Gateway drugs for middle schoolers: Mormon Studies edition
I have a Christmas list, for a not-quite-teenager, with a gap that needs to be filled.
Dreams
I’ve got dreams on my mind today. Years ago, while perusing the History of the Church books, I was surprised to discover an account of a strange dream from Joseph Smith (via Wilford Woodruff). I find it fascinating and I’ve never heard anyone refer to it, so I share it here: “I was standing on a peninsula, in the midst of a vast body of water, where there appeared to be a large harbour or pier built out for boats to come into. I was surrounded by my friends, and while looking at this harbour I saw a steamboat approaching the harbour. There were bridges on the pier for persons to cross, and there came up a wind and drove the steamboat under one of the bridges and upset it. “I ran up to the boat, expecting the persons would all drown; and wishing to do something to assist them, I put my hand against the side of the boat, and with one surge I shoved it under the bridge and righted it up, and then told them to take care of themselves. But it was not long before I saw them starting out into the channel or main body of the water again. “The storms were raging and the waters rough. I said to my friends that if they did not understand the signs of the times and the spirit of prophecy, they would be apt to be lost.…
Home Waters: Soul as Watershed
Spurred by Handley’s Home Waters, I’ve been reading Wallace Stegner. Like Handley, Stegner is interested in the tight twine of body, place, and genealogy that makes a life. On my account, Handley and Stegner share the same thesis: if the body is a river, then the soul is a watershed. Like a shirt pulled off over your head, this thesis leaves the soul inside-out and exposed. You thought your soul was a kernel of atomic interiority, your most secret secret – but shirt in hand, everyone can see your navel. Stegner’s novel, Angle of Repose, opens with the narrator’s own version of this thesis. An aging father, writing about his pioneer grandparents, names the distance between himself and his son: Right there, I might say to Rodman, who doesn’t believe in time, notice something: I started to establish the present and the present moved on. What I established is already buried under layers of tape. Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were – inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and…
Home Waters: Overview
George Handley’s Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River (University of Utah Press, 2010) practices theology like a doctor practices CPR: not as secondhand theory but as a chest-cracking, lung-inflating, life-saving intervention. Home Waters models what, on my account, good theology ought to do: it is experimental, it is grounded in the details of lived experience, and it takes charity – that pure love of Christ – as the only real justification for its having been written. It is not afraid to guess, it is not afraid to question, it is not afraid to cry repentance, and it is not afraid to speak in its own name. The book deserves some time and attention. It’s what you’ve been wanting to read. It may also be what you’ve been wanting to write. At the very least, it made me want to write about it. I’ve planned a few posts that will air some of my ideas about Handley’s ideas: one on the importance of place, a second on the importance of genealogy, and a third on importance of (re)creation. The book’s self-description reads like this: People who flyfish know that a favorite river bend, a secluded spot in moving waters, can feel like home—a place you know intimately and intuitively. In prose that reads like the flowing current of a river, scholar and essayist George Handley blends nature writing, local history, theology, environmental history, and personal memoir in his…
Introducing Adam Miller, guest blogger
It’s my pleasure to announce that Adam Miller will join T&S as a guest blogger. Adam S. Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. He is the author of Badiou, Marion, and St Paul: Immanent Grace (Continuum, 2008), the director of the Mormon Theology Seminar (www.mormontheologyseminar.org), and a managing editor at Salt Press (www.saltpress.org). The Mormon Review recently featured his essay on the film Groundhog Day, which was highlighted here on T&S. Adam has planned a series of posts on George Handley’s recently-released book Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River. Miller on Handley is sure to be a feast of poetry. Welcome Adam!
