Why was "Gazelem" necessary? Alma 37:23

Why was "Gazelem" necessary? Alma 37:23

I think that Heavenly Father sometimes gives prophets and seers "crutches" because it helps us to overcome certain physical limitations of mortality, including the ability to suspend disbelief. As our faith grows, the prophets and seers become less reliant on these kinds of physical crutches. Joseph Smith didn't need to use his seer stone after a while, for example.

How well did the Nephites know the geography of Egypt? Alma 36:28

How well did the Nephites know the geography of Egypt? Alma 36:28

My best guess? Really not that well.

I bet there were maps kept in the brass plates, and I bet that Nephi did teach some basic geography to his children, but I seriously doubt it's anything close to the kind of map access we have today.

I still remember the moment when I realized that I likely know more about and have read more in the scriptures than many, perhaps even most, of my ancestors. That I, with my modern day access to knowledge and information, am totally privileged in a way almost unthinkable by my ancestors. That they were basically clinging to crumbs of truth repeated orally throughout generations, and without access to the scriptures in their mother tongue, the bible itself was further removed from their grasp. It is strange to think about.

Why is it sometimes called Melchizedek Priesthood, others "Order of God"? Alma 13:10, 17-18 - see Alma 13:19

Why is it sometimes called the Melchizedek Priesthood, and elsewhere the "Order of God"? Alma 13:10, 17-18 - see Alma 13:19

See this post and this post.

Whether the Order of the Son of God, the Order of God, or the Melchizedek Priesthood (which is totally not a weird "Mormonism" thing; this concept is totally in the Old Testament!) - the message from the name is clear: this is power from God given to humans. There was this one guy in the past who was really righteous and who also had a really strange name, and was from this order. Using his name makes it easier to not repeat Jesus Christ's name too much and cause it to be said in vain. It's not the "man" priesthood. It's an order, kind of like a fraternal organization, with certain rights and privileges available to members at various levels.

And women are admitted to it. We have full access to the priesthood power.

I want to be an instrument in the Lord's hands. How? Alma 26:15

I want to be an instrument in the Lord's hands. How? Alma 26:15

My favorite missionary in the scriptures is Ammon. He goes to teach the Lamanites and has enormous success. He talks about the work like this (paraphrased):

My brothers and sisters were suffering, but the Lord has brought them his everlasting light. They are circled by his unending, matchless love - a love that is generous and perfect. And we, the missionaries, have been instruments in the hands of the Lord to make this thing happen.

Of course, the next question is, "How can I be an instrument in the hands of the Lord?" It's a good question, but very personal.

I think that as I've gotten older, I tend to grow in my dislike towards assuming that I know what God wants. The world is weird and so many things are "messed up." The only way for me to make sense of it is to quit thinking that I know what God wants. I don't.

He's given commandments - which are general, and callings - which are personal. Some of my callings are from my church leaders, others are... a lot more difficult to pinpoint. I feel really drawn towards my Czech ancestors, as if it were a calling. I am confident that it is good for me to spend my time and effort in studying all things related to my Czech ancestors. Nobody specifically pulled me aside and told me that was my calling, but it doesn't really matter; I feel called.

I feel like as long as we are working towards keeping the commandments - both the broad ones and the more personal ones, like our personal and church callings - that is the best way to be an instrument in his hands. I think that if you try to be an instrument in his hands, you're actually more likely to fail. It's like putting your eye on the wrong mark. Instead of focusing on the things that God has already given you, you're focusing on what you think of and how you interpret God's plan. There's too much variability in that.

But there isn't variability in striving to keep the commandments. It's like... focusing on the commandments allows for some degree of flexibility. The commandments can change as our situations change. Some very basic human commandments (don't steal! don't lie! don't commit adultery!) aren't likely to change. But my identity, my role, my piece in God's plan, well, it has flexibility because I am a changing, evolving, growing human being.

In order to be an instrument in God's hands, I need to try my best to keep the commandments. That means following my church leaders, trying to fulfill my callings, and continually seeking inspiration and direction from God about what my callings even are.

Grouchy about sexism

Sexism.

A perineally interesting topic.

Deeply personal.

Utterly and exasperatingly unresolvable.

Someday when the heavens open and we can see truth as it really is, we will have a very different view of the world, the actions that mattered and the measure of true influence. Because it's not even enough to try to measure "a woman's lot" in her ability to raise the subsequent generation of world leaders. Isn't that still saying only those flashy, splashy people who made headlines are the ultimate measure of "mattering"?

We can try to measure influence in these modern times with likes, views, and comments, but it boils down to the same inherent conflict I've written about before: art vs. advertising.

