a sweet and calm assurance

Hehe, I realized today that "semantics beats aesthetics any day" would probably require me to be anti-makeup. I'll make girls an exception to the policy.

I left sooo much stuff out of yesterday's entry, even one major rant. Pretty ridiculous that a four-page entry (single-spaced) would be incomplete, but I'm just dogsitting this weekend, giving me buckets of time to think. (Huh, I wonder if that comes from "beaucoup." Would rock.)

Oh, first of all, I'm going to Utah next week, hopefully from Tuesday until Saturday. I'll be staying with Trevor Cook, bless his heart. If any of you Mesa kids would like to tag along, leave a comment. It should be a blast; not only has it been five to seven years since I've seen most of the topless girls, but also I hope to hang out with a bunch of Boarders. Overstrict "not only...but also" formalism amuses me. It always sounds better without the "also," to my mind. One of these days, I'm going to use a "not also...but only." It'll be glorious.

Woke up dastardly early. I didn't have my Preach My Gospel manual, which sort of hampered my ability to prepare a Preach My Gospel lesson, particularly when I found that they've removed it from Gospel Library. I managed to grab one from the clerk's office, though, and pulled off another reasonably good lesson with some recycled material from my farewell address.

Know what hymn I apparently adore? "Be Thou Humble". I'm not used to hearing it outside of temple chapels, so hearing it as prelude music for Sacrament meeting last week was actually quite moving by association. I should learn to play it. Yay for C major.

Mmmkay, main rant time. After watching Family Guy or some such Thursday night, I retired to my room, remarking to myself on how interestingly harsh humor has become. I certainly don't mean to censure Family Guy in particular; it's by no means spick-span, but it has an healthy bit of legitimate wit. Rather, I noted that it's now basically impossible for anyone to avoid being mocked for some characteristic or another nowadays. "All the more proof," I told myself, "that dealing with it is a crucial psychological skill," commending myself on, for example, being able to read Men in Hats without a single painful twinge of identification with the depressed character therein.

"Is it really so desirable, though," I asked, "being calloused to derision?" In particular, I noted my patriarchal grandparents, probably the two most celestial people I know personally, both of whom tend to be rather easily hurt by a bit of mislaid sarcasm. I decided to do my study for the night on tenderness, and Jacob 2:7 stuck out in particular:

"And also it grieveth me that I must use so much boldness of speech concerning you, before your wives and your children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God;"

That last clause is the kicker. Upon first reading, it seemed to indicate to me that emotional delicacy can, in fact, be a virtue. However, another reading could explain it as stating simply a utilitarian positive, that it would have been better to leave the women and children in an innocent state, learning more slowly. I don't know how to resolve the ambiguity. My first instinct was to point to the powerful events of 3 Ne. 17. However, in this section, Christ expresses more empathy, I think, than simple tenderness. Perhaps a better example would be John 11.

At any rate, it suggested to me a fourth possibility for the role of gender: is it possible that an unpartitioned being cannot simultaneously know a fulness of strength and a fulness of tenderness? Christ certainly seemed to demonstrate it, between Matt. 26 and 3 Ne. 17, but the idea that gender is requisite so that one may face the slings of the world and the other might retain softness pleases me.

I quite liked my "a day when anxiety and despair rage against love" from the other day. Thinking about it further, I realized something neat: the defining sentiments of our day, anxiety, despair, and apathy, constitute dearths of faith, hope, and charity, respectively.