Sunday School Lesson 48: Zechariah 10-14, Malachi
Zechariah 1:7-6:8: We may be able to read the first six chapters of Zechariah as having a roughly chiastic structure. As with many chiasmi, however, deciding whether this is a chiasmus is a matter of judgment rather than fact. A 1:7-17: The Lord’s omniscience B 1:18-21: Judah and the empires C 2:1-5: Jerusalem’s territory [2:6-13: Reiterates the first three parts] D 3:1-10: Joshua the high priest D’ 4:1-14: The temple itself C’ 5:1-4: Jerusalem’s self-rule (the scroll of the law?) C’ 5:5-11: Judah and Persia (? perhaps a “counter-temple”?) A’ 6:1-8: The Lord’s omnipotence If this analysis is correct, the chiastic structure helps us understand better some of the more difficult parts of Zechariah’s vision. Earlier parts of the chiasm help “define” later, more obscure parts. Notice that each step in the chiasm narrows the scope: from the widest scope, that of the Lord; to the next widest, the international; to Jerusalem; and to Joshua (Jeshua) and the temple. The focus of the vision is clearly on priesthood and on the temple standing at the “center” of the world. The return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple were of critical interest to the Jews. Why? Many had become quite settled and successful in Babylon. What would be the appeal of returning to the Jerusalem area? What part might prophecies like Zachariah’s have played in the return of the Jews and the rebuilding of the temple? Prior to the…
Sunday School Lesson 47: Ezra 1-8; Nehemiah 1-2, 4, 6, 8
Note that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were considered one book until well after the time of Christ. The rough chronology below will help place this week’s material in its historical context. 606 The fall of Nineveh, capital of Assyria. Babylon becomes the major power. Daniel and others are taken to Babylon from Israel 604 Nebuchadnezzar is king of Babylon 598 Judah’s king, Jehoiachin, and the prophet Ezekiel (with thousands of others) are carried captive into Babylon. Lehi leaves Jerusalem. Habakkuk and Ezekiel prophesy 587 The fall of Jerusalem; much of the population of Judah is taken captive into Babylon. Some, including Jeremiah (who is a hostage), escape to Egypt. Mulek leaves Jerusalem 562 The death of Nebuchadnezzar and the beginning of the decline of Babylon 538 Babylon (in modern-day Iraq) falls to Cyrus, king of Persia (in modern-day Iran). Cyrus reads the Hebrew scriptures and encourages the Jews to return to Jerusalem 535 Zerubbabel and Jeshua lead approximately 50,000 Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple 533 The cornerstone of the temple is laid 522 Haggai and Zechariah encourage the Jews to finish the temple after the Samaritans’ opposition and Jewish indifference had forced a stoppage. King Darius of Persia commands the opposition to cease 516 Zerubbabel’s temple is completed 486 Esther, wife of King Xerxes in Persia (460?) 458 Ezra leads a second group of 1,496 exiles back to Jerusalem 445 Nehemiah (Artaxerxes’ cupbearer) arrives in…
Sunday School Lesson 46: Daniel 2
Verses 4-5: Why does the king make this demand on his wise men? Verses 10-12: What did it mean to be a wise man in Babylon? Why was the king angry? Why do you think that the gods of Babylon are never mentioned in this story, not even negatively? Verse 24: Why does Daniel save the other wise men of Babylon? Verse 28: Why would a king living hundreds of years before Christ’s birth be interested in what would happen at the age when the end of the world would come? (“Latter days” is probably better translated “at the end of days.”) Why should anyone but those who live in the latter days care about them? Books about the last days and prophecies of them were not uncommon during the time after the Jewish exile in Babylon, but why? Why are they important to us? Verse 32: The Greek poet Hesiod uses the image of world history as having four parts, each less happy than the last, and each designated by a metal of decreasing value: gold, silver, bronze, iron. The Persians had a similar understanding of the ages of human existence: gold, silver, steel, and iron mixed with clay. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is a mixture of the two traditions. Why would a revelation to the Lord come to Nebuchadnezzar in those terms? Verse 34: What is the stone cut from the mountain without hands? Why do you think that? How…
U.S. politics means Brazilians serve missions at 18
A couple of posts on the social network Orkut claim that the age to serve an LDS mission in the Brazil Area has been lowered to 18—and claim that politics in the U.S. has led to the change.
