State of Kate, Q2 2019

To the one or two souls who read this blog sometimes, here's an update on the State of Kate. 

I've had a really rough spring. I guess you could say it's been really rough since Joey's been born. I guess you could stretch that further and say it's been rough since I have been pregnant. So...it's been a little bit shy of 2 years of it being generally "rough." It fluctuates, but there's just this general malaise that lingers and is really unpleasant. 

It looks like things are about to change drastically in that regard, so woohoo!

Here is an update on all the goals that I had made for myself in May/June. 

1. Apply to Grad School : Everything is done except that I need to finish my writing sample, take the GRE, submit my scores, and pay the fee. But all the other paperwork is done, which is great!
2. Garden 2019 : I planted it. Lots to say about this, but in a nutshell, I've decided that while I'm in grad school, we are going to sod over the vegetable garden, dismantle the trellis, and not have one.
3. Take the GRE : I've been prepping for it a lot, especially the past week. I was supposed to take a mock test this morning (it was in my scheduled study plan) but Danny convinced me that it would be better for my health if I slept in as late as possible; that I'm going to do just fine, and so I should stop stressing so much about it. It will be okay if I just put it off a bit.
4. Taxes : Long since finished.
5. Friends : haha. This is such an embarrassing "goal." It is also really difficult to quantify. I decided that in Q3, I will restate the goal to be a little less stupid.
6. Grundbücherbuch : Waiting on edits from Lukáš. 
7. CGSI : I totally failed at all of these goals. But they still want me involved, by some miracle. So, yeah. Onward.
8. Get Skinny Again : weaning is the answer to making all the weight just fall off. Basically, when I'm not breastfeeding, I feel about half as hungry. 
9. Boston Temple Painting : It's at an okay stopping place for now.
10. Čeština : lots of false restarts, none have really materialized.
11. Czech Out Your Ancestors : I didn't do anything and didn't even feel guilty about it.
12. Exercise : I've been walking and running consistently for the past week or so; it significantly affects my mental health. Will keep it up.
13. Joe's Wedding : it was awesome!
14. Kate Expectations : I've written a lot of pathos-laden poetry for it. I think there's about 50 poems so far? 
15. My Calling : finally, finally, after a very long time of waiting, I have some direction. I have a checklist of items to do, and I'm working through them. That's a good feeling.
16. Cousin Book : I keep meaning to start this thing, but I haven't so far.
17. Home Church : We do this consistently, and well. 
18. A Year of Questions in the Book of Mormon : I'm behind, but I did type up all the questions and I've been slowly attacking them.

For Q3, I am going to revise my goals. Here they are:

1. Grad School Preparations - Take the GRE, finish applying to graduate school, get accepted, enroll in classes

2. ENGL 510 - this is a prerequisite class for many of my other classes which is only offered in the Fall. I will take it in Fall 2020, but I want to be able to prove that I am capable enough to take other classes in Spring 2020. I bought the textbook and plan to work my way through the exercises. Also, it's really fun. 

3. Maintain a Strict Morning and Evening Routine for My Mental Health

I think my days would be smoother if I were to be able to follow a routine (not necessarily on the dot by time, but generally in the same order every day). Basically: 

Morning

- wake up early

- go for a walk/run (this is crucial to do early because a. it's hot and b. I don't like doing it with five kids)

- read scriptures

- work on Czech

- take care of household stuff (dishes, breakfast, chores, laundry, etc.)

Evening

- get in bed at 10:30

- lights out by midnight (or earlier). This will allow me a generous amount of time to read, which I really love!

4. Talk with someone on the phone who is not Danny every single day. This is easier to quantify than "friends." It's also going to be hard. But probably fun.

5. Writing - I want to write 2,000 words every single day. I have a jillion writing projects in the works. It doesn't really matter which one I work on, but I want to reach that wordcount quota, at least for Q3. Then we'll reevaluate. I can (but don't have to) start writing with a "warm up" exercise. 

6. Grundbücherbuch - keep plugging along. I would like to get through chapter 15 but a lot of this depends on my collaborator.

7. CGSI marketing goals - I made a list. I guess I will start with that.

8. CGSI Lincoln Conference preparations - Quite a lot to do there.

9. Asynchronous Book Club - More on that later. Or maybe not. It's almost too nerdy to speak of. 

10. Czech A4 - finish it! Design A5.

11. Kate Expectations

12. My Callin

13. Cousin Book - have a list of all of my cousins, Danny's cousins, and their contact information by the end of Q31

14. Home Church - keep pressing onward

15. A Year of Questions in the Book of Mormon - catch up completely, start gathering stuff for self-publishing it as a journal-y type book, because why not. That's fun.

16. Czech Out Your Ancestors - start blogging there again, and update the Facebook page

17. That should be a movie! - finish season 1, finally! Publish this sucker :-) Record episodes for season 2, streamline the process a bit.

18. Cookbook Project - this has been in the works for about 6 years. I should actually sit down and DO it. I might want to find a collaborator.

19. Classics - start reading classic lit with the kids. We have been doing this for a while, but I want to continue, and maybe make a list of it somewhere.

20. Financial Aid - apply to lots of grants and scholarships for graduate school. Maybe create some kind of quota. 

21. Wean Joey - I'm on day #4 of that. I've been so dizzy today. It feels kind of horrible. But in other ways, it's like I took a giant chill pill. I feel SO much less anxiety, it's almost comical. <-- this goal is the reason why I think I might be capable of completing (or getting a very big head start on) some of these projects in the next three months. First of all, the regained time. But most of all, the regained self. I can already feel my body starting to feel more normal again. Normal hunger levels. I didn't have a panic attack in four whole days. My hands didn't shake. I feel like I look skinnier (though that might be an illusion). I feel much, much more relaxed. Just...dizzy. But that will go away with time. 

It also feels sad, but it was The Right Thing To Do, and I really value doing the right thing, so I'm not going to waste my time crying about it.

Very much.

On Art and Advertising

7th grade social studies. Miss Palombo, a tall, slender, gorgeously tan woman who wore dresses, unlike any of my other Williston teachers. She had us read all kinds of interesting stuff, including a book about a guy who was lost at sea on a boat. She taught us the difference between denotation and connotation, and everybody loved to complain about how annoying her class was because of it. We watched Evita and learned what a "coup d'etat" is. One time, we were outside sitting in a circle reading about something horrible about humanity - something about war, violence, sexism, poverty, or all of the above, and I became very upset, crying in front of everyone. She cried, too. She was also not ever particularly nice to me, the proud, friendless, lonely, immature little girl with braces and glasses. It actually isn't until now, writing this, that I realize what a fantastic teacher she really was; I remember her class vividly. She had us read a chapter from a big, fat book on my bookshelf at home called The Story of Art. The thesis of this chapter was that art is universal to humanity, and as such, it's not possible to define what is "good" or "bad" art. This idea was deeply imprinted on my mind.

My parents are both artists: my dad a professional musician who later became a petroleum engineer, my mom an elementary art teacher. They are also both really big supporters and advocates of the arts. I toyed with the idea of listing all the art museums I've ever been to in this blog post, since art appreciation is almost certainly a function of exposure. But I don't even know if I could do that. I remember going to the Art Institute of Chicago when I was about five; there was a really cool exhibit of miniature rooms, with chairs the size of thimbles. I was really interested in it. We also saw Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte), the pinnacle pointillist piece. Aside from fine art, my parents also took us to the theater and symphony often, also giving us many opportunities to participate ourselves. We didn't do sports, we did art.

