Are women’s perceptions less reliable than men’s? Does this policy not privilege the validity of male experience over female, signaling the stance that men’s perceptions should be accepted by the community as “truth,” where women’s experiences must be measured against men’s?
I’m a Spiritual Slacker; Do I Need the Priesthood?
If indeed my XX chromosomes have blessed me with an extra dose of spirituality, I’m having a hard time seeing it. Truth be told, I find it a real pain to get up on Sunday morning and attend church, and I frequently find myself thinking how nice it would be to instead stay home and read novels, preferably while eating brownies and ice cream. I’ve been known to avoid the internal debate altogether by simply sleeping in–and when I wake up and see that it’s too late to make it, I think, aww, what a shame, I guess I’ll have to try out my latest arrival from Netflix.
Thoughts for Easter Weekend
“By these three days [the Triduum*] all the world is called to attention. Everything that is and ever was and ever will be, the macro and the micro, the galaxies beyond number and the microbes beyond notice—everything is mysteriously entangled with what happened, with what happens, in these days. This is the axis mundi, the center upon which the cosmos turns. In the derelict who cries from the cross is, or so Christians say, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”
–Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon
(*The three days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday are traditionally referred to as the Triduum)
Actually, sameness and equality have a lot in common.
Men and women in the church are equal; they’re just not the same. They have different roles, but their different roles are equal. And when you let women do the same things as men do, you’re not making them equal; you’re just trying to make them the same.
This is among the most frequent means I hear of defending gender inequal—err, let’s call it structural imbalance, just so I can get the basic premise down—in the church. Read More
Should People in Other Faiths Put Their Questions on a Shelf?
The shelf model is probably familiar to most Mormons. If you have doubts, questions, concerns, the saying goes, you put them on a shelf. You focus on the basics (however those may be defined). You accept that you can’t resolve everything. Read More
A testimony.
This week, with Lynnette here to visit, I finally succeeded in inflicting my current favorite movie ever upon the last family holdout: we made Eve watch Troll 2. I’m pleased to say that she enjoyed it much more than she expected; she was still talking about the infamous and inexplicable popcorn scene the next day. Most of the other ZDs were able to experience this steaming pile of cinema at Christmas, after Lynnette helpfully gave it to me for my birthday, a decision which she has only had occasion to regret two or three times since. Read More
What Equality Doesn’t Look Like
In a recent post at the “On Faith” blog at the Washington Post, titled “What Equality Looks Like,” Michael Otterson attempts to make a case for the equality of women and men in the LDS church. He puts the question to several women, who make three points, all of which I find problematic. Read More
Perceptions of Divinity School
I sometimes get evasive when people ask what I study, especially if I’m not feeling particularly talkative–an admission that I study theology can lead to all kinds of complicated conversations. But for the most part, my fellow Latter-day Saints have been enthusiastic and supportive, and I’ve very much appreciated that. However, there are some ideas about divinity school which I’ve repeatedly encountered that I’ve found somewhat baffling, as they really haven’t matched my experience.
(Caveat: this is shaped to some extent by my specific field of systematic theology, and I’d be interested in hearing from those who work in other areas of religion.)
from Elder Bednar’s October 2011 General Conference Talk
Sister Bednar and I are acquainted with a returned missionary who had dated a special young man for a period of time. She cared for him very much, and she was desirous of making their relationship more serious. She was considering and hoping for engagement and marriage. Read More
On Progress and Support
As I contemplated what to write about today, unlike past years, nothing immediately sprang to mind. Overall I think that’s a great thing. Life, even with autism, is more settled these days. We have routines and plans, and real communication, and things are pretty good.
Don’t get me wrong — life with Spencer is far from “normal”. My almost-3yo talks better than my 6yo does. If I have to choose one hand to hold in a busy parking lot or to cross a street, it’s that of my oldest child. Nearly everything in the house ends up dipped in water at one point or another, and that includes electronics. I’m trying to potty-train 3 children at once, and with the oldest I’ve probably washed out 5 or 6 times more poopy underwear than most parents do while potty training 10 children. Waiting in a line is like yanking teeth out with my bare hands.
