One of the most hopeful desires of my heart.

All of us can have a new beginning through, and because of, Jesus Christ. Even you. New beginnings are at the heart of the Father’s plan for His children. This is the church of new beginnings! This is the church of fresh starts! ...

And new beginnings are for more than just our sins and mistakes. Through the goodness and grace of the Saviour, we can have fresh starts that propel change in old mindsets, bad habits, grumpy dispositions, negative attitudes, feelings of powerlessness, and tendencies to blame others and avoid personal responsibility. You can actually change things about yourself that have been wearing you down for years. You can start again through the might of the Master of new beginnings. He never tires of giving new beginnings to us.

Patrick Kearon

His love is perfect. I try to love like Him. I'm grateful that He loves so well.

As near as I can tell, Christ never once withheld His love from anyone, but He also never once said to anyone, "Because I love you, you are exempt from keeping my commandments." We are tasked with trying to strike that same sensitive, demanding balance in our lives.

Jeffrey R Holland

Yes, there will always be problems.

But not everything has to be a problem. For one, today, I'm not fighting for survival. (I also don't discount that there are some even now who are doing just that. But before I categorize myself or too many with them, I write on.)

It seems that we as humans look for littlier and littlier things to solve. This enables us to make our lives better. It can also be taken to a negative excess.

For example, start with an example of an essential problem: We don't have water. Then we find it. Found it, but it's dirty. We filter it. Now the water is generally cheap, available and clean. But now, what about flouride? What about microplastics? And on.

Not saying those aren't issues. But they're increasingly small. (Yay!, right?) We were only able to turn time and energy to them after we solved the previous ones, which were more essential.

The Internet hashtag for this is #1stworldproblems.

How many ways can we eat the wrong thing -- from our grocery stores that are burgeoning with all kinds of food?

How many ways can we sleep wrong -- in a peaceful community that's quiet a night on a bed fit for a king?

How many ways can we see ourselves as a victim of circumstance -- in a time and place that allows us extensive opportunity and freedom?

And on.

Instead of continuing the anxious search for potential life- and dream-killers, we should breathe a sigh and look around in awe. We are grateful for the shoulders of progress that we're standing upon. We are grateful to our God and forebears for getting us this far.

Yes, we live in a fallen world. We call it mortal life. There will be serious downs, even in an age of so much good. Even the downs can be for our good. We have so much going for us. We have important Persons helping us.

Said of Wilberforce and Holland.

His presence was as fatal to dullness as to immorality. His mirth was as irresistible as the first laughter of childhood.

To be so adored and admired. To live life so fully intertwined with others in wonder and joy.

Heard this quote today. She's right. Some call it liberation or progress. It is not. She sees clearly when she calls it decadence.

The fourth threat to the West is very closely linked to educational failure: it is the systematic attack on the traditional family.

Of course, the family has also been attacked in unsystematic ways. In both our countries, and under parties of both left and right, the effectively unconditional supply of social benefits to those who were thought incapable of coping undermined the incentive to work and provided an alternative and seemingly endless income from government. It thus undercut the family unit. It promoted habits of idleness and delinquency. It permitted single-parenthood to become a financially sustainable, alternative way of life. By undermining the self-respect of so many of the most vulnerable members of society–the respectable poor struggling for decency against the odds–the dependency culture poisoned and weakened society as a whole.

Then on top of all that there has been a full-scale and deliberate assault on the institution of the family itself. The exaltation of violent and explicit sex increasingly coarsens the content of films and books and–eventually and inevitably–life itself. This is not progress. It is not liberation. It is decadence. We conservatives are not, most of us, saints: but even as sinners, we have a duty to fight–as whole-heartedly as our enemies promote–the attack on the family that threatens the West at its foundations.

Margaret Thatcher, Speech to the First International Conservative Congress, 1997

Of course it's deliberate. Of course it's on a grand scale. And, of course, we can see it plainly if we honestly look at the sifting of the family unit in these past decades. Some families have weathered it, because it has been a storm. Others have been dashed on the rocks and have either given up, disillusioned, or are attempting to salvage the pieces.

The threat upon the family is real and foundational. We do our best to grow our families in enemy territory. May God help us. May we heed His plan for families.

The human endeavor where the person gives everything he has to give is the most beautiful of endeavors.

On his Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 79, "Organ Symphony":

I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again.

Camille Saint-Saëns

This symphony, especially the finale, are majestic!

As is this incredible organ solo arrangement.

We learn through the discomfort of loss.

For it falls out

That what we have we prize not to the worth

Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,

Why, then we rack the value, then we find

The virtue that possession would not show us

While it was ours.

William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

I am so grateful that Joseph knelt amongst the trees and that God called him to the great work of the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ. I am blessed by this man's humility to pray, then his faith to act and his loyalty to the cause of Christ.

When Joseph knelt amongst the trees, the hopes of all the centuries crescendoed into one. As from a fierce, effulgent flame, the Father spake the farm boy's name and introduced His Son.

When Joseph pleaded through the night, Moroni came, and clothed in might, revealed the plates of gold. The Baptist, Peter, James and John, with keys of power proclaimed the dawn, by prophets long foretold.

When Joseph built a house of God and sent switch messengers abroad with tidings of glad things, The Lord restored His sealing power and set a watchman on the tower to hail the King of Kings.

When Joseph bled in Carthage jail, his spirit slipped beyond the veil into the realms of grace, Where once again, as in his youth, amid a blaze of light and truth, he saw his Father's face.

A beautiful, uncited poem, read by Justin Collings in his Joseph's School speech, transcribed by me. If anyone confirms the original author, please let me know.

Fierce, effulgent flame

1 In that day thou shalt come, O Lord; and I will put my trust in thee. Thou shalt say unto thy people, for mine ear hath heard thy voice; thou shalt say unto every soul, Flee unto my mountain; and the righteous shall flee like a bird that is let go from the snare of the fowler.

2 For the wicked bend their bow; lo, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart, to destroy their foundation.

3 But the foundations of the wicked shall be destroyed, and what can they do?

4 For the Lord, when he shall come into his holy temple, sitting upon God’s throne in heaven, his eyes shall pierce the wicked.

5 Behold his eyelids shall try the children of men, and he shall redeem the righteous, and they shall be tried. The Lord loveth the righteous, but the wicked, and him that loveth violence, his soul hateth.

Psalm 11, Joseph Smith Translation

Babies are of the very most beautiful parts of life. They are so pure, so beautiful, so heavenly. Being united with my born children for the first time has been a singularly wonderful experience.

In a recent interview with Nicholas Eberstadt, I heard this observation from his Oct 2024 article on global depopulation.

Lant Pritchett discovered the most powerful national fertility predictor ever detected. That decisive factor turned out to be simple: what women want. ... There is an almost one-to-one correspondence around the world between national fertility levels and the number of babies women say they want to have. This finding underscored the central role of volition — of human agency — in fertility patterns.

More indicative than biological nature, economic situation or social circumstances. What we desire is important -- to ourselves, our families, our communities and nations, and to the souls that wait to be born.