For several years now, the Mormon Archipelago aggregator site (which used to be found here) has served as a relatively complete listing of LDS blogs and also provided real-time feeds listing recent posts. It has been something of an anchor for the Bloggernacle. It was handy to see new posts at larger blogs all in one place. MA also pushed traffic to a lot of smaller blogs that otherwise wouldn’t get too many visitors. But MA has been down for over a week now and it’s not clear if or when it will be back. What is to be done? As a short-term fix, I have put feeds of 20 LDS blogs in the sidebar at DMI giving the most recent five posts for each blog. For reference, I also set up a page listing all the blogs that were featured at the MA site.
Category: Cornucopia
Contraction
I want to understand one thing especially. All my work bends to it. I want to understand the contraction of religious belief as a positive religious phenomenon.
Elegy
Belief As Habit
In “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Charles Peirce argues that belief just is whatever it does.
BSA: Morally Straight
The decision may come today. Will the Boy Scouts of America allow gay leaders and youth to participate in their program? I have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. Some of them are great. Some I love. Some I’d rather not spend much time with because I find them annoying. After all, they are real people, just like my hetero relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, some of whom are great, loveable and/or annoying. Although not a scout as a child, I am part of BSA now. I even have a uniform to wear. And I desperately want to share the privilege and responsibilities of that uniform with any who desire to serve and give their time and energy to help these kids grow into strong, capable people. So I say, change “morally straight” to “morally true” and move on. Update: The decision has been put off until May.
How Can I Use Church Music to Learn about the Plan of Salvation?
This is one of the teaching outlines from the new youth Sunday School curriculum for February. I thought I’d share how I plan to teach this lesson.
Happy Ratification Day!
It’s a big day today—100 years ago, on February 3, 1913, Delaware ratified the 16th Amendment, meaning it had been ratified by the necessary 36 states. And, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment, the U.S. could constitutionally impose an income tax.
One Day, The Past’s Future May Seem Just This (Un)Weird
It’s always fun to read computer/science/tech magazines from the 80’s, and see just how far things have come in 30 years, and what predictions were way off. Even more so from the 1950s. Sometimes the things they herald as bizarre and never-going-to-happen have come to be so taken for granted that I can seem really old for talking about VCRs, and having to look in the newspaper to find out movie times. It strikes me that such is also the case with the Church, in some ways. But really, I just wanted to post the below image, made with The Pulp-o-mizer. It’s a bit limited in the right images, but captures the spirit.
Single Sisters Unite – and Babysit
The following appeared in a ward bulletin this past week. It was forwarded to me by a friend. Edited only to remove identifying information. [The friend noted: the person who wrote it is new and feels very inadequate and would probably feel horrified to know it was being discussed in the public sphere. But, well, it needs to be.] Thursday, February 14 at 6:30 pm the Relief Society is hosting a Couples Dinner and Fireside. Come enjoy a nice evening with your spouse and gain some insight on how to strengthen your marriage. We will have dinner and babysitting in your home provided. If you want a babysitter please let Jane Doe know so she can arrange it for you. If you live outside of Kolob and would like to stay the night in Kolob…let Jane Doe know and we can arrange that as well (staying with members, not a hotel ;)). Can you tell we really want you to come?! Single sisters, we haven’t forgotten about you. You can support your ward family by letting Jane Doe know if you would like to babysit for a family that evening. Our ward becomes stronger as our families and marriages are strengthened. Boom. A couple’s evening is a great idea! Maybe not on Valentine’s Day — a day when single sisters (and brothers, hello?) might already be feeling alone — but I don’t have a problem with events that are specifically…
Quirky Questions in Mormon Theology: Can there be an odd number of people in Heaven?
