Blog Archives

Christmas is awesome as a kid because you get cool stuff that you can’t get any other time. (Yeah, yeah, you can tell me that Christmas is awesome because we celebrate the Savior’s birth or because we get to serve people, but if you were a kid like I was a kid, it really just came down to presents and time off school.) Now here’s my “kinds of presents” list: Stuff the recipient doesn’t want (like Christmas ornaments — who ever thinks, “I’d love a Christmas ornament”?) Stuff the recipient likes and would probably get for themselves anyway (like... Read more »

FOX News was on while I stood in line at McDonald’s last night. I noticed that the guy being interviewed looked distinctly Mormon (apparently we have a distinctive look), so I walked over to see what was up. The guest was Connor Boyack, and he was talking about how, of all the political ideologies, Mormonism is most compatible with Libertarianism. The Mormon-Libertarian connection is nothing new, but it fits in with something that’s been on my mind lately — competing “goods”. Or, in Elder Oaks’ words, “good, better, and best”. As I see it, there are three cardinal points of political... Read more »

Depression played a major role in my self-identity for a decade of my life, from about 7th grade through the end of my mission. Life is good. In fact, life is great now. I’ve worked through my demons. No, that makes it sound like I knew what I was doing. Even now I can’t say why things have turned out as well as they have. Just lucky, I guess. I remember the day I decided to be lucky. I was walking to school with a friend on one of those frigid mornings when you can see your breath. Things... Read more »

I’m impressed at how frequently I hear parallels drawn between our church and the many other religions out there. Apparently, we are similar to… the Catholics, due to our shared focus on a formally ordained lineage-based priesthood, strong church hierarchical organization, conservative moral politics, family focus with traditional gender roles, the need for works in addition to faith, and the role of priesthood ordinances in obtaining salvation. the Evangelicals, with our conservative moral politics, family focus with traditional gender roles, claim to spiritual gifts, 19th-century scriptural interpretations, and renewed focus on salvation only being available through faith in Jesus... Read more »

Each church member responds to problematic issues in church history, doctrine, and culture in their own way. Some people ignore them, some engage in apologetics, and some leave the church entirely. As for me, I'm a categorizer. I categorize them away. I separate human knowledge and experience into two overarching spheres --- science and religion. For this to make sense, let me start with my definitions of those two spheres. Read more »

It’s that time again — reader participation day, so come join in and let yourself be heard! Back in January, I asked what brings you to the bloggernacle. Today, I want to narrow the question down to Times & Seasons in particular. Several of you are new here in the past six months, and there are a few old friends that I haven’t seen in a while (Bill of Wasilla, where’d you go?) I want to know what keeps you guys coming back here, week after week, month after month. Feel free to take the discussion in any direction you’d... Read more »

Over the past ten years, my approach to the doctrines of the church has shifted dramatically. I’m Mormon now in a very different way than I was then. With the various discussions attempting to define what it means to be Mormon, I thought I’d share what it means to me (well, what it means to me at this time — check back in ten more years and we’ll see where things are at). I believe that the religion that does nothing for people in this life isn’t likely to do much for them in the next. The church is... Read more »

(This is the third part in a series about my vision for a community. Here’s Part One and Part Two.) Time to look at distribution of labor, education and job skills, and self-determination. … Like I said previously, I’m targeting a $1,000-per-month lifestyle that covers food and housing for a family. In practice, the way I imagine implementing it is with a three-tier system: Tier 1: $2,000/month Tier 2: $1,000/month + part-time community maintenance Tier 3: $0/month + full-time community employment Each tier is designed to meet a different individual need. Tier 1 is for people who have money... Read more »

In my previous post about the principles that would govern my ideal community (affordability, space, distribution of labor, technology, education and job skills, and self-determination),  several of you made comments and asked questions about how those principles might work in practice. Here are my thoughts. … Affordability Across the street from my workplace is a Lowe’s (Lowe’s is a hardware/supplies store, for those of you that aren’t familiar with it). The Lowe’s parking lot has a bunch of sheds. Being the odd kind of guy I am, I took a tour of the sheds during lunch one day, and discovered... Read more »

My first posts at Times & Seasons were about building zion-like communities. I’ve wanted to expand on those posts in the year and a half since I originally wrote them, but whenever I try the words refuse to come. Why? In part it’s because communities are difficult and complicated. Mostly, however, it’s because the ideal community that I envision is so dear to me that it pains me to put it into words. I feel like the words do violence to the vision, and a part of me fears that, in transit from vision to writing, the vision might... Read more »

I read Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy over the weekend for the first time since high school. I was glad to see that it’s a book that ages well. As a teenager I enjoyed it as a fun, imaginative science fiction romp. Now I appreciate it as a commentary on the absurdity of life and the immanence of death. (Speaking of which, this book fits in quite nicely with my previous post on Halloweeen. Hitchhiker’s Guide is definitely a Halloween classic, at least in the way I look at Halloween.) The story is essentially a series of... Read more »

