Category: Life in the Church
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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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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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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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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,…
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A Very Cool New Blog
Those wacky Mormons at Harvard Law School (and some that used to be) have started a new blog Harv. L. Saints (for those who missed the geeky law joke in the title, Harv. L. Rev. is the traditional abbreviation of the Harvard Law Review, the greatest law journal of all time, since followed by many…
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“He is a dreamer; let us leave him”: Observing the Ides
“Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music.” (Julius Caesar, I.ii) The imagined exchanges between Julius Caesar and the soothsayer about March 15, 44 B.C. have made me think about superstition, the irrational, and the place of portents, genuine or spurious.
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FeastUpontheWord
My second son, Matthew, has been working on a web site, actually a Wiki site, for a while now: http://feastupontheword.org.
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Roundtable discussion at BCC
Steve Evans has posted a string of e-mails in a fascinating roundtable discussion on that never-dull topic, “Women and the Church.” Discussants include Jim Faulconer, Melissa Proctor, Chris “Grasshopper” Bradford, Lisa (Feminist Mormon Housewives), Kris Wright, Heather Pitts, and Claudia Bushman. Definitely worth reading!
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Why I haven’t replied to your comment
You arrive at Times and Seasons, and you think “I’m home.” You read posts by Russell and Rosalynde and occasionally even Nate, and you agree with them. You feel that this is your community, and that you belong. And then one day you decide to do more than just lurk — you decide to comment.…
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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