In Family

Making it Work

Author ApamePosted on 64 Comments

“Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face.  You have to be fully committed.”  ~ Eat Pray Love

It was rainy yesterday.  And sometimes, when it’s rainy, all you want to do is wear pajamas and watch a movie like Eat Pray Love.  Paint your toenails.  Eat…yogurt?

I don’t know.

The point is that I netflixed Eat Pray Love because I could and this particular quote jumped out to me.  Mostly because I thought it was hilarious.  Secondarily because it had relevance to my life and a certain psychological battle I’ve been dealing with recently.

Babies. Read More

In Scripture

Does the design of our scriptures make them more difficult to read?

Author ZiffPosted on 22 Comments

LDS scriptures can be difficult to read. One reason is that their language is unfamiliar. The argument has often been made that we should quit using the KJV Bible, or at least supplement it with a more recent translation (for example, here’s Steve Evans, here’s Julie M. Smith, here’s DKL, and here’s Grant Hardy on the topic). But I’m thinking of a different reason our scriptures can be hard to read: their design.

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In Uncategorized

No Comment

Author ZiffPosted on 22 Comments

I recently bought some eyeglasses online. When I was selecting frames, the site I was buying from allowed me to filter the list by whether I wanted by rim style (full rim, half rim, rimless), by shape, by size, and by frame color. It occurred to me that none of these were all that useful to me because what I found most important was that my glasses not make a statement of any kind. Needless to say, this is a difficult enough criterion to define that the site did not allow me to filter frames in this way.

I eventually found some frames I was happy with. But thinking about the issue of wanting my glasses to not make a statement also got me to wondering about whether such a goal is easier for men to achieve than it is for women.

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In Church Life, Church Policy, Community

Times, They Are A Changin’

Author ApamePosted on 14 Comments

A couple months ago, I wrote a quick post about Visiting Teaching and my relationship to it.  In it, I emphasized that I didn’t feel like a forced, monthly visit was spiritually or socially useful to me, though it might be for other people.  I also mentioned how my favorite VTs in the past didn’t visit me monthly, but would formally drop by every 3-6 months and otherwise just treat me as a friend around town.

I lamented how the VT/HT program, can get too caught up in stats and “just getting it in each month” rather than really thinking about what people individually need, want, or can adequately do.

The response I got was good–some people liked the idea of making VT/HT more flexible and some people thought that the monthly meeting, though it may not be the most casual, was its own form of showing love through showing consistency. Thanks for all your comments.

I bring it all up again because I wanted to share something interesting with anyone who was intrigued by that post a while back: Read More

In Uncategorized

Taking Requests

Author VadaPosted on 15 Comments

Our blog is a little slow lately, and I’m feeling a little bad about that, and like I should do something about it. I have a number of post drafts in-progress, but none that are currently interesting enough to me to be worth the energy to finish them. So I thought I would approach our lovely readers. Are there any subjects that you’ve always wanted to discuss? Anything you wish we had a post on? Anything that’s currently on your mind that you wish there was a current post about? I’m taking requests. I won’t guarantee anything (since that’s practically a guarantee that I won’t manage to do it), but if you want to see a post on a particular subject and I can come up with something quasi-intelligent to say on the matter, I’ll try to do it. So, fire away. I aim to please.

In Uncategorized

A Spreadsheet for 2011

Author VadaPosted on 8 Comments

While I don’t hold with the idea that you can magically change yourself and your habits by setting goals as New Year’s rolls around, I still find it useful to occasionally stop and look at how I’m doing in various areas of my life, and try to figure out how I can improve. New Year’s and my birthday (which happens to fall in July) always work out to be good times to re-evaluate and try to change some things, and this year is no different.

I set some goals last year, like I do every year, and (as in most years) I achieved some and didn’t achieve others. I’m okay with that — my general philosophy is that I’ll never be perfect, but better is always good. Since I didn’t get as far as I wanted to on some of my goals last year, I decided I should try something different to help motivate me this year, and I had a brilliant idea — a spreadsheet. (I know, it doesn’t sound that brilliant, but really, it was. For me at least.) Read More

In Equality, Feminism, Gender Issues, Intellectual Passions, Uncategorized

My Feminist Beginning: The Joseph Smith Seminar

Author ApamePosted on 59 Comments

It has always intrigued me to hear about people’s “realization moments”–for it seems that, often, women and men come to understand feminism in a sudden moment in time when it became clear, or a series of common events that string together to form the sentence, “Something is not right here.”

I have these moments, and I’ve often thought how interesting it was that my first self-identifiable “feminist realizations” floated around in one single summer, the summer I studied at the Joseph Smith Seminar. Read More

In Fun, Gender Issues

The Circularity of “Separate but Equal”: A Dialogue in Socratic Form.

Author MelyngochPosted on 16 Comments

Socrates and his pal Piggly-Wiggly are out for a post-Thanksgiving pre-Advent walk down by the river.

Piggly-wiggly: . . . and you know what else? Short people. Short people just need to learn to accept their divinely-appointed height role. It’s not a lesser role, just because they’re not allowed to hold public office or propose legislation. They have a lot of important responsbilities. Their role is just as important as tall people’s role.

Socrates: An interesting perspective, my friend. But, if I may query, why do short people need a separate role? Read More

In Grace, Theology

Gratitude and Grace

Author LynnettePosted on 5 Comments

A couple of years ago, I wrote a Thanksgiving post about my ambivalence about gratitude, and why, while I see the value of it, I think it’s a problem to dictate it, or to use injunctions like “be grateful” as a weapon against those who dare to express unhappiness about anything. I’ve been thinking about the subject again this year, but perhaps from a somewhat less psychological and more theological angle. I’ve been wondering—why, religiously speaking, is gratitude important?

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In Callings, Children, Moral Dilemmas, Secrecy, Teaching, Uncategorized

The Fine Art of Spiritual Vaccines

Author PetraPosted on 15 Comments

I was recently called as my ward’s early-morning seminary teacher. I’ll pause to let you all wince.

There are many challenges to this calling, but, to my surprise, waking up at 5:15 AM is not the greatest challenge. (This isn’t to say it’s the smallest challenge, either; I’m not a morning person, at all, and I freely admit to having some very un-Christian feelings in my heart–and words in my mouth–when that alarm goes off.) Read More

In Church Life

Quantity vs. Quality: If you could only have one on a spiritual desert island…

Author ApamePosted on 18 Comments

I have this weird relationship with visiting teaching.

I really like it, actually.  I like it for its ultimate point: to make sure everyone has, if not a couple of friends in the community, at least someone who is making sure you’re okay.  I’m all about making dinners, babysitting kids for bedridden sisters, or sending off a “how ya doin'” kind of card if I notice someone seems down.  I really like getting visited and getting to know people I’m generally too shy to get to know on my own. Read More