I lived in Europe at a formative time in my life. Casually, without being impressed at all with this fact, I decided to become a member of Le Musée des Beaux Arts de Rennes. I went there multiple times a week, often alone. I became friends with the paintings there. I remember them vividly, buying the museum catalog, which is a book I'll never sell or trash.

Obviously, living in France meant I went to Paris. I never went inside Notre Dame, but I did go to many of the art museums, from Le Centre Pompidou to the Louvre to the Islamic Art museum to the Musée Rodin to the Musée d'Orsay...and more. My favorite high school class of all time, including my art classes, was Histoire de l'Art. I could write novels about the things I learned in that class.

My mom was a docent at the Springfield Art Museum. We went there a lot, and I remember the exhibits. One of them was hilarious: a bunch of life-sized mannequins posed as if at a cocktail party, every surface from the floor to the chairs to the people themselves covered in cheese puffs! And they were serving cheese puffs, hahahaha.

As a senior, for a date I drove with my boyfriend to Mass MoCA - and THAT was amazing. There was quite a bit of installation art there. One piece was a basketball court sized room with these weird machines on the ceiling that dropped giant sheets of paper onto the floor, and you were to walk across the room. It was so weirdly beautiful, and experiential. The room was ankle deep in paper. It had something to do with environmentalism, conservation, waste, etc. But it was so fun to walk across that room with my boyfriend and sister (she came with us for fun). And it looked like it was snowing. And the size and mechanics of the piece were quite impressive.

I've had a lot of exposure to art in my life.

***

I went into BYU as a photography major. There were 15 of us. The program was difficult to get into. My high school photo and painting portfolio got me in.

I was miserable.

Long hours alone in the studio. Long critiques by snobby professors. Perfectionism. A very small cadre of people to hang out with, most of whom were not that fun to be with. Projects that I didn't like. Worst of all, so much emphasis on how to market yourself to clients, how to make money. What was this?! Art and money were supposed to be different ideals, and ne'er the twain should meet! I was not happy about it.

[The girl next door to me in the dorms was Palestinian and I spent a lot of time talking with her. I wanted to ask her to teach me Arabic, but thankfully before asking her, realized that wasn't a practical task for another full time student. So on a whim, I enrolled in Arabic 101, fell in love, and switched majors. Czech hadn't been an option.]

If Art isn't good or bad, it just *is*, then how can we put a price on it? When selling art is a motivation or impetus for its creation, is art reduced to craft? How much of the motivation/impetus behind the creation of art can be pecuniary for the object to still be considered art? Can art exist without craft? These are timeless questions, frustrating and challenging artists for millennia. I had already learned in 7th grade that there isn't a single, universally right answer to what defines art, or good art, just a lot of different opinions. As a 16 year old in France, I sat in front of Duchamp's ready-made bicycle wheel on a stool, and felt really happy. It was funny and clever, a big fat middle finger to "Art" with a capital A.

But isn't it a bit overdone by now?

***

Some people really like people to agree with them, to laud them, to praise them, to be told that they are correct, to find validation in all of their opinions. Other people tend to become very distrustful of this viewpoint, doubting its sincerity; what's the ulterior motive? Is there an agenda? 

Advertising, therefore, can't be all praise and validation; it has to have some other element in order to reach the maximum target demographic. That element is novelty.

Here I quote from TOR.com:

Wit sits on a box just inside the gates of Kholinar, strumming on his instrument and generally confusing three guards. His behavior is totally at odds with what they expect of an appropriate lighteyed gentleman. He tells them that something has changed, and that he’s waiting for a storm.

While he waits, he engages them in a conversation by asking what men value in others. One guard suggests that music is what men value most, and Wit begins to play his enthir, calling that statement a beautiful lie. Another soldier asks Wit what the most valuable talent is, and Wit says that isn’t the question. He says that what men value most of all is novelty. Intellect, aesthetic achievement, and innovation are all valuable, but men only value the thinker who comes to an idea or achievement first. 

I loved this scene from one of my favorite books of all time, The Way of Kings. I have read this epic fantasy novel at least three times (I basically have to reread all the books in the series every time a new one comes out, and we are on book 3 right now). 

What it boils down to for me is this: I think there should be a difference between advertising and art. I think that good art is independent of the idea of novelty, though there can be overlap. For example, I do like cubism, "monochromes", and even Duchamp's ready-mades. I think these artists are dangerously close to failing to meet the craft requirement (there has to be something; even these silent musical compositions have titles, for example) that is implicit in art, and absolutely required (for me) in "good" art. But when a message (sticking the middle finger to Art with a capital A) is novel enough to be creative and clever, the art can still be good art, in my opinion. It's like being on the inside of a joke.

Advertising, on the other hand, always has the same message: "Buy me." The only thing that ever changes about advertising is the craft, and because we live in a society that values immediacy, the craft doesn't actually require a large degree of time, effort, talent, or skill; it just requires novelty.

People really do universally seem to like the veneer of novelty. But is the hundredth or thousandth ready-made, or crude clay figurine, or crucifix in a container of urine actually novel? How many times can a canvas be painted in one single color and that be sold to an art museum for tens of thousands of dollars? Rehashing the same old ideas and arguments about what is and is not art can be so tiresome and navel-gazingly meta. It's like the film that is all about the struggling filmmaker - how many times do we have to see that? It doesn't really speak to me that much, honestly.

On the other hand, what makes representative art so appealing and timeless is the fact that there is an implicit balance between a demonstration of the artist's ability to master the craft of his or her medium with the underlying message. Representative art isn't all about defining what art is and is not, it's about the composition, the technique, the subject matter, the execution, etc.

I also think there is a correlation between mastery of craft and the potential of the art to be beautiful, but that is just my opinion.

***

Danny and I went to the Des Moines Art Museum with our kids for the first time last weekend. The main art exhibit was called Queer Abstractions, which is exactly what it sounds like: abstract art in a variety of mediums that is supposed to be about a variety of artists's own thoughts and feelings about their own homosexuality. At first, this made Danny and I really nervous. When the underlying message of art is something that directly contradicts our core values, we feel compelled to censor. "Let's teach young children about sex" is itself something I'm very, very wary of (regardless of hetero or homo), and "let's teach young children that whatever form of sexual expression feels good is good" is just a flat out evil message! We value sexuality, but in a very specific context. My children are intelligent, and I worried that these messages would be internalized (they sure were with me, with all my art exposure, for example). We tried to avoid the exhibit, but the way the museum was laid out made that mostly impossible. 

The art was so lousy that I didn't have much to worry about there, fortunately.

And that was true of the entire museum, actually! There were two paintings by John Singer Sargent which were impressive; these were donated by wealthy patrons that happened to live in the area a century or so ago. I guess if I were a wealthy patron with a beautiful piece of priceless art, I wouldn't think of Des Moines as a real mecca of art appreciation, either; I'd donate elsewhere.

"They had a Picasso," chimed in Danny.

"Danny, Picasso's entire art studio was strewn with papers and canvasses. He would pick one up, scribble some lines on it, sign his name, and that piece is now worth thousands of dollars. He's ubiquitous. Most museums have something or other by Picasso."

I.e. in my opinion, it's not as valuable.

Basically, most of the art in the entire museum was by less commonly known artists who were trying to copy the more famous artists' conceptions and execution. There were only two or three pieces of modern/contemporary art that I found compelling and memorable. Everything else was just like, "How many times do we have to see paintings that look like my seven year old made them?" "Why are we all standing around oohing and aahing at the art here, when it's neither beautiful nor clever?" 

Basically, the art was like this: it's "art" because it's in a pretty frame, hung on a wall in a fancy gallery. That's basically it.

