members of any cart, and having the youngest average members too. Y’all outsing, outpush, and outboast.

You already know some of the youth of your cart. Somehow, dressed all alike and playing a role, they are more distinctly themselves than you have known them before. You struggle to not let them move you too outwardly.

Absurdly, your mind keeps turning to poetry.

Handcarts on high hills.
Pines and greening oaks. Dust blows.
Trek. We push, we sing.

Comment at the Junior Ganymede.

One day after the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Ft. Sumter, on April 13, 1861, Private Daniel Hough stood near a cannon that fired for the surrender ceremony. It burst onto him. He died. Four years later, the war ended in the stillness at Appomattox. 600,000 men had died. In one battle alone, Shiloh, more men died than in all America’s previous wars.

Three years after the end of the war, the veteran’s organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, issued General Order No. 11:

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

Memorial Day has since expanded to touch on veterans and all our dead, but war dead and those who loved them are still at the core of the observance.

Abraham Lincoln said that Americans were an almost-chosen people. Others have said that America is an almost religion. Memorial Day is one of the two religious holidays of the American nation, that link us to the transcendent. At Thanksgiving, we acknowledge the blessing hand of God. At Memorial Day, the nation considers sacrifice and death, both in their nature not of this world, death, especially, being the naked singularity where temporal law no longer holds. If Voegeli is right that every society requires a connection with the transcendent, then Memorial Day may be a necessary holiday. And if Bottum is correct that every state must be a mortuary state, then Memorial Day may be the necessary holiday.

Every society rests on a foundation of unequal sacrifice. (These necessary injustices are echoes of the infinite injustice that is the bond and cement of the society of Heaven.) In war, societies must convince young men to die to the benefit of others. In our society, Memorial Day and all it represents is part of that persuasion.

Memorial Day also expresses our guilt. What we cannot give the dead in the peace and safety that we enjoy, we try to make up to them in honor. Thanksgiving acknowledges our blessings that came at the hand of the Almighty. Memorial Day acknowledges our blessings that we receive at other hands.

And last of all, perhaps, Memorial Day is the pity and horror we feel for the bewildered dead.

“And then, suddenly–and what was it all about?
Why should anyone want to kill me? Why was it done?”

So the grey lips. And so the hurt in the eyes.
A hurt like a child’s, at punishment unexplained
That makes the whole child-universe fall to pieces.
At the time of death, most men turn back toward the child.

It is right and proper to remember the dead.

But what of Mormons who claim that death is just the entrance fee to a rollickin’ good time? We all believe that something better awaits. Should we envy the soldierly dead rather than honor them? Can Mormonism and Memorial Day mix?

We have our own Memorial Day, so yes. Pioneer Day is what I mean, which is not nearly as much our 4th of July as many have supposed.

Death is only ‘just’ a gateway because it was overcome. Christ’s victory was over a real enemy. We only follow him into the resurrection if we first follow him into the tomb. He cannot rescue us from death until we are in death’s power. It would deny him if we only mourned death without any hope. It would also deny him if we thought death was nothing.

But all that needs to be said has been said before:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Comment at the Junior Ganymede.

Your alarm sounds in the dark of the early morning. It’s 5 AM. It’s Saturday. It’s your birthday.

You put on your scout uniform and swing by the bishop’s house to collect the coolers he stacked outside. They are dirty. You mutter imprecations, turn on his faucet, thumb the hose exit, spray them out. You, your wet pants, your dripping coolers, continue on to the church.

The church parking lot. Dawn. Boy scouts, scout leaders, a smoker–fire already hot–, 300 pieces of chicken. Chicken on tables, salt, pepper, seasoning, load the smoker, watch the temperature, boil beans, chop jalapenos, line a cooler with foil, put cooked chicken in, more chicken on tables, repeat. Run to the store for more ingredients. Run home for an ash shovel. Its the Boy Scout fundraiser barbecue.

