We are happy to welcome Michael McBride as a guest-blogger. Mike studies happiness, religion, and the politics of development at UC-Irvine.
There is beauty all around
whether or not there is love at home.
Book Reviews: Juvenile Non-Fiction
If you are an adult, inevitability comes in the form of death and taxes. If you are a child, it comes as the middle school research project.
A face
Sacrament meeting in a small ward, in a large coastal city.
Fireworks
It was a long, hot day filled with furniture assembly and nagging ideological frustrations.
Book Review: A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning: A Mormon Autobiography
A Rascal By Nature, A Christian by Yearning: A Mormon Autobiography by Levi Peterson.
Sunday School Lesson #27
Lesson 27: 1 Kings 12-14; 2 Chronicles 17, 20
Book Review: An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells
An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells by Carol Cornwall Madsen
Primary Lesson Supplements 26-28
Book Review: Contemporary Mormonism: Latter-day Saints in Modern America
Today I abandon my personal policy of only writing book reviews that are, on balance, positive.
Sunday School Lesson #26
Lesson 26: 1 Kings 3; 5-11
Priesthood and the Socialization of Males
Statistically speaking, males seem to be responsible for the great majority of human-made suffering.
Two Sundays in April
I’ve already told my story here. But that’s just what happened, and how it happened. Why it happened is a harder story to tell, especially since I don’t know (and may never know, because there may not be) an ending to it, at which point the answer will presumably be made clear. (Or not.) In meantime, however, I do have two Sabbath days to reflect upon.
Pretty Please
If any of you are familiar with the Morgan/Henefer/Coalville area of Utah and could recommend a place where two women, seven kids, and one husband along for the ride could meet up at a playground or similar, please email me.
Who took the LD out of LDS?
-or- What ever happened to the good ol’ last days? -or- Where have all the millennialists gone?
Homecoming
We sojourned in the wilderness for seven years, spending years of famine and frustration in small apartments. Our children learned to play indoors; our driving skills deteriorated. Worst of all, we neglected our food storage.
Genealogy and Genetics
BYU took advantage of me at a time in my life when I would have done almost anything for 10$.
How Seriously Should We Take Satan?
How seriously ought we to take Satan?
More on Jesus’ Genealogy
I posted previously on the women in Jesus’ genealogy but wanted to invite discussion on some other aspects of it.
Faith and Irony at Menno-Hof
A few weeks ago I visited a charming Amish and Mennonite “visitor’s center” in a nearby town. I noticed something I think Mormons can learn from.
Mormon Familial Amoralism?
In 1958 a political scientist published a book on the culture of Southern Italy that may have something to say about one of the potential pit falls of Mormonism.
Primary Lesson 25 Supplement
Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker
I’ve brought my children west from the alluvial soil of Missouri to the sandy chapparal of Southern California for a few weeks. The first-order pleasures of being home include conversation in our domestic dialect marked at every intersection by shared memory and emotional habit, and free babysitting. Among the second order pleasures, though, are the stacks of wedding announcements at the counter to be perused at lunch and the piles of old Church News issues beside the recliner.
Developing a Testimony of Modern Prophets
I have a friend who is thinking about joining the Church, but he does not have a testimony of the prophet.