Transhuman
Why is the concept of holiness so closely related to self-denial? This isn’t just a Mormon thing, or even a Christian one. We see it in the Buddhist monastic tradition, the yogis of India, and the shamans of many cultures. The holiest people are the ones who can undergo the longest tests of endurance. Most of us are more familiar with what holiness isn’t than what it is. For us, the essence of holiness is “not me”. I would guess that this is the reason we associate “holiness” with the ability to endure trials — we expect to find holiness in something greater, stronger, or more powerful than ourselves. When we find a person who demonstrates great longsuffering, we don’t understand that person, but we instinctively revere her or him. I think that this instinctive divide between “me” and “holy” is the root of the professional clergy class. From ancient times, the priests or shamans of a society have set themselves apart with distinctive dress, habits, forms of communication, and associations. Intentional or not, these clergy obtain power by becoming “not me” or “not human”. They become unrelatable transhumans, and it is by virtue of their unrelatableness and transhumanity that we revere them. Much has been made of how Joseph Smith’s work blurs, or even erases, the line between the mundane and the divine. One great example of this is in our system of rotating lay clergy. Bishop Clark was…
Mormon Feminism Panel at Patheos
Don’t miss the excellent Patheos panel on Mormon feminism. Kathy Soper’s thoughtful and perceptive essay headlines the event, and a fabulous group of respondents — Claudia Bushman, Tresa Edmunds, Rixa Freeze, Kristine Haglund, Caroline Kline, Neylan McBaine, Melissa Proctor, and Rosalynde Welch — pitches in with a wealth of excellent follow-up analysis. If you’re at all interested in Mormon feminism, make sure to check out the discussion.
Church and Family
After a flurry of posts related to the new edition of the CHI (now titled Handbook 1 and Handbook 2), the Bloggernacle has fallen silent. (The Salt Lake Tribune has followed up with a helpful article.) One of the new features of Handbook 2 (“H2”) highlighted in the worldwide training broadcast is the three introductory chapters that provide a foundational and doctrinal context for the guidance given in the balance of the book. I am going to note a few statements given in the four pages of Chapter 1, “Families and the Church in God’s Plan,” with short comments following each statement. The bold titles are my own; all quotes are from H2.
Castles made for sandboxes
A few years ago, I walked half the circuit of a massive town wall. After hauling three kids and pushing a fourth in a stroller for a few hours through the forest, we recognized the wall by the close-packed rubble that stuck out from the crest of the long dirt mound.
Jesus at the Dance
So, Jesus has returned. He’s living in your single adult ward and there’s a dance this Friday night. Tell me, girls and guys, do you attend the dance? If so, how does it make a difference that He’s there? Would you try to hang out with Him? How do you expect He would look/act? How would you look/act? On the other hand, if you’d give it a miss, why?
Great Mormon Business Ideas, #1
So…stay-at-home moms. Utah’s got lots of them. And I bet you’re a market demographic excitedly waiting to hear what I (an admittedly non-stay-at-home dad) am about to propose to bring joy, peace, time, and every other wonderful thing to your day. Well, wait no more, the first of the Great Mormon Business Ideas is here for you today! So far as I can tell, the three banes of the SAHM are: (1) laundry, (2) cleaning, and (3) taking care of kids. But none of these are really so bad on its own; it’s the fact that all three simultaneously demand attention that makes them a drag. So what I suggest is…<drum roll>…the Family Home Drudgery Sharing Program! Okay, so naming things isn’t one of my strong points. But wait! It’s still a great idea. Here’s how it works: four moms organize in a group. One is in charge of laundry, one is in charge of cleaning, and two are in charge of kids. The group picks a two- or three-hour block, say, 9:00 to 12:00. The two Kids moms split the kids between them during that time while the Laundry and Cleaning moms rotate from house to house taking care of…cleaning and laundry. So where’s the business idea part of this? Just helping people organize. Set up a website that helps moms find a group. I know I’m stereotyping the SAHM role (really, Dane? Laundry, kids, and cleaning? Is this…
Faith frames the pie, and other reasons to be grateful
