A recent guest poster at fMh asked for suggestions about what question she might pose to a visiting Seventy who had agreed to a Q&A session with members as part of stake conference. In a post at Nine Moons, Rusty pointed out that many of the questions seemed to be “gotcha questions,” intended to make a point rather than to genuinely seek information. (Several commenters on the fMh thread made a similar point.) I agree with Rusty. Many of the questions did appear not to be serious attempts to get information, but more attempts to show the Seventy up. That being said, I really liked a lot of the “gotcha questions.” I began to wonder why so many people thought of asking them.
How Do You Teach Lessons When You Don’t Agree With Them?
I currently teach Relief Society in my ward. It’s possibly the best calling in the church. It’s teaching, which is usually fun. It involves nothing administrative and no meetings. You don’t have to call people on the phone (a dreaded task which I will go to great lengths to avoid). And it’s only once a month. Really, I have it pretty good. Read More
“…Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end”
The last two months of my life have seen a complete transformation. My experiment with on-line dating led to a relationship this summer, and recently, in an unexpected turn of events, my significant other and I got engaged. It’s been a crazy whirlwind, but in a completely wonderful way. Read More
A Moving Wall at LDS.org?
You’ve probably already seen that the new Church website is out of beta. Check it out at new.lds.org. I haven’t looked at it extensively, but from what I have seen, a couple of nice features stand out. First, you can now upload your own picture to be available to fellow ward members who can’t remember your name, bypassing your ward website person who never got around to it. I hope everyone in my ward does this, because I’d love to be able to learn people’s names faster and pictures would really help. Second, Church magazine articles now have more intuitive URLs. For example, if you want to link to President Uchtdorf’s wonderful talk “You Are My Hands” from this last April General Conference, at LDS.org, you have to use the following URL: Read More
What My Mother Taught Me
Not Ophelia put up the text of President Benson’s 1987 talk about women not working outside the home over at FMH today. I had some thoughts after reading it, and I decided they were long and involved enough (and a little off-topic enough) that it would be better to put them up here as their own post. But they’re a reaction to the talk, so go read (or at least skim) it first.
While I always knew about this talk, I don’t recall ever being taught it much (though it’s possible I simply blew it off if/when it was taught and that’s why I don’t remember it), luckily. And I’m very grateful that my mother (who is very faithful, orthodox, conservative, and was always a SAHM mom) not only didn’t teach it, but didn’t listen to it. Or rather, that she didn’t let it keep her from making the choices that she thought were best for herself and her family. Read More
What Do I Want?
I’m at a point where I have never felt more free to choose the path I want my life to follow. In many ways, this is a wonderful thing, but my biggest dilemma is that I’m struggling to figure out what I want. I know I love teaching high school English and want to continue in this profession. And I know I eventually want marriage and motherhood. Recently, however, I’ve been thinking about my patriarchal blessing, and doing some reevaluating. Read More
Scholaristas
Check out this new blog–some academic-type Mormon women writing about women’s religious history, feminism, and other fun things. They’ve kicked things off with a discussion of the Pink Issue of Dialogue. Looks fabulous.
Mormon Gays in Mormon Plays, Part III
2009
Of the nine plays I (originally) found that met my criteria, I think it’s no accident that almost half of them have premiered since 2008. Whatever the tensions were between the LDS Church and the gay and lesbian community before that year, the heated battle over California’s Proposition 8 has increased them exponentially. Whether or not any of these plays was written specifically because of or in response to those events, the environment of anger and resentment must have been on the minds of anyone with ties to either community, let alone to both. Read More
Being a 30-something Single in the Church: Part VIII, My Experiences with On-line Dating Sites
So, various people have expressed interesting in hearing how my experiences with dating (especially on-line dating sites) have been going. I thought I’d do a quick review of my experiences with the three sites I’ve used, and also talk about how I’ve been approaching the whole on-line dating thing more generally. Read More
Mormon Gays in Mormon Plays, Part II
1999
Banging the Bishop: Latter Day Prophecy, by Dustin B. Goltz
Goltz was raised as a Reformed Jew, but became Mormon as a young man when missionaries came to his door. As a Mormon, he felt that he could be a good person who had a mission in life and divine potential. Also, he was told that his homosexuality was a result of excessive masturbation, and he would be welcomed into heaven if he’d stop. He couldn’t. And he didn’t stop being attracted to men, so he eventually decided he didn’t belong in the Mormon heaven, and he left. Read More
Mormon Gays in Mormon Plays: How Mormon Playwrights Portray Gay and Lesbian Mormons, Part I
Note: I originally intended to make this all one post, then realized that it was over 3,000 words long, so I’m splitting the topic into multiple posts.
A few weeks ago, I learned that a friend of mine is raising money to stage a production of Melissa Leilani Larson’s Little Happy Secrets next year. The play is about a lesbian Mormon who is trying to reconcile her sexuality with her faith. (It’s really unfair of me to condense such a thoughtful and nuanced play into a one-sentence summary. I promise I’ll say more about it later, or you can read about it and their fundraising efforts here.) It was staged last year in Provo, but Dave Mortensen (my friend) and Melissa would like to put on a larger production in Salt Lake City.