Well, if they’re Mormons, there will definitely be a number of odd people in Heaven! ::rimshot:: So, let’s see. There’s a popular LDS belief that only married couples get to Heaven. But is that really church doctrine? And could there be an odd number of people in Heaven? Sort of. Maybe. Ish. D&C 131 reads: 1 In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees; 2 And in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; 3 And if he does not, he cannot obtain it. 4 He may enter into the other, but that is the end of his kingdom; he cannot have an increase. Does this mean, only paired, married couples in Heaven? Maybe. But it’s complicated. Let’s run through some ways in which an odd number of people could get to Heaven: 1. The possibility of a gender-specific rule. The D&C only says that men who aren’t sealed don’t-go to the highest degree. So maybe women who aren’t-sealed are eligible for the highest degree just fine. Of course, this might be an area where the male pronoun is meant to include both. But it might not. If church members believe that men and women have different sets of rules in lots of areas, why not here? 2. The possibility of celestial polygamy and/or polyandry. Yeah. We’ll just mention this one and…
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
(Assuming, of course, that Maria is a full-time ordinance worker at the Washington, D.C., temple.) Did you know that the Church owns an apartment building in Maryland? That it houses temple ordinance workers there? And that the apartment building is, legally, a convent?
How a concussion made me think of Stephenie Meyer and Francis Hutcheson
Last semester, my first semester studying Greek, I sustained a mild concussion. I have mostly recovered now. I still have problems with bright lights that makes nighttime driving intolerable, but for the most part, I’m functioning normally. But for a few weeks there, I couldn’t think straight. It hurt to concentrate. Reading even a light novel was difficult, and translating Greek was nigh impossible. Just looking at Greek letters caused me pain. But my handwriting was spectacular. Any notes I took about lectures I attended during that time are the most clearly written, beautifully precise notes I have ever taken. Sketching was fine too, so the concentration required to look and draw was painlessly available to me. It was strange to experience this involuntary shift in my capacities. I tend to think that what I think, how I think, is what I am. But if my cognitive functions are subject to physical manipulations, some of which are outside of my control, can I think of my thinking self as my self? Stephenie Meyer’s adult sci-fi book The Host is a science fiction romance exploration of the connection between emotional, intellectual, and spiritual development with the particulars of physical embodied experience. In that way, it is a very Mormon reflection on purpose of mortality and morality. For Meyer, the particulars of human embodiment includes deliberate agency and unintentional feelings of passion, vulnerability, and need. This naturally results in social structures, the…
Earthly Father, Heavenly Father – Earthly Mother, Blank
This week a number of my Facebook friends shared a video from the Mormon Channel, titled Earthly Father, Heavenly Father. It kept showing up in my timeline, and finally I watched it. I’m generally a fan of the church’s public relations offerings, so I expected to like this short. I mean, who doesn’t love fatherhood? Instead, the film made me sad. Before playing the video, I saw the blurb underneath: Men on Earth have the opportunity to become fathers and experience some of the same joys that our Heavenly Father feels for us. Fatherhood is a divine responsibility to be cherished. What is the female corollary? Women on Earth have the opportunity to become mothers and experience some of the same joys that our Heavenly Mother feels for us. Is this true? Does she watch us? Interact with us? Listen to our prayers? What does she feel for us? How do we know? Within the first few seconds, we see a quote from James E. Faust: Noble fatherhood gives us a glimpse of the divine. What is the female corollary? Noble motherhood gives us a glimpse of the divine. Is this true? In what ways does noble motherhood reflect divine motherhood? The video gives an analogy between a father caring for his family and Heavenly Father caring for all his children on earth. He goes to work, provides for them, and they are pretty oblivious to his efforts. This video…
Church History Conference
There is a Church History Conference at BYU March 7-8 entitled “Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World” (see details below). I find two things interesting about this conference: 1. The structure of the conference itself. The Church History Department and the BYU Department of Religion are co-sponsoring the conference, and while most of the lineup consists of BYU Religion professors there is also a significant lineup of non-BYU scholars, including Richard Bushman, Matt Bowman, and Kevin Barney. This strikes me as something different than I might have expected. 2. The content of the conference. To date much of the discussion about Joseph Smith and the ancient world has been a polemic between those who see Joseph’s knowledge and use of ancient themes, symbols, practices, and the like to be clear evidence of divine intervention, and those who see Joseph as a crafty religious plagiarist, creatively selecting a la carte from the various ancient studies resources he came across in early 19th century America. Again, the content of the conference appears to be taking a different tack. If nothing else, this conference strikes me as another sign that Elder Snow (who will speak at the conference) is following in the footsteps of his most recent predecessor as head of Church History. Once again, while Bro. Arrington may have lost some key battles, it looks like he won the war. Thoughts? ****** Conference Program: Symposium Committee Lincoln H. Blumell (Co-Chair), Department…
On Complaining
Rosalynde here expresses some of the concerns that I have about the methodology of the Wear Pants and GC Prayer efforts. I want to add a few more thoughts:
Literacy and orality in Mormonism
It would be surprising, and disappointing, if Mormons didn’t sound a bit odd when we speak, or if Mormon verbal art were indistinguishable from any other literary text.
