Zelophehad's Daughters

Saying Alleluia in Coronavirus Time

Lynnette9 April 20209 April 20202 Comments

When I was a kid, I came across a phrase in a novel that rather haunted me: “even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” It was only after I became an Episcopalian that I realized the source of this—it comes from one of the burial rites in the Book of Common Prayer. “For so thou didst ordain when thou createdst me, saying, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ All we go own to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

I have been thinking a lot about alleluia’s lately, specifically about unsaid alleluia’s. We’re still in the season of Lent, and during Lent, all the alleluia’s disappear from the liturgy. At my parish, they literally process a banner reading “Alleluia” out of the church on the last Sunday before Lent, as we bid a temporary farewell to the word. Six weeks later, about halfway through an Easter Vigil service which begins with the congregation processing into a dark church holding candles, the church will be completely lit up and the words “Christ is risen! Alleluia!” will ring out with joy. I love the rhythm of removing the alleluia’s for a sober six weeks of reflection, and then exuberantly proclaiming them. Read More

In Statistics, Temple

A Temple-Announcing Spree

Ziff7 April 20209 Comments

President Nelson announced eight new temples in General Conference on Sunday. This keeps up his pace from last year, when he announced 16 new temples across the two Conferences. Actual construction of all these new temples hasn’t kept up, though. Ground was broken for 11 new temples in 2019, but none have been started this year. This is why President Nelson’s spree seems to me to be more one of temple announcing than temple building. In any case, thinking about this gap between announced temples and built temples motivated me to look back at the data on the Church’s pace of the announcing, beginning construction on, and dedicating temples across the past few decades.

The graph below shows the year-by-year count of how many temples were announced, had construction begin, and were dedicated each year since 1950. I took the data from the list of temples on the Church website, and from Wikipedia where the information wasn’t available on the Church website because a temple is not yet dedicated or is being renovated.

In Uncategorized

Marriage Should Not be Like a Tandem Bike

Pandora6 April 20206 April 202013 Comments

The thing about sitting on the back seat of a tandem bicycle is that it is objectively not equal to sitting in the front.

Pictured above: My now husband and myself on what is actually a pretty fun bike, but one that should under no circumstances be used as a metaphor for partnership in marriage.

No matter how many times someone might say that sitting on the back seat of a tandem bicycle is equal to sitting in the front, that doesn’t change the fact that it is just not true.

In Fun, Music

Hymns for a Time of Coronavirus

Ziff22 March 20201 Comment

Come, Come, Ye Saints

Come, come, ye Saints
No quarantining fear
But with joy
Keep away!
Though hard to you
May distancing appear
Let’s stay home
Day by day!
‘Tis better if we need to meet
To keep a distance of six feet!
Do this and joy, the virus quelled
All is well! All is well!

Now Let Us Be Home

Now let us be home in extended staycation.
For safety as strangers on earth let us stay.
Sad tidings of virus have come to each nation,
But soon blessed hour of containment, we pray!
When from all the people COVID will be driven,
And none will infect them from morn until ev’n,
And all shall come forth and embrace one another
The WHO and CDC will free all to come play!

(Thanks to Olea of the Exponent who suggested a nice edit that fixed the rhythm of the sixth line of “Come, Come, Ye Saints.”)

In Church Policy, Ritual, Sacrament, Sexism

When Institutional Sexism Infects My Home

Pandora17 March 20204 Comments

I am an infectious disease epidemiologist for a global diagnostic company that makes the leading test for respiratory pathogens, including a family of viruses known as Coronaviruses. You may have heard of them. It has certainly been an extremely stressful few months at work. But also just a stressful time, in general, for us all. There is a lot of uncertainty. We’re all anxious.

Around the world, individuals, families, cities, states and nations are taking action to stop the spread of the disease. People are staying home with hopes that the virus will be stopped at the door.

I am an active member of the church. My spouse and I both have callings and temple recommends. However, for many years our activity in the church has been dependent on our ability to stop the harmful aspects of the church at the door of our home. We are vocal feminists. We have different last names (gasp!). We will never hang the Proclamation to the Family in our home. My husband does not preside over me. We take turns picking who prays (anyone else think the tradition where the man picks the prayer giver is just the silliest thing?). We sing of and pray to both of our Heavenly Parents.(Among many other beliefs that would be eyebrow raising at best, membership-council-inducing at worst, to 99% of our ward.) Read More

In General Conference

How General Conference Will Change when Nobody Attends

Ziff11 March 20203 Comments

The Church announced today that the April General Conference will be held in the Conference Center, but that to limit the spread of COVID-19, the public will not be admitted. Only “general authorities, general officers and their spouses, musicians, choirs, technicians, and others” who are participating will be allowed in. I applaud this move. It’s great to see the Church being proactive in helping to limit this disease that WHO just officially labeled a pandemic.

