Category: Cornucopia
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Is Mormon Feminism a Zero-Sum Game?
A sometimes charged little threadjack discussion has been going on in Julie’s latest book review, over a statement by Adam. Adam’s initial statement was “In my experience, the more sympathy and prominence paid to feminists, the more excluded people like my wife feel.” Adam’s reasoning is, I think, a good example of a broader phenomenon…
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Page Six Jesus
As I was reading the paper yesterday on the train to work, I happened across a short article discussing the use of religious images in today’s popular fashion culture. The article discussed shirts and sweaters from top fashion houses that are now bearing images of Jesus or scriptural verses, and it mentioned that celebrities like…
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Toxic Fumes and Memories of Mormon Art
The summer after my mission I got a job restoring Mormon pine furniture. Over the course of its life, the furniture had been painted many, many times. My job was to painstakingly remove layers of later paint with an exacto knife and Q-tip swabs soaked in paint thinner while leaving the original layer of paint…
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Here and There in Mormon Art
Last month I kindly provided my husband some uninterrupted bonding time with his children and flew to New York City for a few days. On the recommendation of a friend (bloggernacle personality D. Fletcher), I stopped by Lane Twitchell’s current art show, “Here & There,” at the Greenberg Van Doren gallery in midtown.
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Book Review: Women in Eternity, Women of Zion
Imagine, if you will, that a stalwart member of the Church approached you with some concerns about the theological underpinnings of the Word of Wisdom. What might you do? Castigate him as a rebellious secularizer? Remind her that questioning was the fast road to apostasy?
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Poached like an Egg
Over at Millenial Star, Davis Bell has posted a few thoughts on the phenomenon of blog poaching. This follows up on the protests that some blogs receive at regular intervals about blog poaching. Davis’s post may be kind of weak itself, but he does point to the interesting, broader issue. What is blog poaching, exactly?…
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Is God an Ethicist?
The Mormon Spinozist has an interesting post lamenting (sort of) the lack of a clear doctrinal answer on the question of when life does or does not begin. What are we to make of the fact that we seem to have important questions about which the scriptures provide cryptic guidance at best? Here is my…
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On the Burden of Dealing with Polygamous Founders
It is tough to deal with being a member of a church which had polygamous founders. It’s not easy to look back through your religious history to the key figures, some of the ones on which the entire system rests, and note their ugly warts. Why did they choose to take more than one wife?…
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“Let us walk through the door”
In honor of this holy day, I offer a favorite poem: “Seven Stanzas for Easter.” John Updike wrote it in 1960 as a university student, as I understand, and published it in a periodical called The Lutheran. ___ Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution…
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Tenebrae
Yesterday at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, here at Notre Dame, I attended a service of prayer and lamentation called “Tenebrae”, remembering the darkness of the night when Christ suffered in Gethsemane and was arrested, and anticipating his death. It closed with a final candle carried out, leaving us in complete darkness, and the…
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Ensign Marginalia
I can’t read without a pencil in my hand, and my greatest vice is pencilling in the margins of library books. In my defense, I can argue that at least I’m not breaking the golden rule: I love reading other people’s marginalia, too. When I was in graduate school, I came to recognize the distinctive…
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Macrocosm and Microcosm
Every so often, I have one of those horrifying little experiences that leads me to question my firmly held belief that most of Freud’s thought is utter nonsense.
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The Silver Ring
This Easter, I have a story to tell, a story about the Atonement. I’m blessed in that I don’t have to look far for models of the Atonement, because a story from my own childhood suffices. It’s a story of a young father, a curious child, and a burning piece of metal. It’s a story…
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“Sir, I have come to ask for your daughter’s hand. Nice pajamas.”
Julie’s post on courting brings up an interesting question that I have, thankfully, only struggled with once: Should you ask a father’s “permission” prior to proposing marriage to his daughter?
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Eight Not-So-Simple Rules . . .
Thought LDS dating rules were draconian? ‘Courtship‘ is the trendy new (old) thing among Christian fundamentalists.
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In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of
loveblogs“For I dipt into the ‘nacle, far as human eye could see . . .” New additions to the bloggernacle are practically a daily occurrence now. Let me point out a few that have caught my eye recently:
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God spared my life and future three miles north of Parowan
God spared my future a few miles north of Parowan.
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Of Fathers, Compost, and the Resurrection
Thanks to a pile of rotting garbage, I was truly happy and contented for the first time in quite a while this weekend.
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Getting Down to Brass Tacks: Right to Life, State Responsibility, Family Input
Despite John Welch’s admirable asserted desire to keep the Schiavo thread on the topic of “what does LDS theology tell us about end of life care options?,” much of the discussion has predictably become a political slugfest. So be it. However, it hasn’t been, in my mind, a particularly useful political discussion. And a primary…
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Terry Schiavo and the Good Death
Last weekend at the conference of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology, Richard Sherlock presented a stimulating paper observing and explaining the complete absence of an LDS casuistry of medical ethics–that is, the absence of a body of literature exploring in a careful, ethically- and scripturally-bound way the trade-offs inherent in the excruciating panoply…
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Eccentrics
There is a student on the Georgetown campus that makes me uneasy. He has glasses, a bushy beard, heavy features, long brown hair knotted in dreadlocks. I see him often, and he always seems to be wearing the same thing: a camouflage jacket, brown trousers, and a heavy backpack full, I’m convinced, of books on…
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Book Review: City Saints
The interaction of the LDS church and its members with New York City is a fascinating topic. Someday, that story will doubtless be the focus of one or more great works of Mormon regional history which will have truly broad appeal to members. And those works will in turn acknowledge City Saints: Mormons in the…
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Technical Update
Hi. We’ve been experiencing some major technical problems, as you’ve probably figured out by now. Our new host didn’t handle the site. We’re pointing the DNS back to the old host, which has the posts and comments through last Thursday. Once this is back up and running (DNS resolved everywhere) we’ll try to get a…
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The Sway of Philosophy
As I see students get excited about Heidegger or Wittgenstein or some other philosopher and the insights into their own lives and the gospel that come with that excitement, I remember my first year or so in graduate school.
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Technical note
This is just a quick note that we’re doing a little bit of work on the technical end around here. It’s unlikely to affect browsing much, if at all.
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Book Review: The Latter-day Saint Experience in America
Perhaps you can forgive me for taking one look at the supersized price tag on Terryl L. Givens’ new book The Latter-day Saint Experience in America and assuming that the intended audience was luckless university students operating at the behest of their profligate professors.
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The bankruptcy bill
You may have read about the new bankruptcy bill which is headed for the House. Major provisions include a required means test designed to certain filers from using Chapter 7, as well as added attorney certifications and disclosures. What should we, as church members, think of this?
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What Does God Smell Like?
I like smells. I sniff my wife when she is not looking. (It really annoys her.) I came home from work late tonight and went in to look at my sleeping son. I bent down and kissed his brow and drank in the wonderful smell of a clean and sleeping little boy. For me smell…
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Sweet spirit
I failed as a primary teacher. No, not in Belgium. Here in my Provo ward. But it cannot be said I did not try. Velcro, scissors, wax crayons, strings, glue, buttons, figurines. Scriptures and stories. We made the armor of God in cardstock, dressed King Lamoni’s sheep in wads of cotton, notched Nephites, laminated Lamanites,…