Donna's Journey

Are you ready to learn? This is awesome. MIT has put the entire listing of classes online and they are free and no registration required. I feel this is cutting edge and so powerful. Though you can receive no credit or get a degree from them, you can work through the material and learn a lot. Knowledge is power and the knowledge you gain can bring you to confidence in understanding college level work. This is a powerful concept for those who love learning, those who engage in life long learning, and for unchallenged pre-college students.

What happens when you use the course material, notes, and tests as a map for learning and apply Thomas Jefferson Education principles- Classics, Mentors, Simulations, Field Experience, and God? I am excited to explore the possibilities.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/about/about/index.htm

I posted about my Georgic Man.

I went to the annual Education Week at the Y last week. Jeremy talked me into going to John Hall’s class. He did not need to twist my arm. John Hall was a colleague of Huge Nibley and I had two other colleagues of Nibley as teachers when I was in college, S. Kent Brown and C. Wilford Griggs, and I learned sooooo much from them. So, this week I gladly went to hear John Hall.

Disclaimer: Please bear in mind, this is my take on what John Hall said. I took notes but did not record it.

I had known from my college studies that the Great Christian Apostasy began during the life of the apostles, in 3 John, Galatians,Thessalonians, and Jude all show evidence of the Apostasy that was taking place. John Hall pointed out that the Apostasy was not gradual as many believe and that it was complete when John walked away, as they no longer had Apostolic authority. The Council of Nicea was a result of the Apostasy, not the cause. By then, Christianity was splintered into many factions. Nicea did not even end in consensus, the texts of those who did not agree were sought out and destroyed, and many lost their lives. Authority is not reached by consensus, but through revelation.

What caused the Apostasy? John Hall pointed out that the study of history is to find the most true cause.

John Hall said that knowledge gets withdrawn if you do not use it, if you rebel against it, or when you become unworthy of it, and is lost even faster when authority is lost. Nibley felt the Apostasy was brought on by disobedience and rebellion in the first and early second century. Joseph Smith taught that apostasy happens with removal of Apostolic authority and that is what happened the day John walked away.

The oldest fragment of the New Testament is from about 125 AD, approx. 15 years after John left. However, it was but a fragment of one page.

Translations are problematic. We have no original texts. The King James Version was translated from post-Nicea Byzantine texts. Both in Hebrew and Greek translations into English, words often have several meanings and one’s theology, philosophy, and agenda can drive the translation. I feel we are in the greatest danger when our philosophy or agenda drives our theology. Like Hitler quoting the Bible, but interpreting it through Nietzschean philosophy. So, men like Eusebius and Jerome need to be reevaluated in my estimation, as they were part of the post Nicea orthodoxy and had an agenda.

Jefferson read Greek. He could see the problems. He too looked forward to a restoration of the Christianity that Jesus and his disciples taught.

Another problem is that older texts had no space between letters, all caps and no punctuation. He gave the example of GODISNOWHERE which can be rendered GOD IS NOW HERE or GOD IS NOWERE. Joseph Smith felt the problems crept in due to ignorant translators, careless transcribers, and corrupt priests. The documents unearthed since his death are a witness that this indeed happened.

The earliest complete manuscript of the New Testament goes back to Constantine.

We have a lot of New Testament Manuscripts from 125 AD-800 AD. All major manuscripts were not found until after Joseph Smith’s death. So, when Joseph spoke he was speaking prophetically because he did not have the documents at the time to substantiate his claims. The documents discovered long after his death now verify what he said.
116 papyri scrolls
310 parchment codexes (book form) all Caps no word divisions
2877 in Cap and lower case, not one exactly the same.

All this said, according to Bro. Hall, Joseph Smith quoted from:
The Book of Mormon 20% of the time
The Old Testament 15% of the time
and the New Testament 65% of the time.
Problems aside, the New Testament has a lot of powerful doctrines. Joseph restored the original theology, taught the essential principle of apostolic authority, and that every dispensation ended in apostasy and every dispensation began with a restoration.

When early Christian documents began to be found that supported LDS theology, it was easy to dismiss the documents as not Christian. However, as the body has grown larger it is becoming clear that post-Apostolic Christianity was not the same as Apostolic Christianity.

In the end, what separates us from other Christians is that we believe in continued revelation. Isn’t God the same yesterday, today, and always? If he spoke then, why not now?

True conservative wisdom is not about political parties, but is about conserving, rather than consuming. It was conservative to live frugally and put away for the future, avoiding debt, because we do not know what the future holds. It is a georgic, rather than pastoral attitude. The georgic was the farmer, the man that had dominion over his land and he was a producer.

The pastoral attitude was the live off the land by grazing what is there.

I will take the conservative approach, thank you very much.

