Quick technical note

Our spam filter has been on drugs lately. Several legit comments got held up as spam for a few hours until the admins let them out. Apologies if this was you. Hopefully, the problem won’t last. If it does, we’ll look into our options on the technical side.

A Letter to a Friend Going to the Temple for the First Time

By and large, I don’t think that we do a particularlly good job preparing members to go to the temple for the first time. As a result, I think that many members — especially converts without close family members who have been to the temple — get worried about what is going to happen, especially if they have heard any of the discussion in the bloggernacle or elsewhere about “issues” with the temple. Here is what I would write to such a person:

Growing Old

I was going to title this “growing older,” but I decided to be honest. I’ll be fifty-nine this year and, though I’m not yet decrepit, by most people’s measures I’ll officially be old next year.

Once more, with feeling

So, we’re told that motherhood is given to women, as Priesthood to men. Two motherhood-priesthood thoughts occur to me: 1. True or false: “The rights of motherhood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principle of righteousness.

An introductory note

Ben tells me that a few words of personal introduction are in order, both to introduce myself (since up to this point I’ve been a stranger to the blogosphere) and hopefully to contextualize some of what I’ll write over the next couple of weeks.

The mother of our ward

My children are getting ready for Father’s Day, and this involves practicing that primary song about fathers of the home, the ward, and us all. So tonight we had an interesting dinner-table conversation, about whether the same structure applies to mothers. We have a mother of our home, and we have a mother of us all. Is there a such thing as the mother of the ward?