Lesson 39: Isaiah 50-53
Sisterz in Zion
An amazing documentary premiered on byu.tv today between sessions of conference.
The Place of Ranting in Mormon Thought: A (Longish) Response to Russell
I have been thinking all weekend about Russell’s post attacking the Mormon legislators who voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The post was a rant. Russell is disgusted and outraged, but there was more to the post than that. Russell didn’t simply think that the Mormon legislators were wrong. He thought that they had betrayed their Mormoness at some deep level. I’m trying to figure out whether or not there is any value in what Russell has done.
Some Thoughts on Embodiment
“[L]iterature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear, and, save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null, and negligible and non-existent. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes; blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February� –-Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill
Ben Huff
My childhood was split between northern Virginia, outside of DC, and the international community in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I went to high school at The Cate School near Santa Barbara, CA. I met Kristine during a year at MIT, took a great class on scripture study from Jim at BYU, and just missed Melissa in the Japan Tokyo South Mission, finishing my service a little before she arrived. I met Adam at the University of Notre Dame and completed my PhD in Philosophy there in 2006. I specialized in ethics and wrote my dissertation on happiness and friendship in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. I now live in a log cabin just outside of Ashland, VA, where I teach philosophy at Randolph-Macon College. I enjoy classic jazz, cooking, mountain biking, and playing ultimate frisbee. (Edit this post).
Sunday General Conference Open Thread
Continue discussions from yesterday, or start new ones. Share with us what you’ve gotten out of conference, or what you hope to get.
Saturday General Conference Open Thread
Thoughts? Opinions? Impressions? Insights? Share them here, from either the morning or the afternoon sessions.
Anticipations
A seminary teacher once told me: Before conference, write down a question you need answered. Think carefully, ponder and pray about what the question should be. When you have your question, write it down on paper. Pray that an answer will be given in conference. Then, as you listen to conference, listen for your answer. What (if you don’t mind sharing) will you be listening for, this conference?
The Marilynne Robinson Post
I have been thinking about Marilynne Robinson lately …
Dear U.S. Senators Bennett, Crapo, Hatch, Smith, and U.S. Representatives Bishop, Cannon, Doolittle, Flake, Gibbons, Herger, Istook, Matheson, McKeon, Simpson:
I can’t believe you people.
Loaves, Fishes, and Understanding
There are two very similar stories of miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes in Mark’s Gospel.
Trusting God
During my senior year of college, my life fell apart. Depression had entered my life months before, and I had been trying to ignore its growing bleakness, hoping that it would go away if I pretended it wasn’t there.
Did Brigham hate your 501’s?
Here’s the lead from an article in today’s New York Times: “IN the 1830’s, when men’s pants were first tailored with buttons visible down the front of the fly, the Mormon leader Brigham Young discouraged the population from wearing them, calling them ‘fornication pants.’”
Joseph and Moses
Most are acquainted with the passage in D&C 130 where God gives a fascinating response to Joseph’s query about the Second Coming:
Another Sabbath
Opening Exercises: my girls stretched on hard chairs, schooled hands still seeking their phones; leaders whispered, heads together, in the back; we settled into our common rhythms—every week the same.
Around the blogs
-Feminist Mormon Housewives runs not-one, but-two recent posts on how to answer questions and return to the church from inactivity. (Because feminists really want to undermine the church and all that.) -You already knew that Family History Centers were good for filling in dates on charts. (As in, “what’s the birth date of my great-grandfather?”) Bookslinger finds that they’re useful for getting another kind of date. Really! (Dating via genealogy centers — what are they going to think of next, baptism for the dead?) -Finally, don’t miss Eve’s poignant and thoughtful post about seeking for happiness in a “secondary” choice of education, after run-ins with the dreaded I-word — infertility. -Also: Mogget continues to blogget about Jesus’s death in Mark; Roasted Tomatoes proposes a thought expermiment about women and priesthood; some-other-blog introduces fall colors and a newly-poached sidebar feature (and they’re starting off on the right note; if you’re going to poach, I say, then poach well).
Cyrus and an Evangelical Theology of Mitt Romney
For those engaged in the perennially fun pastime of Mitt Romney watching, one of the more interesting places to go is the Evangelicals for Mitt blog.
Wow
When I was in college, I dabbled a bit with genealogy.
Second-language acquisition in children; or, This life is a school
I’ve enrolled my two oldest children in a German elementary school. They have until Christmas to learn German and catch up to the rest of their first- or third-grade classes before the risk of flunking out gets to be too high.
Breakfast Thoughts
I am eating an egg and thinking about all those women.
Times & Seasons Welcomes Jenny Webb
We’re pleased to have Jenny Webb blogging with us during the next two weeks.
Pet Peeve #146
“Reverent” and “quiet” are not synonyms.
Mormon Feminists: A Divided Allegiance?
I originally began this post as a primer on feminism–a post on feminist ideological inconsistences and boundaries, and what the term “feminism” means–but the discussion following my previous T&S post on feminism and the comments on this post on FMH have got me thinking about the issue of allegiances and how that seems to be the main sticking point when it comes to Mormon suspicion of feminism.
BYU Studies Blogs
A couple of interesting blurbs appear in the “Study and Faith” newletter accompanying the most recent issue of BYU Studies.