In Blogging

My Nacle Notebook 2008: Funny comments

Author ZiffPosted on 49 Comments

During the Niblets, a random John said that he enjoys looking back at the stuff that gets nominated more than he enjoys the voting. I tend to agree with him. There are all kinds of interesting, funny, amazing, and touching things written in the Bloggernacle. But I have a short memory, and I typically don’t think about even the best of what I read for more than a day or two.

In an effort to improve my Bloggernacle experience, I’ve started bookmarking posts and comments that strike me. This way, when current discussions get too acrimonious or repetitive, I know I can always go back and find my own favorite pieces of writing.

So, on the assumption that a random John and I are not alone in enjoying looking back at favorite stuff, let me share some bits of my Nacle Notebook with you. I’ll start with the comments that made me laugh.

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In Parenthood, Personal Narratives

Missing Motherhood

Author SeraphinePosted on 19 Comments

In high school, I was often frustrated with the standard gender narrative for women (get married in the temple, have babies, become a noble mother in Zion, ad nauseum). I was passionate about education, and even in high school, I imagined myself going to graduate school. I resented being told over and over in YW that my only purpose in life was to be a mother. I wasn’t anti-motherhood, but I had other goals and dreams that I wanted everyone (including God) to recognize. Read More

In Misc

Come See Us at Sunstone!

Author ZDPosted on 15 Comments

Four of the ZDs (Ziff, Lynnette, Seraphine, and Kiskilili) will be on a panel at Sunstone this week.  We’ll be presenting Thursday morning, session 133, on the topic “Possibilities in Mormon Feminism.”  Yes, it sounds dry, but what would you expect from a bunch of academics?  And Ziff may liven things up with fun graphs and charts.  We’d love to see fellow bloggers-both those we’ve had the good fortune to meet, and those we haven’t met yet. So if you’ll be at the symposium, please come by and say hello.  (And if for some crazy reason you pick a different session that hour, we’ll be around for the rest of the symposium, and at the bloggersnacker on Friday night.)

In Gender Issues

A Partner to Adam

Author LynnettePosted on 68 Comments

In describing the honored place of women in the plan of salvation, LDS leaders commonly cite the narrative found in Genesis 2, in which Eve is created as a helpmeet to Adam. They often emphasize that in order to be a true helpmeet she would have to be the equal of Adam, and reference the symbolism of Eve being created from Adam’s rib as pointing to her role as a full, contributing partner, one neither superior nor inferior. And not infrequently, the fact that Eve is created at the very end of the story is cited as evidence of her elevated status. Read More

In Church Life, Community, Personal Narratives

The Grace of Community and Friendship

Author SeraphinePosted on 14 Comments

Last week I began to ponder how the Atonement might apply currently to the struggles I’m facing. We’re taught that the Atonement is not only there for sinners, but for everyone who needs healing and reconciliation. I began to wonder how it might be possible to use the Atonement to reconcile myself to a God from whom I am distant and with whom I am very upset.

This was in the back of my mind as I went to church on Sunday.  Read More

In Dating

Interfaith Dating: It Ain’t Just For NoMos Anymore

Author MelyngochPosted on 23 Comments

On a recent first date, I found myself discussing, with the suitor in question, the topic of previous relationships. We established that we both have a history of dating people for three or four months on average, before one party or the other decides it’s not working and everyone moves on (though rarely so undramatically as I’ve just summarized it); I suggested this happens because three months is about how long it takes to determine whether a thing has the grip to go long-term. He responded – and of course I paraphrase – “Well, at least if you’re both LDS, at least you already know you agree about all the important things.” Read More

In Community

Caring What Others Think

Author LynnettePosted on 21 Comments

There is a conversation which I have seen repeated over and over. It goes something like this. Person A: “I’m upset because I did/said x and I got a negative reaction, people are annoyed with me, etc.” Person B: “Your problem is that you care too much what others think. You need to stop worrying about that.” Seeing variations on this basic exchange on a regular basis has led me to reflect on the question of whether it is necessarily negative to care what others think, a flaw to be overcome, as it is so regularly framed.
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In Fun

The Five Universal Truths of Road Trips

Author ElberethPosted on 36 Comments

I’ve recently had the opportunity to do a lots of driving (somewhere over three thousand miles all told) and I think I’ve discovered the five universal truths of road trips.