The smiling faces trickle in. Then a flood. You serve, boy scouts serve, take the money, more chicken on the table, we’re out of lemonade, quick! Hurry, hurry. A pause, wander over to the tables to chat. You end up in deep conversation with the most liberal member of your ward, the Scandinavian who insists you call her by her Native American name, the kind who believes Mormonism is a variety of Wicca. She tells you that she misses the small-town Mormonism of her youth. Prying eyes kept you out of trouble, she says. At some length she expounds on the need to ban alcohol. The scouts beam when she sincerely thanks them on her way out. Your smoker catches on fire in this golden afternoon.

You scrub grease. The day winds down to evening. At home, finally, you eke out the dying light to plant the last of your corn. Your daughter watches. She announces that you got a snow cone machine for a birthday present. It’s a sharing present! she says. You get to make snowcones to share with us because that’s fun, she says.

You are deeply, profoundly happy.

——

Comment at the Junior Ganymede.

Mormons make two main apologies for our doctrine of continuing revelation. Continuing revelation is practical, we say. Circumstances change, we say, and its just possible that the Almighty might have a few pointers that are specific to us. St. Paul didn’t counsel the Corinthians to make a habit of family dinners to counter-act the the centrifugal forces exerted on the middle-class nuclear family by cell phones and the internet. We would also say that continuing revelation has a meaning apart from the contents of the revelation. Continuing revelation is the sign of God’s continuing care.

Naturally I prefer the second rationale. I’m too high-minded to for grubby practicality. But today, against my nature, I’ve half-baked another practical justification for our doctrine of continuing revelation.

We killed Bin Laden on purpose. We committed a targeted killing. No one worth listening to is going to complain. The upshot is that we’ve set a precedent for an action that heretofore was somewhat suspect. Like most Americans, I’m all for Bin Laden’s 5.56 millimeter’s of justice. Like most Americans, I’m uneasy with the principle that nation-states can legitimately execute foreign nationals without trial and without being at war with the foreign nationals’ nation. But the one leads to the other. Why? Because if it our action is justifiable in this particular case, there must be a justifying principle that is accessible to human decision-making. If that principle is general, then it applies to everyone else and to our own future acts too. Or, if we argue that ethics and customs are highly situational, we at the same time destroy the argument that there is a meaningful principle that nation-states should generally *not* target folks for killing.

The same dynamic is at work in the war on terror in general. Unusual, crisis situations have led to arguably justified actions that have, however, set very unpleasant precedents. One might say the same of the history of US government involvement with the US economy in the the last century or so. Emergency responses to crisis situations have not stayed limited to the crisis. Probably they can’t be. General rules are only useful to the degree they can’t be ignored by ad hoc exceptions, but crisis situations demand ad hoc exceptions to general rules.

So what does continuing revelation have to do with it? Well, the exceptions that men make to man-made rules are dangerous because their justifications are in theory accessible to other men and therefore applicable to other situations. Divine exceptions are not. If God directs an exception to a general principle, we can credibly believe that there may be reasons for it beyond our ken. We can’t justify further exceptions because we don’t know and maybe even can’t know what the justification for the exception was.

Continuing revelation allows us to have necessary moral rules and necessary exceptions to those rules without the one destroying the other, or the other the one. Those of us who are perplexed at, say, the Mormon Church’s curious patchwork of rules on abortion may take comfort in knowing that, perhaps, our perplexity is the point.* Legal scholars have sometimes noted how important “fruitful ambiguity” is to human systems. Continuing revelation extends that ambiguity far more fruitfully than humans ever can.**

*You thought I couldn’t tie in Bin Laden to abortion? How wrong you were, my poppets.
** This is true whether there is actual continuing revelation or not. Even a “doctrine” of continual revelation, such that exceptions might be divine is enough, even if the exceptions also might not.
***One implication is that human systems–governments and such–should make more use of random elements. Just as exception-making is neutered if the exceptions are too meaningful for human understanding, exception-making is also neutered if the exceptions are meaningless. Who knew that my growing attraction to ochlocracy was the fault of Joseph Smith?

Comment at the Junior Ganymede.a>

Christ came for the meek and lowly, a category which includes every human soul. No matter how rich, or how successful, each of us has experienced the dark night of the soul. Each of us still has in our core the frightened child that we were.

