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What the Smith Boys Said This Year
What the Smith Boys Said This Year
What the Smith Boys Said
What the Smith Boys Said This Year
What the Smith Boys Said This Year
This year, Simon turned eleven, Nathan turned eight, Truman turned five, and Julie turned old.
What the Smith Boys Said This Year
Previous installments can be accessed through this link.
What the Smith Boys Said This Year
This year, Simon turned nine, Nathan turned six, and Truman turned three. For previous installments, see here, here, and here.
What the Smith Boys Said This Year
For previous installments, see here and here. Simon turned eight, Nathan turned five, and Truman turned two this year.
What the Smith Boys Said This Year
In 2005, Simon turned seven, Nathan turned four, and Truman turned one.
What the Smith Boys Said This Year
What I’m not good at is keeping a journal. What I am good at is writing down in my planner the funny things that my kids say and then printing them up to put in our Christmas card each year:
Susa Young Gates and Joseph F. Smith’s Vision
The vision that we have printed as Section 138 was received by Joseph F. Smith in the last few months of his life. Among the very first people he asked to have review the document was none other than his friend, Susa Young Gates. In one of the excellent essays presented in the Revelations in Context book, Lisa Olsen Tait talked about Susa’s experience with the revelation. More recently, Lisa Olsen Tait discussed more about Susa and the Vision of the Redemption of the Dead in an interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk. What follows here is a co-post to that interview (a shorter post with some excerpts and discussion). Why was Susa one of the first people to read the vision? Part of it has to do with her personal friendship with Joseph F. Smith. As Tait described: Joseph F. Smith was over seventeen years older than Susa Young Gates. … They became friends in Hawai’i in 1885-87. Susa accompanied her husband, Jacob F. Gates, on a return mission to the Sandwich Islands, and their service overlapped with the time that Joseph F. Smith and his wife Julina were there, basically keeping a low profile during the anti-polygamy crusade. (Smith was a highly-wanted man due to his church leadership position and his knowledge of the records.) A few letters between them from that time survive, and, in my reading, evince a progression from friendly but formal acquaintances to deep…
Incredulous About Joseph Smith’s Polygamy
Entrenched in Mormon Culture I am a 7th generation Mormon who grew up in Utah County. I attended church all my life, had regular family scripture study and FHE. My dad was a BYU math professor and my mom a devout scripture scholar. I graduated from seminary and graduated from BYU (with all its required religion courses) and married a 5th generation, returned missionary in the temple. And I didn’t learn that Joseph Smith personally practiced polygamy until I was in my 20s. I had heard the story about Emma pushing Eliza down the stairs, causing a miscarriage in her jealous rage. But it was all fabricated nonsense created by anti-Mormons trying to defame the prophet. Like everything else that looked or sounded unsavory. Everyone knew about the public polygamy in Utah. Every year our elementary class toured the Beehive House, complete with all the wives’ bedrooms and fairly open discussion about managing the logistics. Polygamous ancestors were a dime a dozen (or two). Whenever the topic of plural marriage came up it was usually swept away with a Gordon-B-Hinkley-like flick of the wrist. “It’s behind us.” We don’t practice it. Move on. Nothing to see here.
Joseph Smith and Baseball: The Evidence
“In the 1830s, on the western frontier of Missouri, ball was the favorite sport of Joseph Smith, founder of a new religious sect called the Mormons1.” A couple of years ago I received as a Christmas present the Baseball documentary by Ken Burns, the PBS series that as much as anything has driven my current fascination with the game and led to the Mormon Baseball blog. Early in the first of the documentary’s 10 parts, the narrator makes the above claim, something that even today I don’t hear from Mormon historians. Could it be that Joseph Smith played and loved baseball?
Counseling Experiences from President Kimball’s Journal: 1960 – 1965
Journal text selected by Dennis B. Horne. Much of Spencer W. Kimball’s Apostolic ministry was devoted to working with and counseling members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that had committed “moral” sins.
Memories: Inspirational Excerpts from The Journal of President Spencer W. Kimball
Compiled by Dennis B. Horne Editorial note: the below excerpts from President Kimball’s journal were selected because I find them to be extra uplifting and edifying, or otherwise special in some way. I did not include a date with them because when I encountered and chose them I was interested in precious spiritual experience and insight, not scholarship. Some of these items can be found by using the index and links previously posted as “Precious highlights in President Spencer W. Kimball’s Journal.” Below is what I judge to be some of the cream of the cream in his diary. These tidbits make my soul sing and reinforce within me how grateful I am to be a member of the Restored Church of Jesus Christ. This apostle and prophet became celestial material indeed. I include a little introduction of a few words to each excerpt to give some context. This is part 4 of an ongoing series of excerpts from Spencer W. Kimball’s journals.
