That there Thang moved!

Yep it's true. New Cool Thang has moved to a new home a www.newcoolthang.com! We managed to get all the posts and comments ported over too. So update you bookmarks and blogrolls friends -- The Thang has a new home!

State of the Blog and Ugly BYU

Well I made it back from a fun family trip to Utah. I see that the comments are hanging up forever with Blogger still so my first order of business is to find a new home for my blog. I expect to have www.newcoolthang.com up and running by this weekend. More on that to come.

As for my trip -- In addition to immensely enjoyable visits with family and friends I also spent Saturday up in Logan at the SMPT conference and met bloggernacle regulars Jim Faulconer, Rosalynde Welch, and Blake Ostler – all of whom were even more interesting and charming in person than they are in writing.

I made it back to BYU on Tuesday and saw how truly ugly the campus is for the first time. Man, Clark was right about the architecture there. Those building from the 60s and 70s could hardly be uglier. Brother Brigham must be annoyed to no end. I mean this is the man that built the gorgeous Salt Lake Temple and the lovely and newly restored BY Academy. Yet the main campus of the University in his name is as ugly as sin. Thankfully the Maeser building is still beautiful and the new buildings under construction seem to have aesthetics in mind -- I have to credit current decision makers for that. But as for the rest of the place... Yikes! That’s what happens when utility is taken too far and beauty is ignored too much I guess. And those unfortunate architechtural decisions are now too expensive to quickly undo (hence the Provo temple still stands).

God certainly didn’t ignore beauty when he made Utah, though. That place is gorgeous from the North to the South. Of course the natural beauty only serves to emphasize how ugly and austere the campus architecture is. But then the same could be said for Interstate 15 from Provo to Ogden... talk about a concerted effort to ugly up a beautiful place with obnoxious billboards, etc. Maybe I have been reading too much Nibley, but the guy is definitely right about this subject. Is it just me?

Goin' back to Utah

I graduated from BYU in 1994 and haven't been back to Utah since. That is about to change my friends. Later this week we're loading the family in the car and driving to Utah for a vacation and to visit my brother Russ and his family.

It's not that I had anything again visiting Utah; I just didn't have reason to go back. Before I knew it eleven years had passed. But now that I have a brother out there I have a reason to visit and I'm really looking forward to it. The three years I spent in the great state of Utah were among the most fun of my life. I met my charming, intelligent, and beautiful wife there; I started my first rock band there; I made some lifelong friends there. And even though I spent three years as an Aztec at SDSU too (freshman year and two years in grad school) I've been a Cougar first in my heart.

So what do you recommend we do while out there? We’re staying in West Pointe (by Layton) for part of the visit. I plan to attend the Saturday session of the SMPT conference at USU. We were going to ski or snowboard one of the days and check out BYU one day too. Anything changed at BYU since '94? (Ok, I know a lot has changed there.) Anyway, what qualifies as must-see or must-do in Utah these days? Help me out y'all.

I found the Bloggernacle in the D&C!

Yep, Sunday school inspired me again this week. We were studying section 25 and this verse about the Bloggernacle jumped out at me:

For he shall lay his hands upon thee, and thou shalt receive the Holy Ghost, and thy time shall be given to writing, and to learning much. (D&C 25:8)

Before I started blogging I did what I could to learn much and I wrote in my journal every month or so, but now I am actually following this instruction from God -- I’m actually writing much and learning much.

Now don’t get me wrong – this scripture cannot be used defend all blogging. I’ve already written my opinion about Mormons practically consecrating their lives to political causes, ideologies, or parties (and it is not high if you were wondering). And there are innumerable other things we could waste our time blogging about as well. The Lord qualified the quoted verse to Emma in these surrounding verses:

And thou shalt be ordained under his hand to expound scriptures, and to exhort the church, according as it shall be given thee by my Spirit... And verily I say unto thee that thou shalt lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better... Wherefore, lift up thy heart and rejoice, and cleave unto the covenants which thou hast made. (D&C 25:7, 10, 13)

And these verses are supported by the first verse of section 26 which in which the Lord says:

I say unto you that you shall let your time be devoted to the studying of the scriptures, and to preaching, and to confirming the church… and to performing your labors on the land.