Many of us–I hope one day all–have experienced the comfort of Christ bearing our meekness and lowliness with us. Many of us also have experienced in suffering a certain sacredness, as if God had made misery holy by taking it into himself. There is a brotherhood, a holy intimacy, of suffering, in which Christ participates with us. It sounds mystical, but it is so. I know it from my own experience.

It matters that Christ was a willing victim, for if he were truly as helpless as we, that he suffered along with us would be no comfort and offer no redemption. He must have chosen to let himself be victimized. The problem is that if Christ chose his suffering, he really wasn’t a companion in our weakness. He knows the pain, perhaps, but not the hopelessness. He was only slumming. And if what Christ’s example valorizes is chosen suffering, then it becomes “Christ-like” to deliberately harm oneself, as indeed some Catholic extremists think it is. But Christ came to redeem misery, not to add to the misery of the world.

My opening paragraph offers one way of squaring the circle: Christ freely chose helplessness, knowing that it would entail his misery, but he did not choose the evils that would be done to him in his helpless state. He merely suffered them.

We tend to think that Christ could have quit at any time during the supreme suffering of his atonement. We might even say that he had to be able to quit for his sacrifice to be voluntary. But how could he have suffered as we do, since we cannot quit at any time?

One of the odd wrinkles in Mormonism its in insistence that Christ suffered twice, first in the garden and then on the cross. This insistence has no meaning at first glance, and even appears to be a kind of historical accident or inexplicable trivia. But it opens up possibilities that help answer how Christ could have voluntarily experienced helplessness.

The truly voluntary act is one that is taken with full knowledge of the choices. I believe that full knowledge is impossible without full prior experience. No one can know what they have not experienced. Or, at least, total knowledge of an experience–not just a description, but knowing exactly and fully how it feels, how it is– is identical to the experience itself. Christ couldn’t have known what was coming in the garden, so his atonement suffereing there could not have been the result of a truly free, because truly informed, choice. To that extent, he was just as much battered in the dark as we are.

The Spirit often guides us to take steps into the dark, not knowing what is to come. Christ’s own ignorance gives that meaning. In any case, as I argue it was with the Savior in the garden, full advanced information is impossible. You can’t fully know how something will turn out until you’ve experienced it. Having the experience described is not the same. How many things I’ve dreaded have gone exactly as I thought but not been dreadful? How many things i’ve hoped for have gone exactly as I hoped but not been wonderful? If I had had the temple ceremony described to me down to the last detail before I took out my endowments, I still would never have predicted my own reaction to my own endowment–which was this ritual was so mundane, every-day, bog standard Mormon. And if I had had every detail explained in advance, perhaps I would not have had that reaction, which has been spiritually sustaining to me.

But if Christ suffered in the garden ignorantly, and to that extent involuntarily, his acceptance of the crucifixion could be considered fully voluntary, because he now knew what he was in for. The doctrine of two different atonement episodes, odd as it seems at first, suddenly springs to life.

Gethsemane and the cross offer a second possible resolution of how Christ could be the paradoxical willing victim. The Father abandoned the Son on the cross, whereas an angel strengthened him in the garden. Why, and what does it mean? One possibility is that in the garden Christ retained his ability to say no, to draw on the rescuing angels and turn away the cup. So at every moment he had to choose to suffer in an immense and continual voluntas. But that on the cross the divine power he had always had withdrew with his Father. He was helpless then, and suffered without choosing. He knew the abandonment that we know.

Again we see that the peculiar doctine of the double atonement gives us a Christ who can give us anything we might need from, both heroic self-sacrifice and helpless suffering.

I see another possibility in the garden and the cross. Like most Mormons, I believe that much of our suffering is meant to help us, like Hugh B. Brown’s currant bush or like the refiner’s fire. Unlike most Mormons, I believe that part of the mortal condition is suffering that has no purpose. Some knives aren’t surgical. I believe that purposeless suffering is a necessary consequence of a world where we have free will and can have an affect on other people.

