WHEREAS, the living room contains Easter eggs (including eggs of the chocolate, caramel, and peanut butter varieties); and Read More

Gene England (1933-2001), Mormonism’s greatest personal essayist, wrote “Easter Weekend,” his greatest personal essay, twenty years ago. I reread it every Easter, usually on Holy Saturday. The following are only excerpts. It was originally printed in the Spring 1988 issue of Dialogue, was reprinted in the Autumn 2001 issue of Irreantum, and is available in full in The Quality of Mercy, a collection of his essays long out of print. I didn’t know Gene well. But even many of those who didn’t know him well miss him, and look forward to someday hearing his voice again. Read More

This will not be a commentary but a question. And I really do want some answers. I’m posting it on T&S, but I hope bloggers from all over will add insights. I want a deeper understanding and recognize that people like Jim Faulconer, Kevin Barney, Julie Smith, and others who have studied the scriptures better than I and looked at the etymology of the words can help me understand. Read More

Once upon a time, three little trees stood in a forest high on a mountain, dreaming of what they would be when they were grown. Read More

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” The real problem with Holy Week celebrations, Kristine, isn’t Nate’s theory about high versus low church and liturgy and ritual. The real problem is falling deities. Just ask any resident of San Pablo. Read More

Kristine is trying to get everyone reved up for Holy Week over at BCC. I wish her well, but I suspect that she isn’t going to succeed on this one. Read More

The trailer is now online for PBS’s up-coming documentary extravaganza on “The Mormons.” You’ll be happy to know that the Bloggernacle had a bit part in the series’ production. Read More

Spring is here with a vengeance, and I don’t think there can be any real argument but that the land south of the Mason-Dixon Line does spring better than any other region of the country. Read More

At the moment, I’m looking at prognostications and popular prophetic tracts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and last week I came across the following Read More

As we’ve done in the past, here’s a space to share any thoughts, inspirations, insights, and/or revelations that come to you through general conference. Enjoy! Read More

I was surprised that the Saturday Afternoon session, held in the tabernacle, was nearly over before the tabernacle was dedicated. I had expected the dedication at the beginning, perhaps even before the official start of the session. If there’s no problem or benefit to having General Conference in a dedicated building, why was the tabernacle dedicated at all? Anyone know the rationale? Read More

As we’ve done in the past, here’s a space to share any thoughts, inspirations, insights, and/or revelations that come to you through general conference. Enjoy! Read More

I suspect that a change has been made to the counsel regarding food storage. See here. Read More

As we’ve done in the past, here’s a space to share any thoughts, inspirations, insights, and/or revelations that come to you through general conference. Enjoy! Read More

As we’ve done in the past, here’s a space to share any thoughts, inspirations, insights, and/or revelations that come to you through general conference. Enjoy! Read More

There’s an interesting article in the Deseret News about the trend of delayed marriage among LDS singles. Thoughts? Read More

Much to the consternation of my wife (who handles our money), I am a rather frequent visitor to William & Mary’s book store. It has been a while since I glanced through their religion section (of late I have been buying poetry or history), but the other day I did glance through the “Mormon” section to see what they have. Read More

BYU’s speaker policy: “No speaker will be invited to campus whose expression of personal or political values would demean the principles of BYU and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Read More

Do all job seekers, academic or otherwise, share Mitt Romney’s “Mormon problem?” Where do you list your religion on your CV? Nowhere. Everywhere. Read More

This post is third in my series of moving angst. Read More

I think that one of the reasons that God commanded Brigham Young to build the Salt Lake Temple was to signal his discount function. Read More

A quick question/poll, for our readers: Do you use aggregation to read blogs? If so, which aggregator(s) do you typically use? The major choices I’m aware of are Archipelago, LDSelect, and Google Reader; are there other popular options? Do you use any of these? All of them? Why (not)? And what feature(s) do you (not) use? I’m curious. Read More

Apparently more men are taking their wives last name on marriage (hat tip: Stephen Thurston). And hey, this sounds like a great idea. I’m just wondering how to make it work with polygamy. Pity the poor membership clerk who has to update the records of that new member, Brigham Work Angell Decker Beaman Huntington Partridge Snow Rollins Pierce … Read More

How comfortable would you be if someone important – your prospective father-in-law, or that trophy client you’ve been courting – showed up at your door and asked to go to church with you? Read More

How I spend my Sunday nights, and what it means for the future of Mormon thought. Read More

The standard reply to every bad-bishop or awful-ward story is well known by now: “The church is perfect, but the members aren’t.” Your interaction with an awful leader or member or ward — hypocritical, sexist, gossipy, unrighteous dominion, Red Sox fan, or otherwise unpardonable — is due to the humanity involved. The church itself is just fine, and please bear in mind that hide-bound church individuals are hide-bound only in their individual capacity. Why, the scriptures even tell us that unrighteous dominion is sadly inevitable. How exactly do we reconcile that line of reasoning with Matthew 7? Read More

This Friday and Saturday, the Miller-Eccles group in southern California will hear a presentation from Rob Briggs on the topic: “Mountain Meadows Massacre: How could this heinous massacre have happened?” Information is as follows: Read More

Over the last several years, I’ve gotten to know a good number of Mormon men whose life goal is to land an academic job in order to provide for their family. Read More

The Mormon court system emerged from the much older tradition of ecclesiastical discipline among the English Protestants who settled North America. Read More

Tomorrow will mark the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Several bloggers have acknowledged that anniversary this month by responding to a challenge: link to whatever you wrote about the war in March 2003, and explain what, if anything, you were wrong about. I have put up my own response here. But for Times and Seasons, I want to reprint something else I wrote, just under four years ago: a post inspired by President Gordon B. Hinckley’s April 2003 General Conference address, “War and Peace”. Read More