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26 responses
The other day somebody sent me a YouTube link for a comedian I’ll call Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones was a chubby gramdma with hot flashes – not the kind of person you usually see doing stand-up. Most of the “funny†email forwarded to me makes me sigh and hit the delete button. Mrs. Jones made me laugh out loud. It felt sort of weird. Which made me realize that I don’t laugh nearly enough Read More
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Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D., is a former president of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists, and the author of Forgiving Ourselves: Getting Back Up When We Let Ourselves Down, recently published by Deseret Book. She is the founder of Sixteen Stones Center for Growth in Alpine, Utah, offering seminar-retreats on topics such as spirituality, abundant life, loss, forgiveness, and other aspects of personal growth. She was a psychologist in private practice in Michigan for twenty years before moving to Montreal, Quebec to serve with her husband as mission president. They currently live in Utah. Welcome, Dr. Ulrich! We’re honored to… Read More
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20 responses
Being mildly depressed about blogging at the moment, I decided to go trolling for a “good news” story to post. Here it is, a story about SVU from the SL Trib: “A bastion of Mormonism in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.” Read More
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23 responses
From the international annals of overachieving singing and dancing Mormons The Mormon moment for the Eurovision Song Contest came in 1984 Read More
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7 responses
Murder most foul, in the strange natural world of southern Utah. Read More
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24 responses
Scene One: In the car. Read More
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3 responses
Element: The Journal of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology is publishing a special issue dedicated to student articles. Read More
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19 responses
So much for one post per chapter. Read More
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15 responses
This past Friday and Saturday I attended a very enjoyable conference at Southern Virginia University, co-sponsored by Mormon Scholars in the Humanities and the Mormon Scholars Foundation. Read More
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Lucky me, I got to talk about Mosiah 15 in my Gospel Doctrine lesson today. Read More
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You never know what they’ll be worth someday: “Einstein Letter on God Sells for $404,000.” Read More
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52 responses
Before we begin, we need to begin at the beginning: Read More
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Faith and fame aren’t always an easy mix, but Mormons who hit the big time seem to be able to hold it together most of the time. At least that’s the thrust of “How Mormons Deal With Fame” at the LDS Newsroom, discussing, among other names we all recognize, the 17-year-old phenom David Archuleta. Read More
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71 responses
Gas prices. Food prices. Credit crisis. Recession. Iraq. Iran. Read More
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There’s a really good conversation about food storage over at MMW and I want to throw one more idea out there, because it hadn’t occurred to me until recently that the best place to do my food storage buying was the most expensive grocery store in town. Read More
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I don’t read to the end of many online essays anymore — either most writing is dull and pointless or I have developed blog-induced attention deficit disorder, you decide which. But I read “Love Thy Neighbor: The religion beat in an age of intolerance” at the Columbia Journalism Review start to finish (hat tip: Get Religion). Read More
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69 responses
Do these concepts have anything to do with each other? Apparently some Mormons think they do, hence Davis Bitton’s corrective essay “How Dark Were the Dark Ages?” (conveniently reposted at Meridian Magazine). Read More
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6 responses
Today is Whitsunday on the Christian liturgical calendar, a holiday in honor of the Day of Pentecost. Not quite four years ago, in June of 2005, I wrote something about the gifts demonstrated on that day, and about those–decidedly less spetacular–gifts which I believe I have. I’m somewhat proud of it; I think it is one of the more honest things I’ve ever written about myself. The text is below; you might want to check out the comments on the original post as well. Read More
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And for thousands of Latter-day Saints who will be delivering a Mother’s Day talk tomorrow, it is looming large. Expectations are high and scriptural sources are limited. Read More
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47 responses
There’s a reasonable chance that all efforts to situate the Book of Mormon over the last 180 years, geographically, culturally, and chronologically, are based on the Nephite version of the Donation of Constantine. But first, let’s talk about Odin. Read More
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99 responses
If one more Mormon tells me to see Expelled, I am going to scream. Read More
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24 responses
Read and discuss. Read More
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9 responses
Gertrud Specht had been a searcher her whole life before she found what she was looking for Read More
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Chapters 9 and 10 of Millions Shall Know Brother Joseph Again deal with purported photographs of Joseph Smith, including the Scannel daguerreotype. Read More
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112 responses
According to various news outlets the Catholic Church has ordered its dioceses to not allow Mormons access to parish registers any more. For decades, our Church has copied and preserved millions of pages of parish registers around the world, as part of the injunction to seek out ancestors and perform ordinances in their behalf. There are probably still millions of pages out there, uncopied. Read More
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Jared T. at Juvenile Instructor is posting a formal, detailed, academic review of S. Michael Tracy, Millions Shall Know Brother Joseph Again: The Joseph Smith Photograph (Salt Lake City: Eborn Pub., 2008), Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Read More
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20 responses
An old friend of mine (a former bishop, for whatever that’s worth) whom I keep in touch with by e-mail has spent much of the past decade working for the U.S. government in different capacities in Russia and Ukraine. In response to some recent news items regarding limits on visas to the former Soviet Union, I asked him to comment on how the church and the missionary program is fairing there. This is what he has to say. For security reasons, he asked that I post it without his name attached. Read More
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19 responses
How do ‘we’ as Mormons learn to view ‘others’? We can try to answer this question from the angle of various approaches to the concept of “gospel culture”. Read More