Guest Post: Mental Health, Mortal Life, and Accountability Part 2: Causes and (Mis)Attributions
[This is the second in a series of guest posts on Mental Health, Mortal Life, and Accountability. The other installments are available here: Part 1:”Exceeding Sorrowful, Even Unto Death” (Mark 14:34), Part 3: Fractured Images of God, Self, and Others, Part 4: Accommodations in LDS Activities and Meetings, and Part 5: The “Greater Sin”/ Sane Repentance & Forgiveness] The church’s web page about mental illness includes a brief list of potential causes. These can include physiological and/or behavioral factors. Mental health or functioning can be compromised due to heredity; birth defect; oxygen deprivation at birth or later; biological trauma (concussion, brain clot, hemorrhage, tumor, seizure activity, bacterial infection); medication, drugs, food, additives, environmental hazards, or other substances that effect brain function; nutritional deficiencies, sensitivities, and anemias; sleep deprivation and its opposite–prolonged bed rest or other immobility/ limitation of physical movement… Behaviorally, mental health can be hampered by child, spousal, or elder abuse, neglect, or abandonment; untreated mental illness in, or substance abuse or poor modeling by a parent or other caregiver; an extreme mismatch between parental and child personality or temperament; food insecurity; prolonged or extreme economic hardship; being a witness or participant in war, violence (including rape and other forms of sexual attack), accident, illness, injury, or other trauma; imprisonment, forced relocation, theft, or other curtailment of liberty or autonomy; divorce and other losses; a variety of continuous stressors; and (yes) guilt over personal sin & transgression. Usually, difficulties stem from a combination of…
MR: Samurai Jesus: A Review of Takashi Miike’s “Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai”
The Mormon Review vol. 5 no. 1 is presented here, with Jonathon Penny’s review of Takashi Miike’s 2011 film Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. By Jonathon Penny Open on a gaunt, intelligent looking man—Tsukumo Hanshiro—seeking the indulgence of a retinue of samurai at the palace of a feudal lord. He claims to be a ronin, a lordless samurai, left to wander in poverty after the dishonor and dissolution of his clan. His request: to commit ritual hara-kiri so that, it is explained to us, he might regain some of the honor he has lost. There is skepticism. Not two months before, Chief Retainer Saito informs him, another ronin from the same clan made the same request. This one, Chijiiwa Motome—younger, more gaunt, and with less bearing—sought an audience with Lord Li, delayed the ritual, fidgeted and fretted. There was skepticism. Takashi Miike’s resume reads like the inside cover of a pulp novel. He has directed film after film whose English titles, at any rate, smack of that Hong Kong irony we all thought Kurt Russell was lampooning, if we grew up in the 80s, or that Tarantino was satirizing, if we grew up later: “Bodyguard Kiba: Combat Apocolypse [sic] 2,” anyone? How about “Rainy Dog”? “Full Metal gokudô”? “Blues Harp”? “Andromedia”? “Ichi the Killer”? “Ninja Kids!!!”? I’ve never bothered with any of them, though I did see “13 Assassins” (2010) and I indulged in “Sukiyaki Western Django” (2007). (Hey, it was…
Should Women Pray in Public?