For me, Christmastime starts around the end of September, with the first hints of autumn coolness. It extends through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, and ends sometime around mid-February. My calendar looks something like this: Christmastime (September through February) The Wet & Cold Season (March through May) The Hot & Dry Season (June through August) Being yet the beginning of October, we’re still right around my new year. When the relentless Sacramento summer heat starts to withdraw and I need to roll my windows up for my morning commutes, I feel the stirrings of new life in me.... Read more »

The first principles and ordinances in my life, borne of my experiences and observations, are these: Exposure, which leads to awareness, or, in other words, the knowledge of good and evil Awareness, which leads to gratitude and wonder Wonder, which leads to vision and discipline Discipline, which leads to understanding and becoming Understanding, which leads to humility and perspective Becoming and perspective, which lead to joy, which is sustainable happiness Sustainable happiness, which is the purpose of life They aren’t as concise as the 4th Article of Faith, but they work for me. Also, they are a work in... Read more »

Elder Perry’s Saturday conference address focused on how we present ourselves and how we are perceived by others. Religious affiliation affects how we perceive others. For example, when I lived in Oregon it wasn’t uncommon to see the little “Christian fish” on business storefronts. (I see this occasionally in California, but not nearly so frequently.) At first, this was a value-neutral statement in my mind. I was just as happy to frequent a business as a non- business. However, my experiences with the businesses were subpar, and I came to associate the as indicating, “We’re not as good as... Read more »

Once upon a time there was a boy named Ghedi. Ghedi has a little brother named Korfa. Ghedi and Korfa are best friends. They live in Mogadishu, in apartment #214, between the Suuqa Bakaaraha and the high school, just across from the Catholic school. Korfa likes to watch Sesame Street with Ghedi. Their mom and dad teach them that it’s important to learn English. Ghedi is 13, and Sesame Street is easy for him. Korfa is 5. Ghedi helps him with the hard words. After Sesame Street, Ghedi usually goes down to the quad to hang out with his... Read more »

Reading back through the recent posts at Keepapitchin (sorry Ardis, I haven’t been keeping up :)  ), I found a great piece on those long-lived, die-hard “doctrines” that aren’t really doctrines at all. Things like how Jesus was married…with children…to multiple wives(?!?!). Or how blacks couldn’t receive the priesthood because they were in the pre-mortal life. Or any number of other eclectic tidbits (I had mission companion who had been taught that Cain survived the Flood in a specially built one-man submarine). She closes with this question: Why the heck do we do that? Why do we... Read more »

Somalia is the kind of country where a New York City Department of Transportation worker can be invited over to become prime minister. Following a year of primely ministration, he quit yesterday…and now he’s back to working at his old job in New York City. But back to Ghedi. Ghedi, 13 years old, was born five years after the events that inspired Black Hawk Down. To get a quick sense of his growing up years, take a look at Wikipedia’s Modern History entry for Mogadishu. You’ll note that the subheading provides these links: Main articles: Somali Civil War, Battle of Mogadishu (1993), Battle... Read more »

Ghedi, 13 years old, is trying to escape Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. Now, before I start Ghedi’s story, let’s get ourselves situated. Here’s Mogadishu relative to the rest of Africa: You can see that it’s a coastal city, on the southern end of the Horn of Africa (that’s the pokey piece of Africa jutting out right below the Saudi Arabia.) Let’s zoom in on that a little bit closer: Note that Kenya is just southwest of Somalia. That’s important because Ghedi, the hero of our story, is trying to get out of Somalia and into Kenya. Specifically,... Read more »

It’s ward conference for us today. Ward conference is kind of a let-down for me. It doesn’t offer the short church session that we get from stake conference, and I can’t watch it on my laptop while eating not-Cap’n-Crunch in my pajamas. It’s pretty much just business-as-usual. But it’s not like the two-hour session of stake conference is really such a break when you’ve got to keep small kids quiet for the duration. Really, I’d rather have three hours of church with someone else watching my kids than to try and keep them quiet and attentive for two hours... Read more »

I just saw Stephen M (Ethesis)’s post on complaints about EFY and I liked his list of reasons people complain (particularly about church stuff). For those of you who aren’t clicking the link to his article, here’s the quick summary of his list: Legitimate — Complaining about a demonstrable problem with a demonstrable solution. Compulsive mental illness — What it sounds like. Compulsive snarkers — “People who are just constant nitpickers…” Thematic — “People who have adopted a cause, and thereafter have a stream of advice and complaints that circle around that as a theme…” People in pain —... Read more »