Mercy, kindness, and caring – a Sunday Sermon
At one point in his ministry, “an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.” He wanted to see what Jesus would answer, asking him: “Teacher … what must I do to inherit eternal life?” To this, Jesus responded with a question of his own: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” As an expert in the Law of Moses, the lawyer quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” To this, Jesus responded: “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” The lawyer wasn’t fully satisfied with the answer, however, and “wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” Rather than responding with a question, this time Jesus responded with a parable: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with…
Women and the Priesthood with Lisa Olsen Tait
“Do women have the priesthood?” You would think the answer would be a simple yes or no for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The reality, however, seems to say differently, with people arguing for a whole spectrum of answers while discussing this topic of perennial interest. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history and theology blog From the Desk, Lisa Olsen Tait shared her historical perspective on how we arrived at the current state of women’s relationship to the priesthood in the Church, drawing on her research that was presented in an article in BYU Studies’ “Yet to Be Revealed” issue. What follows here is a co-post, a shorter post presenting and discussing excerpts from the interview and related materials. In the original article, Lisa Olsen Tait divided the history into sections with inflection points between them, as follows: 1840s: “The Ancient Priesthood” 1850–1900: “In Connection with Their Husbands” 1900–1940: “The Blessings of the Priesthood” 1960s: “The Home Is the Basis” 1970–2000: Feminism and Responses Twenty-First Century: Priesthood “Power” and “Authority” In the interview, Tait explained some of the evolution through those eras, specifically related to the temple. To quote in relation to the 1840s: The revelation commanding the Saints to build the temple (Section 124) repeatedly spoke of it in terms of priesthood. “Therein are the keys of the holy priesthood ordained,” it said. In the House of the Lord the “fulness of…
Church Leadership Callings as a Marker of Your Standing Before God
In one of my recent posts I talked about the connection between wealth and Church leadership; one of the issues that naturally rose to the surface in the comments was the connection between Church leadership and one’s standing before God. On this issue there’s a somewhat uncomfortable tension between different truisms in Church teachings and culture. On one hand, we generally recognize that righteousness isn’t irrelevant to church position. All things being equal, the higher up one goes the more righteous the individual is, to put it bluntly. I’d expect more from an apostle getting cut off in traffic than I would my local bishop. (I suspect having your reaction during a moment of weakness on your worst day becoming part of a multi-generational lore about what Elder so and so did is a stressor; it certainly would be for me). On the other hand, in theory we recognize that God needs all types, and that the calling of nursery leader isn’t any higher than the bishop. This is especially true when we layer gender issues on top of all this, since we limit leadership positions with priesthood keys to about half the Church, the only way this is not discriminatory is if we honor the female roles as much as the male leadership roles. (I’m fine with the current setup, think we should honor both equally, and do see it as discriminatory when we don’t, but this is…
A Mother There: The Quotes Behind the Essay
I mentioned in my post last week that the BYU Studies article “A Mother There” by David L. Paulsen and Martin Pulido had more quotes than I could put into that post. Here is the follow-up with as many of the quotes cited in that article as I could find (excluding the ones presented last week). It’s not everything cited, but it’s the vast majority. Heavenly Wife and Parent First Presidency (1916): Jesus Christ is not the Father of the spirits who have taken or yet shall take bodies upon this earth, for He is one of them. He is The Son, as they are sons or daughters of Elohim. So far as the stages of eternal progression and attainment have been made known through divine revelation, we are to understand that only resurrected and glorified beings can become parents of spirit offspring. Only such exalted souls have reached maturity in the appointed course of eternal life; and the spirits born to them in the eternal worlds will pass in due sequence through the several stages or estates by which the glorified parents have attained exaltation.[1] Orson Pratt (1853): As God the Father begat the fleshly body of Jesus, so He, before the world began, begat his spirit. As the body required an earthly Mother, so his spirit required a heavenly Mother. As God associated in the capacity of a husband with the earthly mother, so likewise He associated…
A Word of Wisdom or a Commandment?