I’m wondering, though, how having no audience (or a very small one made up only of spouses of participants) will change Conference. I’ve never been to Conference in person, so I’m just going to be making some guesses, and I look forward to you sharing your thoughts in the comments.

Will they still have sustaings of General Authorities and General Officers?

In Conversion, Episcopalians, Hope, LGBT Issues

Choosing Life in an Affirming Church

Lynnette10 March 202011 March 20206 Comments

I knew that I probably shouldn’t let myself be encouraged by the unexpected news a few weeks ago that BYU was softening their stance on same-sex dating. Over the years, after all, you learn better than to hope. I remember attending my first Affirmation conference in the fall of 2015, and being blown away by the faith of so many of the people there, the confidence they had that eventually the church would make more room for them. The sheer exuberance of that hope was hard to resist. Despite my skepticism, it infected me a little. I mean, here was a crowd of LGBTQ people, surely a demographic bound for apostasy if anyone was, and more than anything it felt like EFY for queer people—complete with a dance, cheesy music, and even a testimony meeting at the end. I looked at this crowd and thought, okay, maybe I’m too skeptical. Maybe the church really will come around on these issues. How can they possibly resist this sort of faith? Read More

In Lent, Prayer, Relationships, Spiritual Practice

Praying in the Dark

Lynnette1 March 20201 March 20203 Comments

At church today, the sermon was on healing fractured relationships. We need to go deep into the heart of these rifts, said our interim rector, describing the work of repair as something that needed to be both thoughtful and delicate. It was a good sermon, and hit close enough to home that I was joking with some friends afterward that I felt rather personally called out by it. I was actually a little reassured to hear a few other people share similar thoughts. I doubt any of us are not struggling with fractured relationships in some context.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy has a long list of confessions. It’s the part of the service that seems to always leave me feeling the most shaken, and sometimes quite emotional. The words are just too true. “We have not loved you . . . We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves . . . We have not forgiven . . . We have been deaf to your call to serve . . . the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives . . . our anger at our own frustration . . . our blindness to human need and suffering . . .” There’s an awful lot in it, and a lot that is awful. I find Ash Wednesday services deeply moving and powerful, but never really comfortable. “Remember that you are dust,” they say as they trace the cross made of ashes on your forehead, “and to dust you will return.” The ashes are made from burning the palms from Palm Sunday the previous year. They make me think about human fickleness: palms waved in welcome by crowds who soon be calling “crucify him.” They make me think of charred hopes, of aspirations ground to dust. It is a sobering reminder. Read More

In Church Policy

Different Way the Handbook Says “Don’t”

Ziff26 February 202027 February 2020

I’ve noticed that there are a number of different wordings used in the Church Handbook to say not to do something. Of course, these differences long predate the new Handbook released this week. It was just the release of the new Handbook that got me to thinking about it now.

Here are seven different wordings I’ve seen in the handbook for saying “don’t.” (I’m sure this list is not exhaustive. These are just the ones I found from a quick look at a few sections.)

Members don’t do X.
The Church/Church leaders does/do not encourage X.
The Church/Church leaders counsel against doing X.
The Church/Church leaders strongly discourage doing X.
Members should not do X.
Members must not do X.
Doing X is prohibited/not authorized.

In Fun

Rejected Names for Church Wi-Fi Networks

Ziff17 February 202021 Comments

It appears that the Church will be changing the name of the Wi-Fi networks in meetinghouses from “LDSAccess” to “Liahona.” I assume this is part of President Nelson’s push to not use abbreviations for the name of the Church. Would it be too impertinent of me to point out that “Liahona” doesn’t contain Jesus’s name either?

In any case, I’m sure that the powers that be considered many possible names before settling on the one they chose. Here are some of my guesses for what some of their rejected candidates might have been.

LSD Access
No Doubter Router
Broad and Spacious Band
Strait and Narrow Band
Sweet Is the Network
The Promised LAN
WiFi #19
How Firmware a Foundation
In the Internet but not of the Internet
Holy Text Temple Protocol
Moroni’s Mesh
Helaman’s Hub
Router of Riplakish
Pillar of Firewall
Modest Is Hottest Spot
Wireless Local Area Network of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
SCMC Surveillance Van

If you have additions to the list, please don’t hesitate to share them in the comments!

In Fun

Old Testament Valentines

Ziff10 February 2020

In Church Life

Pregnancy Prophets!

Guest10 January 20204 Comments

This guest post comes to us from Josiah of the blog Josiah Reckons.