Today I, with millions of other home cooks around the country, will be getting frisky in the kitchen with all manner of saturated fats and simple carbohydrates as I beget a table full of gorgeous harvest pies. I make pie once a year, the day before Thanksgiving; the rest of the year I prefer my saturated fats and simple carbohydrates in other forms. But at about 4:00 on Thanksgiving Day, surrounded by a riot of dirty dishes and family, there’s nothing in this world or out of it that tastes better. Social scientists would call my Thanksgiving palate a “framing effect”. The framing effect is an important concept in economics and psychology, describing the way in which the presentation of an object or idea in different contexts will change people’s decision-making. By swapping out one emotional frame for another—Thanksgiving Day for Easter, say—we change our perception of the object or opportunity at hand, even though it remains objectively constant. Pie is pie, after all. Thus an egg presented to tasters as “free-range” and “organic” will taste better than the same egg served, say, as part of a blind taste test. Technically speaking, the framing effect is a cognitive bias. Framing distorts our perception of reality, and it can be manipulated to produce irrational decisions. Despite this potential for abuse, though, I want to speak up in defense of the humble framing effect, especially at this Thanksgiving season. While it’s occasionally…
Sunday School Lesson 45: Daniel 1, 3, and 6; Esther 3-5, 7-8
Let me begin, once again, with a reminder that these are not intended for notes to help teachers, though they may also serve that purpose. I write them for people who want to study the lesson materials more thoroughly. So you’ll find explanatory notes and study questions (fewer for this lesson than for most), but few answers. There is considerable material in the readings for this lesson, so I am going to focus the study questions on the book of Esther (the entire book rather than only the parts assigned for Sunday School). I want to focus on Esther because it is one of the books of the Old Testament with which I believe Latter-day Saints are least familiar. That lack of familiarity is ironic, given that Esther is perhaps the Old Testament book best known among the Jews outside the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. Esther is the only book that is still usually read from a scroll on ceremonial occasions, and Jews often publish beautiful editions of it. Esther is the last of five books gathered together as a collection and called “The Five Megilloth,” meaning “The Five Scrolls.” These books—Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther—are a sub-collection within that part of the Old Testament called “The Writings.” These are books read at each of the Jewish religious feasts: Song of Songs at Passover (approximately the same time as Easter, a celebration…
Downgrading Doctrine
Here is a second post (see No. 1) drawn from Stephen Prothero’s God Is Not One (HarperOne, 2010). In Chapter 7, titled Judaism: The Way of Exile and Return, Prothero comments on how ritual and ethics receive greater emphasis in Judaism and doctrine receives less emphasis than in, for example, Christianity. I wonder to what extent this is also true of Mormonism. Noting how narrative Exodus is followed immediately by the detailed legal and ethical recitations in Leviticus, Prothero notes that Judaism is “about both story and law,” and that Judaism stresses “doing over believing, orthopraxy over orthodoxy.” The word “orthopraxy” should set off your Bloggernacle word alert (see discussions here, here, here, and here, for example). If Prothero thinks Jews emphasize orthopraxy over orthodoxy, he is saying that correct practice or action is more important to Jews than correct opinion. He summarizes this by saying, “So Jews are knit together more by ritual and ethics than by doctrine.” Is this true of Latter-day Saints as well? Do we define our LDS community more by ritual and ethics than by agreed-upon doctrine? Obviously I’m not the first one to make the suggestion. In an earlier post I suggested that ritual is “largely absent from LDS public life and worship,” but I don’t think that’s true if we’re thinking of general practices or informal rituals. There is definitely a Mormon way of doing religion. Prothero brings up a related idea when…
Resigning
I started this semester as a seminary teacher. Two months in, I realized that it wasn’t going to work. I was tired and miserable, useless to my family, and unproductive at work. So, for the first time in my life, I asked to be released from a calling. No, that’s not quite accurate. I didn’t really ask; I informed them that I could manage for about two more weeks and then I’d be done. Now it’s been a week since I stopped teaching, and I have no doubt it was the right choice. The entire experience of teaching seminary was humbling. It’s a calling I had wanted — in fact, when we moved into this ward, the bishopric asked me what calling I’d like to serve in, and I told them that it’s always been my dream to teach seminary. (Contrary to popular belief, I’ve found that telling your leaders what calling you want to serve in is usually a good way to get that calling.) A long time ago my mom served as Relief Society president in her ward. After three or four years of service, she told me that she was going to ask to be released. My sister was a teenager, and my mom wanted to be able to be present in her life. At the time, I was a recently returned missionary who believed that every church calling represented the will of God in the most…