I get that fine artists share my disdain for letting what's popularly considered beautiful or "good" to define their expression. I get it! But now we're stuck in this weird paradoxland, with seemingly nowhere to go:

- Artists don't want to create beautiful things because it's cliché,

- ...so they create ugly things, which are by now actually just as cliché.

- But if you question or criticize the art at all, you're "unsophisticated" or "uncultured."  

Basically, we are all just standing around pretending that the crap on the walls of most museums is "good art." 

It's madness.

***

There is only one way to fight the epidemic of bad art, bad music, bad literature, etc. and it's not by words, but creation.

If I don't like the pitiful state of sexism that persists in fantasy/sci-fi fiction, then the only way to do anything useful about it is to write something better. If I don't like how art today avoids topics like religion, patriotism, and parenthood but is meanwhile jacking off in the corner of craftless egocentric self-expression, that means I need to paint something with more interesting themes and better craft. 

The pressure to create is one of those constant forces in my life. It is never going to go away or be appeased. The only way it calms a bit is immediately after I create something. For example, after writing this blog post (and edit it for typos etc, sigh), I will feel a temporary relief from this incessant pressure.

But it won't last.

***

There is actually one other way to fight bad art, and that is by consuming what you personally consider good art. But there is an enormous problem here: how do you find good art? 

Advertising.

Basically, no matter what, good art is reduced to its ability to advertise effectively, unless it is you, yourself, who create it.

How do you "wrestle with God in mighty prayer"? Alma 8:10

How do you "wrestle with God in mighty prayer"? Alma 8:10
Alma leaves Gideon and goes back to Zarahemla to rest for a while. Then he goes to Melek and had a lot of missionary success there. Then he went to Ammonihah, which was a different story. Nobody there would listen to him.

10 Nevertheless Alma labored much in the spirit, wrestling with God in mighty prayer, that he would pour out his Spirit upon the people who were in the city; that he would also grant that he might baptize them unto repentance.

I wanted to know what "wrestling with God in mighty prayer" meant, and if I could do it, then how?

ANSWER:

This metaphor for how one should approach God when asking him to grant the desires of your heart is interesting. Why the struggle? Where does that come from? If we are his children, doesn't God want to bless us? Why should we struggle?

I think the struggle comes in part from simply asking God. It is difficult to admit that there's no possible way for us to get something we long for besides asking him for it.

The struggle also comes in deciding to accept the answer. Maybe God will give us what we want, but at a terrible cost. Maybe God will not give us what we want. Or maybe God's answer is silence - which can usually be interpreted as, "I trust you, keep going forward."

It's also physically difficult to pray sometimes. I recently decided that, while I can't quite bring myself to do daily mindfulness exercises like meditation, I can certainly improve my prayers by making sure I'm in a quiet, secluded(ish) place, and try to remove my mind from the pressure of finishing soon. How I do this is by trying to really tell God my thoughts and feelings, and not just asking and thanking him for stuff. I have started to talk to God in this way because I know that it will benefit me greatly on many levels: this itself is a kind of meditation, and there are empirical health benefits (that I sorely need at this point in my life) in store. I also feel an improved relationship between me and God when I take the time to include him in more real ways. I often think about him, but sometimes it's hard to try to involve him more directly, especially because of the time and comfort factor. My knees get uncomfortable. It's sometimes better on a walk in my thinnest of thin strips of suburban woods. Or in a closet or something.

What does it mean to "sit down w/ Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"? Does this include female prophetesses? Alma 7:25

What does it mean to "sit down w/ Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"? Does this include female prophetesses? Alma 7:25

Alma continues his long sermon to the people of Gideon. He ends it by invoking a blessing of God upon the people, praying that they will someday be able to rest in the kingdom of God with all the holy prophets who ever were because you'll have repented and will have continued through a lifetime of repenting, just like them.

ANSWER:

I read "sitting down" in this verse to imply two things: resting, and ruling.

If you sitting, you aren't standing. Sitting is more restful.

I don't really envision park benches, either. I see this as a loose metaphor for a throne. To me, it's Alma hoping that someday we will make it back to God and have the chance to be like him.

I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to see why sitting down with "all" the holy prophets would not include female prophetesses. It's annoying that only the men are named.

I don't know how things like gender equity will work in the Celestial Kingdom, but I am certain women will be there and that we will be happy. I have a lot more to say on this topic but it's probably not appropriate for this particular online space. Suffice it to say, I'm sure equality for women in heaven is not really worth worrying about; better to worry about that here and now.

Does this mean we should be passionless? Alma 7:23

Does this mean we should be passionless? Alma 7:23
Alma continues his sermon to the people in Gideon.

23 And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive.

Here are some synonyms for passionate:

ardent
dramatic
eager
eloquent
emotional
expressive
fervent
fierce
fiery
forceful
heartfelt
impassioned
intense
poignant
spirited
strong
vehement
violent
zealous

Here are some of the antonyms for passionate:
apathetic
calm
cold
cool
dispassionate
dispirited
dull
feeble
gentle
impassive
indifferent
lethargic
meek
mild
moderate
passive
peaceful
unconcerned
unenthusiastic
unexcited
weak

I noticed that neither humble nor submissive show up as antonyms to passionate on my list.

Anybody who knows me knows that I am a passionate person. I have red hair for a reason. Or something like that. Most deflating insult I ever received, and one I probably play too often in my head: "You overwhelm me with your enthusiasm." I wish they had said, "infect" - then it would have been a compliment.

I do think that I struggle in some ways to be humble, submissive, and gentle, and that it probably does have something to with my very enthusiastic nature. But honestly, I think that being humble, submissive, and gentle is just difficult for most people, and that my personal struggles with it just look different than others'. I am pretty quick to admit my faults and try to change, for example, which is something that other people might not do very well.

I am also not interested in being a fence-sitter. It's unappealing to me to the nth degree to be apathetic - about anything. Note that there's a difference between not having a strong opinion and not having any opinion at all; I want to have opinions simply because I really want to know everything that is good to know. I am positive that there are people out there who don't share this opinion, and when they're faced with a choice would rather allow themselves the illusion of not making one, allowing life to throw stuff at them, and thus avoid picking. But the act of so doing is itself a choice, right?

ANSWER:

I must have been in a really critical mood when I asked this question; it doesn't seem like Alma is talking at all about giving up our passions and zest for life here. He's actually just saying that we should tame our wild, willful tempers and hearts and submit our will to God's - which itself is something that can be done passionately. He also tells us to involve God in our daily lives by praying to him for all the things (spiritual and physical) that we need, and also by acknowledging his hand in giving us all the things (spiritual and physical) that we receive. That, too, is an act that can be done passionately.

Why would perfection make "his course [be] one eternal round"? Alma 7:20

Why would perfection make "his course [be] one eternal round"? Alma 7:20

Alma continues his sermon to the people in Gideon. He says this:

20 I perceive that it has been made known unto you, by the testimony of his word, that he cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath he a shadow of turning from the right to the left, or from that which is right to that which is wrong; therefore, his course is one eternal round.

Here is how I would simplify that verse:

I've noticed that you have been made to know by the power of God that God doesn't err. He doesn't lie. He doesn't make mistakes. [He is perfect]: therefore, his plan is perfect.

I find it kind of interesting that Alma uses the metaphor of a circle to symbolize perfection. There aren't corners in a circle. A circle is a good symbol of both kinds of infinity: containing (and not containing) infinite space, and being at least symbolic of an infinite line, although, I guess you do get back to the original starting point eventually...and maybe that's important in the symbolism. Also, you make a circle with a compass. There is a point of a circle that is the absolute center, and that point is also infinitely small. A circle reminds me of the act of gathering, or enclosing.

