You know how you can’t swing a dead cat in Church without smacking into someone talking about how wicked our day is?
What December Means to Me
December is my favorite month ever. Except maybe May 18. Which isn’t really a month, but could be celebrated all year long. Still, these are my favorite things about December. Mostly in chronological order.
First Presidency Christmas Devotional Ticket Giveaway
In the spirit of the season, Times and Seasons is giving away three sets of tickets to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. The event is on Sunday, December 6th, at the Conference Center, and will feature the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square. These tickets are in high demand and only offered by the Church in a random distribution. Fortunately for our readers, scheduling conflicts prevent us from using these. We are offering them in a random drawing to be held on Monday, November 30th at 10:00 PM. To Enter Simply leave a comment on this post with a valid email address in the email field (you do not need to include the email in the comment itself). Be clever, be witty, or be brief, just enter! Typical contest rules apply: one entry per person contestant must enter by leaving a comment on this post with a valid email address in the email field. deadline for entry is 10:00 PM Mountain Time on Monday, November 30, 2009. drawing will be held on 11/30/09 after 10:00 PM Mountain time by generating three random numbers. odds of winning are based on the number of entrants. two tickets will be awarded to each of three winners selected. winners will be notified by email and must respond to notification of their status by Noon on December 1, 2009. tickets will be mailed on December 1, or winners may choose to pick…
Thanksgiving Scriptures
That ye contend no more against the Holy Ghost, but that ye receive it, and take upon you the name of Christ; that ye humble yourselves even to the dust, and worship God, in whatsoever place ye may be in, in spirit and in truth; and that ye live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you. -Alma 34:38
Writings in the Stone
Some years ago I sat in a Gospel Doctrine class taught by a physician. I mention his profession because I think it matters, as he took the opportunity to deviate from the lesson and condemn in the strongest terms the theory of evolution. He labeled it a satanic concept, one that we must avoid, one that destroys faith. I took a deep breath and then spoke up. I pointed out the numerous statements and scriptures supporting learning from the best books, and pointed to Brigham Young’s statement that Mormonism embraces all truth. It wasn’t the most uplifting class. I might have handled it better. It created a tension between us that never really dissipated. And I made a mental note to seek medical care from someone that actually puts stock in the foundational theory of modern biology. (This wasn’t anything personal, it couldn’t have been. He is an OB/GYN, and I am decidedly male, so it really didn’t matter in this case.) I’ll state this bluntly: I believe that a rigid, literalistic stance is dangerous. It is dangerous to our children as it forces them to face a false dilemma. If we teach that a literal reading of scripture is the only proper reading, what happens when our children reach high school and college and they see the vast weight of evidence – and the consistency of that evidence – as it points to an old earth and natural selection?…
MR: “Of Prophets and Jugglers”
A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with Rosalynde Welch’s review of The Book of Dave by Will Self. The article is available at: Rosalynde Welch, “Of Prophets and Jugglers: Will Self’s The Book of Dave,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no. 9 [HTML] [PDF] For more information about MR, please take a look at the prospectus by our editor-in-chief Richard Bushman (“Out of the Best Books: Introducing The Mormon Review,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no.1 [HTML][PDF]). In addition to our website, you can have The Mormon Review delivered to your inbox. Finally, please consider submitting an article to MR.
Our New Look
So, Times and Seasons is sporting a new look. But rest assured, while the packaging has changed we are not tinkering with the secret formula that creates the sweet, slightly acidic, but oh-so-refreshing content inside. This new design is – a bit lighter – a bit wider – aimed at featuring more – and more frequent – content By moving to a magazine-style layout, we still show the most recent post in a full and prominent position. But by breaking from a traditional listing format, we are able to show more headlines on the screen and include more posts on our home page. Our Notes from All Over section is still prominent on the right, while the most active discussions are still shown with Recent Comments on the left. Our left sidebar features two new sections to highlight the most recent entries in A Mormon Image and the Mormon Review. Each post now features icons at the bottom to make it easy to share our content. And we’ve added a couple little links to the top menu, so you can get your Times and Seasons fix on Facebook and Twitter. Finally, the new design is optimized and delivers the content faster, even as we are pulling images to the front page. We may find a few strange items in the coming days, so if you notice anything quirky or wonky (outside of our writing), please report it here. We’d also…
A Mormon Image: Smiles
“…make the world a better place by smiling all the while.” (Primary Song #267)
From the author of salt lake architecture and green mormon architect blogs.
