2010-06-20

Compelled to be humble
(a svithe)


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Being humble is not my forte. Or, rather, pretending to be less awesome than I am has never been my forte. Which is not how I define humility, though, in my observation, that is the most commonly used definition of the word.

Humility (in my definition) is keeping one's by-virtue-of-being-a-child-of-god awesomeness in perspective. Or, in other words, most people are at least a little awesome some of the time and --- strikes me as likely --- the parents of all this awesome must be awesomer still.

None of which is what I mean to be writing. As per the title, circumstances are compelling me to be humble. Which leads closely to my second definition of humility: placing one's awesomeness higher than such things as faith hope and charity. This is a crime I am quite adept at, as hinted in that initial hyperlink.

And therefore, the vital question posed for me is what's most important.

What is most important.



this post as a thmusing
last week's svithe

2010-06-06

Embodied svithe


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Today we spoke of Ruth who used her womanly wiles to do something good.

See? Sexuality ain't evil.


this svithe as a thutopian
previous svithe

2010-06-03

Heart, might, mind and soul (a midweek makeup svithe)


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I've been getting to bed at 2am more nights than not the last two weeks which has made me cranky and scattered and so, while I have thought about what I will be teaching in elders quorum this Sunday, I have not connected the dots. And I would love to get your input on this because odds are my cognitive capacities will not be restored by Sunday.

When Lynsey and I lived in Provo, I remember one meeting at which spoke a member of the stake presidency. As he began to segue from talking about his former mustache to his topic, it quickly became clear that it was time for a discussion on porn, much like that my ward had with the bishop last week. But he surprised me. Most of the counseling issues in our stake, most!, were because newly married men were neglecting their wives in favor of video games. You heard me right. Video games were winning the race against nubile young wives.

That's dot one.

Dot two is a terrific article I just read about Brigham Young's take on novels (hint: he hated them).

Dot three is something that sounds very similar, but this time it's our own Elder Bednar tchtching my Twitter habit

Then, just last night as I was brushing my teeth, I read a great article on the world's cognitive surplus. People have donated 100,000,000 hours of time to Wikipedia. Isn't that incredible? And, flipside, Americans watch 2,000,000,000 hours of tv every year. Isn't that incredible. Cognitive surplus. What are we doing with the talents with which the Lord hath given us amble time to magnify?

Which leads to another apostle, Elder Ballard this time, and his take on the digital world.

These are our texts for elders quorum. And, I submit, the issues raised here are of significant importance to everyone --- to both our success as human beings, and our eventual salvation (particularly if we're interested in trading up from salvation to the salvation/exaltation package deal).

Please. Help me connect the dots.

this svithe as thutopian
previous svithe