It just sucks that I am on the end of lesser privilege in this particular battle. It frustrates me to not be acknowledged for the very real differences in my soul. It is really dehumanizing to feel surrounded by a male perspective, a traditional male point of view of "self", masculine values, and no real consideration of my own internal reality. Whether through the eyes of classic literature or a modern video game, it boils down to the same thing: this doesn't represent me. I am not validated.

I believe I'm worth validating because I am human.

I'm not a man-hater. In fact, I find men much more comfortable to be around. They make more sense. They are interesting. They are much easier for me to read.

Women are confusing, frustrating, and often far more boring (to me). I struggle with female relationships. But I guess I just struggle with *all* relationships.

This is not even worth the time to straighten out. The ideas are impossible for me to resolve. I think the best I can do is just hope that God will resolve them someday.

Why did afflictions matter? I get sincerity... Alma 37:36

Why did afflictions matter? I get sincerity... Alma 37:36

Hey! This is the first time I've written on this blog in a long, long time! I decided that it's time for me to finally finish this thing I've been writing. I would like to compile it into some kind of book thingy eventually. It's been at least 6 months, but perhaps longer, since I've written. A lot has happened.

For a long time I had the wrong reference written here. It used to point to Alma 37:11, and that made no sense. It wasn't until I reread the chapter that I saw the verse I actually meant to point at.

This is what the verse says (paraphrased):

Remember, my child, to learn wisdom when you are young. Learn when you are young to keep the commandments of God.

Not only learn to keep the commandments, but learn how to pray. In fact, cry your heart and soul to God, turn to him for all your needs and wants. Wherever you go, make sure you go there for God. And not only that - but also let all of your thoughts be directed to God. And even beyond that, let the affections of your heart be given to God always.

Counsel with the Lord in everything you do, and he will direct you in the best path that you should go. Not only that, but also when you lie down at night, make sure you lie down to God, that he can watch over you in your sleep. When you rise up in the morning let your heart be full of thanks to God. If you do these things, you will be lifted up in the end.

I'm playing this medieval RPG game these days. Everybody all the time says things like, "Praise be to Jesus Christ," and, "God be with you." You know, casual greetings. They took this kind of counsel quite literally in the 1400's.

Needless to say, today... not so much.

I've read the Book of Mormon several times.

Tangent:

Here's my scripture read-through count:

Old Testament (in total): 1x
New Testament: 2x
D&C and Pearl of Great Price: 1x
Book of Mormon: 7x
(once as a 14 year old, that time when I finished it on the beach, once in seminary, once with Danny, once when the prophet asked us to read it, once in Czech, and now)

/tangent

I guess on the last read through I misread this verse. I thought it was talking about afflictions, but really it was talking about affections.

But you know what - affect, like affection, is also all about feeling. Afflictions tend to involve strong emotions going in the opposite direction. I know that I originally misread this, but the truth is that in order to actually be afflicted by something, the first step is, well, caring about it. Hard to torment and torture the apathetic.

I guess it's hard for me to relate to apathy in general. It's quite a foreign sentiment to me.

The exact words of the verse are, "let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever." To me this sounds as though the Lord were some kind of altar. You can approach him with your feelings and metaphorically "place" them on him. When nobody else knows (or cares) about what you've been through, the Lord - meaning, Jesus Christ - does. He must, because he took upon himself both the sins and the pains of all humanity everywhere. He's the reason that it is possible to have hope.

This verse points towards sincere, honest, true, diligent trust in God involves both believing that he is who he is supposed to be, and that the inner effort to turn to him matters enough for the effort to be worth the investment.

I believe these things with all my heart. I'm not always the best at laying my feelings on an invisible inner altar, but I consistently try to do so, and I think the intention of our heart is what's at stake anyway.

Checkbox Workaround Solution for Google Calendar - Desktop & Android

Today I solved a computer problem that I've been struggling with for 6+ months. It's a bit convoluted and it is not perfect, but that's because What I Really Want To Do is not possible (see here, here, here, sorta here, and here).

If I were really hardcore, I'd add photos. But. Well. I didn't.

Sue me.

I am really motivated by check boxes. In fact, that is why Nike Run Club worked for me (until I got a very mild case of plantar fasciitis from running too much too quickly in a new pair of shoes). I guess maybe the check boxes worked too well, in that case - causing me to care more about checking them off than listening to my body. Or maybe there were other compounding factors like major amounts of stress. Who knows.

I like check boxes.

As of January 2020, Google Calendar for desktop has three things: events, reminders, and tasks.

Reminders and Tasks are useless for me because neither of them do persistent notifications on my phone. The ONLY way that I sometimes remember to do stuff is because my phone dings, or I look down at the notifications bar and POOF there's a reminder.

Google Calendar for mobile also has this extra thing called goals. It's great! But very lite - not customizable enough for some of my events. It has this great feature where you can mark it as complete or say "later." Supposedly the algorithm learns from you what times are the best for accomplishing your goal, and it will schedule future instances then. So that's cool. But it's obviously not useful for every kind of task, especially those that are not in 15 minute increments and that have rigid start times.

