On entering my third year of svithing

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It's appropriate that my third anniversary of official svithing is Tuesday because I've been reflecting lately on just what my svithing is all about. Not all svithes are created equal.

Of course, I predicted this when I started, but some of the svithes have been throwaways or utter nonsense. And some nonsvithe posts have been more religiousy than my svithes--SpongeBob comes to mind.

So what is the purpose of this blog?

I'll be posting the next installment of Books Read soon, and in the next list is a book by Jeffrey R. Holland. In the book is a speech he gave at BYU not long after I arrived there (pdf). I quoted that speech to myself constantly for months. Or, more accurately, I quoted that speech's quotation of Paul constantly for months: "Cast not away therefore your confidence"---

Paul is telling the Hebrews that when times get hard, do not forget that once you knew, that once you were instructed, that once the Holy Spirit spoke and, to quote another, "if ye have felt [before] to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?"

Yes.

I don't meant to suggest that I am having some sort of crisis of faith over the true and everlasting principle of svithing or something. Haha. No, wiping tear from eye, no; it's not that at all.

It's just a matter of self-assessment.

Svithing is supposed to be a tithe of my blogging, the Sabbath of my writing. If I write one-offs that take no heart or reflection, what am I in fact saying? If I pay my tithing with the rotten egg, what sort of egg am I?

Now that I am with the grownups again, during church services, I am trying to keep up on my reading. I'm doing too well with the Book of Mormon--Lady Steed and I are a book ahead, which is sort of missing the point. But I'm right on with Joseph Smith.

It's a very easy thing to remember weekends when single when I could enter a minicloistering in my bedroom. It's much easier than finding time to remember God as a parent & high school teacher & fulltime student & Cub Scout leader &c.

But making excuses isn't what this is about.

And here's the crux for me. If svithing becomes an excuse for not being who I should be, then I have failed. But if it takes part of making who I should be, then it is a success.

I think about, for instance, the new prophet, and where he was at my age (or, for that matter, Samuel or Mormon or Joseph Smith), and think, what about me? Am I ready to take care of nearly ninety widows? Probably not.

And although I have no aspirations to be either a bishop or prophet in the coming weeks, were that to be required of me, I should be prepared.

So. Need to work on that.

Which may seem tangential to svithing, but it had better not be.

It had better not be.

last week's svithe

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