I decided that I wanted to write a blog post about plays by Mormons with gay and lesbian Mormon characters, both as a way of helping to draw attention to Little Happy Secrets and because of the topicality of how the Mormon community and the GLBT community interact. Read More
FID Conference (Day Two)
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up a summary of the first day of the inter-religious diplomacy conference last month at USC. Then I got distracted by other life matters and never got back to the second day. I thought after slacking off this long I should maybe not bother with part two, but Eve told me to do it anyway, and I’ve heard one should listen to one’s older sisters. So here it is. (This is probably less a summary of the talks—which would be very difficult to do justice—than a mention of some of the points I found interesting.) Read More
Parenting Theories, Love, and the Inevitability of Grief
[Recent reflections at FMH hereby prompt me to broadcast my own half-baked reflections on parenting theories. That said, this isn’t a critique of either Stephanie’s or Not Ophelia’s approaches to parenting, both of which strike me as eminently reasonable; in any case, the content substantially predates their posts. Rather, this is my current take on parenting, such as it is, which is very clearly a result of my particular temperament and circumstances. Like all of my views, it’s worth every red cent you paid for it, and I fully expect it to be substantially revised in three years, downright unrecognizable in five.] Read More
Being a 30-something Single in the Church: Part VII, Attempts at Comfort
If you’re a single woman in the church (late 20s or older), people are kind to you (likely more kind than they are to your male counterparts). However, you have also been an object of pity more times than you can count. The problem is that most of this pity is not direct–instead, it’s usually manifest through attempts to comfort you (because of your poor, pitiful, single status). I call this pity-disguised-at-attempts-to-comfort-the-sad-women-who-are-struggling-to-find-meaning-in-their-lives. Read More
Nacle Notebook 2009: Funny comments
Last year I compiled some of the funniest comments I had seen in my reading of the Bloggernacle in the previous year into a post. I got a lot of positive comments on the post, so I’ve decided to try it again. Here’s my list of some of the funniest comments I read in the Bloggernacle in 2009. Of course, I’m only one person and I can only read so much of the Bloggernacle, so I’m sure I missed a lot of good stuff. If you’re so inclined, please feel free to share other funny comments from 2009 in the comments.
FID Conference (Day One)
I see that a couple of people have already posted about the Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy conference last weekend (see here and here), which reminded me that I’d told a couple of people I’d post some of my thoughts about it. It was really fun to go to the conference; I’ve been kind of obsessed with issues related to pluralism for the past decade or so, but most of my conversation about the subject has been done in a non-LDS context, so I especially enjoyed thinking about them with reference to Mormonism in particular. (Not to mention that I got to hang out with cool people and hide from my dissertation.)
A Post by Ziff, Even a Guy Who Likes Numbers
In Mark Brown’s post “Mormon Buzzwords” (“on words and phrases we don’t need”) at BCC last month, a number of people suggested that our frequent use of appositive phrases beginning with “even” used to describe Jesus or the prophet is particularly annoying. Here’s an example from President Uchtdorf’s otherwise excellent talk “We Are Doing a Great Work and Cannot Come Down,” given in April 2009 Conferece:
I have witnessed with my own eyes and joyfully testify that in our day, God speaks through His prophet, seer, and revelator, even Thomas S. Monson.
So who started this usage of “even”? And who’s perpetuating it among current General Authorities?
How Presiding Works in My Marriage
I decided to pull this draft out because it was voted for — twice! — as one people would like to see finished. It was the only one of mine voted for (not too surprising, since my drafts make up about 1% of the total drafts), and I haven’t posted anything in a while, so I figured I should not only blog something again, but listen to the opinions of our commenters. So here you go. (Also, it was started a long time ago, but what was already there still applies.)
I’ve been reading this thread over on FMH. It had me thinking about presiding in my own marriage, and since I didn’t want to threadjack (and since the blog has been a little dead lately), I decided to post my thoughts here. Read More
No Longer a Black and White Issue
In last month’s Conference issue of the Ensign, (PDF complete–note it’s 6 MB) for the first time I can remember, the pictures were all in color. Not just the pictures of the speakers, but the candid shots of people in and around the Conference Center and Temple Square, and watching Conference in other parts of the world. I’ve always really enjoyed these candid pictures, and I appreciate the work of the photographers who I assume must take hundreds or thousands of pictures each April and October to be able to pull out and publish such fun and interesting ones. I’m going to miss the black and white format of the pictures, though. I don’t know the first thing about photography, but it does appear to me that black and white photographs can emphasize interesting patterns of light and dark in ways that are overwhelmed by different colors in color photographs.
Struggling with Sacrifice
So, I’ve been having a hard time with all things church-related for about six months now. Not in an angst-driven way (the anger/hurt of last year has subsided), but in a I-just-don’t-want-to-be-religious-for-no-explicable-reason kind of way. I did know that I wanted a bit of distance from God after what happened last year, but this past week, as I thought through why I was skipping church yet again, and as I thought about where I am with my dating life, it all finally clicked for me.
I’m struggling with the law of sacrifice. But let me back up just a bit. Read More