The revelation that forms the basis of the Latter-day Saint dietary code refers to its contents as “a word of wisdom for the benefit of the Saints in these last days” (D&C 89:1). The Word of Wisdom was treated like its name implies during much of the nineteenth century—wide advise from God, but not a commandment. Today, however, parts of it are treated as a commandment—one that can result in being barred from the temple and Church callings if not followed. How did the Word of Wisdom become a commandment? It is surprisingly difficult to nail down a specific point in time in which this occurred. Three main options do emerge from my study of the issue, however: it was either always considered a commandment, the Latter-day Saints voted on and accepted it as a commandment, or it became a commandment when it began to be enforced. The first option is that the revelation was always considered a commandment. Many of the earliest Saints to receive it treated it as such—recollections of Kirtland and the eastern United States during the 1830s include many accounts where people threw their tobacco pipes in the fire or gave up coffee, tea and liquor for life like John Tanner did. At a meeting of the Kirtland High Council on 20 February 1834, Joseph Smith declared “that no official member in this church is worthy to hold an office after haveing the words of wisdom…
The Neglected Louie B. Felt
RoseAnn Benson’s book Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith: 19th-Century Restorationists compares the two best known and successful figures in the broad restorationist movement of the 19th century. While those familiar with Latter-day Saint history know the relationship between the two movements, oddly in broader religious history only Campbell and his Disciples of Christ are considered restorationists. The book was warmly received and helped broaden the sense of restorationists as a more significant movement. Benson’s own background is ecclectic. She minored in history but her degree was in Physical Education and her first Masters was in Exercise Science. She then got a second Masters in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. She’s taught at BYU, George Mason University and UVU. Her new work which we’re focusing in on in association with 12 Questions is “Louie B. Felt, First General Primary President” published by BYU Studies.[1] Felt is a neglected figure in Church history. Her history, brought out by Benson is fascinating. This is an interview that definitely is worth a read.
Through faith and doubt, I’ll walk with you
I was invited to speak at a recent Relief Society conference on the topic of nurturing relationships through faith and testimony transitions. I post my remarks here by request, and because I haven’t blogged in forever. About ten years ago my sister Gabrielle looked like a typical young Mormon mom. She had a three little boys, a knack for home renovation and photography, and had recently returned to running after her last baby. One morning on her run, she tripped and fell. Clear sidewalk, no debris: strange, but she didn’t think much about it. Then it happened again a few days later. Suddenly something she had taken for granted every day of her life, so fundamental most of us never even notice it — the body’s ability to orient itself in space — was no longer a given. Simple tasks got exponentially harder: she questioned every movement, never sure which steps were sound and which would trip her up. The most painful bruises were psychological. She lost trust in her ability to navigate the basics of her life, and with it went the capacity to plan for the future. Fear surged. What would she lose next? Where would this end? How would her family be affected? Who was she now? It turned out that my sister was in the first stages of an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis. After years of fighting, she’s now stable, raising her sons and…
2015 Gen Conf–Sunday Afternoon
These are just my notes as I scribbled them and, considering how illegible my handwriting is (even to myself), you will not want to quote them word for word!
FairConference, Thursday Afternoon Sessions
Bob Rees A review of Earl Wunderli’s Imperfect Book Started with this Card Colour changing trick video (http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/colour-changing-card-trick-outtakes/) to illustrate that too much focus on one thing can cause you miss the many other things that are going on. What aren’t you noticing? Emerson said, “Tell me your sect, and I’ll tell you your argument.” How we approach the Book of Mormon will determine what we find within it. Rees was impressed with Earl’s thoroughness. He has read extensively and carefully. He approached as though cross-examining it in a court of law, and like any good lawyer making a case, he has been selective in choice of witnesses. Wunderli’s book does not give a balanced presentation, although it gives an impression of having done so. And he does raise important questions about the Book of Mormon, from the use of KJV language, internal stylistic consistency, anachronistic scientific understanding, mythology, and so one. Wunderli sees himself of side of reason, science and truth, and as a result paints the other side unreasonable, unscientific, and inclined to believe in myths and falsehoods. He doesn’t acknowledge that some scholars are open to spiritual ways of knowing, that there is more than one legitimate avenue for seeking knowledge. Those of us who use both approaches see differently than those who use just one. And this cuts both ways; those rely solely on spirit may be indifferent to any evidence. In Book of Mormon…
Faithful priesthood narratives?
some of those who speak in opposition to women’s ecclesiastical enfranchisement do so because they can’t imagine what a faithful, coherent narrative of our dispensation could possibly look like if women’s priesthood role were restored and developed or if they did receive the Melchizedek Priesthood
A (Partial) Response to Brother Otterson
There is a lot that could be said about Michael Otterson’s recent open letter. I think it does a lot to heal the immense pain and anger that many people—especially those who do not support Ordain Women–have felt in recent weeks as a result of how Church PR has (mis)handled Ordain Women. So thank you, Brother Otterson. There are a few places where I think it falls short of the mark, however; this post pushes back at just one statement:
Saturday Afternoon Session
President Uchtdorf conducting. President Henry B. Eyring: Sustaining votes of the General Authorities and Church Officers
BMGD #33: Helaman 1-5
Book Review: Jacob’s Journal of Doom
This guest review was written by Nathan Smith, age 11.