Even suffering with some ultimate purpose is still suffering. I think of Joseph Smith, seven-years old, with the knife at his leg. He still needed his father with him, because the purposefulness of the steel cutting at his flesh in no way abated the hurt. We similarly need our Christ with us when we hurt and can find redemptive companionship in his fellow suffering.

But just as its hard to see how he can share our experience ofsuffering helplessly if he never suffered helplessly, how can Christ be a companion with us in purposeless suffering if he never suffered without apparent purpose? His atonement suffering was the most purposeful that any suffering has ever been. Here is where the apparent pointlessness of having a second atonement episode comes in. Perhaps in a paradox the pointlessness is the point. In the atonement Christ embraced not only the suffering and misery and helplessness of mortality, but the pointless brutality too. Great is the Lamb.

Christ only did, they say, what he saw his Father saw. Does this mean that in some incomprehensible way that God the Father also suffered? Perhaps. Consider this. As we are free, some of us will choose to finally reject God. The weeping God of Mormonism will suffer because of that rejection. He will be helpless to avoid it. He cannot strip us of our will. And there will be no point in it. Those who reject God do not thereby make themselves or him any better than before.

We have two divine companions in our lowly state.

—
Comment at the Junior Ganymede.

It makes for some interesting insight into scripture. Take the story of the Gadarene swine. Christ has mercy on the devils by allowing them to flesh themselves in the body of pigs. The devils then promptly run down to the water and drown. Why? My regular interpretation is either that the devils love destroying things, or that devils are literally insane. But if the waters of the lake are hell, then what the story means is that devils’ compulsion to evil destroys any gifts that they might be given. It is a story about what it means to be damned.

Or take the stories of Christ calming the storm, or walking on water. If water represents evil or chaos, those stories show Christ’s mastery over them.

But for this Holy Week, what has most been on my mind is the sacrament. In Mormonism, blood is associated with mortality while flesh is characteristic of immortal bodies. So, from one angle, the bread of the sacrament represents the the divine half of Christ’s nature, while the water represents his mortal part.

But what if water can also represent evil and disorder? Then our sacrament feast is a remembrance that Christ took mortality, took on temptation, took on our experience of sin and evil to the ultimate, descended below all things, and emerged victor. In the sacrament, water is spoils. Water is captured battle flags. Water is our own weakness, somehow transmuted into a communion with God.

Comment at the Junior Ganymede.

The UK’s rationale is that pornography damages children and even teens who access it.* Sophistated juvenile users will always be able to get around the blocks, but not all juveniles are sophisticated users, and not all juveniles who come across pornography on the internet meant to. In any case, the more effort a youth has to make to get to porn, the easier it is to resist the temptation to do it. “Lead us not into temptation” is a powerful recognition of human weakness and the limits of human resistance. So I suspect the UK’s proposed efforts will benefit adults too. Some who might not have the late-night willpower to resist pornography lwhile fiddling around on the internet will have the day-time willpower to not ask their Internet Service Provider to take their filter off.

I strongly endorse the United Kingdom’s proposal for domestic American consumption. We are in the middle of an economic collapse perpetrated by short-term and medium-term practices that were unsustainable in the long-term. In the long run we’re dead, Lord Keynes said . . . over a lifetime ago. The long run has now arrived. We’re now realizing that the model of debt-fueled government spending and an international economy of Americans buying stuff from the rest of the world in exchange for home loans cannot last. But we are also shacking up with unsustainable social models. In fact, the unsustainable social models overlap the unsustainable economic models. Part of our trouble now is the demographic collapse of less people getting married and less marrieds having kids. Part is the illegitimacy explosion, which harms productivity (children from fatherless homes are subject to lots of ills and don’t have as much human capital) and which requires lots of costly government spending on welfare or law enforcement (children from fatherless homes are subject to lots of ills and don’t have as much human capital).

Our current partial social model of hook-ups and cornucopic pornography is unsustainable. A society by definition is about rich and multi-textured connections between people. It is also, if it is to have some sustaining depth, about children and child-raising. Hook-ups and pornography are not about any of these. They are self-centered and now-centered. Nothing comes of them. Their ethos is incompatible with a prior commitment to marriage and family.

