Zelophehad's Daughters

I sometimes get evasive when people ask what I study, especially if I’m not feeling particularly talkative–an admission that I study theology can lead to all kinds of complicated conversations. But for the most part, my fellow Latter-day Saints have been enthusiastic and supportive, and I’ve very much appreciated that. However, there are some ideas about divinity school which I’ve repeatedly encountered that I’ve found somewhat baffling, as they really haven’t matched my experience.

(Caveat: this is shaped to some extent by my specific field of systematic theology, and I’d be interested in hearing from those who work in other areas of religion.)

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As I contemplated what to write about today, unlike past years, nothing immediately sprang to mind. Overall I think that’s a great thing. Life, even with autism, is more settled these days. We have routines and plans, and real communication, and things are pretty good.

Don’t get me wrong — life with Spencer is far from “normal”. My almost-3yo talks better than my 6yo does. If I have to choose one hand to hold in a busy parking lot or to cross a street, it’s that of my oldest child. Nearly everything in the house ends up dipped in water at one point or another, and that includes electronics. I’m trying to potty-train 3 children at once, and with the oldest I’ve probably washed out 5 or 6 times more poopy underwear than most parents do while potty training 10 children. Waiting in a line is like yanking teeth out with my bare hands.

Still, things are pretty good. Read More

Today is the 4th annual World Autism Awareness Day, and in honor of it, we here at ZD are lighting it up blue today. Look for a related post later in the day!

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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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.

Don’t miss Dane Laverty’s Mormon Stories interview on the genesis of
his feminist convictions and his hopes for his new site, Agitating
Faithfully.  It’s well worth a listen.

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

Judith Dushku and Eliza Dushku are attempting to raise $30,000 to build a healing center for former child soldiers in Uganda. For more information, including how you can donate (and be entered in the ultimate Feminist Mormon Housewives raffle), see fMhLisa’s post.