Six years ago today my second oldest son Jon, was sealed to Tiffany Cragun in the Portland Temple. As we sat in the chapel waiting for the sealing, my oldest son leaned over and said, “this may not be the only wedding this year!” My husband grabbed his elbow and said let’s talk. There was enough time, so out the door they went. Funny Adam wanted to ask her on his birthday, we encouraged him that if he knew in August he should not delay for another month. After the ceremony, we went to the Bridal Lunch and then the wedding party headed to Eugene for the garden reception that night.

I loved the reception. Tiffany and her father sang a father-daughter duet. Tiffany’s brothers and Jon sang Tiffany a love song. it was a beautiful evening.

About midpoint through the evening, Adam invited Julia to leave immediately to drive back to Utah with him so he could propose to her former Room mate. Off they drove in the night.

One wedding, and by November there would be a second one!

We love Tiffany, now mother of four boys, Jarom, Jonny, James, and Peter.

Happy Anniversary Jon and Tiffany!

Yes, 3 years ago today, my grandson Zane Isaac Goff AKA Zaney Bug, or just Bug for short, came into this world 9.5 weeks early. He just could not wait to get here! He is a cutey-pie and we love him!

It only appears like chaos on the surface, a deeper look says that life has subdivided and now there is an opportunity to guide life and help evolve it to a higher order. Translation, many things have happened in the past 18 months, a daughter married, I had a five month respiratory illness, an almost move to Monticello (our house did not sell, go figure, at the time it was on the market, almost no one could get a loan), a thesis completed (whew, after 80 hour weeks last summer), graduation from graduate school, a slip on ice and injured wrists, a granddaughter born, another daughter married, a grandson born, a business launched, a sprained ankle, and separated AC. All of these things change the variables of my life. Yes, change is inevitable. I am adaptable. To survive and thrive one needs to be aware of the opportunities and Carpe Diem “Seize the Day!”

I am rethinking the order of my life to meet life as it is. I crave order. My creativity craves an ordered life. I felt helpless as my landscape began to change. I needed order but why establish new order and then have to pack, move, and have to establish new order? Sanity maybe? Last night as I waited on the curb for my husband to pick me up at the university, it hit me, my solution. Have a Winter Quarters mentality. When the people with Brigham Young were at Winter Quarters, they planted and carried on life as if they would stay, but were prepared and ready if they had to move on. I need order now.

The events of the past 18 months have resulted in Chaos, some caused by fewer people and the changes that necessitates. Other challenges because of resulting selective neglect, as I am but one woman and my family life was impacted by several very time intensive experiences. It all adds up and systems have slipped into disuse.

Time for the Georgic in me to reawaken. I need to come out of my pastoral stage of grazing. Georgics need to actively create (plan) and then work to exercise dominion over the elements of their property that they may obtain life from their property. Georgic thinking will move me forward into my creative space, where I thrive.

I need to go through everything I own, including books, activities, things that pull my time and mental energy, etc., and decide whether to keep, share, or toss. If I stay here in this house for a long time, the new order and extra space it provides will be a great blessing. If I ever have to pack up and move, I will have a home ready for show and I won’t have to sort as I pack, nor will I have to move things I no longer need.

As I go through each thing, I can really think how I can systematize and make less work for the future. This simplification creates space for creativity to flourish, energy to be renewed, and peace. Ah, the Hebrew word for create, bara is also translated as organize. He says that His house is a house of order. The press has circulated the idea of disorganized genius. That is only a part of the picture. Some may be so focused that they neglect other areas. Others had someone in their lives that took care of the periphery. Others still were very organized. Like a pregnant woman may crave exotic or wild foods, the creative craves order that they may have space for creative ideas to flourish and time to explore, experiment, and discover. Disorder is a distraction and distraction can cripple creativity. So, I am on a quest.

Order is not a project but a process, and is a continuum. My female brain has so many cross overs through my corpus callosum that I can see how the periphery can affect the important. Ordering will help move things forward. If this makes any sense to you, what are you waiting for? Go georgic! Take charge of your life. Exercise your ability to create. More later as I create…

Happy birthday to the mother of four of my grandsons and wife to Jon. Thank you for being the woman you are!

I attended our annual church picnic and pool party today at Scera Park and Pool. It was great to see families gather, married children coming, and friends and neighbors joining.

The church provided the main dish and the salad and desserts were varied, delicious, and provided by members of the congregation.

There were games, and there was the candy cannon. They filled tubes full of candy and shot it out the cannon into the air and candy rained down over the park, as children scattered to collect their booty. All in good fun. This was the 17th annual August church picnic that we have attended.

Whew! One more year and two of my seven children will be over 30!

Happy 29th Birthday Jonathan Andrew Goff. I hope you had a wonderful time!