As Taryn and I walked through the residential streets near downtown Evanston, it began to rain. Late March is still winter here; there were no leaves on the trees and no green in the grass as yet. The rain began to leave streak marks on Taryn’s glasses. We admired the eminently practical hat of a passing mail carrier, which suspended a small umbrella above her head. The early stages of Taryn’s labor continued as we walked; it was all terribly romantic. (more…)
And when he had spoken unto them, he turned himself unto the three, and said unto them: What will ye that I should do unto you, when I am gone unto the Father? And they sorrowed in their hearts, for they durst not speak unto him the thing which they desired. And he said unto them: Behold, I know your thoughts, and ye have desired the thing which John, my beloved, who was with me in my ministry, before that I was lifted up by the Jews, desired of me.
Therefore, more blessed are ye, for ye shall never taste of death; but ye shall live to behold all the doings of the Father unto the children of men, even until all things shall be fulfilled according to the will of the Father, when I shall come in my glory with the powers of heaven. And ye shall never endure the pains of death; but when I shall come in my glory ye shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye from mortality to immortality; and then shall ye be blessed in the kingdom of my Father. And again, ye shall not have pain while ye shall dwell in the flesh, neither sorrow save it be for the sins of the world; and all this will I do because of the thing which ye have desired of me, for ye have desired that ye might bring the souls of men unto me, while the world shall stand…
And it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words, he touched every one of them with his finger save it were the three who were to tarry, and then he departed.
Peter LLC grew up in the Mojave Desert, not far from the world’s first Del Taco in Barstow. He now lives with his wife in Vienna, Austria where he ekes out a living paying close attention to the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues. When not fighting with the French and Russian delegations for a seat in the back row, Mr. LLC enjoys noodling on the guitar while watching dubbed re-runs of CSI: Miami, pushing his mountain bike through the Vienna Woods, choking on Ronan’s dust on hikes in the Alps and eating bulgogi.
BCC has kindly consented to host his guest posts for the next two weeks. He reckons he will begin with something of a vignette of life in Vienna as an introduction.
Just when you thought you knew your neighbors–better the devil you know, after all–they go and turn the tables on you.
I was talking to my brother the other day, as I do, and I was trying to get at what bothers me about the shenanigans in Texas. I think that the manner in which the FLDS church has established its beliefs and the manner in which they express them are manifestly evil. Forcing girls into unwanted marriage, driving away boys because they might win the hearts of the girls, and parceling out families and salvation as gifts to the sycophants all strike me as patriarchal behavior at its absolute worst. It is obviously wrong and that is, I believe, why Texas has so mishandled it. (more…)
Some of you may be familiar with the Genesis newsletter. For an article in that newsletter, we’d like to get responses to three questions. Comments in this thread may appear in the forthcoming article.
1) Where were you on June 8th, 1978? (If you don’t know what this refers to, then you are probably too young to answer these questions.)
2) What was your reaction?
3) What changes have you seen in the Church since that time?
BCC’s weekly romp through the best of the Bloggernacle, hosted this week by Steve, Brad, and MikeinWeHo. Featured posts/sites: (more…)
Stop me if this sounds familiar. I’m indebted to the always-handy BYU 100 Hour Board, as well as the LDS Church History site’s exhibit on Primary. (more…)
In March, Natalie posted about ways of reading The Book of Mormon, especially close reading. I’ve tried applying the close reading skills I teach as a high school literature and composition teacher — a sort of basic formalism, which involves coming to conclusions about the author’s intentions based on the text and the techniques used by the author. (more…)
I realize this is an old subject; see for instance this prior discussion. For those who have been living in a cave, starting I believe in 1967, women were not allowed to give the opening prayer in sacrament meetings, apparently on the theory that such meetings were “priesthood” meetings and had to be opened by priesthood authority. I think there may have been a letter rescinding this position within about six months or so, but it was definitely done away with by 1978: (more…)
In London, we had dinner with a group of young married American couples who made up about half of the active population of our ward. Someone told the story of how they got engaged –it involved a scavenger hunt around Utah Valley — and other couples picked up the theme, telling of the elaborately romantic gestures involved in popping the proverbial question. There were horses and orchestras and airplanes involved in these stories, with weeks of planning and a fair amount of money. I mean, how cheap can it be to rent a suit of armor?
Someone asked how we got engaged, and my wife laughed. I told them the story.
We were at H’s apartment on a Monday night watching The Matrix on TV. During a commercial, H was in the kitchen, and as I saw her through the door, I said, ‘Hey, we should get married.’
And she agreed. (more…)
None of us lives context free. We live the gospel in worlds driven by other values and other practices. While the separation from the rest of the world has lots of traction within Christianity, as a means of legitimizing faith, still the things we draw on to emphasize the separation leave much room for context. It is hard to imagine a completely gospel driven society of any size.
