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124 responses
This week a number of my Facebook friends shared a video from the Mormon Channel, titled Earthly Father, Heavenly Father. It kept showing up in my timeline, and finally I watched it. I’m generally a fan of the church’s public relations offerings, so I expected to like this short. I mean, who doesn’t love fatherhood? Instead, the film made me sad. Before playing the video, I saw the blurb underneath: Men on Earth have the opportunity to become fathers and experience some of the same joys that our Heavenly Father feels for us. Fatherhood is a divine responsibility to be… Read More
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13 responses
There is a Church History Conference at BYU March 7-8 entitled “Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World” (see details below). I find two things interesting about this conference: 1. The structure of the conference itself. The Church History Department and the BYU Department of Religion are co-sponsoring the conference, and while most of the lineup consists of BYU Religion professors there is also a significant lineup of non-BYU scholars, including Richard Bushman, Matt Bowman, and Kevin Barney. This strikes me as something different than I might have expected. 2. The content of the conference. To date much of the… Read More
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2 responses
The spirit of revelation described in D&C Gospel Doctrine lesson #5 isn’t always credited with all that it deserves. During our lives, I think, we often receive inspiration that we don’t attribute to anything but our own decisions, while that inspiration makes subtle changes, pushing us towards the better. Other times personal revelation is very clear, appearing as the kind of direct communication whose source is all but undeniable. The following poem is an example of when and how personal revelation can appear, along with a meditation on nature and how it should turn our vision o the truth. Read More
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106 responses
Rosalynde here expresses some of the concerns that I have about the methodology of the Wear Pants and GC Prayer efforts. I want to add a few more thoughts: Read More
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11 responses
It would be surprising, and disappointing, if Mormons didn’t sound a bit odd when we speak, or if Mormon verbal art were indistinguishable from any other literary text. Read More
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This is the second post on Adam Miller’s Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology (Greg Kofford Books, 2012; publisher’s page). In this post I’ll discuss Chapter 8, “The Gospel as an Earthen Vessel,” a suggestive symbol that Adam borrows from 2 Corinthians 4:7: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” Read More
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19 responses
[This is the third in a series of guest posts on Mental Health, Mortal Life, and Accountability. The other installments are available here: Part 1:”Exceeding Sorrowful, Even Unto Death” (Mark 14:34), Part 2: Causes and (Mis)Attributions, Part 4: Accommodations in LDS Activities and Meetings, and Part 5: The “Greater Sin”/ Sane Repentance & Forgiveness] I appreciate the input and insights from those who have experienced depression and other mental health challenges firsthand. Many of the comments have focused on physiological causes and medical helps. I’d like to briefly explore some emotional and psychological factors and their effects and treatments before we discuss implications and applications for… Read More
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4 responses
I think that we often think of witnesses as something outside of the event, added to fill a particular need or satisfy the desires of the world. But I wonder if this perception might not be incorrect, if witnesses are not, in fact, an important part of the process of communicating truth. A testimony is, after all, what a witness provides, and, at least in the church, it is hard to imagine communicating truth without testimony. In the fourth D&C Gospel Doctrine lesson witnesses to the Book of Mormon are an important part of the story of the scripture’s preparation.… Read More
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23 responses
[This is the second in a series of guest posts on Mental Health, Mortal Life, and Accountability. The other installments are available here: Part 1:”Exceeding Sorrowful, Even Unto Death” (Mark 14:34), Part 3: Fractured Images of God, Self, and Others, Part 4: Accommodations in LDS Activities and Meetings, and Part 5: The “Greater Sin”/ Sane Repentance & Forgiveness] The church’s web page about mental illness includes a brief list of potential causes. These can include physiological and/or behavioral factors. Mental health or functioning can be compromised due to heredity; birth defect; oxygen deprivation at birth or later; biological trauma (concussion, brain clot, hemorrhage, tumor, seizure… Read More
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6 responses