Basically, Events was the only option that I was left with. But events do not allow you to mark them as complete. I guess people just assume that if you had an event, you complete it.

Well. That's not how I use Google Calendar. And it's also not how I am motivated to do stuff.

So here's my workaround using the "Going? Yes/no/maybe" feature.

1. Use a dummy google account (you probably have one if you're anything like most people). For clarity's sake, I'm calling the main account in my example mainAccount@gmail.com and my dummy account dummyAccount@gmail.com.

2. In your mainAccount, on Google Calendar you will have three calendars: Events, Reminders, Tasks. Set up at least one other calendar.

(FYI: I have like 20+ calendars. All 5 of my kids gets their own individual calendar, there's calendars for home/family, church, school, personal, blogging, etc. The calendars are all color-coded. It's kind of nice to do it this way because I can see visually at a glance whether or not I need to calendar in more or less time in a certain area of my life. It has helped me to stay more balanced. "Oh, there's not enough time with Danny. We should calendar something this week." "Oh, I've got way too many things planned for school. I should try to adjust that in the future.")

3. In your Android phone, add both your mainAccount and your dummyAccount as users. When you open the Google Calendar app on your phone, you'll have to scroll down through all the calendars of mainAccount to see the calendars of dummyAccount. DummyAccount will have its own separate Events, Reminders, and Tasks calendars. The only accounts you want to be visible are both mainAccount Events and dummyAccount Events. I mean, I guess whatever - you can have Contacts, Birthdays, Tasks, Reminders - but UNCHECK all the additional calendars for mainAccount, otherwise you'll see your events twice, and that's annoying.

4. Create an event in mainAccount (you'll want to do this on your computer). Make sure it is NOT in your Events calendar, but in whatever separate calendar(s) you've created.

5. As you are creating an event in mainAccount, invite dummyAccount to attend. And spare yourself the email invites, sheesh.

6. In your Android phone, you should now see dummyAccount's events. Since you've been invited to them, they're outlined and not shaded in. When you open an event on your phone, you will see that it is marked "Going? Yes/no/maybe" at the bottom. If you squint, you can pretend that it's asking, "Did you go?" When you select "yes" then the event will be shaded in on your calendar.

7. ...Hence, I've named my dummyAccount Events calendar "I did this!" Now I'll have a single place where I can see all the stuff I accomplished this year.

Cons:

• It's slightly annoying that the prompt is "Going?" rather than "Did you go?" <-- but if they had that, I wouldn't have needed this workaround at all.
• There isn't a good way to maintain my color-coded events on my phone (but that's okay, and might even help me to focus more) since they are all in a single calendar (remember, the dummyAccount Events calendar that I named "I did this!"). On the other hand, they still are slightly colorcoded - empty for not done, shaded for done. 
• It is a little annoying to add an event from my phone. To add it to the right calendar, I would have to start by finding that calendar, checking it off as viewable, and then going through the steps to add the event. Fortunately, 90% of my events are created from my computer, so that's not a huge deal. Also, I often just use google keep when I'm in a rush anyway (like at the doctor's office) and then add the events later. But it's not ideal.
• It will take some time for me to get used to adding my dummyAccount to events, and it is slightly longer. But honestly, it's wayyyyy less of a pain than this workaround. Um, no, I am not going to edit the event's title every time I want to mark it as done. That is the kind of workaround that would cause me to switch calendars entirely.
• It will take a little bit of effort to both invite my dummyAccount to all future events, as well as transition all the evens in my mainAccount Events calendar to other auxiliary calendars. So that's annoying, but it's a one-time thing. Moving forward, I now know what to do.

Which would be a real pity because Google Calendar is great at so many other things, including creepily adding itineraries from gmail into my calendar. I say it's creepy - it's actually soooo helpful.

It just kinda sucks at understanding how I use this app to motivate myself and get stuff done.

As an aside: google goals are automatically added to the Events calendar of my mainAccount. That is why I choose to keep mainAccount Events calendar visible on my phone. Those actually do stay color-coded, too. So that's great.

As another aside: I learned through this experience that a GSuite account allows you to set up appointments through google calendar, while a regular google account does not. I also learned that if you are logged into your mainAccount in the browser, but even if you're in dummyAccount's google Calendar, it will still default to showing you all the mainAccount's Events calendar events (along with dummyAccount's calendar events - all of them, I think) on the appointment page. But fortunately, it won't show that stuff to anybody else who is not logged into your mainAccount google account, or if they're using another browser. Confused yet? Well, this matters because I don't really want to share a calendar with lots of people to set up Czech speaking appointments and have them see my reminders to meditate, fold 2 baskets of laundry, go to sleep, go to sleep for real, etc.