A few years ago, my sister handed me a lumpy white envelope for Christmas. I opened it carefully, able to feel the jumble of small parts beneath my fingertips. Inside were perhaps 30 or 40 small, dark seeds. “Um. Cool,”…
4 o’clock
Category: Cornucopia
Recommended NT Resources, Part 1: Translations, Text, and the Bible in General
(Cross-posted at Benjamin the Scribe) We’re 80% of the way through our Old Testament, and the time has come to start looking forward. As I did for the Old, so I will do for the New. This time, I’ll break…
Do Women Count?
Here are the words that President Uchtdorf used in his talk at the General Women’s Meeting: I am honored to have this opportunity to be with you as we open another general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ…
A supplementary lesson plan for October 2014 Sharing Time, week 2
I love Primary. It’s my favorite place to serve in the Church, and if I had my way I’d serve there for the rest of my life. This month’s Sharing Time theme is “‘The Family: A Proclamation to the World’…
Forgetting Kolob
General Conference is the central forum for official instruction in Mormon doctrine. Conference has very wide viewership among church members, and its influence is magnified by the widespread reach of Conference talks in the Ensign. The last General Conference in…
The Crucible of Doubt – A Review
Fiona and Terryl Givens’ The Crucible of Doubt is a nearly perfect book. I hope that a million Mormons read it. Crucible manages to do what all great religious writing must: it sacrifices the impulse to prove its religion and,…
Five Things I Liked from General Conference
Note that I did a separate post on the General Women’s Meeting here and posted notes from the Saturday afternoon session here. Some things I liked from conference:
Isaiah 29:21
A friend recently said she needs a “new approach” to studying the Book of Mormon. I’m not sure what her old approach was,
Progress and Perfection Reconciled
Peace like a river.
Who Likes Deseret Book?
If you are a Bloggernacle regular, probably not you. You most likely have little sympathy for their fluffy books and a whole heap of disdain for their other kitschy products.
Magic and Mechanisms
In her talk “The Evolutionary Roots of Religious Adaptation” for the Mormon Transhumanist Association, Chelsea Strayer hit on one of the fundamental sources of tension between devout and academic perspectives on faith: the distinction between process and purpose. She gave…
Temple and Observatory Group Event in Minnesota
The Temple and Observatory Group, which has sponsored other events in Utah, Virginia and New York, is offering a seminar for those in the midst of a faith transition or crisis in the Minnesota area. The event features Terryl and…
What to Expect When You Are Expecting . . . A Bishopric Call
So a dear friend of mine[1] just got called to a new bishopric and wants to know the known knowns, the known unknowns, and, of course, the unknown unknowns[2].
My Experiment with Five Minute Prayers
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been setting a timer every time I say my evening prayers. This might sound like an absolutely terrible idea and, in some ways I guess it is. So before I tell you how…
In Your Heart and Mind
My son came stomping into the house from the garden a month ago, demanding I punish his sister,
Elder Ballard: “Don’t Talk Too Much”
Today Elder Ballard spoke at the Europe Area Sisters’ Meeting. (Yes, the same meeting with the poster flap.) You can see the video here.
A self-guided walking tour of Higher Criticism
So I wrote another book. At first I thought that I was writing a short article to explain why two different Reformation-era prophecies share the same title, but the project kept expanding. Along the way, I changed the way I…
A temple, a temple, we already have a temple
Yes, we do, a lot of temples, more than ever in history. We are, as the leaders never stop telling us, a temple building people, and if anything distinguishes us from our fellow-Christians it is our temples. For us the…
Truth and Contradiction in Religious Communities
A couple of weeks ago I listened to the audiobook of Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction. As that was the first thing I’ve read on the topic (other than a multitude of Wikipedia entries) I by no means consider myself…
Book Review: The Crucible of Doubt
Terryl and Fiona Givens, The Crucible of Doubt, Deseret Book, 145 pages.