“Scrooge regarded everyone with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humored fellows said, ‘Good morning, sir! A Merry Christmas to you!’ and Scrooge said often afterward, that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.”
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
It was a Catholic friend who first introduced me to the term “scrupulosity,” a condition in which one is overly obsessed with personal sin. The topic came up because of my friend’s observation that I had some tendencies in that direction. I didn’t disagree. But I must confess that on some level I actually took the observation as a compliment. I secretly believed that it was an indication of a virtuous life. I must be a truly moral person, I thought, to be so acutely aware of my constant failings—and to be so unwilling to cut myself any slack for them. Read More
The following is an excerpt from an interview between a member of the Strengthening the Members Committee and missionary rodent, shortly after she was taken into captivity
How long have you been following us?
My people first came to this planet in search of intelligent life in the hopes of opening trade negotiations, and seeking a new avenue for allies in our continuing war–
Nearly a decade ago I was a missionary, serving for three weeks in the Provo MTC before moving on to a smaller MTC in Latin America for the remainder of my Spanish language training. While I was in Provo, Sister Cheiko Okazaki (1926-2011), the former first counselor of the Relief Society General Presidency, came and spoke to the Sister missionaries. (I was sad, after hearing her, that the Elders had not been invited as well.)
I have always loved Sister Okazaki’s thoughts. In her books and public speaking, she quotes often from the Bible. Her advice that day in the MTC was both practical and inspiring, a discussion of dealing with feelings of inadequacy and hypocrisy, of “putting on Christ,” and of navigating the need to forgive ourselves and others on our journey. It was filled with metaphors from scripture about clothing and Christian discipleship. Read More
Sorry, friends: I apparently can’t stop myself from weighing in on Pantpocalypsalooza (term borrowed from someone cleverer than me), so if you can’t stand to hear any more about it, I’d stop reading now. Read More
One of the things that has stood out to me in wading through the comments on The Great Pants Uproar (not a great use of one’s time, I must say, though that didn’t stop me) is the number of people who have expressed the sentiment, “if you don’t like the church, you should leave.” I want to think about this idea from a theological angle, specifically what it means in the context of religious pluralism. Read More
An oft-made statement in discussions of gender equality in the church is something along the lines of, “I’ve never felt unequal.” (Or, if the speaker is male, “My wife/daughters/sisters have never felt unequal.”) Sometimes there’s a barb in it: “I’ve never felt unequal, so why do you? What’s wrong with your testimony?” But more often than not, I think it’s simply an honest account of a person’s experience, combined perhaps with a bafflement that other women have the concerns they do. Read More
No, seriously. There are, at this very moment, a lot of people who are convinced that the end of the world is coming because of trousers. In church even! On ladies!
The Mayans predicted this! Read More
When we started ZD nearly seven years ago, I don’t recall that we had much discussion about whether or not to use pseudonyms—I think we simply took it for granted that we would. Some of my co-bloggers spent some time coming up with creative names. Seraphine originally went by “S”, and I recall an extended email conversation about name ideas for her. In contrast, I was pretty boring; I decided to just use my middle name, of which I’ve always been rather fond. Read More
What would a church designed by and for introverts look like?
At a recent FAIR conference, Joshua Johanson spoke about how he has negotiated the conflict between his same sex attraction and his religious faith. Something that struck me about this talk was a comment he made near the beginning about his wife’s relationship with the feminist movement and how it is similar to his relationship to the gay movement. He stated: Read More
In support of RAH’s Sister Missionary Leadership Project over at fMh, here’s a post about my mission originally published at Both Sides Now in July of last year.
In our mission we had APs and “Traveling Elders” who assisted with a lot of the nuts and bolts of mission organization (for a primer on the organizational structure of LDS missions, see here). They acted as extra eyes and ears for the Mission President (MP), traveling around the mission area and checking in with different companionships, helping to arrange apartments, discussing difficulties in different areas or companionships, etc. Because mission rules prevented the young Elders from visiting one-on-one with the Sister missionaries, the MP created a calling he dubbed the “Coordinating Sister.” It was the Coordinating Sister’s job, once or twice a month, to travel around the mission area with her companion, work with other Sister missionaries, and then report back to the MP. From my vantage point it was a very helpful calling, since mission culture and rules meant not only that Sisters were often more isolated than Elders, but also that they typically felt very inhibited about discussing problems in companionships with their District or Zone Leaders or even with the MP. (I should probably note that neither I nor any of my companions served as the Coordinating Sister.)
