While the situation described may be common, the names, events, and dialogue etc. are all fictional. Here’s the situation: David and Sue Johansen have been married for 20 years. They have four children: 19 (girl), 15 (girl), 12 (girl), and 8 (boy). The oldest just finished up her sophomore year in college, about a two-hour drive away. She is doing very well in school, majoring in biology and pre-med with a 3.8 GPA, and her boyfriend of nearly two years is an education major, planning to teach high school English in an inner-city school. Needless to say more, they...
children
Does God Squash ETs: How Human is Human?
Distinctly Mormon doctrines relating the physical appearance of humanity to God’s own “preferred” form grew gradually in early Restoration history rather than springing forth in full. Although there are references in the Book of Mormon to the Brother of Jared seeing the “finger” and then the full vision of Christ (the earliest recorded of Joseph Smith’s prophetic writings), even the earliest published accounts of the First Vision do not feature descriptions of two personages appearing as does the “official” version eventually recorded several years after formation of the church. This doesn’t mean that later descriptions were contradictory to the...
The Mormon Therapist on Kids Talking Anatomy
Natasha Helfer Parker is a Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family Therapist and a member of the Church with 13 years of experience working with LDS members. Here she shares with us representative cases from her practice and insights she has gained from her work as a therapist. She blogs at mormontherapist.blogspot.com. So here’s a conversation I wasn’t expecting the other morning started by my 3-year old son and joined in by my 5-year old son as they were getting dressed for the day. 3: “Mommy, what is this?” Lifting his penis and touching his testes. I feel my anxiety...
A Marital Confession
A recent visit at FMH and John Dehlin’s Mormon Stories interview with fmhLisa (Butterworth) has made me realise something about myself that I am not very proud of. Therefore, in the spirit of a post I wrote for another blog, I want to confess something. I am sexist.
A Tribute to Charity
My father had a stroke on Wednesday. The artery in his neck is 95% blocked, and he will have surgery to try to correct that problem next Wednesday. Since my New Year’s Resolution posts on my personal blog this month are focused on charity envying not, I want to repost something that I wrote a little over two years ago when one of my nieces died unexpectedly. Much of what I know of charity envying not (and charity in totality) was learned by watching my father – particularly as he laid down his own life for the woman he...
Interfaith Marriages by guest Madam Curie
A recent post by Cr@ig on Main Street Plaza caused me to reflect on the strength of interfaith marriages. I had hoped to generate a follow-up post on this topic at MSP. However, since the comments on the Cr@ig’s post devolved into a blame game of whether the believer or non-believer was more responsible for marital dissolution, I decided it was probably best to avoid a second opportunity for mud-slinging. Differences in religious belief can be the death knell to a marriage. For that reason, many organized religions strongly advocate against being “yoked with unbelievers”. This is not only...
A Child Is Born In Bukavu
A Christmas message, by today’s guest poster, mormongandhi. A child is born in Bukavu A child is born in Bukavu, and sadness fills his mother’s heart… Bukavu is not the city of David. It is a town in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. War has been ravaging the country for years. Ever since Kabila invaded the former Zaire with military support from the US. It is a war that no one speaks of – but it has cost the lives of millions of people and caused unimaginable suffering.
Temple Wedding Petition
A temple wedding petition to is being circulated to promote love and happiness in the family by changing the church’s stance on civil marriages preceding temple weddings. The petition requests that the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make it acceptable to have a civil marriage ceremony first, if desired, and then giving the couple the necessary time to attend the temple for the sealing ordinance as they do in those countries whose laws require it. (The petition is not endorsed by Mormon Matters; this information is being shared for discussion as a news item). In...