Sunday School Lesson 44: Ezekiel 43-44, 47
Ezekiel’s book goes back and forth between telling of the literal return from Babylon to Jerusalem in ways that we can also read to refer to the last days to speaking directly of the last days. (But when he thinks of the last days, is he thinking of the same event or events that we are thinking of?) Beginning in chapter 40, he has a vision of the temple in Jerusalem and of the order of temple worship there. What kind of vision do you think this is? In Ezekiel 37:26-28, the Lord promised the temple as part of the covenant of peace that he will make with Israel. You may wish to review those verses to prepare for this lesson. What is the covenant of peace and why does the Lord call it specifically a covenant of peace? What kind of peace? Peace with whom? For whom? How is the temple relevant to that covenant? What do the end of verse 26 and the end of verse 28 suggest about the purpose of the temple? The temple worship that Ezekiel describes in these chapters speaks of different sacrifices and different numbers of sacrifices than are mentioned in the Mosaic law. (Because of this, at one time the Jews considered excluding the book of Ezekiel from the Bible.) What do you think this shows? Chapter 43 2-4: In Ezekiel 10:19, the Spirit of the Lord abandoned the temple by way…
Is ‘Prized-linked Savings’ Just Another Lottery?
What if you could play the lottery and not lose any money? — You might not win, but you were guaranteed not to lose what you put in. Would that still be against LDS Church teachings? Would you vote against it in a referendum?
Lesson 43: Ezekiel 18, 34, and 37
Chronologically we turn backwards at this point. Jeremiah was the prophet in 597 B.C. when Jerusalem was finally captured and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and its people were carried into Babylon. Like Lehi, Ezekiel was a contemporary of Jeremiah, but Ezekiel did not prophesy with them. Instead, like Daniel, Ezekiel was with the large group from Judah taken captive into Babylon earlier. He began to prophesy only after arriving in Babylon, so prophets in Jerualem, like Lehi and Jeremiah, may not even have known about Ezekiel. Tradition has it that he died and was buried in Babylon. With that in mind, as you read Ezekiel, ask yourself what difference the absence of the Temple makes to his preaching and teaching. Chapter 18 Verses 1-4: The people of Israel seem to have used the proverb of verse 2 against the Lord. Can you explain how the proverb works as a complaint? Why might that complaint have arisen in Babylon? Why does the Lord speak here of his ownership of all souls? What point is he making when he speaks of the soul of the father and the soul of the son? How is he responding to the criticism of him implicit in the proverb? Verses 5-9: In the Old Testament, what does it mean to be just (verse 5)? Does it mean perfect obedience to all the commandments? Can you explain why you answer that question as you do? What does it…
Unauthorized Practices and Other Selected Highlights From the Leadership Training Meeting
Things happen fast around here these days. Last night when I retired for the evening, nothing about yesterday’s Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting had yet been posted online. Now that I am home from church today and are sitting here at my computer, the video is publicly posted for all to read and discuss; Handbook 2 (or “H2”) is likewise publicly posted; and several Bloggernacle posts are up (here, here, here, here, here, and here). But I still think my notes have a few things to add to the discussion. In his short pre-recorded introductory remarks, President Monson stated that reading, understanding, and following the Handbook would further the goal of avoiding what he termed unauthorized practices. As an example, he recounted a personal experience where a high councilor thought it proper to turn the chair of a young man receiving the priesthood toward the local LDS temple. I’m aware of a visiting general authority who recently advised local leaders that women should not offer the invocation in sacrament meetings (this is now expressly corrected in H2, section 18.5: “Men and women may offer both opening and closing prayers in Church meetings”). While the persistence of these sorts of problems is often laid at the feet of the general membership, these examples remind us that it is generally local leaders and even general leaders — the people that members listen to and follow — that perpetuate doctrinal folklore and unauthorized practices,…