I won’t lie, I was frightened going to the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Category: Cornucopia
The God Who Weeps: Satisfaction
I agree with The God Who Weeps that God redeems our hungers and desires, but I disagree about how God does this.
Halloween!
I really enjoy Halloween. I’ve always liked dressing up and making costumes. Over the years, I’ve learned that the trick to costumes is not complete accuracy, but suggestion. Like a good suspense movie, an audience needs only to be directed. Then they create the full costume in their minds. So my pioneer costume, which I only wear in July, is a regular dress, late 90s cut, but paired with a bonnet and apron that I whipped up out of scrap fabric and a shawl, and it is surprisingly convincing. Pumpkin carving, too, is another ‘less is more’ type of enterprise. Although there are examples of truly spectacular and detailed carving, the classic jack-o-lantern is simple with easily carved triangle eyes. And that very simplicity is both effective and evocative of all Halloween. Right now, the best part of Halloween is trick-or-treating. We have grade-school aged children. I don’t care so much about the candy (they may disagree). We don’t go to trunk-or-treats, or hit up the stores in the mall. We walk around our neighborhood, crossing paths with other neighbors who are walking together as families. We see our elderly and homebound neighbors who we’ve helped with decoration and leaf raking. We are welcomed at the doors of people who will never darken the doors of our churches. And for that night, we are a community. On All Hallow’s Eve, we may be dressed in fantastic ensembles, but we are…
Pre-storm Report from NYC (updated)
Since I live in NYC, I’ve been following the weather and news pretty closely from various sources. I left work early yesterday, and it was closed down today. All transit has been shut down, evacuations taking place, and the Ward/Stake communications network is in place. I live up a hill, so I’m not worried about flooding. I went for a short walk this morning to pick up a few more supplies, and the reactions vary broadly. Some places are boarded up and closed, others open like usual. Fewer people are out on the road, but I saw three runners in twenty minutes. And I’ll confess, one reason I went out was to see if I wanted to run in the weather. (RunnersWorld had some good humor on that.) So far, it’s not much different than any other storm. Constant drizzle, but not hard rain. Wind, sometimes really strong wind, but I haven’t seen any downed trees or even big branches yet. It’s selfish and shallow, but I enjoy extreme weather; it’s a change in schedule, a little uncertain, and fun… up to a point, obviously. My wife’s trapped in the Chicago area for a few days, so I spent the day cleaning with streaming videos in the background, reading Saving Darwin as deep cultural background affecting how we instinctively read Genesis (post to come!), and eating through anything that might conceivably go bad quickly in the fridge, if we lose power. That means…
BMGD #41: 3 Nephi 22-26
Winning the mini-mini-Lottery: What would you do?
I sat in a comfy chair downtown reading my iPad for two hours, and received $175 in Amazon credit for my troubles. That’s nice work, if you can get it. Even better is getting paid four figures to fly to France on a private G5 and take four naps a day for a week. (Yes, I’ve done that too, but napping on a rigorous schedule is much more difficult than it sounds.)
Performative Religion
To throw another idea in the faith vs. works debate: “Faith is not equivalent to belief or certainty. Faith has more to do with commitment. Faith is fidelity.” Times and Seasons is a place that respects the faith of Latter-day Saints. As someone who often struggles with the faith of belief, I cling to the faith of fidelity. I want to keep the faith in this church that I love. Some things I don’t know, and some I only hope to believe, but I am committed by covenant and the strength of my faith to act as though the teachings and doctrines of the Church are true. My thanks to Paul Toscano and David Allred for the excellent articulation of faith as fidelity that they shared at the recent Counterpoint Conference. It’s a concept I’d been struggling to articulate for some time.
The God Who Weeps: Faith
I agree with The God Who Weeps that faith is a decision, but I disagree about the site of this decision.
Book of Mormon Comics
I love stories. A narrative strikes me as the most fundamental way of ideas with other people. And by ideas, I mean not only the bare events of the narrative, but also abstract concepts, morals, and emotional truths. It makes sense to me that our basic scriptural texts have strong narratives. The Old Testament is a collection of stories, with the consequences of one generation’s choices setting the stage for the actions of the next. The Book of Mormon also has very strong narratives. Other classic stories that we are familiar with, we feel free to reimagine. We update fairy tales, retell myths in modern settings. Even the stories of Genesis are recognized as archetypes that we re-present and reinterpret. But too often Mormons tend to shy away from this type of creative engagement with the text and narratives of the Book of Mormon, perhaps from a kind of self-censorship that fears corrupting in some way the most true book on the face of the earth. Unfortunately, that means that while we regard the book as wholly inspired (or just holy), it often remains dry and emotionally opaque to us. Although we are counseled to apply the scriptures to ourselves, we often don’t actually take the obvious first step of sympathizing with the people of the Book of Mormon as though they were real, feeling men (or women, for the few that are explicitly mentioned in the text). The unfamiliar…
Silas Marner, Empty Casket
Defamed and exiled, Silas Marner loses his native faith. Now he’s got nothing to prop up his soul.
BMGD #40: 3 Nephi 16, 20-21
Exploring Mormon Thought: Benediction
In linguistics, a word that is only attested once in a text is called a hapax legomenon. In older texts (like Hebrew and Mayan texts), these hapaxes can be especially hard to decipher because that single attestation may be the word’s only occurrence anywhere. Lacking context, it’s hard to tell what a hapax means.