So it looks like All Enlisted (the people who brought you “Wear Pants to Church Day”) is now starting a campaign to have a woman pray in General Conference. It prompted this repost from BCC which references this piece from Rosalynde Welch. I want to look at just one line from Rosalynde’s essay:
Guest Post: Mental Health, Mortal Life, and Accountability Part 1:”Exceeding Sorrowful, Even Unto Death” (Mark 14:34)
[This is the first in a series of guest posts on Mental Health, Mortal Life, and Accountability. The subsequent installments are available here: Part 2: Causes and (Mis)Attributions, Part 3: Fractured Images of God, Self, and Others, Part 4: Accommodations in LDS Activities and Meetings, and Part 5: The “Greater Sin”/ Sane Repentance & Forgiveness] Not many years ago, a younger sibling of mine sought to stop her unbearable emotional pain by ending her mortal life. While she succeeded in completing her suicide, she did not consciously chose this path, and she is not fully accountable for her desperate and tragic actions. In some ways, she is in a safer place, as she is now beyond reach of some of the individuals, circumstances, and influences that had power to destroy her soul. I also believe that many of her challenges continue, and some may even be greater. I do not know the ultimate destiny of her soul. But I know for sure that God’s love, watch care, influence, empathy, and grace go with her beyond the grave, that the Plan of Happiness, Salvation, and Exaltation is for her, as much as it is for me, and you, and all of God’s precious children. Christ endured the emotional pain that my sister endured specifically so that He can now succor her. As I have mourned and been mourned with through this tragic loss, and as I observe and mourn with others bearing similar and…
Guest post: Failure, by Nate Curtis
No one sets out on a path with the intent to fail. In late 2009 I took the last major hike with my father before he died. We decided to do the Tapeats Creek/Deer Creek loop, a trail in the Grand Canyon that we had done several times over the years, and is considered by many to be not only the most difficult hike in the Grand Canyon, but among the hardest hikes in North America. It was the first hike my father had done in the Grand Canyon when he was 14 years old, and it was the first hike he took me on in the Grand Canyon when I was 12 years old. He used to tell a story of a pudgy kid from Houston (himself) who had never even seen a valley, much less the Grand Canyon. A boy who descended into the depths of those sandstone walls and emerged 20 pounds lighter and fully converted to the Canyon’s mystery. The trail is not easy. Just a few weeks before our trip, an experienced hiker in good physical condition attempted to hike the trail alone. He became lost and for some unknown reason began to navigate his way down a large cliff. After descending a ways he realized he could go no farther down, and lacked the strength to climb back up. Stranded on a ledge, he soon died from exposure to heat and dehydration. It was…
Finding My Heavenly Mother, Part 4 (Literary Edition)
Also see part 1, part 2 and part 3. In a 1944 essay (“Is Theology Poetry?”), C.S. Lewis remarked, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” As one who embraced Christianity later in life, Lewis had a keen appreciation of how a new discovery of belief can throw a bright reflected glory on the world and everything in it. The mind, which craves new connections of any kind, takes a special delight in those intellectual connections that carry an associated weight of affection. Who has not noted with pleasure the increased sweetness imparted to a beautiful place by the remembrance of a few precious moments shared there with one’s beloved? How much more, then, might we linger over a place, a picture, a happy turn of phrase that brought to mind some past or promised communion with the divine, assaulting our senses with a sudden tingle of the holy. Like Lewis, I have been in the habit of finding God everywhere, illuminating everything. And besides amid the glories of the natural world, nowhere for me does the spirit of God breathe more vibrantly than in literature. The scriptures of various religious traditions are, of course, replete with references to God. But I’ve encountered beautiful spiritual insights in books by authors from Victor Hugo to Friedrich Nietzsche. Since “discovering” my Heavenly Mother, I…
Why I Listen to Screamo
So here’s a piece about multidimensional optimization algorithms, a genre of music named after and including a lot of primal screaming, and my mission. Several examples of said musical genre, screamo, are included so I hope you have a broad audial palette. I’ll start with a short story from my Mormon youth. On one particular day I remember being in the backseat of a minivan full of my fellow teenage Mormons as we drove to or from some weekday church activity. We were listening to the radio when Bullet with Buttefly Wings by The Smashing Pumpkins came on and I started to sing along. This song is sonically tame compared to what we’ll be sampling shortly, but my enthusiasm was met by unanimous horror from the rest of the van. This, it seemed, was not what good Mormons listened to. While someone gave me a mini-lecture on musical standards, the radio dial was hastily changed from alternative rock to top-40. My own misgivings–was I bringing the devil into this vehicle?–were laid to rest as Christina Aguilera instructed us all on how to rub her the right way in order to convince her to “give it away”. I was pretty sure that, next to that, Billy Corgan singing “And I still believe that I cannot be saved,” wasn’t any worse. As my mission approached, I partook of a great deal of the kind of folklore we have built around them. First there was…
A Mormon holiday: Purgation Sunday
As others have noted, Mormonism does not have much of a liturgical year, and the role of holidays in Mormon theology is quite attenuated. I propose we designate the first Fast Sunday in January as Purgation Sunday.
