Zelophehad's Daughters

I had the opportunity (and the very narrow window of time) a few weeks ago to drop in on exactly one session of the Salt Lake City Mormon Stories Conference.  I was pleasantly surprised there when I got the chance to meet and listen to one of my blogging crushes–the “Mormon Child Bride.” 

Her reflections about faith transitions, navigating family and cultural expectations, authentic living, and experiences with doubt and belief were so perfectly done, so wonderfully vivid, and so refreshingly well-composed (as only a teacher of English could do) that I asked if I could share her latest here.  

Graciously she agreed, and so, without further ado, I give you the words and the faith journey of the very much admired MCB.

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We are excited to announce that we’ve adopted two more ZDs: Beatrice and Galdralag, from the outstanding blog Both Sides Now.

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E-mail received today: 

Bishop ***** and I both endorse an effort of the ******* Catholic Church to bring  to light religious freedoms being encroached upon by our government,  and encourage all Latter Day Saints to participate in an open invitation to all Christian congregations to attend an Interdenominational prayer service for religious liberty on Saturday June 16^th @ 7:00 PM at **********.

 Let’s support our Christian Brothers in something we can agree on! 

Note (added after publishing):  Some have (I can now see, understandably) assumed that this e-mail was sent by the Bishop’s wife.  However, it was actually sent by a bishop who is just referring to a neighboring ward’s bishop who is in agreement.  So, there was no “pulling rank” from a wife going on or anything strange like that.

Or, What The Media Doesn’t Mention About Mormons in Business

The Economist recently published an article about the prevalence of Mormons among successful businesspeople, and it’s certainly not the first publication to do so; there’s an entire book dedicated to the so-called “Mormon Way of Doing Business.” (Are we, as a people, really so prevalent in the top echelons of business? And here I thought Mormons were all lawyers, dentists, and podiatrists!) These articles have all noticed a peculiar correlation out there in the wild world of business, one that goes a little bit like this: Read More

Any good descriptive linguist will tell you that words aren’t defined by the dictionary; they’re defined by the communities who use them. Consequently, a word like “preside” doesn’t necessarily mean, in the context of Mormonism, what a general-use dictionary says it means. While its secular/worldly/dictionary definition might be “to exercise authority or control”¹ or some such, in Mormonism, it actually means “to be the seat of the authority while also being equal to everyone in a  non-hierarchical authority structure, and maybe also have veto power,” or some such.²

BLARRKT.

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1. preside, v. OED, 3rd edition, March 2007; <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/150739> [↩]
2. This is really my best attempt at defining “preside” according to the most apologetic, non-in-charge definition I can come up with. If you have a better one, have at it, but you’ll also have to have-at whether it changes the way I’m analyzing the term’s deployment, below. [↩]

If you’re in Utah in August, you should definitely check this out. It looks like a great conference. See details here.

 

I’ve been reading a book and it has me all curious about something.  So, just let me know, in the comments.

E or I

Which do you lean more towards?

I wrote this two years ago and just happened to come across it today.  

My senior year at BYU was pretty darn lame.  But, you know, it was only lame because I made it lame with my panic.  You see, it was the first time I actually realized that I was going to be graduating…with a humanities degree…and I was still single…

The irony of the whole thing was that I was totally blindsided.  I was that girl who would shake her head sadly at those other girls in MFHD/ElementaryEd** who came to college to “get married.”

“You go to college to…GO TO COLLEGE,” I would intone philosophically at BBQ’s.

But, ya know what?  Come September 2005, I was in full scale panic. Read More

Today is a day when I wish to honor the crowning glory of God’s creation, that being which is supernal among God’s children, whose qualities mirror as no others’ do the supreme love, grace, and dignity of its creator; whose elegance, gentleness of soul, and unique reproductive capacities bespeak its divine origins.  I speak of course of Wombat, the shnuffliest and burrowingest of all Australian mammals, the most pudgy-nosed and adorable. God indeed has a special love for his wombats.

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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 mentioned in my last post that I found FMH in the spring of 2005. I periodically looked at the bloggernacle that year, but much of my time online was spent on another, mental-health related message board, and I didn’t have time to be involved in many more online activities. Also, while I was intrigued by Mormon blogs, I was also intimidated, and I have to admit that I was uncertain that I would find any welcome there. In Mormon contexts I’ve so often felt like an outsider, and I worried that the same dynamic would be at work online. So while I was interested to see people discussing such a wide variety of questions, I didn’t follow the blogs very closely.

I’m not sure what shifted, but in December of that year, I decided to start commenting on FMH. Read More

As I mentioned in my last post, I wasn’t planning to study theology when I went off to grad school. But once I started, I fell in love with it. I’ve blogged before about how it affected my faith more generally. But here I want to mention some of the issues that came up which were particularly related to my developing feminism, and mention some of the questions I was thinking about.

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I didn’t plan to go to BYU. In fact, I planned to go anywhere but BYU. As a teenager, I was determined to get out of the state of Utah. But when my senior year rolled around, and BYU offered me money, and I looked at the financial realities of my situation—it made sense. So in the end, I gave in.

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I first saw the Star Wars movies when I was eleven, shortly after my parents purchased our first VCR. I was an immediate and enthusiastic convert. My siblings and I watched the movies over and over—in the days before we owned them, we used to check them out from the library every week (my mother would ask, are you sure you don’t want to try something new? and we would inevitably answer, no). I can divide up my life into Before Star Wars, and After. Read More

When people talk about the reasons for uncivil behavior on the internet, anonymity is often mentioned as a culprit. If no one knows who you are, the theory goes, you’re less likely to censor yourself. And it certainly is ridiculously easy to find people posting under pseudonyms and tearing each other apart. (Just check out the comment section of most newspapers.) Read More

Some recent Facebook bloggernacle conversation has gotten me thinking once again about an issue that I’ve been meaning to blog about for a long time. (I probably started this post during the Prop 8 Blog Wars, but in classic ZD fashion, never got around to finishing it.) My original title was something like “Should We Have Compassion for Gays?” I changed it because I didn’t want to deal with the people who only read the title of the post before commenting. But that is in fact the question I want to think about.

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How do we describe women’s participation in the Church to non-Mormons? There have been a few recent published statements that have all attempted this and have, in my view, all gotten it wrong in the same way.

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Just for fun: Read More

If you follow the bloggernacle, by this time, you are likely familiar with Ralph Hancock’s recent two-part article at Meridian Magazine (parts one and two) about Joanna Brooks’ memoir, The Book of Mormon Girl. (See discussions here, here, and here.) I know I’m a bit late to the party, but I found this essay seriously troubling, and I wanted to add my two cents. There is a lot to consider, but I want to focus on a few things I found particularly problematic: Hancock’s condescending tone and generally dismissive attitude toward Brooks, and his approach to issues of gender and feminism. Read More