Since I am in Peru let me use a Catholic example. (more…)
I received a question recently from a young man at a prestigious university: (more…)
Forty-five years ago, Americans were shocked at the news reports and TV footage from Birmingham, Alabama.
So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.
Discuss. (warning: language!)
In Boise? The Idaho Black History Museum will present Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers Darius Aidan Gray and Margaret Blair Young, on Friday, May 9, 2008 at the BSU Special Events Center at 7:00 p.m. The event is free. The filmmakers will also be at the Idaho Black History Museum for further discussion of the film on Saturday, May 10th and 11:00 a.m.
I was looking over Elder Nelson’s talk from April Conference and I ran across this quote:
In God’s eternal plan, salvation is an individual matter; exaltation is a family matter.
We often hear people repeat the cliche, “Heaven wouldn’t be heaven without my family.” Here, Elder Nelson apparently raises it to the level of doctrine. (more…)
One of the great things about being a Mormon is that you stand a very good chance of sitting close to small children in church meetings. Over the years, I have made many friends among the under five set by discreetly going cross-eyed, pulling faces, wiggling my ears, and not ratting them out to their parents when they take second helpings from the tray of bread as it passes by. Paper Rock Scissors is a lot more fun when you need to play it so as not to be detected by authority figures.
BCC’s weekly romp through the best of the Bloggernacle, hosted this week by Steve, Brad, and Ronan — three lone men in the garden of Eden. Featured posts/sites: (more…)
My body is not what I thought it was. It isn’t less than I believed it to be; it isn’t weaker. If anything, it’s stronger - more durable, quicker to heal, more inured to pain - than I ever knew. I spent thirty years making assumptions about my body’s capabilities which, based though they were on the experiences of many other people, were quite seriously mistaken. As a result, I have spent the last month disoriented, living in a body I feel I do not know. (more…)
Now the BYU finals are over, it is officially open season on hasty nuptials. (more…)
The coupons were concealed carefully inside my purse, but I had to keep peeking at the list to see what was approved for me to purchase. A dozen eggs, four gallons of milk, some breakfast cereal of specific brand, cheese- all carefully lined out on the coupons the nice lady at the WIC center had given me. (more…)
As the last of the Martin handcart company were poised to entered the valley, Brigham Young stood before a conference in Salt Lake City. He recounted the peril of the Saints traveling in the snow and declared that they had a great labor ahead: “we had supposed that we should see the kingdom of God established on earth and Zion become the joy thereof, by merely gathering to the several Stakes; and that then our labors would be done and we should have nothing to do but sit and sing ourselves away to everlasting bliss; but we will find that preaching the gospel is but a small portion of the labor that is upon us.” (more…)
So, following the news this morning… If Roger Clemens, a resident of Houston, really had an affair with a 15 year-old, why doesn’t the great state of Texas raid his home and take his children away from him? And maybe, while they’re at it, they could take his neighbor’s kids, just to be safe?
A request recently came to the offices of Dialogue, which I pass along here to those who may be interested. A Master’s Degree student at the University of Calgary is writing about feminist women in patriarchal religions and looking for subjects to interview. You’ll find her recruitment notice below the fold. (more…)
This from our Viennese correspondent Peter LLC, recently seen scouring the Vienna words looking for sex slaves while Ronan stood idly by.
For the second* time in less than two years, an Austrian man has been found with prisoners in his cellar. (more…)
A few Sundays ago, we had an American visitor in English language Sunday School. He was starting a three-month trip around Scandinavia and the Baltics. Travelling around for thee months sounds good to me, but he felt the need to tell us the motivation for his journey: ‘I’ve come here to find a wife.’ (more…)
It may not be fashionable, but it is very much on my mind. Tomorrow evening my plane will descend through perennial clouds to land in a chaotic and fragmented, but somehow functional, third world city, Lima, Peru. On the way from the airport I may well go by a walled in area of ancient pyramids; Lima has experienced some ten millennia of human habitation. Near one set of pyramids, in an intriguing continuity, opens the impressive modern campus of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. (more…)
Prior to the 1940s, fundamentalist plural marriage looked a lot like 19th-century Mormon plural marriage, in that participants chose their own partners, based on personal attraction, principles of faith and in general the same sorts of considerations that lead anyone to choose a marriage partner. While this open market style continues to obtain among most polygamous groups, it does not among the FLDS, which practices what they call placement marriage, in which marriages are arranged, and wives and children are sometimes reassigned to other men, as a sign of absolute submission to priesthood authority. Originally when a young girl in the FLDS tradition felt ready for marriage, usually between 16 and 25, she would discuss the matter with her father, who would let the priesthood council know and they would assign her to a male to marry, which would take place either immediately or within a week or so. But under Warren Jeffs this has evolved to coercing younger and younger girls into marriages without their first presenting themselves voluntarily. (more…)