A Mission Epiphany For Epiphany Eve
Snow White. If on Christmas Day of 1975 you were for some harebrained reason outside on the frozen Belgian tundra and you squinted up your eyes against the shiny white landscape to look east from the edge of the little town called Zichem, then you would’ve almost certainly noticed in the houseless distance the improbable sight of four overcoated and possibly harebrained missionaries-dressed-as-local-businessmen trudging along a slippery, messy path next to a big field.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Would you like to learn more about how to not just brownout when you kneel down in prayer? It’s a good New Year’s resolution: learning how to be still and listen for God.
Resolved:
I generally hate New Year’s Resolutions, mostly because experience has taught me that I will fail to carry through. I don’t like failing. It seems that we usually pick for resolutions something about which we are conflicted. The resolution may be about losing weight, which is the conflict of habit and genetics against a health or aesthetic ideal. Or it may be about exercising, or getting enough sleep, or devoting time for personal scripture study and meditation, or it may be about losing weight. Most Mormons are able to avoid the common resolutions about drinking and smoking less, but we still want to spend more time with our families, get out of debt, and volunteer more. But this year, in a moment of inspiration, I hit upon a resolution for this year, one that I believe I can actually keep. Here’s the rub though: I can’t tell you what it is. This isn’t like blowing out the candles on your birthday cake and not telling anyone the wish because if you do, it won’t come true. It’s because speaking the resolution would be a violation of the resolution. For example, let’s say I had some difficulty getting along with a family member in the past, and my resolution is to not complain about that person any more. By saying, “My resolution is to complain about X,” I am actually in a passive aggressive way complaining about X. Saying that I’m…
The Council in the Preexistence (medieval Antichrist edition)
In the twelfth century, Walter of Chatillon wrote a rather pessimistic appraisal of the world’s condition.
A Mission Dream For the Last Day of Autumn
Five-Sense Gray. 9:15 in the morning in the very late autumn in Belgium. It’s barely and unenthusiastically light because the sun has just come grudgingly up (if you call ten feet above the horizon up), and because the heavens are so blanketed with clouds that whatever slivers of rays manage to get through are absorbed right away into the gray. Belgian towns aren’t colorful in any sort of autumn or winter light, but in this particular flannel-gray sort they might as well just go ahead and say it: we are thoroughgoingly monochrome.
A Letter to a Friend
Below is the text of a letter that I wrote about a year ago to a close friend who was in the midst of a crisis of faith. I have edited it to remove any identifying information: Dear Friend, It was a pleasure to talk with you earlier. I am sorry to hear about the spiritual and intellectual difficulties that you have been struggling with. You are — quite literally — in my prayers. I have thought a great deal about what you told me of your struggles with faith and the Restoration. I hesitate to offer any advice or “solutions” to your difficulties, both because I don’t know precisely what troubles you and because I realize that when one opens up the hurting parts of one’s soul often a sympathetic listener rather than a fix-it guy is what is of most value. With that apology, let me offer a couple of thoughts. I don’t think that a faithful life is something that flows out of a full theological reconciliation. That is, I don’t think that we are tasked with answering all of our theological questions and doubts and only once that reconciliation has been effected commit ourselves to living a faithful life. I realize that this runs counter to much of the rhetoric in the church, rhetoric that is borrowed in large part from our proselytizing efforts. According to this model, one is given a revelation of the truthfulness…