Perspective
Everybody blogs, right? Why not me? Looking for my niche, my angle, and the one thing that seemed to make me stand out in my corner of the world. I found it: Being single. And 40. And Mormon. In a family ward. In a town where EVERYONE is under 30, sealed in the temple and constantly reproducing. The best humor is found in our painful life experiences. Read about mine and laugh with me. Or at me. Whichever
Wherein I stop being liberal and start standing up for what I believe
A lot of what I talk about in regard to the church is a reaction against something else. For a period of time my wife even stopped talking to me about Relief Society lessons because of what I would argue or disagree with. After a lot of self-reflection over the past few months, I realized my problem: I am not standing up for what I believe is right, I’m just arguing with those who do. When I think there is an over-emphasis on necklines or haircuts, or a teacher presents something that I think is wrong, I want to...
How Our Families Can Help Families Around the World Escape Poverty
A year ago my wife and I were struggling to find ways to teach our children the importance of helping those in need, and lamented the fact that despite our knowing there are millions of families around the world who need help, we felt virtually powerless to make any significant difference in their lives. And although we were grateful for the opportunity to make monetary donations to the Church’s humanitarian program, we felt that writing a check quite wasn’t enough to help our children understand the challenges so many of the world’s families face; nor did it allow our...
The Sesame Street Approach to Primary
The children’s television series Sesame Street premiered November 10, 1969. I was just turning 10 years old, so I didn’t watch it very much as a child. But in the mid-1980′s, with several preschoolers, the show became a staple in our home. Wikipedia describes the program as follows: Sesame Street uses combinations of animation, puppets, and live actors to stimulate young children’s minds, improve their letter and word recognition, basic arithmetic, geometric forms, classification, simple problem solving, and socialization by showing children or people in their everyday lives. Since the show’s inception, other instructional goals have been basic life...
Dancing Through the Sidebar
Comment on any of the following articles – or anything else from the sidebar – or any other article of interest to this forum that we missed. There is no such thing as being normal If Kaimi were in dire straits, he would prefer to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s Apparently, marriage is hard work Gayby Boomers? Silly name, interesting phenomenon An explanation for Utah bankruptcies I don’t think PETA would approve of this Aren’t you glad we have calculaors? Even Orson Scott Card realizes that Mormonism is a culture Another reason to have more kids – Placenta...
mothers really are the primary nurturers
I have long been dismayed by the seemingly arbitrary idea that mothers should be first in charge of nurturing their children, with fathers there to step in and “help” as an equal partner.
Women are from Venus, Men are from Kolob
Based on my experience, I would guess that the majority of LDS women under age 65 would say that polygamy is NOT an eternal principle and that it doesn’t require any earthly worrying as a result. While the men are probably not worrying about it (although any of them who are married to me should think twice about expecting additional wives in the future), my impression is that a higher percentage of them believe it is an eternal principle that will be practiced long term.
Interfaith International British DJ
OK Paul technically isn’t exactly an international DJ, not unless you consider that you can listen to his interviews on line.
Worship or Whine?
This post was inspired by David Stout’s series of posts on LDS Worship, Part II and Part III as well as HawkGrrrl’s post entitled “More Christ at Church.”
Mormon Masks
Often people have a hard time with intimacy (intimacy = “into me see”) because they feel vulnerable. They would rather deal with ideas than people, and they don’t want others to see who they are. They might feel insecure or care what others think of them. People who feel this way wear what we call social masks to hide who they are and present a facade instead of their true self to others. And sometimes, the mask people wear is the church.
Mother’s Day
As you know by know, I often like to talk about history. So, I thought I would try to learn a little about Mother’s Day. While there have been various movements over the centuries, in the United States, it seems the first Mother’s Day movement began just after the Civil War with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Julia was a poet, writer, journalist, women’s suffrage activist, and abolitionist.
“Out-of-Wedlock” Is No Longer “Illegitimate”
In a recent CNN.com/living article (“Out-of-wedlock births hit record high”), the discussion centered on the fact that the birth rate outside of marriage in the United States has risen nearly 25% in the past five years. You read that correctly – 25% in 5 years. The following are some representative quotes from that article:
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