Men and Hierarchy

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we have a lot of experience with hierarchy.

We have a lay clergy, but even to expand on that—every worthy male member is ordained a priest, of various stations.

The priests of an area are organized into quorums; a quorum has a president, who…presides.  Above him is the local area bishop, and above him is the president of the “stake” — something like a diocese.  Up and up it goes, until you have the President of the Church.

The reason I write about this is because I’ve grown up near many, many examples of men in positions of authority and trust.  It’s not a foreign concept to me.   I’ve been in some myself.

In a group of men in another context, that is somewhat unstructured, I thought, “Oh, we ought to appoint a leader.”  It occurred to me that the naturalness with which the thought came to me, and the lack of worry, and the knowledge that said leadership position would be more of a burden than a boon, is perhaps not very common today, or at least not as much as it used to be.

I don’t know.  It feels good, knowing men that know how to function in a hierarchy.  It’s one of life’s great pleasures.

Be of Good Cheer

I’m still around.  Been on Twitter mostly, or head down in work.  But still around.

 

Back when Kakistocracy was still around, he wrote something I thought quite insightful.  Since he deleted his blog, I can’t quote him directly, but what said, in effect, was:  one purpose of his blog was to serve as an online thought receptacle, and to share what perspective he could.  But another function, just as if not more important, was to keep up morale.

All the models of the “smart people” are in disarray.  For anyone who has had all their wishes granted over the last few years, it’s self-evident that there were flies in the ointment they didn’t anticipate.  We’re all in the dark now—we know it to be true of ourselves, and we know it to be true of others.

But there are still men of good will!  And Christ has not abandoned us.

I don’t know what to say, really, that can top that.  Our job is to keep our eyes on Him.  When we do, everything else looks very different.