Category: Cornucopia

When my Father finally arrived in Denver, Teresa was not at the terminal to greet him. Confused, my Father claimed his luggage and waited a few minutes before he was paged. When he found her, Teresa was in hysterics; she grabbed him and, looking at him through streaming tears said, pleadingly, as if he might…

On Kaimi’s Ensign thread, a conversation about the kinds and quantities of power exercised by the sexes has been simmering. Julie suggested that we open another thread for that discussion, and I’ve obliged.

Alas, my other lives (teacher, wife, mother, producer [for the moment] and writer) are calling me, so I will contribute less frequently to T&S and other blogs–though this has been really fun. I promised to publish a post about writing the trilogy with Darius. I’ve written elsewhere about some of that experience–the miraculous parts–and thought…

Ernesto has hit the East Coast and is currently plowing its way through the Southern Chesapeake. As it happens I live in the Southern Chesapeake.

My Father has never been one to speak much of himself; he is almost painfully shy about being honored, even in private. Not surprisingly, then, I have only ever heard snippets of his life story. Still, I have become acutely interested of late in better understanding my heritage generally and my Father’s story specifically. This…

MySpace recently overtook Yahoo as the most-visited website in the US.

Kiskilili poses the following very interesting question: Often appearing to be caught between pronounced sacramentalist tendencies (ordinances effect real change that goes beyond their symbolic import) and an underdeveloped theology regarding the significance of our so-called “non-essentialâ€? ordinances (no transubstantiation for us!), we seem at a loss to explain clearly the difference between a non-priesthood…

The September Ensign rocks. No two ways about it.

I spent most of grade school attending the remedial classes for the learning disabled because I was, well, learning disabled.

Barbara Kirkham Jolley, my mother’s mother, died on Monday. She was 86 years old. Grandma Jolley’s husband, Joseph Arben Jolley, died eight months ago, and by all reports, she had put little effort and had even less interest in living ever since. Just days ago, she fell and broke her hip; when she heard that…

Our theology–or, more accurately, our perception of it–helps to determine our response to mental illness. Consequently, we must ensure our unexamined religious assumptions do not rob us of compassion or persuade us to premature and unwarranted judgment. Let me give some examples.

What follows is a summary of some of my research notes. I have been reading Puritan legal history of late, looking for ideas and ways of thinking about Mormon legal history.

Up until about a year ago, if you had asked me why I had studied German, I would have said that I started in the ninth grade and just didn’t know when to stop. At BYU, my major in mechanical engineering lasted about 20 minutes into the first orientation meeting, and I didn’t really know…

In her thoughtful and enlightening book Leaving Eden, Amber Esplin tells the story of a young girl named Judith. Near the end of the novel, Judith’s brother dies and she confronts the chasm that opens in his absence. Though Judith must at first face the bitter sadness that inevitably accompanies death, she finds some catharsis…

I have been teaching English at BYU for over twenty years, focusing on creative writing for more than half of that time. As I contemplate fall semester in my new identity as a BLOGGER, I have been thinking about the conversations we teachers have with our students. Some might label the conversations lectures or lesson…

Hi, my name is Tyler and I’m addicted to achievement.

Here’s a fun party question: Who are your favorite commenters?

Over at some-other-blog, Margaret Young writes in a comment: “Card-carrying Mormons do often believe that Blacks were fence sitters in the pre-existence and that polygamy is essential to eternal progression. Neither position has been formally repudiated by the powers that be. We have merely distanced ourselves from them.” This comment, I think, highlights two different…

Driving to work today, I had an odd epiphany. It occurred to me that there is an odd symmetry between the danger that “liberal” and “conservative” Mormons see in story telling.

In October 2000, Elder Oaks spoke to the Church about the difference between doing and becoming. He said many Church members treat progress in the Church as a spiritual checklist with the goal being to mark off each spiritual task in succession. His address was, for me, anyway, enlightening—it changed the way I live the…

As we become more like God — all progressing towards the same end point — will we lose our uniqueness as individuals? How can we maintain individuality as we become just like God? As with many questions, this one can be answered by recourse to the classic computer game Nethack.

The fine thread which Margaret Young’s post kicked off yesterday reminded me of some equally fine ones from the past. I’ve posted on the topic before a couple of times as well, and so–given that there was a lot to say–I was having a hard time keeping my comment to managable size. So I decided…

My daughter said recently that she had been raised to view extremely wealthy people as wicked. I was appalled, since I am one of the primary people who raised her. What messages had I communicated which elicited those words? I admit that my father, on first view of a cousin’s enormous mansion, said simply, “Well,…

Margaret will be with us for the next couple of weeks, and with perhaps the exception of Rosalynde, we are all a bit nervous about her guest-blogging.

I gave a talk yesterday; the text is pasted herein. It’s long, but easy reading, I promise.

The rumors are true: Jonathan Green has agreed to come on board Times and Seasons as our newest permablogger.

David King Landrith is much-abused on LDS blogs, including this one.