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57 responses
The function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs are in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to… Read More
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40 responses
Matt has kindly invited me to continue guest posting at will. And I’m glad, because my mind is spinning this week with thoughts I’d like to dump on you guys. I’m going to start with a long preamble: this sacrament meeting talk that was assigned to me a few months ago. More to follow tomorrow. We don’t call this earth life “the lone and dreary world” for nothing. We are strangers here, homesick for our heavenly parents, our heavenly home. In our mortal bodies we are subject to all kinds of difficulties and infirmities, both mental and physical and emotional.… Read More
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72 responses
A couple of months ago I heard a presentation on the general topic of historical sites that the Church owns and manages. I came with a pocketful of snarky questions but left with some appreciation for how tough the task is and (on the whole) how well the sites are set up and managed. I’ll give a couple of paragraphs summarizing the talk, then a couple of paragraphs commenting on historical sites I have visited. Read More
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74 responses
The people who bet money on their ability to predict political events are bullish on Mitt Romney. Read More
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34 responses
BYU shot up over 50 places in the university rankings that were just released this week. Not in the US News and World Report rankings, where BYU continues to bounce around the 70s, but in the Washington Monthly rankings of universities’ based on their contributions to society, where BYU went from 124 to 68, right between Loyola Chicago and Brown. Read More
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17 responses
The writer of the gospel of John worked really, really hard to make it clear that no one suspected Judas: Read More
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110 responses
We seem to discuss issues of homosexuality ad nausum around here. Surprisingly, one particular subtopic that hasn’t really come up in the past is the real problem of anti-gay violence. Read More
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12 responses
Baseball cards and Pokemon cards are the modern descendants of the 18th and 19th century trade card Read More
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43 responses
The Old Testament gives us all sorts of strange stories. One that I’ve been thinking about lately is the delightfully wacky book of Esther. In particular, I’ve been wondering about the lessons on sex and morality that we can learn from this book. And I find the answers a little surprising, to say the least. We’ll start with lesson one from Esther: Use sex to get power. Read More
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22 responses
We left our hotel late Sunday morning, heading home from Utah. We weren’t sure whether we’d make a 2-day trip of it, stopping in St. George or Vegas, or whether we’d pull an all nighter. It would depend on how we felt. Read More
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94 responses
The day before the cliff swallows return to traditional nesting sites in canyons near where I live in southern Utah, the sky hangs quiet, with only a few ravens, hawks, and eagles spiraling through. The next day, whoosh! Swallows arrive reeling in their folklorico like revelers at an unseen party spilling onto a quiet street. Read More
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71 responses
I don’t know of any Americans planning to move into my ward soon. If there were any, I wish they would understand a few things from the outset. (If you’re contemplating a foreign assignment in an industrial nation, some of this might apply to your situation as well.) Read More
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44 responses
Comments expressing love for President Faust have been left by readers in India and the Netherlands Antilles. Read More
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“The Faust family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Church Missionary Fund or to the Perpetual Education Fund.” There is a site at lds.org/Faust available for making donations. Read More
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41 responses
It is the destiny of mint to be crushed. –Waverley Lewis Root June 12, 2007 Rained most of the night. Morning’s cool and sweet. Good day to venture into a canyon. Because the storm has left behind puffy white seeds that could blossom suddenly into rain, I replace my extra water bottle with a rain poncho. In honor of the sky, scrubbed to a deep, shining blue, I wear my turquoise tee shirt. Usually I wear a white one with sleeves, but I like to wear this color when I hike. Weather permitting, I do. Read More
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70 responses
President James E. Faust, second counselor to President Gordon B. Hinckley, has passed away at age 87. Read More
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20 responses
It is surely one of the more unexpected voices to go to bat for Joseph Smith: Harold Bloom in his 1992 book The American Religion, which gave serious (if unconventional) consideration to Joseph Smith’s role as a religious figure and which famously described him as a “religious genius.” As sort of a post-script, in the March 2007 issue of Sunstone there was a two-page essay by Bloom entitled “Perspectivism and Joseph Smith.” I can’t say I follow every remark in the essay, but I do appreciate his continued interest in Joseph Smith. Here are a few points Bloom makes in… Read More
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18 responses
On Matt’s thread, Jordon F. wrote, “I should add that I think children are particularly quick at grasping and enjoying the opportunity of rendering service as a family. “ Read More
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100 responses
When asked why they aren’t more generous with their time or money, many people answer that if they gave more, it would be at the expense of their own children. Sure, the argument goes, it would be great if I could pay an extra $100 to provide immunizations for kids in Africa, but my first duty is to my family, and giving that $100 for immunizations would prevent me from taking my kids to the water park. Read More
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Church History, Comparative religion, Cornucopia, General Doctrine, Latter-day Saint Thought, Mormon Studies, Philosophy and Theology, Women in the Church
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For those interested in the BYU summer seminar, I’ve revised the post, adding the titles of and abstracts for the papers. Read More
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126 responses
For years I’ve been torn by the knowledge that there are thousands of orphaned or abandoned children desperate to be welcomed into a family like mine and our reasons for “passing by on the other side” when we see the “least of these.” Read More
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11 responses
Over time I’ve discussed various reasons to think that we’ll have the pleasure of raising kids in the Millennium. For convenience I’ve collected all those reasons and shortened them down, with links to the longer original versions. Read More
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40 responses
Warning: To write this post, I’ve had to get personal. I apologize in advance for that, but some points I make require grounding in my observations about personal experiences, many of which are highly charged. The stories and observations I report here in no way represent everything I think about these matters. More importantly, they don’t represent everything I will think; I’m not through turning over these events and ideas to see what else is there. If you’ve come to this post already feeling overwhelmed or bothered about something, you might want to skip reading this, because it might make… Read More
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Church History, Cornucopia, Latter-day Saint Thought, Life in the Church, Mormon Studies, Philosophy and Theology
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11 responses
The annual summer symposium, this year “Joseph Smith and His Times,” will be held on Thursday, August 9, 2007. The symposium will feature papers by twelve summer seminar fellows on the theme “Mormon Thinkers, 1890-1930,” covering topics ranging from the influence of Herbert Spencer on Mormon thought to Mormonism and Modernity. Read More
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15 responses
“Our correspondences show us where our intimacies lie,” writes Terry Tempest Williams. Read More
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29 responses
I just finished finished reading Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth (2005). Almost everyone loves myth from a distance, as a conceptual springboard or reference, as long as it doesn’t get too close to one’s own beliefs or worldview. This book helps put myth in a more useful perspective, which I’d like to explore. But rather than spend several paragraphs defining or explaining what myths are or are not, I’ll just settle for a one-sentence definition [myths are stories about the world with cosmic significance, that talk about birth and death, love and pain, good and evil, earth and… Read More
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100 responses
There’s something interesting in the current Deseret Book catalog. Read More
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28 responses
For more than 200 years, my father’s family has lived in western New York, centered between Canandaigua and Palmyra. Whenever anyone publishes a description of Joseph Smith’s neighborhood and the neighbors who knew him or hired him or harassed him, I scour the writing for familiar names. Read More
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83 responses
1. How does Harry Potter get from one room to another? Read More
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61 responses
When I was in high school, I had a friend whose family always struggled to make ends meet. Read More