women

Sunstone 2010 – A Feminist Recap

August 17, 2010
By
Sunstone 2010 – A Feminist Recap

I really enjoyed the last day of Sunstone, since I was able to attend all day, rather than a session here or there.  Don Bradley gave a presentation titled “Dating Fanny Alger”, a bit of a play on words.  I remember he gave a funny line to the effect of “By all accounts, she was hot!”  Anyway, Bradley tried to pin down when the “affair” happened.  Apparently, Emma discovered Joseph and Fanny late at night in the barn.  According to Bradley, Alger appeared pregnant.  Emma threw a fit, and threw Alger out of the house.  (Apparently Alger had been...

Read more »

Hanging Out with Apostles at Sunstone

August 6, 2010
By
Hanging Out with Apostles at Sunstone

Sunstone has been going on since Wednesday here in Salt Lake City.  It ends tomorrow, and I thought I would give a few words about the conference.  I have been blogging here at Mormon matters for about a year and a half, and have never met any other bloggers here….until this week!  It has been nice to nice BiV and Stephen Marsh.  I hope to meet others tomorrow.  It was also nice to meet with a few apostles.

Read more »

A Horrific Tale of Forgiveness

June 29, 2010
By
A Horrific Tale of Forgiveness

I really miss my book club, but I am participating in the Stay LDS Book Club.  The first book that we have decided to read is Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza.  It is her story of the Rwandan Genocide.  I previously discussed the movie Hotel Rwanda, describing the events from Paul Russebagina’s point of view.  Immaculee has an incredibly inspiring story as well.  The book is intensely moving.

Read more »

Mormon Marriage Ref: Bikinis, Garments, & Facebook

June 25, 2010
By

WARNING: Sophisticated readers have described The Mormon Marriage Ref as a painfully artificial and repellent reality TV way of solving arguments, as using incredibly silly black and white binary thinking, and as sorely lacking in nuance. Read at your own risk! Here’s the situation: Matt and Sarah are a young couple living in Las Vegas. They are very physically active, and put a high priority on health and exercise. They love the warm weather and their big neighborhood pool. They originally met in Germany (Sarah is German, and speaks fluent English) while Matt was on his mission. Matt went...

Read more »

Time to Study the Old Testament…Again – Part 8 – The Names

June 18, 2010
By

One thing that has always intrigued me about the English version of the Old Testament were how the names, the Hebrew names, were modified away from a Hebrew pronunciation.  Sometimes the names are close and sometimes not even. The key to pronouncing a Hebrew name or any Hebrew word is that he accent is always syllable .

Read more »

The Mormon Therapist on “I don’t feel safe talking to my husband about sex.”

June 16, 2010
By
The Mormon Therapist on “I don’t feel safe talking to my husband about sex.”

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. You have mentioned the importance of communicating with our spouse about our view of sex–not just the fantasies. I don’t feel like I can do that with my husband. He is not a safe place to go for me. We have a different opinion about how and how...

Read more »

A Closer Look at that Virtuous Woman

May 27, 2010
By
A Closer Look at that Virtuous Woman

OT SS Lesson #20 Sometimes I wonder how women in the Judeo-Christian tradition got stuck with the gender role identifications they have. The Old Testament doesn’t include many detailed descriptions of women, but when they do appear, they are not what you’d think. To prove my point, I’m going to investigate two women featured in this week’s Sunday School lesson, plus Deborah the judge/prophetess, and the ubiquitous “virtuous woman” of Proverbs 37.

Read more »

Feminist Musings on the story of Jephthah

May 20, 2010
By
Feminist Musings on the story of Jephthah

OT SS Lesson #19 You are going to talk about the Biblical Judges in this week’s Sunday School class, and the lesson’s got it pretty well covered (including a discussion of the Judge/Prophetess/Mother in Israel Deborah, yay!) You’ll have to let me know how your respective teachers covered her.  But some of the Judges are peripheral and didn’t make it into the lesson materials.  As is my wont to do, I’d like to investigate the marginal; the story that isn’t mentioned in the manual — that of Jephthah. Whenever I come across an odd story in the Old Testament,...