We love babies at our church! Our community is excited when someone in the ward is going to have a baby. People are quick to congratulate and offer support.

My wife and I had three children while in our 20’s. People gave encouragement, clothes, toys, food, and support in many other ways. Our church can be very supportive of couples with children.

Specious Signs

In our excitement, we love to talk about pregnancy and babies with expecting parents, but we can get carried away in our enthusiasm. Sometimes we start to think we are pregnancy prophets. We think we are seers seeing the signs of the times. And sometimes we say things that lead to awkward revelations like “Not Pregnant!”.

Being sick last week, and bloated this week is not the same as being pregnant. Gaining a little weight is not the same as being pregnant. Not bouncing back to pre-pregnancy weight ‘fast enough’ is not the same as being pregnant again. Working a couple of weekends and then showing up to church looking tired is not the same as being pregnant. Use your imagination, there are lots of possible reasons a person might look similar to someone in the early stages of pregnancy.

In Fun

Nacle Notebook 2019: Funniest Comments

Ziff6 January 20209 Comments

This post is my annual compilation of the funniest comments and bits of posts that I read on the Bloggernacle in the past year. In case you haven’t read them yet, here are links to compilations for previous years: 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008.

Most of these are excerpts from longer comments or posts. I’ve made each person’s name a link to the original source, so you can go and read them in their original context if you want. Also, the comments are in roughly chronological order.

Comments on Sam Brunson’s post “Call for guest posts: #TeachingPrimaryCFM” at BCC:

[responding to the suggestion that a child could only sit still for as many minutes as they were old]

Great suggestion. I’ll be 72 this year and not old enough for 2-hour church.

Cate:

I taught the Valiant 9 class last year . . . . [at] the monthly teacher council, . . . . we all came in there with different challenges. The gospel doctrine teachers are asking themselves, How can I make this new and interesting to people who have heard it so many times before? The youth teachers are asking, How can I get my kids to see that this really does apply to them? And the primary teacher is asking, How can I get my students to sit at the table instead of under the table?

I was teaching 8 yr olds . . . about the miraculous occurrences at the Kirtland Temple dedication. I was using all of my story telling skills in hopes of providing a relatable experience for about ten. After telling the kids about some at the dedication speaking in toungues, the appearance of an angel, and the visions and miracles that occurred, the kids were quiet, still, and ostensibly attentive. I thought I had ‘em. Then one boy raised his hand. I knew him to be a smart kid. I expected him to ask who the angel was. When I called on him, he very matter of factly asked, “Brother G, did you know I’m going to Disneyland next week?”

In Nature of God, Praise, Spiritual Experience

Praising God

Lynnette4 January 20204 January 20202 Comments

Praising God is a staple of Christian worship. In the various Pentecostal churches I’ve visited, I’ve found that people are more likely to greet you by saying “Praise the Lord” than by simply saying “hello.” In churches where higher levels of congregational exuberance are the norm, it’s not uncommon for people to call out “Hallelujah” or “Praise the Lord” during the sermons and to have bands spending a lot of time on praise songs (“Our God is an Awesome God”). Episcopalians are more sedate, but every Sunday mass has a song of praise at the beginning (though my parish tends toward more traditional music). “Glory to you, beholding the depths; in the high vault of heaven, glory to you,” we sing. Read More

In Fun

New Church Policies for a New Year

Ziff3 January 20204 Comments

Some of my sisters visited me over the holidays, and together we came up with a list of goofy Church policy pronouncements that we’d like to hear this year.

Twinkies are permitted for use in the sacrament (see D&C 27:2), but only if it is preceded by a disclaimer that their use does not imply any endorsement of the Church or its priesthood by the Hostess Corporation.

The Church wishes to state clearly so there can be no confusion that it has no connection with the dating app Moroni’s Bosom.

In Christmas, Fun

Christmas Carol Confusion

Ziff20 December 20193 May 20218 Comments

When I was a kid, I was deeply confused by the lyrics of some of the Christmas carols that I heard or even sang. For example, in the chorus of “What Child Is This?”, this line got me stuck:

Haste, haste, to bring Him laud

Laud? What the heck is laud? I remember wondering if it was a long-ago time, and since food wasn’t as abundant as it is now, maybe what Baby Jesus needed to have brought to him was lard. Not that tasty, but it would keep him and his family alive for a while. Also, I reasoned, perhaps people were just singing the word with some kind of weird affected accent.

