Zelophehad's Daughters

I was watching a movie yesterday that I’ve watched many times in the past and that typically makes me laugh out loud pretty much every time I watch it. I think I laughed once. I didn’t find it that funny. And I stopped and realized I don’t really remember finding much of anything funny in the past few years.

I think somehow in all the epic emotional drama of my life I lost my ability to have fun and just enjoy life. Except with my students because if you can’t laugh when you teach high school students then you’re too far gone to be saved. Read More

In Uncategorized

The Anxieties of Faith

Seraphine3 October 200912 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot this past year about how faith is a risk. When you take a leap of faith, you hope that things will work out and that your faith will be confirmed, but this doesn’t necessarily happen. When you walk blindly into darkness, sometimes you find a path or a light, but sometimes you get lost. And sometimes you take a dive headfirst off a cliff you didn’t see. It can happen because your faith wasn’t strong enough; it can happen because what you had faith in wasn’t “true,” but sometimes there’s no clear reason for what happens after you exercise your faith. Read More

In Uncategorized

Bafflement at the Atonement

Seraphine25 September 200925 September 200928 Comments

This past month has been miraculous in unexpected ways. As I wrote recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Atonement. I realized this summer that the Atonement was probably the only thing that could heal my relationship with God–I knew the pain was too great for me to muster the faith to trust God again without some kind of help.

So, I started praying. Read More

In General Conference

Ordinary members speaking in General Conference

Ziff24 September 200925 Comments

What do you think about having ordinary Church members speak in General Conference?

In Pluralism, Theology

The Pitfalls of Pluralism

Lynnette13 September 200913 September 200917 Comments

When it comes to religion, I have strong pluralist sympathies; one of the aspects of the LDS church I personally find the most challenging is the “only true church” claim. I’ve blogged before about why I think it’s a mistake for Mormons to assume that we have nothing to learn from other traditions, or to conceptualize them as–at best–less developed versions of ourselves. In my own life, I have found that serious engagement with the teachings and ideas of other traditions has tremendously enriched my faith.

Nonetheless, there are ways of talking about pluralism that I find problematic. Read More

In GA's, Statistics

Aging of the Quorum of the Twelve

Ziff11 September 200934 Comments

Mike Wallace: There are those who say, “This is a gerontocracy. This is a church run by old men.”

Gordon B. Hinckley: Isn’t it wonderful to have a man of maturity at the head, a man of judgment who isn’t blown about by every wind of doctrine?

[From a 1996 interview on 60 Minutes.]

In Church Life, Marriage, Singles

My Brief, Hideous Encounter with Mormon Single Life

Eve10 September 200914 October 201736 Comments

A couple of months ago I was in the throes of a personal bread-making craze which has since spent itself, partly because the bread I made wasn’t very good. (I really need to get some pointers from those domestic goddesses over at FMH.) One bread-baking afternoon I took my wedding ring off to knead the dough, and I neglected to put it on again before attending a church meeting that evening. Read More

In Uncategorized

My Realization from Sunstone (or How Sunstone Strengthened My Testimony)

Seraphine9 September 200910 September 200914 Comments

While I have recently found a renewed appreciation for the Mormon community, my worries about God were rolling around in the back of my mind as I went off to Sunstone this year. So, perhaps it was inevitable that the theme that jumped out at me while I attended multiple sessions was a teaching unique to Mormonism: our embodied God. Different speakers explored what this meant for gendered experience, for how God understands and interacts with us, etc.

While I found all the philosophical discussions on an embodied God fascinating, the discussions kept reminding me of my recent desires to remake God into a figure that was easier to deal with; Read More

In Blogging

My Nacle Notebook 2008: Interesting Comments

Ziff8 September 200921 November 201513 Comments

Here’s an experience I frequently have on the Bloggernacle. I read a post and think of a great response. Then I read through the comments and find that someone else already made my point, typically with greater eloquence and precision of thought. Read More

In Giftedness

Thought Experiement: Giftedness at Church

Eve7 September 200914 October 201729 Comments

OK, just for fun and just because I can’t seem to stop talking today, I’m going to propose a thought-experiment in the form of a bunch of related questions.

In Giftedness

The Trouble with Giftedness

Eve6 September 200914 October 201773 Comments

A recent thread at Segullah got me, yet again, contemplating my reservations about giftedness.

In Academia, Politics

Proselytizing and Liberal Contempt

Eve5 September 200914 October 201769 Comments

For me political choice is generally negative; prolonged exposure to the proponents of one set of dogmas tends to drive me into the arms of that dogma’s opponents. By the logic of this unpleasant via negativa, my upbringing in Utah County made me liberal; recent years in the ivory tower, on the other hand, have driven me right, although I’d continue to describe myself as a liberal-leaning moderate of the most unfashionable possible variety. Just a couple of my quarrels with the left: I think much of the sexual revolution was a misstep that has resulted in the widespread masculinization of sexuality–not a liberatory move for women, nor even for men–and I find our culture’s adolescent, pornographic view of sex both boring and exhausting. I also have reservations about a certain wholesale uncritical veneration of nature, ongoing now at least since that old wide-eyed hippie rake Rousseau. Sad though some of its consequences have certainly been, we as a species left nature behind about 10,000 years ago with the neolithic revolution, and I for one have no desire to go back. When well-meaning people earnestly inform me of the virtues of natural foods, natural fibers, and natural sources of energy, all I can think is that there’s nothing more natural than losing all of one’s teeth to chronic malnutrition, dying in agonizing childbirth approximately nine months after achieving puberty, or losing multiple family members to epidemics of cholera or the plague. Hooray for the thoroughly artificial health technologies of our culture. Not so interested in subsisting for long periods of time on berries and bark scrapings, myself. Read More

In Family

You’re like a mother to me

Ziff4 September 200924 Comments

When my wife was young and she was first learning to talk, she called two other women “mom” in addition to her mother. Polygamous family? No. The other women were her then-teenage sisters. Given the often large families that Mormons have, I suspect her experience of being well over a decade younger than some of her siblings is not uncommon. I’m interested in how these large age differences affect sibling relationships when everyone is grown.

In Blogging

My Nacle Notebook 2008: Funny comments

Ziff31 August 200921 November 201549 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.

In Statistics, Utah

Is Utah Weird?

Ziff21 August 200921 August 200932 Comments

Utah is the most depressed state! (Or perhaps it’s the happiest state.) Utah has the highest bankruptcy rate of any state! Utah uses the most porn per capita of any state! Why are we interested in these rankings? This is probably obvious, but I think it’s because we read them as revealing what the effects of being Mormon are.

In Parenthood, Personal Narratives

Missing Motherhood

Seraphine17 August 20097 September 200919 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!

ZD9 August 200915 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

Lynnette7 August 20097 September 200968 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

Seraphine6 August 20097 September 200914 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

Melyngoch31 July 20097 September 200923 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