ANSWER:

A perfect plan for the salvation of humankind would have a lot of similar characteristics to a circle. It would not allow for spiritual favoritism by God towards people based on the circumstances of their birth. If we consider God's plan to be a path, and it goes around in a circle, no matter where we start on that path we will eventually get all the way around.

Is Alma saying faith comes AFTER baptism & repentance? Alma 7:14

Is Alma saying faith comes AFTER baptism & repentance? Alma 7:14

In latter-day saint theology, there are 13 main points of doctrine that are outlined in what is the closest thing we have to a "credo." Small children memorize these statements. They are written into songs. They are called 'The Articles of Faith.' They were written by Joseph Smith as a response to someone else's query about what we believe. If you read them, you will have a really good, basic summary of all the most important doctrines.

The fourth article of faith outlines the first steps that one takes in their spiritual journey: faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the holy ghost.

The first two are very personal, individual processes. The second two are ordinances that require involvement by someone who holds the priesthood and for you to physically do something: to be baptized, an Aaronic priesthood holder says a specific prayer (it's very short, basically just announces that he's baptizing you with the authority of the priesthood) and you are submerged fully under water. Then, after that, you receive the gift of the holy ghost by a Melchizedek priesthood holder laying his hands upon your head and saying a similar specific prayer. At that time, they also give you a personal blessing. It's a neat experience.

You are not allowed to get baptized until you meet certain requirements. For example, you cannot just simply call the missionaries and say, "Hey. I want to be baptized. Can you baptize me tomorrow?" You have to meet with them, talk with them, and be interviewed by the bishop. Sometimes some people are not allowed to be baptized until after they meet certain requirements, such as getting permission from their parents if they are a minor, or going through certain specific repentance steps if they have committed certain specific serious sins (this is rare).

Alma is continuing a sermon to the people in Gideon. He has stepped down from his government position and is now a full-time missionary. Here's what he preaches:

14 Now I say unto you that ye must repent, and be born again; for the Spirit saith if ye are not born again ye cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven; therefore come and be baptized unto repentance, that ye may be washed from your sins, that ye may have faith on the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, who is mighty to save and to cleanse from all unrighteousness.

ANSWER:

I think that Alma is not contradicting the steps in the 4th article of faith. I think he's stating that baptism is itself an act of faith.

What else could it possibly be?

Are the chains of hell something that happens in the physical real world? Alma 5:6-9 Alma 12:11

Are the chains of hell something that happens in the physical real world? Alma 5:6-9

Alma, the highest religious leader, is talking to the church, who by now has started to get inflated with pride. He asks them really thought provoking and probing questions about their souls, and their attitudes towards their own salvation. He mentions specifically whether the people can remember how God delivered their ancestors' souls out of hell by changing their hearts.

In this verse, the chains of hell certainly are at least a metaphor for what it's like when you lack God in your real, physical life. The metaphor most likely extends to later, as well - being dragged down to everlasting separation from God. Life outside of the Celestial Kingdom kinda fits this definition, as does the suffering you must endure to pay for your own sins if you fail to allow Jesus to bear the burden for you.

Alma 12:11

Alma is talking to Zeezrom, a sneaky, crafty lawyer who was trying to disprove Alma's words. Alma explains that people who harden their hearts get less knowledge, until they gradually know nothing about God and spirituality, and essentially allow themselves to be taken captive by the devil and led by him to destruction: and that is the definition of the chains of hell.

ANSWER:

It definitely sounds like these hell-chain thingies are very much a thing that happens while people are alive. It sounds like they are a metaphor for Satan's influence on you. 

Satan wants to destroy us and thwart God's plan. He doesn't want us to repent. He wants us to be miserable like himself. He doesn't keep his promises, and he doesn't offer anything worth having, anyway. Sometimes I wonder why evil even exists. This is especially true when I'm trying to get inside the mind of a character in a novel I'm thinking about and creating in my mind: what is the motive of a villain? Why are they evil? I don't relate to it. I mean, I understand some things about it, but I really don't get wanting to be or do evil. It's not logical, and it's really weird. 

Why is this "nevertheless" here? He had to experience it physically, not just through the spirit? Alma 7:13

Why is this "nevertheless" here? He had to experience it physically, not just through the spirit? Alma 7:13

Here Alma is continuing a really deep sermon about the nature and purpose of life. He says that the spirit knows everything, but the Son of God suffers in the flesh so that he can take upon himself the sins of his people and have the power to blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance.

13 Now the Spirit aknoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the bflesh that he might ctake uponhim the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.

When I read this, I was surprised about this conjunction "nevertheless." I didn't really know why it was there.

ANSWER:

"Why was it necessary for Jesus Christ to come to earth at all? Doesn't God know everything already?"

Yes. But apparently it's not enough to merely know them. He had to feel them.

In this most recent reading, I also noticed that the word "transgression" is used rather than sin. I think that word covers both the bad things we do on purpose as well as those for which we are not accountable, but which certainly do have an effect on the world. In other words, Jesus Christ experienced all the pain that ever was or will ever be - all of it.

This is such a beautiful doctrine. Essentially, it's the idea that I am not alone in my pain, that somebody else understands. But he doesn't just understand on an intellectual level; because he experienced it, he has the power and ability to actually conquer it. I love this doctrine. It makes a lot of sense to me, even though at the same time the scope is impossible to comprehend. 

I have faith that even though I can't really grasp how it's actually possible, that it is possible. It fills me with joy and relief to believe that somebody else is really intimately aware of my suffering and pain. It also means that all those nasty horrible thoughts I think in the dark recesses of my mind are not really a secret. It helps me to try harder to avoid going to bad places and thoughts willfully, just to know that. I don't want anybody else to know, let alone feel, some of the thoughts and feelings I sometimes have. 

Can joy come w/o wading through affliction/sorrow? Alma 7:5

Can joy come w/o wading through affliction/sorrow? Alma 7:5

Now we enter into a long philosophical section about the purpose and nature of this life.

Alma describes how his joy for the people of Zarahemla came after wading through much affliction and sorrow.

ANSWER:
No. Not really.

To really taste joy, you have to also taste bitterness. There isn't really another way. This is the great paradox and mystery of life as a human being. It is the conflict in the story of Adam and Eve. We are here because in order to experience joy, we have to gain experience and knowledge that only comes from the pain of sorrow.

The greater the sadness and sorrow, the greater the potential for pleasure and happiness. I don't think we need to try to go looking for miserable experiences. They will just come on their own, and if there's one thing I learned from reading the Old Testament, it's that the most admirable men and women of history had one similar characteristic: they all had the ability to turn even the most terrible circumstances into something good.

That's basically God's superpower, after all. We are all these weak, frail beings. And yet, he uses us to accomplish his purpose, which is to expand our own potential. He places us in situations, guides our lives, and sets us on paths for his own reasons and designs. He uses us, in spite of our weaknesses and evil natures, to accomplish something great: to save us and exalt us, because he is our father. He loves us.

Were their names blotted out on request or not, en masse? Alma 6:3

Were their names blotted out on request or not, en masse? Alma 6:3

After Alma ended preaching to the church, all the people who were not yet members who repented were baptized and became members of the church. Everybody who did not repent had their names blotted out from the church.

Basically, this concluded a long struggle that Alma and his followers had been having about how to deal with, "What do you do with dissenters within the church?" We do the same today. You can remove your name from the records of the church. In order to be added to the records again, you need to be rebaptized.