Parents are people
It’s been a stressful time for us. My father in law had been battling leukemia for over a year, when he suddenly took a turn for the worse. FIL’s illness lasted a few more weeks, and he finally passed away. This has affected the family in a number of ways; most importantly for this post, it resulted in a complicated set of travel plans.
What Happened in Nauvoo, Part 3: Polygamy
[See Part 1: Founding and Part 2: Flourishing] Any history of Nauvoo needs to give an account of the secret practice of polygamy between 1841 and 1846. In Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise, Glen Leonard does this in about twenty pages as part of Chapter 13, “Foes Within: The Church of the Seceders.”
What do we mean by “families are forever”?
Over at my other blog, a reader posted the following question: On a related LDS family matter, many of us have been confronted by Mormon missionaries with a message, or even a free DVD, of “Families are Forever.” A sincere, respectful question: isn’t this motto a solution in search of a problem? That is, what Christian believes there is separation or division among the blessed in heaven? Of course, Jesus himself teaches in extremely plain and simple terms, and Christian history has always held, that there is no marriage in heaven as we know marriage. But, shared Christian belief realizes that the communion among believers in heaven results in a bond significantly greater in love than what we perceive in our knowledge of marriage. That bond is a consequence of the everlasting worship and praising of God. Why wouldn’t God be the focus of any discussion involving the word “forever”? Here’s what I answered:
Happy Birthday to Us
Thanks to reader Clair for pointing this out in comments: The first issue of the Times and Seasons was published at Nauvoo. — 170 years ago today [err, yesterday] – Nov 15, 1839 . Happy birthday to us!
Hope and Children
Faith and charity get plenty of attention, but hope not so much. Pessimism, it seems, has become one of the guiding principles of modernity, reflected in the media, popular culture, and even academia. So I was surprised to find a philospher making the suggestion that children anchor our hope for progress and our conviction that life will be better for the next generation.
Charter for Compassion
In February, 2008, noted religious author Karen Armstrong was awarded the TED Prize, and her wish for the world was to gather a council of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and other spiritual leaders to draw up a “Charter for Compassion.”
A Mormon Image: Memorial
from Bill of Wasilla, who writes:
Dad is the man who lies in this flag-draped coffin. I will not say too much about him for now, except that he was a good father and that, thanks to him, and many more like him, most of them gone now, the evil dream of a man named Hitler died in flames and blood.
We buried Dad on June 2, 2007. He died on Memorial Day.
Midwest
Utah is not part of the Midwest. Idaho is also out. That is all.
MR: “Getting Your Hands Dirty”
A new issue of The Mormon Review is available, with Russell Arben Fox’s review of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford. The article is available at: Russell Arben Fox, “Getting Your Hands Dirty: Notes on How Mormons (and Everyone) Should Work,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no. 8 [HTML] [PDF] For more information about MR, please take a look at the prospectus by our editor-in-chief Richard Bushman (“Out of the Best Books: Introducing The Mormon Review,” The Mormon Review, vol.1 no.1 [HTML][PDF]). In addition to our website, you can have The Mormon Review delivered to your inbox. Finally, please consider submitting an article to MR.
November 9, 1989
Each anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is a bit embarrassing for me.
The Road
The persistence of love between a father and a son. Our most cherished relationships, our strongest commitments, laid bare in a book and a movie.
“Fathers do not mother”
Kaimi put up a sidebar link to a NYT piece on parenting. It had an interesting quote: “Fathers tend to do things differently, Dr. Kyle Pruett said, but not in ways that are worse for the children. Fathers do not mother, they father.”
Under Intellectual Condemnation
Let me begin by saying that I not only believe in the historicity of The Book of Mormon, I feel a deep and passionate commitment to our narrative. But this is a point on which I think Mormon historicitists, believers in a divine or human fiction, or any other type of good Mormon ought to be able to agree: The Book of Mormon is rich far beyond our nascent attempts to uncover.
Let not thy left hand know that thy light so shines before men
For over a year I’ve wanted to write a substantive post about the contradiction between two of the best-known biblical injunctions, “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” and “let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.”
From the Archives: The Reynolds Jury Charge
The trial court in Reynolds v. United States gave the following jury charge, which the Supreme Court later found was proper and not inflammatory. I think it not improper, in the discharge of your duties in this case, that you should consider what are to be the consequences to the innocent victims of this delusion.
A Mormon Image: Guardian Angel
This is a statue of an angel in the cemetery where my first baby is burried. I like that she’s smiling. Death is heartbreaking but it’s not only sad. I am also filled with hope when I think about my son. He is alive and happy and we can be an eternal family. It has always been such a comfort to know that.
Kirsten Obert
Springville, UT