Tuesday, September 26, 2023

 My blogging history (old links).

I'm suddenly back involved with gaming.

Backpacking has become a major part of my life.  My wife and I finally finished the Appalachian Trail and will be starting the Pacific Crest Trail in 2022.
  • https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=d20%27s%20h%20pageiking
  • My current backpacking blog:  https://adrr.com/d20/
I have not blogged much more here.  Most spiritual posts and thoughts will have been at https://wheatandtares.org/ which has a lot of variability in the content.

The bottom line is that grief and loss happened to me, but they did not become me.

https://adrr.com/d20/ is where to look at what I'm mostly doing these days, outside of non-hiking projects.

Sacrament talk on coveting

 

I was asked to talk on the tenth and final commandment “Thou shall not covet.”

 

The Hebrew word translated "covet" is chamad (חמד) which is commonly translated into English as "covet", "lust", and "strong desire." The word means yearn to possess or have (something).  In the tenth commandment we are warned not to year to possess or have things that others already have.  Not their husband or wife.  Not their house. Not those who work for them.  Not their mode of transportation or the things they use to earn a living or anything else.

 

It is interesting that Elder Tom Perry stated that of the ten commandments, too often people dismissed the tenth as one that they do not find important.  He warned that Coveting, or envying something that belongs to another, is damaging to the soul. It can consume our thoughts and plague us with constant unhappiness and dissatisfaction. It often leads to other sins and to financial indebtedness.

 

Traditionally in Christianity the commandment to not covet has been linked to with the command to "love your neighbor as yourself."  That is, to long for things that are another’s is the opposite of loving them, to not covet what others have is the first step towards loving them.

In addition, not coveting is to avoid the first step that leads to other sins. 

 

In traditional Judaism, coveting was seen as the first step that led to theft or murder. 

 

Coveting also leads to entanglement in the world.  Christ spoke on this very point in response to someone who interrupted Christ giving a sermon about relying on the Spirit.  The man interrupted to ask about the man’s brother’s refusal to divide an inheritance with him.

 

Let me read from the scriptures to you, from the Gospel of Luke.

 

13 And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.

 

14 And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?

 

15 And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

 

16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:

 

17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

 

18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

 

19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

 

20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

 

21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

 

22 And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on.

 

23 The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.

 

24 Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?

 

25 And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

 

26 If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?

 

27 Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

 

28 If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?

 

Christ warns against coveting because Coveting causes us to focus on things, and to treat people as things. Coveting causes us to not trust or follow God. 

 

To better illustrate Coveting I am going to go to some stories in the Bible.

 

I will start with the story of Cain and Abel from Moses Chapter 5.

 

32 And Cain went into the field, and Cain talked with Abel, his brother. And it came to pass that while they were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him.

 

33 And Cain agloried in that which he had done, saying: I am free; surely the bflocks of my brother falleth into my hands.

 

There are many reasons why Cain slew Abel, but a key facet is that he gloried in the result, that he took possession of the flocks that were his brother’s.  Coveting and greed were a part in what led him to murder.

 

There is another story.

 

There was a king.  He had two generals.  The grand daughter of one of the generals was the daughter of another general and was married to the equivalent of the king’s head of Seal Team Six.  They called the elite of the elite something else in those days, but comparing them to our Seal Team Six captures the heart of what it meant to be the elite of the elite, a mighty man at the hand of the king.

 

The married daughter’s home was within the walls of the Inner part of the city, a hill top reserved for the king and those very important to him.

 

You probably know this as the story of David and Bathsheba. Not only did David have Bathsheba’s husband murdered, but as a result he turned two of his generals away from him, another of his sons rebelled against him, most of his wives were separated from him, and his reign was almost extinguished. 

 

David’s son Solomon killed another one of David’s sons, Adonijah, for coveting the throne and David’s last wife. Coveting brought ruin and disaster upon most of David’s house, much of it in his life, and the rest not that long after his death.

 

God even called the prophet Nahum to chastise David for coveting.

 

Later, in the book of Micah, God called the Prophet Micah to chastise those who led the people of Israel for coveting.  He said.

 

1 Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand.

 

2 And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage

 

Coveting led the leaders to take action, the action included violence and oppressing through the governmental system so that they could take possession of what the common people had.