ANSWER:

I think that this verse implies that probably some people had their names blotted out simply by a failure to repent of their wickedness and humble themselves before God. However, we don't really know if their wickedness extended to personally requesting for their names to be removed, or if Alma was just trying his best to deal with the management of the church. I guess that potentially it could have been a mixture of both of these cases.

Today you have to actually ask for your name to be removed. It is really sad when people do that. It's one thing to drift off into inactivity (which a lot of people do). It's a wholly separate thing to leave the church actively.

Excommunication is another way you can be removed from the church today. I suppose that this verse is implying that there may have been a bit of a mass excommunication thing going on. If so, that sounds very sad indeed.

The only thing that is not sad about people leaving the church is that it is not the end for them. In fact, excommunication is always done with the person's own best interests in mind. It isn't about protecting the church. It's about removing a layer of agency for the individual. It's essentially removing one's baptismal covenants. Without those covenants, you are no longer under an obligation to God to live up to them. You also willfully deprive yourself of the blessings that accompany so doing, which is the sad part. But when you have less agency, you're also less accountable. It is better sometimes for some people to become less accountable for a short time before they can come back. It is always better for people to come back, though.

Apparently, the majority of God's children did not need to be part of his church during their lives. Most people die without ever joining the church. They will get the chance to do so later. But apparently, the common plan for mankind is to have less accountability in this life. That's a little bit odd to think about, but it makes it easier for me to deal with the idea of people I love leaving the church.

Need to read something highly uplifting and inspiring? Alma 5

Need to read something highly uplifting and inspiring? Alma 5
ANSWER:
Who doesn't need something highly uplifting and inspiring?

I have been reading from the Book of Mormon every day of my life for the past decade or so. Perhaps I have missed a few days here and there, but in general, I try really hard to at least read a verse or two. In the past two years, I have discovered that I really feel that's not enough. It just feels pathetic to read a verse right before falling asleep. So instead, I've made a much more concerted effort to study this book. I've reaped some good rewards in so doing.

Still, right now, I am not really actively reading the Book of Mormon per se. I am answering these questions that I asked myself last year, but I am not really reading it for the story. Sometimes I find myself not in the mood to answer these questions. Instead, I need a place to turn in the Book of Mormon for something else. I am going to put a bookmark on the page of Alma 5 because it is really uplifting and inspiring to me.

I think that sometimes people get intimidated by some of the soul-searching, soul-probing questions in this chapter.

I think it is guilt inducing for some people. I suppose it would also be for me, too, if it weren't for verse 33 and onward, which are firmly rooted in Jesus Christ's plan for the world. He invites us freely and openly to come to him, so that we can experience true happiness.

I believe with all of my heart that this message is true. It is really happy to me even just to read about it. It fills me with a strong conviction to continue to try my best to follow God's commandments and be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Is the Holy Order that of Melchizedek? Alma 6:8

Is the "Holy Order" that Alma refers to here that of Melchizedek? Alma 6:8

Alma starts his full time ministry to declare the word of God to the church in the valley of Gideon, according to his testimony of Jesus Christ as well as "the holy order by which he was called."

ANSWER:

Yes. See this post.

When it mentions they did not believe "according to their own will and pleasure", what does that mean? Alma 4:8

When it mentions they did not believe "according to their own will and pleasure", what does that mean? Alma 4:8

Alma wins the war, everyone's prospering, and the people in the church become so righteous that they become super wealthy. They start to wear fancy clothes, have lots of gold and silver, and became so prideful that they began to scorn each other and especially the nonbelievers.

This is the opposite of what you tend to see elsewhere in the scriptures, where the nonbelievers persecute the believers.

The wickedness in the church impeded the progress of spreading the gospel to nonbelievers.

Turns out it's hard to be a missionary when you're a jerk.

ANSWER:

We don't really know exactly what this persecution looked like. I bet it started small and got bigger from there, developing into general discrimination. Probably nonviolent, or else it would have been mentioned.

I betcha this kind of thing *never* comes up in Utah...

Why was this phrase uttered by Alma recorded? Alma 2:30

Why was this phrase uttered by Alma recorded? Alma 2:30

There's a big huge battle between the Nephites, the Amlicites, and the Lamanites. Alma the Younger, the righteous religious leader, is fighting this horribly wicked guy named Amlici in hand-to-hand combat. In the middle of their battle, he steps back, gets some breathing room, and prays to God for help.

Verse 31 describes how he manages to slay Amlici, verse 32 describes how the king of the Lamanites runs away.

This really took me back because it's like, huh?

ANSWER:
Probably the men in the battle (kind of stupidly) stopped to watch their leaders fight to see who would win. The words also probably were passed down as a kind of legend, though I tend to think it's not of the tall-tale sort. Maybe Mormon didn't trust the story enough to include embellished details.

It is a clear, obvious example to us, the readers, the value of praying to God. We don't know much about Alma's physical strength. We know he was best friends with the princes, son of the second (or first) most important person in the Nephite society, and by this point he has become both the chief judge and the high priest. Picture President Nelson as the prophet, president of the United States, and the chief general of the army, fighting Hitler...with a sword!

Everyone knew the story of Alma's past. His prayer here was visible, important, significant, and totally impactful. God immediately answered his prayer by filling him with strength to prevail over his enemies.

The main takeaways about prayer here are these:
- When you're in a bad situation, pray. No matter how bad it is.
- Literally, no matter how bad it is, you should make time to pray. Even in a one-on-one death match.
- Pray unselfishly. He prays for God to spare his life so he can be an instrument in God's hand to save and preserve his people. This detail is important.
- When you pray for what God wants you to have, you're more likely to get it. Duh.

Inside My Anxious Mind

I would like to write a little bit about my anxiety.

It's really hard for me to write about it.

I opened up to a friend recently about what it feels like to me, how I actually experience it, how this weird condition I have twists my mind emotionally. I think right now I'd rather write in specific terms than general ones. Maybe that'll help it become clear what's going on. Maybe it will help dispel my worries. Maybe it'll be cathartic. Maybe it'll be screaming into an elevator shaft and nobody'll care, which is what I mostly expect.

To really convey effectively what it's like, I guess I'll just have to write it in a steady-stream-of-consciousness. You know, once somebody commented to me that that is the style of the writing on my blog, and to be honest, that's not really *exactly* accurate; I always at least try to reread what I write, and depending on what I write, I also sometimes spend a little more time writing thoughtfully. You know, the act of writing isn't that linear. Quite often the words and ideas come to me in exactly the opposite order from what makes sense, and I have to reverse my sentences.

Brace yourselves for something new, then. This is what it's like inside my actual mind.

My fingernails are really nasty right now. I peeled off the manicure that I got last week because it kept reminding me of the terrible feeling I had trying to sit there and talk to that poor Vietnamese woman. She really seemed to be under some kind of pressure to not speak to the customer. She had been living in the United States for three years and could barely form a sentence in English. It made me feel so sad. This is the second time in my entire life I've had a manicure, and it was under considerable peer pressure. All the women on my side of the family plus Piper went to do this "great" thing together. I put great in quotes because I feel like I might be the only woman in the world who doesn't see it as some great thing. Piper had a similar experience, except I couldn't really tell whether or not she was enjoying herself. I was just nervously trying to make conversation and be agreeable, trying really hard to patiently endure it all.

I don't really want to comment specifically on the kinds of similar-to-this conversations and interactions I felt like I had to endure last week. But it was mentally exhausting for me. A lot of internal eye rolling. Which makes me feel like a pompous snob. It's not a great way to be.

