My New Year’s Resolution this year is taken from I Corinthians 13:4-7. In a nutshell, it is to become a little more charitable this year. I am studying and trying to practice one of the manifestations of charity listed in Paul’s passage each month. This month, the focus is on charity “vaunting not itself” and not being “puffed up”. I write each Saturday about this resolution on my personal blog, and I want to share something with all of you that hit me as I was preparing to write my post for last Saturday. Continue reading…
Archive for the 'love' Category
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 Mormon phenomenon; you see this in any faith tradition that teaches that they alone have exclusive access to God. Even before marriage, it is rare for the unmarried, devout Mormon to even consider dating (let alone marrying) a non-Mormon; most LDS women raised in the Church are taught from an early age to make a temple marriage to a returned missionary their primary goal. Continue reading…
(Mormon Matters gives a hearty “Welcome!” to our latest Permablogger: Joanna Brooks. You can read more about Joanna on her web site, and on her new blog “Ask Mormon Girl“. Joanna is head of the English Department at SDSU, and has recently been featured on Radiowest and writes occasionally for Religion Dispatches. Welcome again, Joanna! So happy to have you aboard!!!!)
So, Mormon Matters readers, there I was: my askmormongirl@gmail.com account barely three months old, when it arrived from uncharted reaches of the internet universe–a bonafide query about the Mormon world I know and love.
“Hello Mrs. Brooks,
I have a 16 year old mormon friend, and I am attracted to her. I am 15, and I am not a Mormon. I am, however, a Christian. She knows that I like her, and I think that she likes me, too. I don’t know what I should do, because both of those things can create some problems if I ask her out. I turn 16 in April. Should I wait until then to ask her out? Any advice that you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
L.M.”
Now, readers, you may imagine how it felt to be the recipient of such important questions straight from such a young and tender heart. And who exactly am I to answer such a query? A lifelong member of the Mormon Church. A profesional scholar of religion and American culture. A writer. A Mormon woman writer who has gotten used to being the only Mormon woman in the room, in the company of non-Mormon people with a thousand burning questions they never dared ask before. A bossy older sister. A cosmic mother hen. And, could it be, as they would say in the Yiddish of my husband’s grandmother, a would-be yenta: an absolute sucker for the prospect of greater ecumenical understanding, teenaged love, and exceptionally thoughtful fifteen year old boys who research the faith traditions of their would-be crushes on the internet.
So I took a deep breath. Click-click-click went the keyboard. And here is what I said:
I was asked to teach the lesson in Elder’s Quorum on Elder Eyring’s General Conference talk from October: Our Perfect Example (click here for video.) Inspired by Hawkgrrrl’s Virtual RS/PH lessons, I thought I’d give it a try again. I’m not sure if everyone is supposed to review this talk, but I believe this is the talk our stake has chosen. I think Elder Eyring’s talk is a perfect lead-in to New Year’s Resolutions. Shouldn’t we all resolve to be more like Christ? So, before I get to Elder Eyring’s talk, I want to discuss the History of New Years Day.
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.
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 Continue reading…
Last January 2009, I wrote a piece “Stop Baptizing Our Dead.” I spoke about groups who objected to the LDS Church baptizing the dead that identified themselves with their own religious group, mainly Catholics and Jews.
I faced my own personal dilemma after my Mother died in March of 2007. While she and my Dad did not disown me for joining the LDS Church, they were not happy about my decision. My Mother, in particular, made sure that she voiced her opinion strongly from time to time. She told me once that she was afraid I would give all the money I received from her estate to THAT Church. And she made it quite clear she was not interested in being Baptized a Mormon after she died. Even though I tried to explain the idea of having the right to choose to accept the ordinances performed for our deceased, she was still adamantly against it.
So, I always wondered what I would do after they were gone. Would I respect their wishes and not do their Temple Work or do it anyway? Continue reading…
At the Evergreen conference held September 18-19, 2009, Elder Bruce Hafen gave a talk regarding homosexuality. The talk was reprinted on the official LDS Church Newsroom website. I will not synopsize the talk here but I suggest reading it yourself. Within a very short time, for obvious reasons, the bloggernacle was dissecting and analyzing the speech. These actions generated some interesting discussions here, and one permablogger at FMH did a good job of challenging the less-than-spectacular research here. Continue reading…
What if the Brethren decided to allow gay marriage? They’d have to do a lot of back-peddling to explain why they were suddenly in favor of something they stood against for so long. But over time, the church’s previous “official” opposition to gay marriage would be downplayed, the Apostles who spoke publicly against gay marriage would be criticized for giving their own personal, uninspired opinion, and new generations of LDS children would grow up in a church that accepted gays openly. Continue reading…
Being from England, we do not really have a Polygamous Pioneer heritage like some from the US. However, we do have something a little more contemporary. A few months ago I was speaking to a single woman, who had a few children and had been divorced for some time, about the Church’s history regarding polygamy. It was fairly routine until she began explaining some of her past experiences with people who had approached her regarding whether she wanted to practice Polygamy, but in a slightly different way. Continue reading…
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. Continue reading…
There have been several attempts over the years to categorize Mormon “belief-styles”: Orthodox Mormon versus Liberal Mormon, Iron Rod Mormon versus Liahona Mormon, and so on. In the online world of LDS blogs commonly called “the Bloggernacle”, Mormons are often categorized as being TBMs (True Believing Mormons) or NOMs (New Order Mormons).
One evening when my wife and I had the opportunity to reflect on the timeless story of Adam and Eve, it struck me that their different responses to God’s commandments, and to Lucifer’s “temptation”, perfectly exemplified the different mindsets of TBMs and NOMs, and symbolically portrayed the age-old struggle between Orthodox and Liberal in any faith. And as I meditated on their dramatic dialog with Lucifer, with each other, and with God, it donned on me that Adam and Eve were the perfect TBM-NOM couple.
An article in Newsweek “Adventures in Good and Evil” made a few interesting points about why some people are good and some are evil. Continue reading…
What do you want your funeral to be like? Do you care or do you figure you’ll be dead anyway? How do you feel about burial vs. cremation? Are you an organ donor? Continue reading…
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. Continue reading…
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