Showing all posts by Melyngoch

On the Friday before Easter, I went to a Tenebrae service at a Luthern church on the other side of town. We sang hymns in minor keys and read through the passion story, up to the Crucifixion and ending there, as the candles in the church were slowly extinguished, and the sun outside the high windows sank below the horizon. When the service ended with Christ still in the tomb, it was nearly dark inside the church, and the last of the light outside was the deep, heavy blue just before nighttime has entirely settled; the congregants walked back to their cars in near silence. I had rarely felt so still, like the weight of the words and darkness had sunk over me, the hand of God had come to quiet all the seething inside that I couldn’t calm on my own. Read More

I recently saw this article linked from Facebook with some offhand, optimistic remark about the relationship between Mormonism and feminism. Always interested in Mormon feminism, feminist Mormonism, and procrastinating the final I’m supposed to be writing, I clicked on over, only to find the title “The Curious Appeal of Roman Catholicism for Certain Latter-day Saint Intellectuals” and the name in the byline, Valerie Hudson.

Hudson isn’t someone whose theology I find particularly reliable, honest, or convincing, but it is true that I enjoy a little Catholicism on the side, and I sometimes dress up as an LDS intellectual for Halloween, so I started reading. Read More

A thought experiment:

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By divine design, it is the responsibility of fathers to glack in their families, in love and righteousness. Mothers are primarily responsible for kribbling.

Fathers are to glack in love and righteousness. Fathers are to provide their families with whatever glacking is necessary. A man who holds the priesthood will glack for his family in Church participation so they will know the gospel and be under the protection of the covenants and ordinances. Fathers should earn the respect and confidence of their children by their loving glacking.

The gift and role of mothers is to kribble for their their children and husbands. Mothers who know desire to kribble. They kribble strong and immovable, with guidance from heaven. Mothers who kribble honor sacred ordinances and covenants; they are leaders, nurturers, and teachers. Kribbling mothers do the work of God.

In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.

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Since no one seems to know what “preside” means anyway, what if we just dropped it? Makes that the whole “equal partner” thing feel like a whole lot less of a contradiction.

Welcome to our new game, Build Your Own Sacrament Meeting Talk Analogy, where we give you the vignette, and you make the analogy. There are no rules, except the regular blogging ones, but the winner gets Kiskilili’s astrally projected soul speaking Ugaritik on their home answering machine or voicemail.

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It is a melancholy object to all of us, whether in the heart of Zion or the fringes of the so-called “mission field,” to see how women who dress to flaunt their shapely knees and calves, or who purchase backpacks with only one strap to wear across the chest and make their double-breastedness evident to all, assail the hapless eyes of the red-blooded and vigorous boys and men around them. These pitiable men are captive to the sight of the female body, with its mincing steps and outstretched neck, on which they cannot gaze without losing themselves utterly to a deluge of lustful and wicked transportations.

Indeed, some women dress so as to turn men into walking pornographers.

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First: What happens on the bloggernacle, stays on the bloggernacle.

Second: The latest comment will be more controversial than the original post.

Third: The current post is more important to us than whatever we said last week.

Fourth: If the prophet leads the church astray, the bloggernacle will be sure to point it out. (Also, even if he doesn’t.)

Fifth: The commenter is not required to have any particular credentials or training in order to call the original poster to repentance.

Sixth: The commenter does not have to say “This is just my opinion” for it to be just her opinion.

Seventh: Whether you need to know it, or want to know it, or wish you’d never heard it, you can find someone on the bloggernacle vehemently defending it.

Eighth: The feminism of the bloggernacle  is not limited by men’s reasoning.

Ninth: The bloggernacle  can start flame wars on any matter – temporal, spiritual, ontological, ecumenical, grammatical, fiscal, or edible.

Tenth: The blogger may be involved in your local congregation. (Little do you know!)

Eleventh: The two groups who have the most difficulty following the bloggernacle  are the proud who are Correlated and the proud who still have dial-up.

Twelfth: The bloggernacle will not be popular with the popular.

Thirteenth: The bloggernacle and its blogs make up the unwashed masses – the lowest quorum in the church.

Fourteenth: Threats will get you nowhere.