I have been putting off my CGSI marketing chair duties for about two months! I feel like a total slacker. Meanwhile, I've been basically pouring my entire soul into a book writing project with a collaborator who doesn't seem to understand me very well. I am trying to be flexible and reasonable about my edits, but sometimes it can be horribly frustrating. And it's so lonely, too. It's like, here's the way I think we should fix our book. But you don't believe me. I have to prove it to you. And now my allotted computer time for the day is done, and these other less important but also more important jobs I'm supposed to do like update my blog - I swear that I've received about five emails from a collaborator in the past week, wanting to post something, and I haven't responded at all! Silence! Agh! All these other things just get shoved aside. There's a physical pile of papers and books on my actual desk, but the mountain of papers and reminders and stuff that I feel like I need to do that keeps piling up on my mental desk - that is really much, much bigger.

It seems like it is, but I know it's not.

I don't want empathy. I never said I wanted empathy. I don't want people who will sit and tell me that they understand how I feel, and give me advice about how to go through it. Why would you think I wanted empathy!? I really don't. This is bothering me. It doesn't make sense. What if I'm wrong? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I really do want empathy. This is stupid. Why don't I understand what I'm feeling? What am I looking for?

Oh, I can tell you exactly what I'm looking for. I want feedback! I don't even necessarily care if it's positive or negative - though positive'd be nice. I can understand exactly why those crazy MLM stay home mom people lost their homes and all their friends and became sucked into the "game" of sell-sell-sell these hideously ugly, overpriced, poor quality leggings. I'd never do it that way, personally, but that's just because I have a pretty strong sense of what I think is a "acceptable" behavior. That's like, way over the line. And my line is pretty generous compared to a lot of peoples'. Is it peoples' or people's or peoples's? I don't even know how to write my final s's with apostrophes. Huh. What kind of terrible linguist do I think I'll become. Kinda like I went through my entire elementary education thinking it's meant the possessive its, and nobody actually felt like correcting me; I had to find out on my own. And so it still sometimes trips me up. And it's easier to blame The System than to just accept that I can be imperfect. I just want to be perfect. 

Never. Gonna. Happen.

You know what's not acceptable behavior? You know what I really actually crave? The thing that I actually want, but was not brave enough to say outright because, for whatever reason, it broaches some kind of line of horrible awkwardness (but...writing about the awkwardness is okay? How does that make any kind of sense? Is it just another lame manifestation of my awkwardness theory in action? I don't know). What I Really Wanted was an asynchronous book club with my dearest friends. I miss them. They all live far away. I want to know their opinions. There isn't time or space to do it face to face. There isn't motivation or reason, either. 

Words girl. Just a words girl. I really care about the words. I want to read them. Do you know how horrible it was to wait, week after week for those very short lines? I wrote you pages and pages and pages. I missed you so badly. It was so difficult to wait. I think it ended up good for our relationship, but it also kind of tore an irreparable gash in my soul. Or maybe that's a crappy metaphor - maybe it'd be better to say something more like, it caused me to overvalue the written word. But maybe I've always been like this. I probably have always been like this. I don't know why I am like this. It's a stupid way to be. I don't suppose most other people care so much about the opinions and thoughts of their friends. I really want to know them.

My sisters'd never play. My brother'd never play. My husband tries but doesn't really like it. My friends...maybe Kami will agree to it. She told me once on the phone that she wishes that we could have a Book Club with *just* her and me.

"Why don't you put your thoughts and opinions about the End of Eternity on facebook? That'd be a perfect place for it."

Even I know that it's too long for that medium. And anyway, it would just serve as another horrible reminder about how people don't care about my thoughts and opinions. One or two fanatics would read it, and I'd get some kind of short comment about, "You write too much." I really hate those, "I'm overwhelmed by your enthusiasm" comments. They are not fun to listen to at all. They are deflating, horrible, HORRIBLE things. I don't want to deal with that. If I'm going to open up at all, I'd better just do it in a small, protected little space with people I care about, where I won't fail. And if I fail, it won't be quite so terrible. Or visible.

Whatever, I already failed. I guess the failure was that I didn't communicate what I wanted clearly, so I just wrote (and wrote and wrote and wrote) a long essay about my thoughts, and by simply sharing was trying to signal, "Please write me back. Let's do an asynchronous book club." But I didn't communicate it outright because the words were just too painfully embarrassing. Too painfully horrible.

I guess I'm worrying about this too much. It's pathetic. I should not worry about this. It seems to show that I care too much about it. But I do care. But I don't want to. But I don't think I care about this a lot more than other things. It's just that I basically care too much in general. This is stupid. The way I feel is stupid.

Ding. Another email into my inbox telling me what jobs I qualify for. The Most Depressing Emails of All Time. I really want a job! But I have five children and one of them is breastfeeding, two are not in school yet, and I literally do not have a career path. I don't know what the path will be. I don't know what I'm doing, or who I will become. Identity Crisis is a stupid thing to say. It's so...canned. It's not really like that. I have some direction. This is the direction.

I decided that I want to go back to school. Every time I think about it, I feel happy. It's stupid that the thing I look forward to most about going back to school is making the human connections with other likeminded people. It is the reason why the most important criterion for me is not what school, and not even necessarily what to study, but that it be a physical brick and mortar experience. I don't want my life to be so online. I want real interactions with real people who can look me in the face and notice that I actually exist and have feelings, thoughts, opinions - who will talk to me about what I am thinking. There are people like that in my world, but precious, precious few and they aren't even all...tangible. I don't want my life to be an asynchronous book club - the symbol of continually searching for meaning and connection to other humans online, but failing miserably because sometimes the words are too painfully stupid and awkward and embarrassing and x to say. Who can utter words related to computer games online? Especially when the games are so...

Well, so different. Some people play first person shooters, I play google docs? That's so lame.

So lame!

I think in this writing exercise I have by now written at least fifteen times about how lame and stupid I think I am. This is, itself, really lame and stupid. It's not going to help me feel better. And it's not going to help me change. Why do I do this? I don't know. I try to think a way out of it, but I'm not sure how to do that. It doesn't really make sense. There's huge swaths of me that don't make sense. I think I've been wearing these negativity glasses too long. I need to get up and get a drink of water, take a walk, bang on the piano or something else. 

 

Quitting Facebook on my phone has been good but in the past six months my interpersonal human connection has really plummeted as a result. I dunno, maybe it wasn't that great before. This is why I want to go to graduate school. I want people to read what I write. I want people to care that I exist. I want to be in a room with people who ask about my opinion on things. And the subject does matter. I don't actually have opinions about laser armpit hair removal, except keep it away from me - but I have a LOT of opinions about language. That matters to me. 

You know what sounds fun and really interesting, and would help to take away some of this sick and nasty pain of feeling like such a failure? At the CGSI meeting tonight, people were talking about how hard it is to get one's hands on the sole copy of the Czech genealogical dictionary that exists. It is not that great, it's pretty short, and I am really confident I could write a better one! Write a dictionary, that's pretty cocky and presumptuous. No, but for real. I am confident I could do that. What a worthy project, too!

Stop it, stop it. I can't think of new projects to start before I actually finish some of my old ones. I've basically come to the conclusion that what I really need is to find a way to increase my confidence, and while there are not a lot of concrete ways I can approach that task ("Fake it 'till you make it" is just a vague aphorism - I think it will constitute about 75% of all of it), one thing that I *can* do is try extra hard to cross the finish line on some of my projects.

