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About 800 Members of the Sacramento California Stake and their friends donated more than 2,000 man-hours at the City of Sacramento’s William Land Park, which has seen its finding cut by 60 percent in recent years and its maintenance staff trimmed from 22 to seven employees. Volunteers focused on numerous work projects, including historic trail restoration, power-washing of park amenities, landscape maintenance, specialized gardening, and the cleaning out of the park’s three ponds. The volunteer service in Land Park has an estimated value of more than $70,000. by John S. McKinney ___ This picture is part of our ongoing series… Read More
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While Rana Lehr-Lehnardt’s guest run continues, Times & Seasons is happy to introduce our next guest blogger, Ralph Hancock. Ralph is a long-time professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics, as well as of numerous edited volumes, articles and chapters. His forthcoming book, The Responsibility of Reason (Rowman & Littlefield), addresses the meaning and limits of reason through a triangulation involving de Tocqueville, Heidegger and Strauss. Ralph has also translated three books (including one with his son Nathaniel) and numerous chapters and articles from French, and has organized… Read More
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The question of the truth of the church didn’t enter my consciousness until I was about twelve years old. That was the age when I started discussing religion with my school friends. I remember a conversation I had with a friend after school. His family was not religious, and he was curious about my beliefs. I started by explaining to him the one doctrine that resonated the most deeply with me — the three degrees of glory. I remember learning about the three kingdoms in Sunday school and thinking, “Wow, this makes a lot of sense. Of course God isn’t… Read More
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I credit any awareness I have of gender issues in the church to the challenging, patient, and frank discussions that take place within the bloggernacle. Reading the first-hand experiences shared by many sincere sisters here has forced me to reconsider the paradigm I was comfortable in — the one where men and women have separate but equally valuable roles in God’s plan. Now I’m more inclined to view these strongly typed gender roles as reflective of the church’s situation in a specific time and culture. This week I went with the missionaries to visit a less-active member in our ward.… Read More
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One can reasonably argue that the book of Judges shows us the decline of Israel to a situation in which they have to have a king to lead them, and that the treatment of women that we see in Judges is a sign of that decline. One can also argue that Ruth is a response to that theme in Judges. How does the story of Hannah fit into that theme? Chapter 2 Verses 1-10: These verses are a song, perhaps not one that Hannah composed, but one she knew already and applied to herself, much as we might choose to… Read More
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Since instituting the “A Mormon Image” series last fall, our submissions have slowed from a glut to a trickle. As a result, we thought we would issue a new call for photographs to be considered for inclusion in the series. The instructions for submissions can be found here and the images we have featured since kicking off the series can be viewed here. Read More
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During a great discussion of our most recent general conference, one very bright young woman in my class sincerely asked, “President Packer said that ‘the father presides at the table’ – and I just want to know what that means.” Read More
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The Nauvoo Temple at about 4:15 in the morning. I was up watching the equipment for the pageant and saw the Temple at the first early light. Read More
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Times & Seasons is happy to introduce our newest guest blogger, Rana Lehr-Lehnardt. Rana is a mother of three who just finished up her first semester teaching at the University of Missouri at Kansas City Law School. After spending several years in the D. C. area, Rana and her family are adjusting to life in Liberty, Missouri where her husband, Mark, has established a corporate and international trade practice. Before finding her way to the University of Missouri, Rana attended law school at BYU, clerked on the Tenth Circuit for Judge Terrence O’Brien, earned an L.L.M. from Columbia Law School,… Read More
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ST. GEORGE–AP–August 10, 2010– Verna Watkins sits on her threadbare couch clutching a wrinkled tissue. Between sobs, she says, “I consider it the most sacred spiritual experience of my life . . . when the Three Nephites–divine beings–helped me change the tire on my Suburban. I spent two hours writing the story up to post to my Church’s website, and later I found out that they wouldn’t approve it. My own Church rejected the event most important to my faith.” Ms. Watkins is one of many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–commonly known as Mormons–who feels… Read More