 

Looking to the New Testament, when the Apostles met and decided to focus on what was important to keep from the Old Law, Paul summarized the laws that were critical in Romans Chapter 13:

 

8 Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

 

9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

 

10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

 

From these stories and that summary, we can take away the following points about coveting:

 

1                    Coveting is a strong desire to possess something that someone else has rather than just to have something.  Not “I want a car” for example, but rather “I want that car that belongs to someone else.”

 

2                    Coveting is never satisfied, it never has enough.

 

3                    Coveting goes beyond just desire to dwelling on the desire and seeking ways to fulfill it at the expense of others.  All of the examples of coveting in the scriptures involve theft or murder or other methods of extorting results in order to have what the person is seeking—the property and relationships of someone else.

 

4                    Coveting takes us away from God.

 

I would also note that coveting does not make us happy.

 

My undergraduate degree was in Applied Economics.  A part of economics I always liked, even if it was all done by graduate students which I never was, is called experimental economics where economists try things out to see what happens.

 

So they might compare having someone pan handling outside a bakery and then panhandling next to a sewer to see how that affects the amount of money they make.  Or they might see how paying tithing affects people economically.  They might study what winning the lottery does for people and if it makes them happy. 

 

Spoiler alert.  Winning the lottery, even tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, doesn’t make people happier for longer than about a year.

 

Economists have also studied many factors that go into what causes happiness.

 

One result of this research is that we have an area of hard science that deals with happiness.  One interesting outcome of that science is that it is now well established that people who live beneath their means are happier than people who live at their means or above their means.

 

We know that making more money makes people happier until they are making around $60,000.00 a year and then more money doesn’t mean more happiness.

 

And we know that the emotions and mental states that go into coveting the possessions and relationships of others makes people unhappy and that actually getting the things that were coveted doesn’t make people happy.

 

Coveting is a way to become profoundly unhappy.

 

So, what does the command to not covet mean, what is its significance?

 

Coveting is a gateway to sin, whether the sins be those of violence, theft or coercion.

 

Coveting leads us not to love God or our neighbors.

 

Coveting leads us to not trust or accept God.

 

And coveting makes us unhappy.

 

Avoiding covetousness makes us happier, more able to love God and our neighbors and more able to avoid other sins.

 

I leave you with this, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

 

 

 

 

Sunday, December 19, 2021

 Just had the best birthday I've had in my life.  I'm grateful for that.

And Win is the best part of my life, which continues to improve, even thought I'm now 66.

When I was new to grief I also began to gnash my teeth, grinding them, without being aware of it.  My dentist pointed it out to me and I was able to quit grinding them during the day, but not at night.

I started using guards at that point.  The ones you can buy in a drug store would last a night or two.  I ended up with very hard plastic ones from my dentist.

Then in 2019, while hiking on the Appalachian Trail, I lost my guard and replaced it with what I could, a soft one from a drug store.  It is now 2021.  I've basically had two of them, one of which I lost rather than using up.  I've gone from getting a couple days out of one to a couple years or more -- the physical side effect of grief that has been a barometer for me has had marked changes.

Other things are better as well.  I can enjoy my birthday and the holiday season does not fill me with sorrow.

--So an update.

I'm really enjoying my life right now, much of it revolving around helping out with the grandchildren.

I'm doing so much better now.  It is like I've crossed an infinite distance.

So, I'm providing a summary here, where my grief and related blogging transitioned, to let people know where I am now.

My blogging history (old links).

I'm suddenly back involved with gaming.

Backpacking has become a major part of my life.  My wife and I finally finished the Appalachian Trail and will be starting the Pacific Crest Trail in 2022.
  • https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=d20%27s%20h%20pageiking
  • My current backpacking blog:  https://adrr.com/d20/
I probably will not blog much more here.  Spiritual posts and thoughts will probably be at https://wheatandtares.org/


Gaming posts will probably center around Shattered Norns.  

My general life and contacts with friends and family will be at https://www.facebook.com/stephen.r.marsh

Otherwise, we were on the Appalachian Trail in 2019 and then 2020.  With Covid and our condo already leased out we moved to Virginia for a year's contract and currently we are in Utah with family.  We will be on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2022.

And of course, once a year I'll be at NTRPG Con.

But I'm doing better.  I'll never be the same, but I'm in a place where I can find joy.


Sunday, August 23, 2020

From my mission.

 Thanks to President & Sister Siddoway and the A.P.'s who put this together originally, and to President Siddoway for the enormous amount of work it was for him to make a copy for Kris Morgan Cunningham, and then thanks to her for getting it to me so that I could get it to you!!! 