Another song that caused me confusion was “The First Noel.” This line in particular:

Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay

For the longest time, I thought that the word certain here was a verb, and this was some as-yet-unknown-to-me usage that meant “to make more certain.” So the angel appeared to the shepherds, who were in doubt and fear, and the angel reassured them to make them certain that all would be well. I admit that I’m still kind of disappointed at its actual meaning, where it feels like a filler word. Like, was it really important at all which shepherds heard the news of Jesus’s birth? Not really. It could have been any old shepherds. Or people of any occupation, really. The important point is just that the birth was announced. It’s not like they were the certain Wise Men who came from the east or anything. So it wasn’t really certain poor shepherds. It would work just as well to say random poor shepherds. I still like my childhood interpretation better. I imagine that we all like shepherds have need of being made more certain, and an angel comes down and provides that certainty.

In Tithing

What to do with the earnings on $100 billion

Ziff18 December 201910 Comments

So, it appears that the Church may have an even bigger stack of investments than many of us thought. In this post, I’m not interested in the possible tax law issues of this giant fund, but rather just the size of the fund. To be blunt, I find it appalling that the Church has this much money available at the same time that General Authorities continuously harp on members to pay tithing, not to mention that they pass other costs on to members like the recently-announced increase in the cost of serving as a missionary and the ongoing requirement for members to clean church buildings.

I was so irritated by this revelation that I started going back through Conference talks and Ensign articles to try to make a comprehensive list of all the times GAs have told stories of members valiantly paying tithing instead of paying for food or rent. But I got sidetracked by a really interesting talk that President Monson gave in 1990 where he discussed changes the Church had made over time to reduce the financial burden on members. He said,

The newly announced local unit budget allowance program is but one of several carefully studied and prayerfully implemented steps taken by the Church to relieve the membership of financial burdens which some simply could not carry.

He then went on to list four changes made in the previous years that were designed to reduce the financial burden of Church membership on members:

The consolidated meeting schedule was introduced (I assume reducing transportation costs).
The Church went from paying 50% of the cost of new buildings to 60%, 70%, 96%, and finally 100%
The per-capita welfare assessment was eliminated.
Ward/branch budgets became completely funded by the Church.

In Church Meetings, Statistics

Who bears their testimony in F&T meeting?

Ziff2 December 20192 December 20198 Comments

Who bears their testimony in fast and testimony meeting? I’m interested in this question not so much in the sense of which particular people do (“Oh, no, it’s Brother Mansplainer!”), but in the sense of whether it’s the same ten people every month or an ever-changing group.

To get some data on this question, I noted who in my ward bore their testimony in each of the 12 fast and testimony meetings in 2019. Of course it would be much better to have data from hundreds or thousands of wards and branches in different locations, but that would be really hard to get, so I decided to start with what I have. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted data for one month when I got a new phone and factory reset the old one, so what I’m working with is 11 months of data. I excluded the testimony that’s always borne by the bishopric member who’s conducting the meeting, as I was interested in tracking testimonies borne by people who chose to do it, and bishopric members are pretty much expected to do it as a matter of course.

In the 11 F&T meetings, 99 testimonies were borne, or an average of 9 per meeting. These 99 testimonies were borne by just 44 people, so the average person who bore their testimony bore it 2.25 times in the year. The maximum number of testimonies borne by any one person was 9, and this was achieved by two people, so together they accounted for over 18% of all testimonies borne. Of the 99 testimonies, four came from visitors and two from missionaries serving in the ward.

Before I get more into the question of the same ten people, I thought it might be interesting to look at a breakdown of the testimonies by age and gender, which is shown in this graph.

Most of the testimonies (82%) were borne by adults, with some teens (age 12-17) and only one child (age < 12). Women and girls bore more testimonies in all age groups (58% of adults, 76% of teens, 100% of children).

In Depression, Mental Health

Going to the Edge

Lynnette23 November 201923 November 20199 Comments

CW: Suicidality

To start with, it was my birthday, and even in good years I don’t like my birthday. It comes just after New Year’s, after everyone is burned out on holidays and get-togethers and eating too much rich food, and has moved on to New Year’s resolutions about healthier living. It’s only two weeks after the winter solstice, and the light is barely making any headway against the still-dominant darkness that somehow seeps into everything. And by that point I am usually tired of people and celebrations, and feel cranky and just want to hide. In bad years, I am also deeply upset about being alive, and the anniversary of my birth feels like a bleak thing to be noticing, let alone pretending to be happy about. Read More

In Race, Scripture

Do Scripture Stories ever depict heavenly people of color?

Ziff20 November 201914 Comments

Well sure they do! For example, here’s a picture from New Testament Stories that shows the pre-mortal existence and includes a black boy, and here’s another picture from Doctrine and Covenants Stories that shows people going to the Celestial Kingdom, and they’re not all white.

Other than those two, though, no.