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Elder George Albert Smith at Sundown Ranch in Aripine, Arizona (1941). Read More
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According to this, Mormon Doctrine will no longer be published. Read More
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Julie’s post on scouts has me thinking about how we do callings in the church. Several people pointed out that since scout leaders are called rather than volunteering, you end up with people who aren’t enthusiastic or engaged in the program. I understand that you can’t just let everyone pick their own callings in church, since you’d have twenty people teaching gospel doctrine and nobody teaching the nine-year-olds. However, perhaps we could allow people to pick the general areas they’re interested in. For example, you could divide ward and stake callings into: Teaching Leadership Clerk Provident Living (things like employment,… Read More
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I’m a believer in having role models (and anti-role models). One of the great things about sharing the world with billions of other people is that you get insights into where you might end up depending on the paths you take. I like to watch people who are twenty or thirty years older than I am, to look at the ones who are happy and the ones who are bitter and ask, “How did you get there?” And patterns start to emerge. I see life as extending along four axes — “I” (my relationship with myself), “IT” (my relationship with… Read More
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I know the relationship between the Church and BSA has been discussed to death in the bloggernacle, but I want to share two recent experiences anyway. Read More
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The story of Ruth occurs “in the days when the judges ruled” (Ruth 1:1). It is not, strictly speaking, in chronological order. Indeed, from here on out, you may wish to consult the Old Testament chronology in the Bible Dictionary if you wish to see the historical connectedness of the various stories. What do Naomi, Ruth, and Hannah have in common? Why is it appropriate that this lesson is about these three women? The story of Ruth is completely different than any of the stories we have read so far. God is only mentioned obliquely and plays no intervening role… Read More
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One comment I saw recently, after Senator Bob Bennett lost the Republican nomination to retain his seat, approved the move by the Utah Republican Party, saying that Bennett is a RINO. Read More
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The memorial service was held in the mouth of the Russian River. Not on the beach by the river, but right in the water. Over a hundred surfers gathered there, clad in their wetsuits. They paddled on their surfboards into the river, pulling a massive floral wreath out on the water with them. The first thought that struck me was how distinctive the group was. The surfers that gathered there became a foreign community to the rest of us, like I imagine a group of Amish or Hasidic Jews (or Mormons!) would be. The wetsuits acted like ritual attire, visually… Read More
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I admit that when approaching William Lobdell’s Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America — and Found Unexpected Peace (HarperCollins, 2009), I expected the standard debunking treatment that is so familiar in news and entertainment media these days. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find a balanced and engaging narrative that mixes accounts of the stories Lobell covered while a religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times with details of his own journey into, then out of, faith. Lobdell’s journey and reporting Lobdell’s journey began in his late twenties, when he first attended the… Read More
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Next Friday and Saturday, May 21st and 22nd, John Hamer will be at Miller Eccles in southern California to discuss the history of the Community of Christ. John’s work is fascinating, and if you’re in the area, I’d encourage you to attend one of the two events, either on Friday the 21st in Orange County, or Saturday the 22nd in Los Angeles. The event announcement (with lots of information about why you should attend) is this: Dear Friends: We are pleased to announce the next meeting of the Miller Eccles Group will be on Friday, May 21, 2010 (Villa Park)… Read More
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Searchable archives. Free access to the entire vault of past articles. Helpful starting points in a Classics section. No more one-page-at-a-time clicking through the wacky — lovable in a quirky way, but definitely *not* user-friendly — old pdf-image page-by-page e-archives at the U library website. Did I mention, we’re talking about searchable archives and free access to the vault? What are you still doing here? Go check out Dialogue’s new website — or discuss in comments what you like about it best. Take advantage of the free access. (Starting in summer, the most recent two years will be subscription-only, but the… Read More