Still, things are pretty good. Read More
Light It Up Blue
Today is the 4th annual World Autism Awareness Day, and in honor of it, we here at ZD are lighting it up blue today. Look for a related post later in the day!
General Conference Stories Where the Subtext Speaks to Me
Often what I remember best about General Conference (other than controversial bit that are later argued in the Bloggernacle, of course) is the stories speakers tell. This probably isn’t surprising. A vivid story is likely more memorable for most people than an abstract discussion of Church doctrine or practice. But what might be unusual is that I’m frequently more struck by the subtext of a story than by its text. (By subtext, I just mean what is implied by the story’s content, or what is conveyed without being explicitly said.) Read More
Making it Work
“Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You have to be fully committed.” ~ Eat Pray Love
It was rainy yesterday. And sometimes, when it’s rainy, all you want to do is wear pajamas and watch a movie like Eat Pray Love. Paint your toenails. Eat…yogurt?
I don’t know.
The point is that I netflixed Eat Pray Love because I could and this particular quote jumped out to me. Mostly because I thought it was hilarious. Secondarily because it had relevance to my life and a certain psychological battle I’ve been dealing with recently.
Babies. Read More
Nacle Notebook 2010: Funny Comments
Below is a list of some of the funniest comments I read in the Bloggernacle in 2010. Note that in most cases, I’ve taken excerpts from longer comments. Each commenter’s name is a link to the original comment (except for comments at Mormon Matters, which are no longer displayed at the site).
Warning: Reading this post may make you dumber
Reading this post may make you dumber. Not (only) because of bad arguments I might make, but because you’re reading it on a computer.
How to Name Your Devil [updated]
What name do Mormons most often use to refer to Satan? A few months ago, Julie M. Smith suggested in a post at T&S that we might be cutting back on naming him specifically as being responsible for evils in favor of blaming “the world.”
Hymn Humor
Not very good humor, mind you. Remember that I have a talent for dumbness. Consider yourself warned.
Does the design of our scriptures make them more difficult to read?
LDS scriptures can be difficult to read. One reason is that their language is unfamiliar. The argument has often been made that we should quit using the KJV Bible, or at least supplement it with a more recent translation (for example, here’s Steve Evans, here’s Julie M. Smith, here’s DKL, and here’s Grant Hardy on the topic). But I’m thinking of a different reason our scriptures can be hard to read: their design.
No Comment
I recently bought some eyeglasses online. When I was selecting frames, the site I was buying from allowed me to filter the list by whether I wanted by rim style (full rim, half rim, rimless), by shape, by size, and by frame color. It occurred to me that none of these were all that useful to me because what I found most important was that my glasses not make a statement of any kind. Needless to say, this is a difficult enough criterion to define that the site did not allow me to filter frames in this way.
I eventually found some frames I was happy with. But thinking about the issue of wanting my glasses to not make a statement also got me to wondering about whether such a goal is easier for men to achieve than it is for women.
Times, They Are A Changin’
A couple months ago, I wrote a quick post about Visiting Teaching and my relationship to it. In it, I emphasized that I didn’t feel like a forced, monthly visit was spiritually or socially useful to me, though it might be for other people. I also mentioned how my favorite VTs in the past didn’t visit me monthly, but would formally drop by every 3-6 months and otherwise just treat me as a friend around town.
I lamented how the VT/HT program, can get too caught up in stats and “just getting it in each month” rather than really thinking about what people individually need, want, or can adequately do.
The response I got was good–some people liked the idea of making VT/HT more flexible and some people thought that the monthly meeting, though it may not be the most casual, was its own form of showing love through showing consistency. Thanks for all your comments.
I bring it all up again because I wanted to share something interesting with anyone who was intrigued by that post a while back: Read More