These are not only instructions for behavior in Zion but instructions on the priorities of our actions. Certainly many activities in the Bloggernacle could be described as the first two things on the Lord’s list there.

So while not our posts and comments can be defended with scripture – many of them can. Therefore my fellow citizens of the Bloggernacle, I say Blog On!

Give me convenience or give me death!

I always chuckled at that saying. I think that was the title of an album by a punk band in the 80's -- but I can't remember which band it was. In any case it applies to the new home page for the Mormon Archipelago: www.ldsblogs.org Go check it out and let me know what you think!

The purpose of the new site is to be a useful central place to see what's going on at all of the best blogs in the Bloggernacle. We hope it will continue to grow more useful over time. Be sure to try our the sweeeeeet search function written by my super-smart younger brother Russ. Yer gonna love it!

Twisting God's arm?

In Sunday school this week I used the term "twisting God's arm" as a way of describing the process of petitioning the Lord with enough fervency and faith (and sometimes through enough people) to get a mighty miracle. It was a tongue-in-cheek reference and I qualified this term by mentioning God wants his arm twisted in this way by his children. But I have decided that twisting his arm is not the proper analogy for this process.

After the events of the last week this subject is very much on my mind. When our family needed a miracle I talked with my little girls (ages 5 and 7) and asked them to nag their Heavenly Father about it. They understand what nagging is because they use it with us (though rarely successfully… we hope). The idea resonated with them, but I don’t think that analogy works well either. If nagging is as annoying to God as it is to me it can’t be a good thing. And the same thing applies to the term occasionally used in the church: "wearying the Lord". This sounds like another term for nagging to me. Are we really out to annoy our God?

Most of us turn to bartering when we really need something from God. I like negotiating – I do it for a living. I've had great success strictly observing the Covey-ism “win/win or no deal”. This means unless everyone wins in a deal it should not be struck. But negotiating with God is generally frowned upon in the church, though I’m not sure it should be. As the hymn says “Sacrifice brings forth the blessing of heaven”. And as Elder Maxwell repeatedly preached – there is one thing that we can offer God that he desperately wants:

In conclusion, the submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar. The many other things we “give,” brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God’s will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give!
(Ensign, Nov. 1995, 22)

Just tonight I heard a moving story. A man who works with my brother and law up in Seattle confided that he had prayed fervently for my son upon hearing of our calamity last week. He offered up a few years of his own life as an offering or sacrifice to God if it would allow for my boy to be saved. This man has no idea who we are. He is not LDS. But he is a son of God and I can’t believe God can ignore such charity.

My feeling is that if we are to bargain with the Lord we need to understand his currency. I’ve mentioned before that his currency is the souls of humankind. That is the most precious commodity in the universe. If we want to bargain with God we had better bring something he wants to the negotiations. According to Elder Maxwell we have only one thing to offer – our wills.

Maybe that’s why I felt so driven to seek more prayers here and everywhere… Maybe we weren’t nagging God or twisting his arm at all but as a group we were paying him in his currency. We were humbling ourselves and turning our wills over to him. We were exercising faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps he was well paid in his currency for this miracle.

Of course the kicker of it all is that we all were generously rewarded immediately by him as well.

The ultimate win/win deal…



PS – Regarding our miracle: A firefighter that was first on the scene last week stopped by the house tonight to see Quinn with his own eyes. He told us that in his 14 years on the job (here in Arizona – the land of a million pools) he had only seen 3 children come out intact from the condition he found our Q in…
PPS -- I’m sorry if all these posts regarding our miracle are tiresome… They feel important to me right now.