Showing all posts by Ziff

In General Conference

No Longer a Black and White Issue

Author ZiffPosted on 11 Comments

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.

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In Uncategorized

Mormon Fundamentalism and LDS Fundamentalism

Author ZiffPosted on 12 Comments

In Steve Evans’s recent post “I Could Not Do It” at BCC, he mentioned the “serious aspect of fundamentalism at the heart of being a Mormon,” and then clarified,

I am using “fundamentalism” in a general sense, and not in reference to polygamist groups, although that is clearly an example of fundamentalism in action.

His comment got me to thinking that it’s too bad that, in the Mormon context, the word “fundamentalist” has come to be almost synonymous with “polygamous.” Read More

In Jesus, Statistics

And his name shall be called…

Author ZiffPosted on 35 Comments

In a recent post at T&S, Kaimi suggested

it seems to me that church members (and leaders) tend to de-emphasize the use of the single-name description Jesus. We regularly use the name Jesus when it is associated with the title Christ. However, when we use a single-word name, LDS speakers — unlike speakers I’ve heard from other denominations — tend to use the name Christ, not Jesus.

I think he’s probably right, but I thought it might be interesting to gather a little data to check. Read More

In Family

You’re like a mother to me

Author ZiffPosted on 24 Comments

When my wife was young and she was first learning to talk, she called two other women “mom” in addition to her mother. Polygamous family? No. The other women were her then-teenage sisters. Given the often large families that Mormons have, I suspect her experience of being well over a decade younger than some of her siblings is not uncommon. I’m interested in how these large age differences affect sibling relationships when everyone is grown.

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In Blogging

My Nacle Notebook 2008: Funny comments

Author ZiffPosted on 49 Comments

During the Niblets, a random John said that he enjoys looking back at the stuff that gets nominated more than he enjoys the voting. I tend to agree with him. There are all kinds of interesting, funny, amazing, and touching things written in the Bloggernacle. But I have a short memory, and I typically don’t think about even the best of what I read for more than a day or two.

In an effort to improve my Bloggernacle experience, I’ve started bookmarking posts and comments that strike me. This way, when current discussions get too acrimonious or repetitive, I know I can always go back and find my own favorite pieces of writing.

So, on the assumption that a random John and I are not alone in enjoying looking back at favorite stuff, let me share some bits of my Nacle Notebook with you. I’ll start with the comments that made me laugh.

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In Missionary Work, Statistics

Implied Statistical Report Graphs

Author ZiffPosted on 21 Comments

Over at T&S, Kent Larsen wrote an interesting post based on the Church’s statistical report from Conference. He compared this year’s data with statistical reports from 5, 10, and 25 years ago. Since I find this kind of speculation so entertaining, I searched lds.org and found statistical reports all the way back to 1973 to fill out the data set a little. To make the resulting data easier to look at, I’ve put some of the numbers Kent and the commenters discussed into graphs.

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In Missionary Work

Better than Orange Juice

Author ZiffPosted on 19 Comments

In the October 2000 General Conference, Elder Robert C. Oaks compared our reluctance to invite people to join the Church to a person’s reluctance to share orange juice with a guest:

Consider that you are invited to a friend’s house for breakfast. On the table you see a large pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice from which your host fills his glass. But he offers you none. Finally, you ask, “Could I have a glass of orange juice?”

He replies, “Oh, I am sorry. I was afraid you might not like orange juice, and I didn’t want to offend you by offering you something you didn’t desire.”

Now, that sounds absurd, but it is not too different from the way we hesitate to offer up something far sweeter than orange juice.

This has always struck me as a particularly poor analogy. It trivializes what I think are very real concerns we might have about sharing Mormonism with our friends. Read More

In Fun

Rearranging Zelophehad’s Daughters

Author ZiffPosted on 27 Comments

If you’ve visited recently, you may have noticed that elements of our sidebars have been moving around. We recently upgraded our WordPress installation, so Lynnette has been tidying everything up in the aftermath, when of course some plugins failed and now have to be replaced.

But rather than rearranging pieces of our blog, I’m thinking more about rearranging the letters in Zelophehad’s Daughters to see what words I could come up with. If you’ve made a resolution, as I have, to waste more time in 2009 than you did in 2008, you’ll immediately see the value of such an undertaking.

So I’ve fiddled around with Zelophehad’s Daughters, as well as the names of some other blogs I read most, to see what I could come up with. I’m not nearly good enough to do complete anagrams, where all the letters are used. Most of my solutions are just partial, leaving one or more letters out. Also, since I did these all manually, I’ve probably made errors, so please feel free to point them out.

Here are a few of my favorites: Read More

In Doctrine

More Like Three Wise Guys, I’d Say

Author ZiffPosted on 23 Comments

As a kid, I was at least somewhat aware that we Mormons believed differently than other Christians about some crucial doctrines. For example, I knew that our belief in God having a physical body wasn’t widely shared. I also knew that, unlike the sadly misled apostates, we believed that the Wise Men weren’t present at the birth of Jesus.

Yes, I thought that was a central doctrine. I also thought that Mormons uniquely took that position that the Wise Men arrived later. I’m not sure why I thought this was so important or unique. Maybe my parents mentioned it to me once or twice, or suggested I move the Wise Men away from the stable in the nativity scene. I don’t know. It makes me laugh to think back now that I thought it was such a central and important issue.

I’d love to hear of anyone else’s experiences of finding out that the Church-related ideas you thought were crucial as a kid turned out to be not so important.

[In case it’s not clear, my title is a reference to the Far Side cartoon in which a bartender (I think) is dismissing the Wise Men with this line.]

In Fun, Hymns

Approved Party Song #19

Author ZiffPosted on 16 Comments

In a discussion about the hymnbook at FMH a few weeks ago, patti said that her husband thinks Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel is the Communist fight song. This reminded me that many years ago, when I was in a BYU ward and this hymn was announced, a friend wrote a note referring to it that said, “Working shoulders of the world, unite!” (Perhaps my friend is patti’s husband.) This comment inspired me to rewrite the hymn: Read More