Parts 1-2: https://thesoleacademy.com/…/1975-Pageant-Workbook-parts-1-…

Part 3: https://thesoleacademy.com/…/1975-Pageant-Workbook-part-3.p…

Part 4: https://thesoleacademy.com/…/1975-Pageant-Workbook-part-4.p…

Part 5: https://thesoleacademy.com/…/1975-Pageant-Workbook-part-5.p…

Parts 6-7: https://thesoleacademy.com/…/1975-Pageant-Workbook-parts-6-…

Parts 8-9: https://thesoleacademy.com/…/1975-Pageant-Workbook-parts-8-…

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Please ignore this post if you are here for actual content.

Please ignore this post if you are here for the older content.

The last substantive content is at:  http://ethesis.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-hope.html

Borrowed from Tatiana Boshenka

Thought 1: This post reminds me of what Vaclav Havel said about hope:

. . [T]he kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. . . . Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. . . .

I feel that its deepest roots are in the transcendental, just as the roots of human responsibility are, though of course I can’t – unlike Christians, for instance — say anything about the transcendental. . . .

“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. 

The more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is not the same thing as optimism.

It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from ‘elsewhere.’

It is also this hope, above all, that gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.”

Disturbing the Peace, pp. 181-182


My current blogging relating to my backpacking is at http://ethesis.wordpress.com/ 

















Below are some affiliate marketing links for some friends and family.  I can't imagine that anyone else will find them of any use, especially if you are a parent who has lost children.



 


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073TDCLJM?ie=UTF8&tag=adrr0e-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B07FCS4F3X&th=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FD2BQ2J?ie=UTF8&tag=adrr0e-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B01BMFSPJ4&th=1&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071H33X94?ie=UTF8&tag=adrr0e-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B071H33X94

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071H33X94?ie=UTF8&tag=adrr0e-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=B071H33X94 --

Icebreaker Merino Women's Tech Lite Scoop Neck T-Shirt 


https://amzn.to/338HpXe -- lightweight hats for backpacking (there are all sorts of these, from $50.00 to a great deal less.  This is a great deal less.






https://amzn.to/34WeOGa For the Grandmothers

Friday, November 08, 2019

Please ignore this post if you are here for the older content.



Please ignore this post if you are here for the older content.

The last substantive content is at:  http://ethesis.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-hope.html

My current blogging relating to my backpacking is at http://ethesis.wordpress.com/ 

I can't imagine anyone who would be interested in the specific links below.



Checking to see if this works as I was just told that the other links were not working. reverted  

 That is the film I use for tarps.



The filter



Surprise for Rachel

Friday, August 02, 2019

Marketing sample

Please ignore this post if you are here for the older content.

The last substantive content is at:  http://ethesis.blogspot.com/2019/02/on-hope.html

My current blogging relating to my backpacking is at http://ethesis.wordpress.com/ 






  . . . .


Disclosure/Caveat:

Any time you share an affiliate link, it’s important to disclose that to your audience.

Note, I have affiliate links, it is just that as of Friday, October 25, 2019 other than the one at the top of this page, all of them go to an account that does not exist.  That will eventually change and you should treat all links as if they are affiliate links going to an active account on Amazon.com

Generally, readers trust you more if you are transparent about where you are directing them and why.

To meet the Amazon Associate Program's requirements, you must (1) include a legally compliant disclosure with your links and (2) identify yourself on your Site as an Amazon Associate with the language required by the Operating Agreement.


To comply with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations, your link-level disclosure must be:
In addition, the Operating Agreement requires that the following statement clearly and conspicuously appears on your Site:
Associates should also consider the relevant social media platform’s guidelines.
To read more about the FTC Endorsement Guides, visit: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#affiliate.
Visit this page on AC to bookmark this information about disclosures.


1. Clear. A clear disclosure could be as simple as “(paid link)”, “#ad” or “#CommissionsEarned”.
2. Conspicuous. It should be placed near any affiliate link or product review in a location that customers will notice easily. They shouldn’t have to hunt for it.



“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”

For social media user-generated content, this statement must be associated with your account.


For example, Associates may use Facebook's Branded Content tool.



.
So, when I eventually get to creating links to my actual affiliate status, all of the above will apply. Treat any link you access after Friday, October 25, 2019 as being an affiliate link I am paid for, even if the truth is that I probably won’t them linking to an actual account before 2020.
Caution should be rule 1.