[I am traveling for the 4th annual Brazilian Mormon Studies Conference — please excuse the delay in posting this.] From the beginning of Mormonism, Baptism has been a central focus of our preaching. Baptism must be done in the correct manner and by the correct authority, and should be followed by the gift of the Holy Ghost. And this is the focus of the second lesson in the Lorenzo Snow manual used in Priesthood and Relief Society. Of course, our baptisms have always been accompanied by hymns, and the following hymn appeared in Emma Smith’s first hymnal in 1835 and… Read More
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6 responses
[I am traveling for the 4th annual Brazilian Mormon Studies Conference — please excuse the delay in posting this.] Of our mythic founding stories, the First Vision is surely the most important. It appears regularly in manuals and conference talks, as well as in the missionary lessons, where it is among the first things that converts to Mormonism learn. So naturally it is a frequent subject for Mormon poetry. But most of the poetical treatments of the First Vision that come to my mind are descriptive, tell what happened instead of the role of the First Vision in the ages.… Read More
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16 responses
This is the first of several posts discussing Adam Miller’s Rube Goldberg Machines: Essays in Mormon Theology, a little gem published by Greg Kofford Books in 2012 (here’s the publisher’s page on the book). After some preliminary discussion about why there has been so little Mormon theology done (compared to say LDS history) and what Mormon theology might look like, I’ll discuss some of Adam’s observations in Chapter 6, “A Manifesto for Mormon Theology.” Adam, of course, is a permablogger here at Times and Seasons and will likely be adding his own additional enlightening thoughts in the comments. Read More
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5 responses
The Mormon Review vol. 5 no. 1 is presented here, with Jonathon Penny’s review of Takashi Miike’s 2011 film Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. By Jonathon Penny Open on a gaunt, intelligent looking man—Tsukumo Hanshiro—seeking the indulgence of a retinue of samurai at the palace of a feudal lord. He claims to be a ronin, a lordless samurai, left to wander in poverty after the dishonor and dissolution of his clan. His request: to commit ritual hara-kiri so that, it is explained to us, he might regain some of the honor he has lost. There is skepticism. Not two months before,… Read More
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119 responses
So it looks like All Enlisted (the people who brought you “Wear Pants to Church Day”) is now starting a campaign to have a woman pray in General Conference. It prompted this repost from BCC which references this piece from Rosalynde Welch. I want to look at just one line from Rosalynde’s essay: Read More
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[This is the first in a series of guest posts on Mental Health, Mortal Life, and Accountability. The subsequent installments are available here: Part 2: Causes and (Mis)Attributions, Part 3: Fractured Images of God, Self, and Others, Part 4: Accommodations in LDS Activities and Meetings, and Part 5: The “Greater Sin”/ Sane Repentance & Forgiveness] Not many years ago, a younger sibling of mine sought to stop her unbearable emotional pain by ending her mortal life. While she succeeded in completing her suicide, she did not consciously chose this path, and she is not fully accountable for her desperate and tragic actions. In… Read More
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34 responses
After due consideration the staff of Times and Seasons has selected Mitt Romney as the 2012 Mormon of the Year, our annual designation of the Mormon who had the greatest impact or influence on Mormons and Mormonism during the year. Read More
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Despite a heartfelt campaign led by his children, LDS baseball star and former Massachusetts Boston Mission President Dale Murphy was not inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, according to the results announced this afternoon. While that result was expected, the fact that fellow Mormon Jack Morris was also not selected was almost as suprising as the fact that the BBWAA selected none of the eligible players this year. The group last failed to add any players to the Hall of Fame in 1996. Read More
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15 responses
No one sets out on a path with the intent to fail. In late 2009 I took the last major hike with my father before he died. We decided to do the Tapeats Creek/Deer Creek loop, a trail in the Grand Canyon that we had done several times over the years, and is considered by many to be not only the most difficult hike in the Grand Canyon, but among the hardest hikes in North America. It was the first hike my father had done in the Grand Canyon when he was 14 years old, and it was the first… Read More
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Also see part 1, part 2 and part 3. In a 1944 essay (“Is Theology Poetry?”), C.S. Lewis remarked, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” As one who embraced Christianity later in life, Lewis had a keen appreciation of how a new discovery of belief can throw a bright reflected glory on the world and everything in it. The mind, which craves new connections of any kind, takes a special delight in those intellectual connections that carry an associated weight… Read More
