Thank You

A very happy New Year to all!

It’s been a long, four-year commitment to systematically go through the four LDS standard works with a question/answer format, but the task has now been completed.  My hope is that these posts have been useful to you – the questions more so than the answers – and that they have inspired you to inquire of the Lord directly regarding your own answers to these questions, and even better, to pose new questions to Him, of your own. 

I’ve been inquiring of the Lord myself regarding what He’d like me to do with this blog going forward: options include closing it, keeping it available as a reference but not adding any additional content, or to continue to add new content – perhaps revisiting chapters/verses from the Standard Works or delving into other possible sources of truth.  The guidance I’ve received is to do some form of the last option.  Alternative sources of truth that may be interesting to explore include the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads or the Dhammapada, or perhaps look at some facets of quantum physics, or the practices of Native American medicine men like Fools Crow and Black Elk, or the writings of people like Itzhak Bentov and Michael Talbot, or statements from Denver Snuffer, Robert Smith, John Pontius or Val Brinkerhoff, or do a deep dive into speeches contained in the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith.  There is a lot more to explore as we seek to expand our understanding of truth.  Whatever the source material, I will continue the question/answer format which I hope leads to additional inspiration from considering open questions and then later reviewing one person’s views on some answers, which don’t preclude other completely different answers. I see future posts being less structured than what I’ve done the last four years (and probably shorter); instead of walking linearly through an entire work, I will focus on a specific section or even just a paragraph, and then maybe move on to another work for the next post.   

I will post a new set of questions next Sunday, January 7, 2024.  

Regarding comments and the prospect of a group of people openly sharing the elements of truth they’ve found with me and each other – I love it and I think it would be very beneficial to all.  My concern has always been the refereeing aspect of moderating a comments section – if things were bad in a Sunday school room where people know each other and can see each other’s faces but still respond to each other negatively, they seem to be infinitely worse online – and I don’t have the time (or frankly, the energy – as an introverted personality) to facilitate it.   But I will open the comments for this post – as I’d love to hear from you whether a comments section would be valuable or not – and we can go from there. 

Thank you for indulging me on this journey - the prayer and study required over the years to produce this blog has been extremely valuable to me and it probably something I would not have done to the extent I have if I didn't have an expectation of sharing it with you.  I truly hope it's been of some value to you, as well.  I look forward to branching out into additional sources of truth over the next few years - which doesn't mean that we won't come back to the Standard Works, from time to time, as well - as a continual study of them is critical to measuring the truth of the other writings we will consider..