1. Books on MP3 (aka CD/tape) make the trip go faster.
I listen to audiobooks to help my apartment get clean faster but this time I discovered they also seem to make road trips go faster. I seem to prefer light mysteries (I’m listening to the stories of Amelia Peabody right now) because I can move my attention to something else (like the semi up ahead who’s pulled over or the downpour that’s about to happen) without losing too much of the plot line. After sitting in a car for three, eight, or even ten hours straight, it’s nice to listen to someone else’s ‘life.’
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In Personal Narratives

Finding Myself

Author SeraphinePosted on 22 Comments

Recently, as I’ve sat pondering the mess that’s been my life for the past year, I noticed a common thread. For awhile now, I’ve been allowing other people to invade my boundaries, to dictate how I will act, to affect my life in negative ways without directly standing up for myself and my needs. Instead, I’ve been withdrawing further and further into myself, hoping the barrage from the world around me would stop. Read More

In Christian Practice, Church Life, Personal Narratives, Questions

Going Nowhere, Fast: Two Decades of Religious Crisis, and Counting

Author EvePosted on 28 Comments

It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another; it’s one damn thing over and over.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Late this afternoon I sat down to feed my seven-month-old daughter dinner. She quickly tires of solid food; she’ll accept a few spoonfuls, but then she wants to bang her fists on her tray and throw Cheerios on the floor, so I keep my laptop on the table to entertain myself in between offering bites of cereal or strained peas. In my browsing I came across a presentation on Mormonism and feminism I gave sixteen years ago, the summer I was twenty-one. I clicked on the file with trepidation, sure I’d be dismayed at how young and naïve and foolish I sounded. But what I found was far worse: I was dismayed at how familiar I sounded. Sixteen years ago I was dealing with almost exactly the same issues in Mormonism that I am now. Read More

In Missions, Statistics

Missions, Numbers, and Lying

Author EvePosted on 76 Comments

On a thread last year at BCC entitled Coming Clean, Mark Brown daringly confessed to the entire Bloggernacle that he invented his mission numbers reports. His bold revelation transported me straight back to a dark, sweltering night in the dark, sweltering center of my mission. I had recently become senior companion, and while my first couple of ZLs had accepted our numbers as representative of our best efforts and delivered encouragement rather than condemnation, our new ZL, who had just ascended from junior companion with a death grip on his own personal scepter of self-righteousness, was subjecting us to the first real numbers pressure I’d ever experienced. The Sunday-night ritual of calling numbers in was becoming distinctly unpleasant; the ZL was constantly critical of the weekly results we had to report, unwittingly heaping discouragement on me during what was already, for me, a very difficult time, one of the lowest of my mission. Read More

In Uncategorized

“those durned librul activist judges” aka, Gay Marriage and Judicial Review in Action

Author VadaPosted on 10 Comments

I wanted to talk about this during the Prop 8 fervor, but didn’t quite have the energy. With the recent ruling in Iowa going into effect, I thought this was a good time to bring it up again. My friend John already wrote an awesome note stating my feelings on the matter better than I could, so (with his permission) I am reposting it here. Read More

In Blogging

Ten Thousand Comments

Author LynnettePosted on 29 Comments

In our recent discussion of theory and practice, ZD hit 10,000 comments.  (The 10,000th comment, by the way, was Geoff J’s #6 on that thread.  Congratulations, Geoff; your prize, a T-shirt that says “This is What a Feminist Looks Like,” and a subscription to BUST magazine, will be in the mail.)  I have to say that it’s a bit strange to think that our relatively small blog has this many comments.  (Just think of the number of dissertations that could have been produced by all that writing.  Of course, they might not have been coherent dissertations.)

Comments, I think most bloggers would agree, are both one of the most fun and one of the most challenging aspects of running a blog. Read More