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So here’s a piece about multidimensional optimization algorithms, a genre of music named after and including a lot of primal screaming, and my mission. Several examples of said musical genre, screamo, are included so I hope you have a broad audial palette. I’ll start with a short story from my Mormon youth. On one particular day I remember being in the backseat of a minivan full of my fellow teenage Mormons as we drove to or from some weekday church activity. We were listening to the radio when Bullet with Buttefly Wings by The Smashing Pumpkins came on and I started… Read More
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The second Doctrine and Covenants lesson makes the point that this modern scripture talks and teaches of Christ. That focus was easy to find in many Mormon poems and hymns, but the following poem has the advantage of talking about the Lord for what He has done for the Latter-day Church. Eliza R. Snow probably needs no introduction for most members, as her poetry still appears frequently in our hymnals. And in this poem her combination of praise for the Lord with references to the latter-day work makes this a good match for the lesson. Read More
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I love the first lesson in the Lorenzo Snow manual. It seems like Snow’s love of learning is second to none among latter-day Prophets. And his statements about learning are wonderful: “Though we may now neglect to improve our time, to brighten up our intellectual faculties, we shall be obliged to improve them sometime. We have got so much ground to walk over, and if we fail to travel to-day, we shall have so much more to travel to-morrow.” Read More
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5 responses
As others have noted, Mormonism does not have much of a liturgical year, and the role of holidays in Mormon theology is quite attenuated. I propose we designate the first Fast Sunday in January as Purgation Sunday. Read More
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Snow White. If on Christmas Day of 1975 you were for some harebrained reason outside on the frozen Belgian tundra and you squinted up your eyes against the shiny white landscape to look east from the edge of the little town called Zichem, then you would’ve almost certainly noticed in the houseless distance the improbable sight of four overcoated and possibly harebrained missionaries-dressed-as-local-businessmen trudging along a slippery, messy path next to a big field. Read More
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39 responses
I know, I said a year and a half ago that I wasn’t going to see The Book of Mormon. But then it came to Chicago and, in spite of the fact that it is sold out through at least March, a friend set me up with a ticket. So I’ve now seen the show. I’m not going to review it, though. It’s already been widely reviewed, and frankly, I don’t have the musical theater chops to provide a credible review. Read More
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Would you like to learn more about how to not just brownout when you kneel down in prayer? It’s a good New Year’s resolution: learning how to be still and listen for God. Read More
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22 responses
This post opens the voting for Mormon of the Year. Votes will be taken until midnight Eastern Time on Monday, January 7th, at which time the voting will close. The voting mechanism will attempt to restrict votes to one per person. The order of the choices is set at random, and is different each time the form is presented. THE WINNER OF THE ONLINE VOTE IS NOT NECESSARILY THE MORMON OF THE YEAR!!! Read More
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2 responses
I generally hate New Year’s Resolutions, mostly because experience has taught me that I will fail to carry through. I don’t like failing. It seems that we usually pick for resolutions something about which we are conflicted. The resolution may be about losing weight, which is the conflict of habit and genetics against a health or aesthetic ideal. Or it may be about exercising, or getting enough sleep, or devoting time for personal scripture study and meditation, or it may be about losing weight. Most Mormons are able to avoid the common resolutions about drinking and smoking less, but we… Read More
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2 responses
The initial lesson in the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History course of study points out that the revelations found in the text are meant for our time and cover our dispensation, while the history presented is the history of our people, as opposed to those who lived aeons ago. This course should, therefore, be relevant to us today in a way that the other Gospel Doctrine courses can’t hope to accomplish. The poem below discusses not only a few of the major events that opened our dispensation, but also follows the prediction often made; that our dispensation has a… Read More
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7 responses
In the twelfth century, Walter of Chatillon wrote a rather pessimistic appraisal of the world’s condition. Read More