There's this linguistics MOOC that I took and almost finished about 6 months ago. There's one single quiz left, plus one short project, and the final quiz. I took the quiz about 10 times, and I keep getting it wrong. There are 12 questions, the possible answers keep changing (both what they are and the order; I can't rely on visual memory), and I don't really, apparently, understand the concept. I keep getting 9 right, but I need to get 10 in order to "pass". "Passing" means a green checkbox. This green checkbox is stupid. But, these last three checkboxes would cause me to place a big check next to the class itself, which Danny assures me would really build my confidence. I did so for two other classes yesterday, and it actually *did* feel great. Like a relief. I didn't even know I was worrying about that. 

Maybe I shouldn't start so many projects. 

But then I wouldn't be me, I guess.

The reason I've been looking for a job is because we need a way to fund my graduate program. I want to be able to finish this program while my mom lives here, and in the next 1-3 years she is going to move to Utah. Probably. I don't know for sure, but that's how things look right now. I have decided that it's really important to me and our family, but especially to me, that I live close to my mother. Both my parents, really. But mostly my mom. I've never had as good a relationship with her as I have right now, and I don't want to lose it. It is one of the most valuable things in my life. I don't think she really wants to talk about linguistics or any of the things about Czech genealogy with me. But she does care about me and being physically present and available, well - it's an important thing. It's sometimes difficult to express why, because it doesn't make logical sense. But it is real. Just trust me, and believe me.

So I need a job to fund this degree, or we need to seriously overhaul our budget so that we can afford me to go to school. This is really stressful to think about - I don't want to think about it.

Especially because the jobs I qualify for with my lack of experience is just so horrid.

Because I don't actually lack experience, I lack hours in the workplace. I should say, in the paying workplace. I've been working crazy hours for years and years - more than a decade - at this stay home mom thing. And it is a lot of work! And I have some really great skills. And I've lost others. For example, I cannot even believe that I forgot that the product of two negative numbers is positive. That is something so funny that I have to say it over and over and over because it deserves to be displayed on a pedestal of my stupidity, or The System's stupidity, or something else. It's just a hilarious joke to me. A hilarious, self-deprecating joke that isn't even painful anymore, except that there are a dozen other issues with my math that are just like that.

Hence why I've been doing multiplication and division flashcards with my older kids on a daily basis. It's for them, but...it's also for me.

I actually applied for a few of the jobs, but like...well, first of all, there's probably a giant mountain of English majors interested in the kinds of TESOL jobs I want and would be good at. Also, I guess when you apply for jobs, you most often don't get them. The rejection is pretty terrible. There's all these pithy little online job opportunities which would even FURTHER limit the allotted computer time, but they just serve to reiterate: You Are Not Valuable. I don't really need more of that in my life. Danny says he's interested in working on developing some apps after he graduates in December. Maybe that'll fund my Venture Out of the Lonely Abyss. Ugh. How pathetic is it to go to grad school because you crave human interaction and don't really get enough of it at home? 

Well, it could actually be quite normal? Maybe? I am not the only one on this road. There are probably many others...

***

*That*, dear reader, is real steady-stream-of-consciousness writing by a person who is on the wrong end of the cyclical struggle with anxiety. May this round of it be over soon, and may I find a way to try to tell myself how great I am more often than I tell myself how much I suck. 

I don't think that's the solution for every person; in fact, I think it would be pretty terrible for certain individuals to further inflate their egos. But for me, I think I just really need the person inside myself to believe that I'm friendable. I have figured out that that is what I need on the outside, but how to internalize such a thing? 

Sometimes all that internal work can be knocked down with a single teasing remark by an oblivious family member. Usually teasing is okay. Except when it's not. There's this little record player in the corner of my mind with a huge stack of comments people have made to me over the years, and which I have somehow internalized. So many of them are negative. 

I need to find the ones that are positive and play those instead. 

Musicals and Epistemology

Hey secular, lazy world! How would you like your Christian religious education packaged? Maybe we can wrap it in some nice melodies and sticky-in-your-heady lyrics for the sake of "relate-ability" so you can assuage any vestigial remnants of guilt you might have about not quite being able to find the time or effort to actually, you know, bother to crack the spine of the most influential book in the history of mankind. We've got you completely covered in the mainstream musicals of the English speaking world - sit back, relax, and leave your critical thinking skills behind!

Here's a non-conclusive list in order of least to most offensive (to me):

Vague Allusions to Mystical Events You Don't Need to Know About in Detail:

BISHOP
By the witness of the martyrs
By the Passion and the Blood
God has raised you out of darkness
I have bought your soul for God!

Vague Allusions to Stories, Characters, and Parables You Don't Need to Know About in Detail, Plus Some Mild Innuendo for Good Measure:

RENO
Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp
But now I'm willing to trim my lamp
So blow, Gabriel blow

And Now Let's Make Fun of Stereotypical Christian Attitudes Towards Sharing the Gospel: 

SAVE-A-SOUL GROUP
Follow the fold and stray no more
Stray no more, stray no more
Tear up your poker deck and play no more
Follow, follow the fold

Saying the Literal Exact Opposite of the Story. Because We Can:

PHARAOH
We were in a jam
would've baffled Abraham.
But now we're a partnership
it's just a piece of cake.

CHORUS GIRLS
Greatest man since No-ah,
only goes to show ya

JOSEPH
Anyone from anywhere
can make it if they get a lucky break!

Reduction of a Major Doctrinal Topic to a Glib and Profane Statement, for Sh***s and Giggles!:

JESUS
I'm here to get washed up!

Mormons! A Perennially Hilarious Topic:

The entire Book of Mormon Musical falls into this category. There is literally no other purpose to this musical than to make fun of latter-day saints. The only good thing about this musical is the advertisement that the church continues to take out in the playbill:

The God of the Universe - but Rebranded! 

Jesus Christ: Superstar - I can hardly even bear to write those words out. They are so utterly distasteful. Who cares that the makers of the show were devout Christians with pure intentions.

They failed!

In a massive way.

The moral of the story: there's a very small percentile who enjoys a dancing Gentile.

If Broadway is the main source of your religious education, I can't help but question your personal epistemology.

I mean, would you judge all of American food by a single lousy experience in a McDonald's in Europe? Would you claim to know the purpose and function of Kubernetes because you read a comment about it on a Stack Exchange thread once? Would you claim to speak German because you memorized one or two 101 level sentences?

Why should it be any different with religion?

Duh. It shouldn't.

You live in the West? You should read the Bible.
You live in the East? You should still read the Bible.
You live on Mars? Are you a human? Doesn't actually matter - you should still read the Bible. Send our planet your own religious texts.

I personally can't wait for other ancient religious texts to be discovered, uncovered, revealed, translated, shared, and to further shed light on God's plan for his children. You slackers over there who keep saying, "A Bible? A Bible? We already have a Bible. We don't need ANOTHER Bible!" - who don't even bother to give it a passing glance, preferring to take your religious education passively, served to you in a baby bottle, totally diluted from any real, powerful, meaningful doctrine, you guys keep messing it up for the rest of us. Why should God bother to give us further instructions when we don't even generally value and treasure the words we already have?!

I value it.

It is immeasurably frustrating to me when others, especially those who should, don't.

There was a preview for a MOOC about philosophy of religion that I saw. It reminds me of that:

"Is there a God?"
Danny and me: "Yes."

"Do you know there is a God?"
Danny and me: "Yes."

"Do you believe there is a God?"
Danny and me: "Yes!"

"Can you convince a reasonable person that there is a God?"
Danny and me, almost shouting: "NO!"

Constraint Programming Ideas Applied to a Housewife Paradigm

Last week I inadvertently solved a program on paper that could have been solved by constraint programming. Apparently, cp is not actually computer dependent, and was a way of solving optimization problems during World War II. Or was that linear programming? They are all just theoretical to me. So far.

