What do we know about the covert life of our members? Take Irma.
Month: October 2005
A Decent Man
During my second year of law school I met Samuel Alito, who President Bush has nominated to the Supreme Court.
My Big Fat Mormon Aesthetics Post
For months now, I’ve been contemplating a series of posts on the possibility of a Mormon aesthetic. I’ve been rereading Kant and Rousseau and Augustine, arguing with Michael Hicks in my head, and contemplating my illustrious career as the great one who definitively articulated the theoretical framework of a Mormon (musical) aesthetic. Last night, sitting in the dark at Stake Conference, I abandoned the notion of writing that piece. Completely. And joyfully.
My Conversion Story
The reason that I don’t like to tell my conversion story is that it is boring. If I were to appropriate the famous Joseph Smith line, I would have to modify it thusly: “No man knows my history. . . . I don’t blame any one for not staying awake through my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have stayed awake through it myself.” So don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Chicks
My wife was out of town, so I decided to pick up some chicks. I took the kids with me, of course.
Crisis and Compost
You will be happy to hear that the Oman marriage has weathered a massive marital crisis. It was tough for a while, but we are doing well now. As you might expect, the dispute centered on compost.
From the Archives: Suing the Church
Adam asked [in a comment lost, alas, when we changed software] if suing the church might place one in the category of “groups that oppose the church.” He raises a question which, I think, does not have a yes-or-no answer. (more. . .)
Golden
Why are we Mormons so damn intrigued by J. Golden Kimball?
Blogging and Lying
Imagine that you and a couple of friends started a group blog — called it Heaven’s Banner — in which you all pretended to be fictional people having really bizarre conversations (OK, so perhaps this wouldn’t take too much pretending). You and your friends work to create a semblance of warped verisimilitude, and then watch the show. Here is an interesting question: Are you liars?
Platinum Wedding Bells
The Saints are pretty good at spotting blatant attacks on the family. But, recently, I realized that I had been completely unaware of a subtle yet profound attack on marriage and family.
Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press
I see that Slate now puts the odds of Harriet Miers confirmation at 70%. Silly Slate, don’t they know that niche is taken? As I’ve mentioned before, the best bet, literally, is to follow the gamblers. And as of press time, they are betting that Miers has a 3 in 10 chance of making it to the Big Bench. Want a second opinion? It’s pretty much the same as the first.
Influence in all the wrong places…
From time to time Mormons face various forms of legal and political harassment. Sometimes this happens in the United States, but as events in Venezuela dramatically illustrate the legal challenges that the Church faces abroad are generally much more extreme than those that it faces in the U.S. One result is that there is a real mismatch between the Church’s challenges and its resources.
Meanwhile, Back on the Farm…
…it’s been a great year, one of the best my father can remember. The Fox family farm brought in over 90,000 bushels of wheat, including about 30,000 bushels of our high-protein dark northern spring (averaging about 80 bushels an acre for the latter, a particularly good crop). Some wild oat grass got into part of the farm, cutting down on the yield from about 400 out of our total 1800 acres, but otherwise there is little to complain about. The Amoths–a Mennonite family that have managed and farmed land for our family for three generations, and soon four–have every reason to be proud.
Anne comes home
I read and enjoyed Orson Scott Card’s book Sarah. In fact, that book sparked an interest in me to find out more about what exactly we knew of ancient times, both New and Old World.
The Inevitability of Pain in Mormon Intellectual Life
Twenty years ago, there was an interesting debate between two political philosophers at Harvard that ultimately does a lot to explain the inevitability of pain for Mormons who embark on intellectual discussions of their religion.
In the -Hoods: Are Motherhood and Priesthood Equivalent?
Julie: This dialogue is the outgrowth of a few comments at one of those other blogs that Rosalynde suggested might make an interesting discussion.
Sukkot
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur get all the press around here, but one of my favorite Jewish holidays usually sneaks in just before or just after the high holidays. This year in particular, with news of floods and earthquakes filling my heart and head, the festival of Sukkot seems especially worthy of
Holy Men and Hucksters
This post is ostensibly by way of reminding our Southern California readership that it’s not too late to catch the last day of the Claremont Conference on Joseph Smith. It’s also an excuse for me to ruminate on the ever-engaging question of what sixteenth-century blogging might have looked like had they, you know, invented computers and the internet and everything. Here’s a possibility:
Bloggernacking
A few recent highlights: -Lisa at FMH writes a Feminist Polygamy Manifesto — don’t miss it. -Aaron at BoH: Faker or fakir? -Bloggernackers (heart) Elise Soukup: DMI, Mormon Stories, and a nice interview at M*. –Chloroform in print on iPod. -DMI wants to start a discussion group about whether discussion groups are permitted. Clearly he has forgotten “the first rule of discussion groups is you do not talk about discussion groups . . .” -Reminder: Volunteers sought to participate in polygamy . . . survey. -Finally, if you like your navel-gazing with a healthy dose of snark, you may want to look at a relative bloggernacle newcomer, doubtless administered by famed ‘nacle urban-legend-buster arJ.
The Fortunate Failure of the Doctrine & Covenants
In many ways, the Doctrine & Covenants is my favorite book of scripture, and as it now stands it is the result of a failure.
Thinking about the Trinity
It is hardly news to this crowd that Mormons don’t accept the traditional understanding of the Godhead, the Trinity.
Drat! They’re on to us!
From the informative and helpful New Zealand Cult List
Maggie Gallagher’s tautology
Over at Volokh, Maggie Gallagher makes the curious argument that society needs marriage because without marriage, people would be having children out of wedlock.
Remain in your homeland
In last General Conference, Elder Uchtdorf reiterated the 1999 counsel of the First Presidency, a counsel that has actually been given since the 1950s.
Our Enemies List
Like Nixon, Times and Seasons maintains a detailed “enemies list.”
The Deep Meaning of the Bloggernacle (Abridged)
It seems to have been a bicoastal weekend for real-world discussions of the bloggernacle. John Dehlin gave a great talk on blogs at the Seattle Sunstone Symposium (pod cast here), and I gave a brief presentation to Naomi Frandsen’s “Saturday Night Discussion Group” (a name that carries all sorts of unfortunate disco connotations for me.) Lacking the technical sophistication do a podcast, here is a shortened version of what I said:
On the Blowing of Noses and the Bearing of Testimonies
While I was running errands with my children one morning last week, I glanced up at the rearview mirror to see my four-year-old daughter’s finger probing her nostril. I reprimanded her, gently, and asked if she needed a tissue. “No thank you, Mom,” she answered cheerfully, “This kind comes out only by a fingernail, right?”
Malcolm Gladwell on the Future of Religion
In its latest issue, Time magazine “assembled some of the smartest people we know to identify the trends that are most likely to affect our future.”
A Marketing Hypothetical
This season The University of Notre Dame has been airing a student recruiting advertisement called “Candle”.
Jerusalem
Last week Janice and I spent several days in Cornwall, Great Britain, with the BYU students doing London Study Abroad.