But while that is all true, its just a little abstract. The UK initiative highlights a more common-sense reason why kids and pornography don’t mix. Put the ethos and all that to one side. Sing a paean to the joys of privacy, porn, and a bottle of pump hand lotion. Tell yourself that watching Black Girls S**k C**k III is an awesome part of your marital intimacy. Pathetic and wrong, but whatever. You still don’t watch children and young teenagers being exposed to porn and neither does anybody else. We have a widespread consensus that kids and porn don’t mix. So our default internet access to pornography therefore means that, online, in our culture children and childrearing are secondary to even hollow adult pleasures. An afterthought. A sideshow. In perhaps the important arena of modern life, we are agreeing that kids are a nuisance that if you insist on having, you’ll have to protect them yourself.

That’s why sidelining pornography like the UK is proposing is so powerful. It reverses the reversal of values that puts porn above the young.

We should do it too. Politically its feasible. This is the sort of proposal that could get bottled up in committee by lobbyists, but if it ever comes to a vote would pass by huge margins. Legally Congress has the power to do it under the Commerce Clause, I suspect, even under a non-maximalist interpretation. I do not believe our First Amendment jurisprudence would necessarily prohibit it either. States should also be able to implement these proposals, depending on how the legislation is structured.

This is a cause Mormons should support. We know the evils of pornography. We know the importance of family and children. We know we are called to promote legal measures that support the family. Swapping scary porn stats in sacrament meeting is fun, but someone who wants to do something should consider supporting a cause like this one.**

Comment at the Junior Ganymede.

* suggestive evidence about the biochemical effects of pornography even on adults discussed here.

**Or worthy groups.

Cereal eating probably has nothing to teach us about movies. Probably, but Toy Story II was the best of the Toy Stories. It had a moral depth that the others didn’t reach.

Hear me out, dudgeoneers. I don’t claim that I and III lacked moral content or value. Toy Story I was a fun little adventure story. In the person of Buzz Lightyear, the message was about preferring real, prosaic relationships to celluloid fantasies. Toy Story III also had a decent message about preferring real relationships even at the risk of heartbreak, though the message was derivative of II’s. I liked both movies fine.

I liked Toy Story II better. Here’s why. The Toy Stories are about families. The toys’ relationship to kids is analagous to spouses’ relationship to spouses and especially parents’ relationship to kids. Each of the Toy Stories has a message that fits into that analogy. In the person of Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story I is about putting aside a fantasy existence for marriage and children. Toy Story II is about giving your heart to your spouse and your children even knowing the possibility (with the spouse) and the probability (with the children) that they’ll grow away from you, leave you, and break your heart; Toy Story II is about sticking it out with your family when you first realize in your gut that the good times aren’t going to last. Toy Story III is sort of about the same thing as Toy Story II, just lest effectively.

In Toy Story II, the analogy to parenthood reaches beyond platitudes and feel-good sentiment. Morally, II’s central character is Woody. He finds out that his boy, Andy, will unwittingly damage him and that Andy will likely leave him as Andy grows. He is given a choice. He can go to a children’s museum in Japan where he will “delight” kids. His existence will be more sterile, because he won’t have love, but he won’t be broken or abandoned. Instead, Woody ultimately makes the bittersweet choice to go back to Andy, come what may. A parent–a father, like me, who has little girls who call him daddy, little girls who put drawings under his pillow . . . little girls for now–may be forgiven for getting a little choked up. Mormons might even see an analogy to the Father’s choice between Jesus’ plan and Satan’s plan, and understand like they haven’t before that the Father’s choice was tragic.

Toy Story III takes the bitter part of Toy Story II’s bittersweet choice and tries to make it sweet. Toy Story III tries to deny that there need be any tragedy.

SPOILERS. There is no central character as such. Andy’s toys are an ensemble cast. As foreboded in II, Andy does indeed grow up and leave off playing with the toys. He grows up so much, in fact, that he’s going to college. The toys’ original hope is to ‘retire’ to the attic, spending the years together until Andy comes back home and wants to relive his old memories, while Woody himself might go with Andy as a memento. Mishaps happen, however, and in the end Andy brings his toys to a nice little neighbor girl. The toys become part of a new family, ready to embark on a new adventure of love. Soft focus, the end.

