Question: What do you do when you are the manager of a blog and you wake up Wednesday morning to the realization you have nothing to publish?

Answer: Defer to the Lord.

The Lord is present with every man, urging and pressing to be received; and His first coming, which is called the dawn, is when man receives Him, which he does when he acknowledges Him as his God, Creator, Redeemer, and Savior. From this time man’s understanding begins to be enlightened in spiritual things, and to advance into a more and more interior wisdom; and as he receives this wisdom from the Lord, he advances through morning into day, and this day lasts with him into old age, even to death; and after death he passes into heaven to the Lord Himself; and there, although he died an old man, he is restored to the morning of his life, and the rudiments of the wisdom implanted in him in the natural world grow to eternity. (True Christian Religion 766)

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last year about the significance of community. Having a group of people who you feel known and understood by, loved and supported by, and with whome that feeling is reciprocated, is an amazing gift.

Earlier in my life I experienced high anxiety as a result of a lack of that kind of community. More specifically it was feeling like my internal emotions and experience didn’t line up with the external appearances about the community I lived in. In terms of religion, skin color, and economic standing I fit with the majority but internally I didn’t feel like I fit in. I also felt as if I had to hide some part of me and that caused significant anxiety.

In some ways being an “obvious” part of the majority of the community was a big part of my emotional conflict. I didn’t feel confrontational or brave enough to demonstrate to people the ways I didn’t fit expectations, but the internal awareness of the fact that I didn’t fit and hiding that caused a lot of anxiety. Continue reading Communities in Heaven and on Earth →

Several women have lamented on our blog that, while the Heavenly Doctrines deal extensively with lust in men, there doesn’t seem to be any discussion of lust in women. That’s not quite true. Married Love 502-503 are the only numbers I’m aware of that deal with sexuality in women–but I find them bursting with thought-provoking truths:

502. The state of a virgin or untouched woman before marriage and after marriage. What the state of a virgin is before she has been instructed in the various aspects of the nuptial torch has been disclosed to me by wives in the spiritual world, by those there who departed from the natural world in their infancy and were raised in heaven.
Continue reading Women’s Sexuality– What the HD Say →

The Muslim religion has been much on my mind lately. The Heavenly Doctrines refer to the “Muhammadans” in several places. The following is an excerpt from Married Love:

342. (9) The Muslim heaven exists outside the Christian heaven and is divided into two heavens, a lower and a higher; and only those Muslims are raised up into their higher heaven who renounce concubines, live with one wife, and acknowledge our Lord as equal to God the Father, who has given Him dominion over heaven and earth. Before we say anything about this specifically, it is important that we premise something about the Lord’s Divine providence respecting the rise of the Muslim religion.
Continue reading The Muslim Religion — What the HD Say →