Category: Life in the Church
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Christian Meditation
This week’s lesson in my ward’s Priesthood and Relief Society meetings was number four, “The Elements of Worship.” As we talked about reverence, meditation, and communion, I was reminded of a talk President Hinckley gave when, as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, on one of many visits to Korea, he spoke to…
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Am I a Productive Adult?
Actually, I know I’m not. I eat too much sugar, I don’t rise at the crack of dawn, I own no Tupperware, I take three hours to leave the house in the mornings, I’ve never bought a car, I earn about $12,000 a year, I have a library book overdue, I had zero taxable income…
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The Church Has Already Written a Modern English Version of the Book of Mormon
The first installment of Phillip Barlow’s excellent 12 Questions raises the interesting question of whether the Church will ever produce a modern language edition of the Book of Mormon in English. The answer is that it already has.
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Prayer
Each month of this semester the Faculty Center at BYU is sponsoring a panel discussion of prayer. The participants are Julia Boerio-Goates (Chemistry), Thomas Griffith (University General Counsel), Roger Keller (Church History and Doctrine), and James Siebach (Philosophy).
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Violating the First Amendment
What I’m about to tell you are two true stories in which public employees clearly violated Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment. The names and a few other details have been changed to protect the guilty.
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“Told you I did…
Reckless are [they]. Now… matters are worse.” “That [blog] was our last hope.” “No…. There is another.”
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Benefiting from the Keys
Way back in the dawn of time, we had a rather lengthy discussion about the appropriate role of criticising Church leaders. Apparently this topic is still interesting enough to prompt comments, so I thought I’d put my two cents in. Actually, I thought I’d try to put in Elder Eyring’s two cents.
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The English Nature of the Mormon Constitution
The Church has a certain amount of constitutional law, by which I mean norms and rules that govern and control its institutional structure. What is the nature of this constitutional law? I would submit that the Church ends up being more English than American. Priesthood quorums illustrate why this is so.
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From the Pulpit: Notes on Repentance
In the noble tradition of literary hacks who never miss an opportunity to recycle old material, here are the interesting bits of a sacrament meeting talk I delivered in church today. Repentance is, at its simplest, a turning away from sin and a returning to God.
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Getting older
I mentioned earlier that I thought to post about what getting older has gotten me and then thought better of doing so. Now, with some editing, here is the post I resisted.
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For JV on January 17
JV is the kind of person one notices right away in an LDS chapel, the kind of person one remembers. I’d seen her at various stake activities after I moved with my new husband into our micro-studio apartment in a transient-urban ward; when we moved into student housing in the neighboring transient-student ward the next…
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In the Cultural Hall
The danger in telling people you write a little bit is that they then assume you can. Last week a friend from my ward called and asked me to write the libretto for a musical show she has been called to coordinate for the stake; a few of the creative decisions had already been made,…
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Called to Criticism
A couple of weeks ago, the mail man braught me my long awaited copy of the first volume of B.H. Roberts’s Seventies’ Course in Theology. As you can imagine, it has been a heady time around the Oman household. In reading it, I came across what I am sure would be Aaron Brown’s dream calling:
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Worthy?
We often speak of being worthy. We pray that we may be worthy. We urge each other to be worthy. Sometimes we recognize that we are not worthy. But what do we mean by “worthy”?
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Say No to Santa
It’s time to get rid of the old fat guy in the red suit. I have five good reasons why Santa has to go. One: Santa is a big fat lie. Let’s face it.
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Utah and the Working Mother
On a recent post, Kristine was wondering about the number of Mormon women who work*.
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The Church and the Tribe
The church seems to have replaced the tribe as God’s pattern for organizing his people–or has it? When God covenanted with Abraham, the covenant was with Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 17:7-8+). This covenant was to be fulfilled in part through Abraham’s righteous leadership as a father
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My Only Real Regret
I really only have one real complaint about the Church, and it has to do, of course, with women’s fashion.
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“Preach My Gospel”– The New Missionary Guide
The new missionary manual is out and available for browsing.
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Sinning Alone
At a recent conference, I was klatsching with law professors, mostly from my school, when a young law professor in the group related how she was being pursued by another conference attendee. “I always attract married men,” she lamented. “Of course, they all say that they have a bad marriage, but this one is Mormon!”
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On Spiritual Education
About 10 minutes after my first positive pregnancy test, I was at the bookstore, perusing the shelves of parenting titles, a pastime I’ve continued with some regularity for nearly a decade now. One of my favorite of these books is called 10 Principles of Spiritual Parenting.
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Bowdlerizing the Book of Mormon
This afternoon at lunch, my angelic three-year-old daughter said causally to her quesadilla, “I’m going to kill you by plunging my spoon into your heart.”
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Can a Good Mormon be a Meritocrat?
I’m not a big fan of much of David Brooks’s writings, as he is often too Manichean to be useful (here’s a good parody). But in the opening pages of Bobos in Paradise, Brooks does a nice job of describing the shift in American culture from a class structure based on lineage or money to…
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The Question You Should Never Ask
“Are you pregnant?” In the past two weeks, for some reason I have had four people ask me this question and variations on it: “Are you and Kristen expecting another?” “Are you going to have another baby?” “When is the next baby coming?”
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Primitive Church
The missionaries found me when I was 17. That was back in 1964 in Antwerp, Belgium. I read Joseph Smith’s history and Moroni’s promise. I knew it was true. Immediately, fully. The Gospel unfolded like the rising sun.
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Teen Apathy
Now that I no longer teach Seminary, one of my biggest challenges is getting my daughter to Seminary on time. She has a driver’s license and would be happy to go on her own, but we can’t spare the car. So I am up at 5:30 (or so) every morning, just like last year. This…
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From Mormon to LDS in international perspective
I first had the title “We love the Mormonettes!”, but that would have covered only a tiny piece of my long text. But if you want to get to the Mormonettes, read on! Are you Mormon or LDS? In Utah, but also elsewhere in the U.S., the shift towards the use of LDS is inescapable.…
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Galen, Holmes & Hot Drinks
One of the odder bits of Mormon interpretation is the strange life of “hot drinks.â€? These are the actual beverages forbidden by the Word of Wisdom. As we all know they have come to mean coffee and tea with hot chocolate and Diet Coke forming border cases for some, and no one really objecting to…