Quoting from Monty Python. Sorry, it’s just not funny when I hear you do it. This applies double to anything about being turned into a newt and getting better. Same goes for Princess Bride. Yes, it’s quite possibly the greatest movie ever made, but I don’t care that you can recite the whole thing word for word. And I’m especially banning the use of British accents by non-British peoples who defy bans #1 and #2. I shouldn’t even have to include #2, because Wesley wasn’t British. Also, the word “bloody”. The grammar rule that says periods and commas go inside... Read more »

One goal in computer programming is to build “loosely coupled” systems. A loosely coupled system isn’t tied down to a specific platform. It makes it easy to take a program written for Macintosh and turn it into a program that can run on Windows or Linux or whatever other system you want. When a new platform appears (like the iPhone), a loosely coupled system makes it so that you can just swap a few parts around and make your program work on that new platform. Loose coupling is achieved by separating a system into “layers”. Take this blog, for... Read more »

NPR did a piece yesterday evening on a speech school for Brooklyners (Brooklynites? Brookies?) who want to get rid of their accent. These are people who feel that speaking with a Brooklyn accent makes people perceive them poorly, and that it’s holding them back socially or professionally. Predictably, this leads to a kickback from the non-Brooklyners who feel that regional dialects are part of the richness and charm of our nation, as well as from other Brooklyners who feel that these ones are “betraying their culture”. Is culture something that can be betrayed? And do we have a responsibility... Read more »

In 2001, when I lived in Tracy, California, I attended the tri-stake institute in Stockton, or maybe it was Manteca. The teacher was Pres. Anderson, an amazing CES instructor. (He was transferred out to Utah shortly after I left Tracy… Do any of you know what happened to him, or what he’s up to now?) Pres. Anderson started  his lesson on the celestial kingdom with these words written on the chalkboard: Two pedigreed Siamese kittens — Cost: $100 Is that a great deal? I don’t know how much Siamese kittens normally cost, but apparently it’s more than $100 a... Read more »

There’s a folk doctrine I’ve heard expressed by members of the church, and it goes something like this: “As long as you are obedient to your priesthood leaders, any sins you commit are on their heads.” The idea is that if your priesthood leaders counsel you poorly and you obey that counsel, you aren’t morally responsible for the outcome of those actions; you fulfilled your duty as a saint. You get to go to heaven, and they get to go…well, wherever it is that people who give bad counsel go. Where do we get this from? St. Ignatius, founder... Read more »

Gospel Doctrine on Sunday featured the parable of the ten virgins, accompanied by this picture: Apparently it’s a well-known picture, but I’d never seen it before. The instructor read the picture’s accompanying interpretation. It’s too long for me to share in its fullness (which can be found here), but here are some of the bits that I found a little bit jarring in the context of a Sunday school lesson: “The third virgin represents the ordinances necessary on this earth to enter the kingdom… She is dressed in blue, trimmed with gold – blue and gold are the colors... Read more »

I decided a couple weeks ago that I’m going to start attending the worship services of the various churches in my area, partially for self-education and partially for fun. Motivated by the vision of being inspired by new and unfamiliar practices, I hopped on Google and searched for “roseville churches”, then clicked on the map view. Roseville isn’t a huge cosmopolitan metropolis (it’s a suburb of Sacramento, with a population of about 120,000 people), but it’s large enough that I hoped to find a variety of religious groups. Of the first 10 search results, 8 are non-denominational Christian churches... Read more »

As a missionary, I took pride in my familiarity with the scriptures. No matter the question, I could usually present an investigator with a scripturally backed answer. Being somewhat slow on the uptake, it probably took me a year or more to become conscious of the fact that most investigators didn’t ascribe the same level of authority to the scriptures that I did. I just took for granted that “proving a concept by the standard works” = “concern resolved!” But that’s a topic for a different post. This post is about the one scripture that did make a difference.... Read more »

Kent’s post on community responsibility brings to mind the question of whether and how a community can repent. Do the first principles and ordinance of the gospel apply to the church as a whole? The church exemplifies faith through its teachings, and I can see the entire church organization as reflective of the ordinances of baptism and confirmation. But what about repentance? I’m not aware of any instances where the church as an institution has worked through a repentance-like process (acknowledging an institutional error, accepting responsibility for it, apologizing, and then working toward restitution), but that doesn’t mean such... Read more »

Is church Correlation the new United Order? I remember a conference talk from years ago (by Pres. Packer, if I recall correctly, though I haven’t been able to find the actual talk to confirm it.) The speaker talked about how his local church unit had a wonderful and unique youth program — something about performance or public speaking, I think. It was managed by great leaders and the results with the students were remarkable. They were engaged, enjoying themselves, and learning new skills. However, the call came down from higher authorities to shut down the local program and replace... Read more »