I’ll highlight one passage from today’s reading, Alma 38:   “See that ye bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love” (38:12).   I heard Truman Madsen point out, many years ago (probably when I heard him lecture at Education Week down in California, while I was still in high school), that this verse doesn’t advise us to kill our passions off, but to bridle them.   When we bridle a horse, we do so to guide... Read more

    “We live among ruins in a World in which ‘god is dead’ as Nietzsche stated. The ideals of today are comfort, expediency, surface knowledge, disregard for one’s ancestral heritage and traditions, catering to the lowest standards of taste and intelligence, apotheosis of the pathetic, hoarding of material objects and possessions, disrespect for all that is inherently higher and better — in other words a complete inversion of true values and ideals, the raising of the victory flag of ignorance... Read more

    I rejoice that the sacred scriptures of our faith portray a God who listens to prayer, who loves us and longs to lead us.  I rejoice that my chosen line of work, mathematics, has enabled me to bring into being new things that did not exist before, and to greet with wonder and awe many amazing inventions of my fellow workers.  I rejoice that daily we live immersed in infinity, that we have the freedom not only to... Read more

    Back in 2009, I posted a (relatively) brief expression of my belief, and of why I find Mormonism so very deeply satisfying, on the Mormon Scholars Testify website:   http://mormonscholarstestify.org/151/daniel-c-peterson-2   It seems appropriate for me to call attention to that statement every decade or so.  Just so people know where I stand.     I fully understand how Wordsworth derived inspiration from the Lake District, which has long been another of my favorite places on Earth.  I... Read more

    What is dying? A ship sails and I stand watching  till she fades on the horizon,  and someone at my side says, “She is gone”. Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all; she is just as  large as when I saw her . . . the diminished size and total  loss of sight is in me, not in her,  and just at the moment when someone at my side says “she is gone”, there are others ... Read more

    Thanks to Robert Boylan for calling my attention to this important news story:   Thousands Of British Refugees Make Dangerous Journey Across The Irish Sea   Meanwhile, here are some less serious items about the “Brexit”:   “Reflections on the Shock of Brexit”   “Brexit and the End of International Progressive Inevitability”   “Liberal Cosmopolitans Lash Out at the Shattering of Their Worldview”   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England         Read more

    A quick reference regarding Alma 37 and this whole section of Alma, with its counsel by the father to his three sons:   My friends Gordon Thomasson and Jack Welch published this item very nearly a quarter of a century ago:   http://edgemontscripturestudy.com/All%20About%20Alma/42%20Sons%20of%20the%20Passover%20Chap%2056%20in%20Reexploring%20The%20Book%20of%20Mormon-John%20W.%20Welch.pdf   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more

    This article shows Latter-day Saints in the United Kingdom engaged in the kind of service that Christian disciples should engage in:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org.uk/article/welsh-mormons-donate-to-womens-refuge   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more

    The Church has just made an enormous contribution to Afro-American family history research:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/historic-freedmens-bureau-project-completed   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more

    http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/06/narcissists-get-more-dates.html   Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England     Read more