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Photo of Noel Robinson by Todd Glaser My cousin died this week. He was a surfer, Noel Robinson. All the surfing sites have pieces on him (this one is my favorite — what a great picture!), and there’s been a huge response from the surfing community. Noel and I got along well, but we only saw each other rarely. I had no idea that he was a celebrity in his sphere. Now that he’s gone, I really wish I had put in the effort to know him better. ***** I participated with Mormon Helping Hands yesterday. What an amazing gathering.… Read More
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A friend of mine came to visit a couple weeks ago, and he had me take the “Color Code” personality test. Perhaps you’re familiar with it. It divides people into red (control-oriented), blue (intimacy-oriented), yellow (socially-oriented), and white (peace-oriented) personalities. There are plenty of tests like this — Myers-Briggs, enneagrams, etc. — that result in classifying the taker into some class or archetype. I think they’re fun, and even useful. They provide frameworks for looking at oneself and one’s relationships. I don’t expect that any of them are The One True Truth, but insofar as they offer guidance and understanding… Read More
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What if you knew her and / Found her dead on the ground? / How can you run when you know? Today is the 40th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre. Have we learned what we should have from the tragedy? Read More
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In honor of my grandfather, who passed away yesterday at the tender age of 93, I thought I’d post a few photographs. He was a kind and generous man who was always upright in his dealings and loved to surround himself with family. He was not a member of the Church (my mother is a convert), but he led a moderate and principled life that will continue to serve as an example to me. His memory will be carried by his children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This last fall, my wife and I were lucky enough to sneak away… Read More
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The notes this time are shorter than usual, for which you may well be grateful. I’ve had much more difficulty thinking of verse-by-verse study questions for these chapters. Judges The translation “judge” is misleading, for it suggests that the person it describes had judgment as his or her primary duty. However, the judges of Israel lived in a time before the powers of government had been separated into anything like legislative, executive, or judicial functions. As a result, “leader” or perhaps even “chief” would be a more accurate translation, for the people that the King James translation calls the judges… Read More
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“…wickedness never was happiness.” — Alma 41:10 I’ve only ever heard this phrase from the scriptures used as an encouragement toward righteousness — “if you are wicked, then you won’t be happy, so be righteous!” But reducing the scripture to a causal relationship like “if ( wicked ) then { not happy }” necessarily implies the contrapositive: “if ( happy ) then { not wicked }”. Both of these readings reduce the rich context of the passage to a logical proposition, and these sorts of shallow reductions don’t often translate well to the complexity of real life. Even so, I… Read More
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In the course of an interesting email exchange today, I learned that a good friend and I had had similar experiences in trying to track down our priesthood lines of authority. After being ordained Elders, we both asked our fathers if they had copies of their lines of authority, both said they thought they did somewhere, but both ultimately could never come up with them. My friend then approached his uncle, figuring that he might have the same line as my friend’s father, but without success. Fast forward ten years. His uncle randomly found his line of authority and remembered… Read More
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This week the presiding bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unveiled the first solar-powered LDS meetinghouse in Farmington, Utah. The building is one of five green prototypes being developed for LDS chapels in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada—and the building program will eventually expand across the US and around the world. The official press release cites other environmentally-friendly building innovations in the Farmington facility, including high efficiency heating and cooling system that can interface with the solar power equipment, xeriscaped grounds, plumbing fixtures that cut water use by more than 50 percent, and Low-E Solarban 70 windows… Read More
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Joshua 1 Verse 1: Why is Moses referred to as the Lord’s servant, but Joshua as Moses’ minister, official, or aide? Why not call Joshua Moses’ servant or, even better, the Lord’s servant? Compare Exodus 24:13 and 33:11, as well as Numbers 11:28, but notice that in the latter two, though the King James translation uses the word “servant,” it translates the same word translated “minister” here and in Exodus 24. According to the Word Biblical Commentary, the word translated “minister” refers to someone like a young page who attends a king. Why do these texts always use language that… Read More