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A few weeks ago in my elders’ quorum, we had the lesson from the George Albert Smith manual on the Word of Wisdom. As often happens with lessons on this topic, a couple of people raised their hands and talked about how the Word of Wisdom is the perfect health code, that it tells us exactly what we must do to be the healthiest we possibly can. Along similar lines, in response to some provocateur asking why we don’t drink a little wine since some research suggests it might be good for us (no, the provocateur was not me :D), people also commented that if any “science” (their tone suggested the quotation marks) suggested something different than the Word of Wisdom, then the science was sure to be proven wrong sooner or later.
The manual is more conservative. While it says that we’ll be physically blessed for following the Word of Wisdom, it doesn’t say that the Word of Wisdom is necessarily the perfect health code. I think this is actually a strength of the commandment: it’s reasonable, but it’s not too reasonable.
I’m less than thrilled that I’m going to be stuck in class from 6:00 to 9:00 pm on election night. (Though I’m sure everyone will be surreptitiously checking the election returns.) For the last presidential election, we had a family Skype, which was a fun way to watch things unfold. (It was also memorable because I was staying with my sister Eve, and my niece was born in the early hours of the following day.)
I’m curious as to what other people will be doing. Do you have traditions? Do you get together with people? Do you skip the whole thing?
(NOTE: THIS IS NOT A POST TO DISCUSS THE MERITS OF SPECIFIC CANDIDATES OR PROPOSITIONS, AND COMMENTS ALONG THOSE LINES WILL BE REPLACED WITH RANDOM STAR WARS MATERIAL.)
One of my first posts at ZD was about what I called my “feminist awakening.” I pinpointed it to a particular summer, the first of my graduate studies. But, I don’t think it really explained the bigger picture of what really was happening. That summer wasn’t the beginning of my discomfort with gender inequality, it was just the first time I named it. And, it was the first time I really dealt with something I came to term “gender coercion.” And by gender coercion, I mean:
The forcing of another party to act out gendered expectations in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation, or some other form of pressure or force. Read More
Being a woman in a male dominated major at a school with a large LDS population can be difficult. Although many of the male students won’t treat women any differently, there are some who will act threatened by or uncomfortable with women in these programs. It is not that uncommon for women to be told that they are “taking up the spot” of a potential breadwinner, or asked what in the world they are going to do with their major once they are a stay at home mom. Generally, the stereotypes of women in male dominated fields is that they are career oriented and thus are not interested in having a family. There is also an assumption that women in male dominated majors must be planning on using the major in a stereotypical female way by going into teaching or part-time work. Read More
For the past few years, I’ve posted lists of some of the funniest comments I read on the bloggernacle in the previous year. One reason I do this is because I love to laugh. But another reason is that I hate to forget. The bloggernacle is full of all kinds of great writing on interesting topics and fascinating discussion (yes, I know, not always), but it’s also ephemeral. Today’s interesting post is a vague memory tomorrow, and will likely be forgotten by the end of the week.
So in my ongoing effort to promote remembering what is great about the bloggernacle, allow me to present a list of 15 posts from 2011 that I loved. (It was going to be 10, but I could only reduce my list so far.) With each post, I’ve included a quote that will, I hope, draw you in and lead you to want to go (re)read the whole thing. Other than the last one, which actually appeared first, the posts are listed in the order they were published.
Kent Larsen at T&S has a great list of possible effects of the changes in minimum missionary ages that President Monson announced in Conference. Many of the effects discussed are straightforward and closely tied to missionary work (e.g. enrollment at BYU), but others are more weakly tied and more speculative (e.g., divorce rate). I want to push things out even father, and guess about other possible changes in the Church that are completely unrelated to missionary work, but that might be made more likely by the missionary age change. Read More
In the past, ZD has posted titles of unpublished drafts for your consideration and perusal. Currently there are a whopping 933 unpublished drafts in our queue. Here are the titles of a few:
In one of the fMh Conference threads, Elisothel said that Wyoming gets a mention in every Conference. This got me to wondering how often any of the US states are mentioned. So I looked it up. Read More