http://www.bycommonconsent.com By Common Consent is the pre-eminent Mormon blog. Sun, 11 May 2008 20:08:38 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Elder Rasband’s talk in the recent General Conference is, for the most part, a distillation of Elder Bednar’s “Tender Mercies” talk from a few years ago and Elder Eyring’s similar talk from last October. At its heart is a call for us as members to examine our own lives ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/special-experiences/ In my notes from last year's Sunstone Symposium, I gave a list of ten principal differences between Fundamentalist and Mainstream Mormonism as given by Brian Hales. See comment 93 of this thread. While those are the biggies, there are other, more subtle differences that would mostly be lost on a ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/some-subtle-differences-between-fundamentalist-and-mainstream-mormonism/ I wish to honor my mother, the professor's daughter who married into the collapse of the American dream. The woman who coaxed weavils out of home-made granola, cultured yogurt in Kerr jars in a water bath in our dilapidated oven, and tried forty-five different ways to hide goat meat ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/on-this-often-tense-day/ When people learn I studied linguistics in college, they are generally unimpressed to discover that I frittered away my four years studying theoretical syntax--c-command, head movement, control theory, and a host of other words and word combinations whose meanings I no longer remember or frankly understand. What they had ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/a-name-for-uncertainty/ By a show of hands, how many of you have started each day intending to do good, only to realize upon retiring to bed that the world was probably worse off for your efforts? I know I have; certainly as a missionary and in just about every calling since then my ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/that-power-which-still-produceth-ill-whilst-ever-scheming-good/ 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. ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/through-the-valley-of-the-shadow/ 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 ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/your-friday-firestorm-46/ 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 ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/in-my-backyard/ 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 ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/the-flds-the-war-on-terror-and-wolverine-why-what-is-painfully-obvious-sometimes-gets-us-into-trouble/ 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, ... http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2008/05/where-were-you-8678/