Like in many Mormon families, my siblings and I helped fix dinner. On Sunday’s I loved to fix the mashed potatoes. It was in making mashed potatoes that I learned early that though a little is good, a lot is not necessarily better.<\/p>\n
Early on, I served a large bowl (there were 8 of us) of mashed potatoes after thinking that if a little salt was good, . . . <\/p>\n
I grew up in suburban Washington, D. C., where my brother and I were the only LDS Church members in our high school. There were other members who lived within walking distance, and most of the high schools in the area had a handful of members in each. The Church was organized into stakes, just three in Maryland and another couple in Northern Virginia. The Temple was built while we lived there, and became a fixture in the city, a landmark framed, when you approached it the right way, by the overpass that had spraypainted on it, “Help, Dorothy!”<\/p>\n
After serving a mission and attending BYU, I landed here in New York City, which, in terms of the concentration of members, feels similar. Our stake covers just the island of Manhattan. My daughter starts high school today and will be one of perhaps a handful of members in the school. My son graduated from a different high school a couple of years ago — he was one of I think three LDS Church members in high school. The city is covered by three stakes and a couple districts, with perhaps another 4 stakes covering most of the suburbs.<\/p>\n
To me this all feels about right. Here the Church is the salt of the earth. Members are scattered through a larger population, trying to not only live their lives, but also make a difference in their communities. There’s room for the Church to grow, and lots of room for Church members to both improve the community and be improved by the community.<\/p>\n
Of course, how much salt to have is a matter of taste and health. Some like more, others like less. Some like more, but their health would be better off with less. For me, New York City has about the right amount of salt.<\/p>\n
But regardless of taste, isn’t there a point where there is simply too much salt?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like in many Mormon families, my siblings and I helped fix dinner. On Sunday’s I loved to fix the mashed potatoes. It was in making mashed potatoes that I learned early that though a little is good, a lot is not necessarily better. Early on, I served a large bowl (there were 8 of us) of mashed potatoes after thinking that if a little salt was good, . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mormon-life"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5933,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4760\/revisions\/5933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}