On the sweetness of Mormon life.

Really, on the sweetness of fatherhood and motherhood.

There is something irreplaceable about carrying your small, sleeping children to bed.  It is an experience that never palls.

In sleep, veritas.  The resting face of the slumberer is a window on the soul.

Now, children are naturally savages.  And the scriptures tell us that the natural man is an enemy to God.  But I take it that the “natural man” is more a matter of trajectory than of anything else.  Being an enemy to God is where we would naturally end up, as Adam and Eve learned when they were barred from the tree of life, lest they live forever in their sins.  (“Naturally”–but the awesome world-breaking power of repentance makes us all supernatural men).

And if we don’t always live up to that promise, why, the promise in the young, sleeping face is itself wonderful.

Even more wonderful if this is the one child whose face will never take on a pinched look as it grows.

Anyhow, there you have it: the experience of seeing a sleeping child, and some reflections on what it means.  But the main thing is the experience.