Read more »

Rachel and Leah: A Modern Perspective

March 28, 2010
By
Rachel and Leah: A Modern Perspective

Last year, I posted a topic about Marriage Fitness.  The author is Mort Fertel, and he makes no illusions that his method is a quick or easy solution to a better marriage, but he does guarantee it works, if followed.  Part of the package includes a book with the same name. He has an interesting perspective on the Biblical story of Rachel and Leah.  As we all know, Jacob (who later changed his name to Israel), greatly loved Rachel.  After working for 7 years to marry Rachel, he was duped into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah, and then had to...

Read more »

Our Voices, Our Visions: A report from the road

March 24, 2010
By

Monday night in Claremont, California, we kicked off the Our Voices, Our Visions Mormon Women’s Literary Tour in the company of an audience of 30 Mormon women ranging from 12 to 80 years old.   “This is an historic event,” said event host Claudia Bushman. Yesterday, Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley and I crossed the desert from San Diego to Tempe, talking and laughing all the way about things Community of Christ members and LDS folks have in common like ancestral visions and deep connections to Mormon places.  As well as the things we don’t, like frog-eye salad...

Read more »

Ask Mormon Girl hits the road: the Our Voices, Our Visions Literary Tour

March 22, 2010
By

This week, I’m putting the Ask Mormon Girl column on vacation while I set out for adventure in the great Book-of-Mormon Belt. The Our Voices, Our Visions Mormon Women’s Literary Tour is hitting the road. It’s the first ever literary tour by and for Mormon women, featuring eighteen Mormon women writers– younger and older, new and prize-winning, unorthodox and orthodox—giving readings at five universities from Claremont University to the University of Utah. And it all began yesterday when Susan Scott, a fifth-generation RLDS / Community of Christ woman writer, arrived at the San Diego airport from her home in...

Read more »

The Relational Definition of Sin

March 17, 2010
By
The Relational Definition of Sin

One of my favorite experiences at the BYU Studies Symposium was listening to a set of two talks on the subject of sin.  That might not usually be such a fascinating topic!  But these had a twist which captured my interest — sin and its effect upon human relationships.

Read more »

A Marital Confession

March 16, 2010
By

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.

Read more »

The Virgin and the Whore: Thinking Beyond Dinah and Potiphar’s Wife

March 10, 2010
By
The Virgin and the Whore: Thinking Beyond Dinah and Potiphar’s Wife

OT SS Lesson #11 Lesson 11 in the Old Testament manual employs several stories from Genesis 34-39 to develop the theme of sexual morality. Joseph’s actions embody the “Lord’s standards” for morality and are contrasted with the actions of Shechem, Reuben, and Judah. You may notice that the featured characters in the lesson are all male. What shall a woman do with a lesson like this? I think the idea is for women to identify with Joseph — to be virtuous when facing temptation. But Joseph is a man, his responses are male-oriented, and intentionally or not this approach...

Read more »

From Patriarchy to Eternity

February 3, 2010
By
From Patriarchy to Eternity

I am going to put this as simply as possible, and let’s start with a definition.  Patriarchy is a social system in which the father or eldest male is head of the household, having authority over women and children. Patriarchy also refers to a system of government by males, and to the dominance of men in social or cultural systems.  I know that this is a true definition, having found it on Wikipedia. However, if you disagree, scroll down and I will include definitions from as many dictionaries as I can google.  Patriarchy by its very definition is not...

Read more »

Interfaith Marriages by guest Madam Curie

January 30, 2010
By
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...

Read more »

A Child Is Born In Bukavu

December 15, 2009
By

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.

Read more »

The Single Mormon Girl and the Priesthood

December 7, 2009
By

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

Read more »

Brother Brigham Brother Young

December 6, 2009
By
Brother Brigham Brother Young

Recently I drove up Little Cottonwood Canyon with my brother and nephew.  This is the canyon in which many of your ancestors pulled out  the granite for the construction of the salt lake temple. As soon as we passed the granite facings on the side of the canyon my nephew played a song on his iPod by Corb Lund Brother Brigham Brother Young and it brought mental flashes into my mind of men working on the side of the mountain blasting granite out of it.    It made me think of the struggles that men and women had even back...

Read more »

Perspective

November 26, 2009
By

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

Read more »