This attempt to paper over the tragic element in Woody’s choice in Toy Story II is misguided. Trying to undo one of the key elements in your prior hit is never a good idea. The attempt also resonates in an unfortunate way with our culture of serial relationships and our notion that if a relationship isn’t fulfilling the best thing to do is move on and try again. Worst, ithe attempt doesn’t ring true to life. Kids do grow up. Parents don’t get to start over with everything just the same as it was. Even the God of the universe weeps. Even He can’t avoid giving his love to creatures who sometimes reject them and there’s nothing he can do about it.

O, ye nations of the earth, how often would I have gathered you together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!

—

I’ve reviewed a few other Pixar movies. Have a look:

Cars

The Incredibles

I didn’t review Up. I didn’t much care for it compared to the other Pixars. The movie was incoherent about family and the taste for adventure. Fun film, but no consistent meaning underneath.

Comments at the Junior Ganymede.

Lehi tells us that there are things that act and things that are acted upon. The man Christ–the God Christ–is the ultimate actor. What he does matters more than anything else in the universe. But the child Christ does not act. He represents the element in Christ’s make-up that is acted upon. Perhaps this is one meaning behind the cryptic verses in Mosiah that Christ is both the Father and the Son.

It is essential to Christ’s actions that he also be acted upon. Alma prophesies of Christ’s birth and immediately states that Christ will have to suffer “pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind” in order to atone for us. Matthew 25 tells us that Christ is able to save us precisely because he was helpless and naked and we cared for him.

So we celebrate Christ’s birth not just as a foreshadowing of what’s really important in his later life, but because the weak and helpless baby himself matters to us. God did not just condescend to die on a cross. He condescended to be weak and helpless and dependent on mortals like us. That’s what Christmas means. And that’s why we try to find those who are in the image of the Christ Child–the poor, the needy–and give them what aid we can.

—-
Below are many Christmas devotions that I have enjoyed. I hope you can enjoy some of them too.

Christmas 2009

President Maxwell taught us that we really only have our will to give. He’s right, but we’ve started giving a gift each year to Christ during the Christmas season, some small devotion usually. It lights up the season for us.

LDS material

LDS.org’s Christmas page
The true meaning of Christmas

The Christmas Spirit video

Christ-the Real Gift of Christmas

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009

My Christmas Writing

The Slaughter of the Innocents and Falls, Gardens, Deaths
– two reflection on tragedy and sadness at Christmas time. Nine Moons did something similar last year that I really enjoyed but it seems to have vanished.

How we are Mary and We are Joseph and Mary and Holding the Messiah–three essays on being a father or a mother or a recipient of revelation. See also this brief meditation on the comparison between Mary and the tree of life.

Tithing Settlement 2008 and The Feast of Saint Tithing Settlement.

Christmas Devotional 2008

Christmas and the Sacrament — there is only one Christmas — Perhaps the best thing I’ve every written, and the only one that ever led anyone to denounce my writing.

Mr. Krueger’s Christmas (Eve)

Lonely mission Christmases

The 6th Day of Christmas

Other Christmas Favorites

All six verses of Silent Night

Believing in Santa Claus and The Christmas Dress and Worshipping on Christmas Eve– (Russell Arben Fox)

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus

Christmas Bells, by Longfellow

Behold the Condescension of God! and O Tannenbaum (the Fowles Brothers)

Two Christmas Poems (KHH)

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times — some of the comments especially are painful and eye-opening

My Testimony, Christmas Morning

Christmas music recommendations–here, here, here, and here. We have also got a lot of mileage from www.Pandora.com. We created a wonderful Christmas music station on it. Our seeds were the Hereford Cathedral Choir (Holiday); For Unto Us a Child is Born, by the Cambridge Singers (Holiday); and The Hallelujah Chorus, by the Canadian Brass (Holiday). KHH’s Advent music posts at BCC are quite nice, I recommend them.

—
Comment at the Junior Ganymede.