
Poetry for this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, D&C sections 41-44, addressing the law, consecration for supporting the poor, and the role of revelation.
What did Joseph Smith think? What was he like as a person? Questions like these are interesting to think about and are important considerations when you’re a part of a religion that draws so heavily on one person’s writings and…
If I were writing about the benefits of lay clergy in a missionary tract, I would probably spend less time on dusting one’s feet.
The revelations we are studying this week continue with themes found in revelations from throughout 1830, such as an imminent Second Coming and the gathering, but also set up an expectation for an endowment of power that would be an…
Poems about the Gathering, preparation in order to ally our fears, and the cares of the world, to accompany the Come Follow Me lesson for April 12 to 18.
The teachings are familiar, but the images are surprising.
While no Come Follow Me lesson will be taught at church this coming Sunday, there is a lesson in the manual, meant for home study. So, I’m providing some poems to go with that lesson, which focuses on three aspects…
This short sections feels quite familiar.
I lived a significant portion of my life in Logan, Utah and frequently attended the temple during the time that I lived there. I had a lot of beautiful and sacred experiences while doing so, but I also rarely attended…
Hezekiah didn’t consult with artists or historians before destroying the bronze snake Moses had made. He didn’t even try to preserve it somewhere else for its cultural value.
On the confession of sin and the treatment of members acting contrary to law
There are certain things that you grow up with that you don’t realize are weird until you start really noticing the world around you and see that other families don’t do those things your family does. Take one of my…
For Hyde, the sacrament seems to be not quite as strictly symbolical as it is for us, and more directly tied to guilt and confession. Also, will Sunday always be the Sabbath?
Several years ago, I had a conversation with co-worker from outside of Utah about various Mormon churches that existed in Utah. He had been doing some research and we were discussing fundamentalist Latter-day Saint groups (ones like the FLDS or…
Within the corpus of J. Golden Kimball folklore, there is a story of Elder Kimball getting bored during a long process of sustaining officers at a stake conference somewhere south of Provo, Utah. Noticing that most of the congregation was…
What is a priesthood ordinance’s method of action? What Hyde describes in this short article seems to be both less direct, and to emphasize the mediation of the priesthood and the priest conducting an ordinance, more than we typically would…
If the Book of Moroni is an instruction manual to “build a church,” as Michael Austin suggests, with the “nuts-and-bolts how-to-run-a-church stuff that anybody trying to reassemble what the Nephites built will need to know,”[1] then Doctrine and Covenants Section…
Also, Native Americans make an appearance.
Years ago, I attended a testimony meeting that began with a counselor in the bishopric talking about how grateful he was to be a part of a religion where believed that God was full of grace and would save almost…