I don't know how cp would have done it differently, but my strategy for solving the problem was to try to first see how the current plan fit with the actual constraints of reality, and then make changes based on how far they were off from it. There was also a fair amount of intuitive guessing.

I will probably write about this at greater length on my language learning blog. It's important to me, even though it seems very much like it fits in a category of topics that nobody else actually wants to talk about with me, though I guess listening (or reading) would be tolerable. The thing is, there's a big difference between how it feels to me to be passively listened to and actively inquired. It's hard for me not to conflate caring about my interests with caring about me, myself, because I try to care about what my friends care about. To my dissatisfaction, men - who tend to have a high enough dorkiness tolerance level to handle being my friend at all - just don't seem to work this way. There's not even a question about, "What does it mean that we are talking about x?" It's just the face value itself. I enjoy figuring out how the male mind works, but sometimes it just grates on my nerves, their inability to act like they care, their inability to see how women normally and intuitively interpret rejection. And how it's somehow always a flaw in me that this is how I see the world. When three of your closest friends do it simultaneously, even though I'm sure it's inadvertently, it hurts a lot.

When I was much younger, about ten or eleven, I spent a lot of time with my brother watching him play computer games. There were only a handful of games that fully consumed my attention; most of my time playing at a computer was watching, and occasionally taking turns. One day, walking home from school, I imagined if it were possible to turn somebody's daily life into a game, and what that could look like (yeah. Not the only one to think that up). I think I spent several weeks fantasizing about an imaginary world where one could live vicariously through an avatar (didn't know that word at the time - did it even exist in 1995?), where the problems to solve would be "fairer". Like, where I'd be able to know what to do in order to get the results I wanted. I was not a popular kid. I often said really awkward things, made verbal blunders. I wanted really badly to have close friends, but that didn't happen for me until college. I dreamed of a world where that was possible.

There isn't a formula for friend-making. You can't solve this problem with constraint programming. There are too many variables! You can't account for all, or even most, of them. But I suppose this might be the best algorithm for solving this problem. You wouldn't want to use a genetic algorithm, which really is just complicated guessing, except as a last ditch effort, when all else has failed.

I have half a dozen other problems sitting on my mind's desk, that could be solved with constraint programming methods.

For example, the problem of how to balance a dinner (or more specifically, a set of dinners) that everyone will eat, isn't too expensive, is healthy, tastes good, is easy to make, is not too much the same as something you recently ate, makes it so you don't eat too much meat in any given week (an aspect of my religion's health code that a lot of people ignore, but I don't), and if you eat it you'll have components in your fridge for the next day. It is a complicated equation, but it's far from unsolvable. Yes, some factors are subjective, but all can be measured and described with data. It's just you need a LOT of data to solve this problem. I've been working on it subconsciously and consciously for a decade. I guess most housewives end up not really solving it explicitly. I really want to do that. I want to write a book of ~12 sets of dinner menus, each of which is slightly tweaked and optimized for a different priority, all of which are designed to have the right amount of meat and leftovers, and to be very different. I'm at the stage in the project where I'm testing the menus. I created them in 2014. Part of the huge appeal for this project is the idea that I could just hit "print" and suddenly have a grocery list. Eventually, I would like to just hit "enter" and that list would order the meals online for me. So far no third party service has done all the things I wanted, especially not the interconnected menus. It is going to be a bring your own recipe cookbook planner, basically. Nothing quite like it really exists.

Another idea that I have which could be solved using constraint programming is the complicated management of temple name cards. It wasn't until late 2018 that you could print single ordinances; before, you had to print the card with all of them (baptism, confirmation, initiatory, endowment, sealing to parents if they are known; sealing to spouse is a different card). So you ended up with a stack of cards that are easy to lose. You reprint the card, there is a significant risk of duplicate temple work. The thought makes me sick, actually.

Why not just organize it in a spreadsheet? Well, you could, but there are some factors that don't fit so well there. Basically, these things have to be done in order, parents have to be sealed before their children can be sealed to them, and if you can get all the children of a couple together, you can seal them all at once, which is my goal. Sometimes you want to prioritize the expiration date of the cards. Sometimes you want to prioritize the older people first, since they have been waiting the longest. You always want to prioritize by which ordinances you can physically do; I can't stand as a proxy for my male ancestors, we don't always have time to do an endowment session (~1 hr 45 minutes), we might be going with unendowed people to the baptistry, somebody might want a stack of cards, etc. Basically, I don't know how to write a program to solve this, so I am creating that spreadsheet, but to use it, I will be constantly reordering the columns, which is somehow far from ideal. I am looking forward to working through my backlog of temple names eventually, and being able to just print the ordinances for that day in order to avoid risk of duplicate work. But that's about two years away.

What is "my" discipline? How do I look at the world? I was trained as a teacher. A lot of time was spent on learning about theories in pedagogy. I haven't officially touched that field for a decade.

What is my field, then? Where and how do my ideas "count"? How can they be classified? How can what I do mix with what other people do and create something even better? I'm a pretty average housewife. It's not really a field but a state. Sometimes I dislike everything about this state except for my children and my husband, who I really love. But the cost, the cost, the cost... Worth it, just barely.

I am quite confident that I could make a meaningful, important, valuable contribution to the world. That my ideas could cross over into other disciplines and create some new method or theory or whatever. This is something I would really like to see happen, and vice versa, to apply interesting ideas to the way I personally solve my problems. Why should my housewifey constraints apply to my mind? They really needn't.

List of Boring Things

Yes, sometimes I do find some things boring. I decided to make a list. What, if anything, do these items have in common? Hmm. 

• Making this list
• Listening to my relatives talk about sports
• Trying to figure out some weird physical ailment that nobody else thinks you have
• Keeping track of schedules and appointments
• Listening to similar complaints and deciding if it should be treated with ibuprofen or Tylenol
• Anything having to do with health insurance
• Finding a doctor
• Navigating online payment portals
• Painting a wall
• Folding laundry
• Putting away laundry
• Nitpicking
• Trying to figure out a bus or train schedule that doesn't make sense
• Waiting at a restaurant for them to bring you (and your five hungry kids) food
• Almost all cable television
• Driving across the state of Kansas
• Reading the plaques at the zoo
• A whiny 4 year old girl
• Trying to figure out investing
• Trying to figure out the equation for how to calculate the cheapest, best quality toilet paper (or paper towels)
• Clothes shopping for myself
• Clothes shopping for myself online, which is somehow even worse
• Being on hold on the phone for a long time
• Almost all radio
• Sanding anything
• Staining anything
• Coating what you sanded and stained in polyurethane
• Getting lost while driving, especially when there's a lot of traffic
• Trying to figure out how to get the stupid [insert electronic device] to work
• Many of the lengthy, repetitive passages about the destruction of Jerusalem in the Old Testament
• Almost all sacrament meetings with small children
• The first part of a lesson or a presentation when they list the desired outcomes of the lesson or presentation
• Scrubbing anything or anyone
• Basically, anything that you do every single day without any variety or change
• Forcing yourself to block out the fingers to a measure of a piano piece
• Waiting for people to be available for you
• Trying to fall asleep
• Swimming laps
• Listening to adults whining about their jobs
• Eating the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
• Painting, even though I like the end result
• Spending hours in the antiquities section of the art museum
• Putting away laundry
• Vacuuming
• Dusting
• Washing the dishes
• Trying to remember birthdays
• Planning vacations of any kind, including fun ones with a suitable budget
• Cleaning the kids' rooms
• Having small people whine and cry and pull on you
• Many of the GRE practice test reading sections