Musings on Life and Living

Again, I know that this post isn't actually going up on the Sunday before Christmas. In fact, it is going up the day before (Christmas Eve). I decided it would be better to space out the last three posts in the series but actually get them done instead of posting them back to back and having nobody read them or have time to really think about the message.

My friend Sarah Doremus has recently started blogging again and has been doing a guest series of ways to "make Christmas merry." I have been enjoying this series and then I saw her post that her husband, my friend Lucas, wrote about the difference between happiness and joyfulness . This is something that has run across my mind from time to time but really crystalised while reading his thoughts. Happiness is a good thing. Really, it is. Happiness has been the topic of books, movies, essays, and philosophical treatises for ages. (While not for all of the above, but folks have been discussing happiness for a really long time.) I like being happy. It makes me, well, happy! So, what is happiness? To this I turn to one of my favourite resources: the Online Etymology Dictionary . According to this collection, the word "happiness" has been used to describe a "pleasant and contented mental state" since the 1590s. So then I decided to dig back furthe...

Okay, I somehow completely lost track of time and my posts for Advent completely failed to go up on time. I started to write this post on the second Sunday of Advent and then didn't finish and didn't post it. Then I completely missed the third Sunday. Today is actually the fourth Sunday, but I am going to get two and three written before I get around to four. I'll do better next year! The second Sunday of Advent is focused on love. There are many different kinds of love. My native language, English, doesn't do a good job of expressing this. We use the word love to describe several different things and several different relationships. For example, I love my wife. I love my sisters. I love my female friends. Even though the objects of this love are all women, the relationships with them are considerably different. I also love books, bacon, and chocolate. Again, a very different relationship. And, of course, I love my Father in Heaven and my Saviour, Jesus Christ. ...

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there are many Christian traditions that have, for various and sundry reasons, not become a part of the LDS tradition. Some are because of the 19th Century frontier Protestant roots that many of the early Latter-day Saints came from. Others are because our church does not agree with or embrace those traditions. And some are just because the Latter-day Saints moved to the Intermountain West in the mid-1800s and developed their own traditions separate from the greater Christian community in the eastern United States. One tradition that I have been pondering for the past several years is that of Advent. A professor of religion at Brigham Young University, Eric D. Huntsman, is a man I have never met yet have heard so much about from friends of mine who attended BYU. Several years ago,  he began observing Advent with his family , incorporating LDS scriptures and stories into a month-long celebration of the birth of Chri...