Religion, Superstition, and Rationality in Scotland

Book Report: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)

Flag of Presbyterian Covenanters, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

It's great to find a literary classic that I hadn't known before. Reading all I can devour about Scotland helps me be a better tour guide. This one intrigued me as it was listed as an odd book, a religious-psychological thriller that had served as inspiration to another Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, in writing Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It has sword fights, murder, mayhem, and a couple of strange games of tennis. What's not to like?

It's Time for Peace on Earth, Good Will to All

It's been a long, cold, lonely Winter. And it only started a couple of days ago!

The problem was that the Fall was pretty tough. The Malheur defendants were sent free (well, some went back to jail awaiting trial in Nevada); there was an active-shooter incident at the school where my wife teaches (the Science Teacher hero was in our home the other night as my wife is Science supervisor and we hosted the Holiday dinner); and, then there was that horrible man elected president. That caused some serious trauma for some.

So, I return to the events of summer to catch a bright light for Christmas.

In our wandering of the National Gallery in London, we came across the original of one of my favorite Nativities.

There it was in all its Glory! And I mean Glory! The Christ Child glows for all the world to behold, especially the poor shepherds.

I love this one as it is contemporary to my distant Cousin Poet, Henry Vaughan, and his twin, Thomas, the highly religious Alchemist married to Rebecca.

Here is my photo of the entire piece:

It is floor-to-ceiling huge, larger than life, as it should be.

May God bless us everyone!

And my wish to all is a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays for all who seek joy and peace!

And speaking of Peace, I leave you with another Christmas Poem of Henry Vaughan:

The Nativity

Peace? and to all the world? sure, One
And He the Prince of Peace, hath none.
He travels to be born, and then
Is born to travel more again.
Poor Galilee! thou canst not be
The place for His nativity.
His restless mother's called away,
And not delivered till she pay.
     A tax? 'tis so still! we can see
The church thrive in her misery;
And like her Head at Bethlem, rise
When she, oppressed with troubles, lies.
Rise? should all fall, we cannot be
In more extremities than He.
Great Type of passions! come what will,
Thy grief exceeds all copies still.
Thou cam'st from heaven to earth, that we
Might go from earth to heaven with Thee.
And though Thou foundest no welcome here,
Thou didst provide us mansions there.
A stable was Thy court, and when
Men turned to beasts, beasts would be men.
They were Thy courtiers, others none;
And their poor manger was Thy throne.
No swaddling silks Thy limbs did fold,
Though Thou couldst turn Thy rays to gold.
No rockers waited on Thy birth,
No cradles stirred, nor songs of mirth;
But her chaste lap and sacred breast
Which lodged Thee first did give Thee rest.
     But stay: what light is that doth stream,
And drop here in a gilded beam?
It is Thy star runs page, and brings
Thy tributary Eastern kings.
Lord! grant some light to us, that we
May with them find the way to Thee.
Behold what mists eclipse the day:
How dark it is! shed down one ray
To guide us out of this sad night,
And say once more, "Let there be light."

Live-Blogging LDS General Conference - Saturday Afternoon - April 2015

We're back! You can watch this live and see past sessions at LDS.org.

Had a nap while one of my boys painted the bathroom. Did a good job too. We'll do another coat when that dries. I was going for the turquoise color of the Caribbean, but it came out more of an "easter-egg" pastel blue - which is cool.

President Uchtdorf reading the sustainings and releases. Primary Presidency and Young Mens Presidency changing. They kept Sister Wixom as President of the Primary and switched out counselors.

Some yahoo is yelling out "No's!!" to sustaining Pres. Monson. Not sure what that is about. Pres. Uchtdorf says the votes are noted. And at the end he asked them to talk to their Stake Presidents . . . .

My 18-year-old is there with friends who had tickets.

Faith without Welsh Is nearly Dead

Dan Jones, Amazing Missionary to the Welsh

On my quest to learn Cymraeg (Welsh), one of the first things I did was to go to the LDS Distribution store just a few blocks from our house and purchase a copy of the Book of Mormon in Welsh. Reading it in Portuguese helped me learn that language. And I still have scriptures memorized in Portuguese from my mission that bounce around in my head that will apparently be there forever.

The main challenge was, the Welsh edition of 1853 has not been updated except for the cover. So, the word Arall is pretty easy as "Another" because "Testament" and Iesu Crist are obvious along with Llyfr Mormon which etymologically isn't that far off from O Livro de Mórmon in Portuguese. I see a Latin root in there -- or Indo-European?

But then I looked inside, In 1853, the book hadn't even been divided into chapters and verses as we are now familiar. That was a process that culminated in English in 1920 with Elder James E. Talmage -- even if the "most correct book" still gets occasional corrections back to the original transcript from Joseph Smith's prophetic translation.

Political Apologies, as in True Repentance: Ya know it when ya see it.

In Sunday School today we read this from Romans:

There is none righteous, no not one.

With all the Republican primary candidates trying to prove how "Christian" they are and how their opponents "aren't," this scripture comes as a friendly little reminder (most having forgotten all about the "no religious test" of the U.S. Constitution, Article VI). And it also reminds us of all the sad history of political apologies, I mean the apologies of politicians because nobody really apologizes for politics (take Cheney's book, for example). The non-partisan list of those politicians apologizing for getting caught in their various indiscretions goes on and on. I've racked my brain to think of one of those that I thought was really sincere, and I'm still thinking. So if anyone out there has any ideas on that, please let me know.

Meyers-Briggs INFP: What Sir Galahad and I Have in Common

Sir Galahad by Arthur Hughes (1832-1915)

It's not exactly the purity (although far from me being some kind of libertine!) Rather it's the idealistic temperament we share. I feel the need to explain myself yet again, which, of course, is also part of the psychological profile.

Live-blogging LDS Conference April 3, 2011

This is a lot of fun! It helps me stay awake and pay attention to do a good job knowing my notes are going out to the whole world. I hope I'm being respectful enough to the speakers. This should be no substitute for going to the official transcriptions or the live and recorded broadcasts at lds.org. But it also pleases me that this conference blogging has had more hits than anything else I've ever posted.

Daughter Anne is fixing breakfast burritos. Of course, I have already broken into the 72-hour snacks we eat every April Conference to rotate out the old stuff so when the earthquake strikes we're not eating stale goldfish crackers, etc. But it's nice to have Anne home from BYU for the weekend.