Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday afternoon session

Second general session! (Speaking of which, i wonder how many non-general sessions there are? Priesthood session is technically a general session, since Sunday morning is the fourth general session, but the relief society and young women’s sessions aren’t included in the general session count. There used to be welfare sessions, but they’re gone now, unless attendance at them is a lot more restricted than it used to be.)

Anyway, a reminder: The entries for the session are arranged from the bottom up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post—but each speaker’s entries are given in the order i write them. This means that this is where you scroll to the bottom of this post and start reading upwards.

Closing prayer (i didn’t catch who said it)

• I caught direct references to at least three, maybe four of the addresses this session. Nothing like proving your were listening, eh?

L. Tom Perry (of the quorum of apostles)

• Four apostles (not counting the first presidency member) speaking in one session—seems a bit of an overload. This plus the temple announcements this morning feel like an attempt to reward the people who are actually watching today.
• Lots of discussion of the church’s place as a topic for discussion and comment in the public sphere.
• Okay, i’m an academic linguist, and i’ve published a number of articles on the card-cord merger—that is, the ability of speakers of certain dialects of English to pronounce the or in words like cord as an ar, like in card. L. Tom Perry exhibits that merger a lot—and it’s distracting me, on a professional level.
• I’ve heard other Mormons characterize this blog as evil and a horrible public face for a member of the church to present, and i’ve also heard other Mormons characterize this blog as a quite positive and humanizing public face for a member of the church to represent. I’m curious how L. Tom Perry would categorize it.
• Good to hear a general authority explicitly say that it’s good to have a two-way conversation about religion with non-Mormons, contra the occasional Mormon meme that our job is to teach others, not to be taught by others.
• We need to be civil in our discussions of religion, no matter the tone others adopt when engaging us or discussing our religion. I think we tend to do that anyway, but it’s good to hear such direction from high levels occasionally.
• Interesting statement: When talking about the church, we shouldn’t try to make it sound “better than it is”. Very nice indirect acknowledgment that even though we believe that we have the truth, we can’t claim to be using that truth perfectly. (And so maybe L. Tom Perry wouldn’t mind this blog, after all.)

D. Todd Christofferson (of the quorum of apostles)

• What exactly is entailed in a “call to repentance”? He’s presenting it in a way that seems slightly different from what i expected, and i’m not entirely certain what exactly he means by that phrase.
• His reference to the baptismal covenant didn’t really parallel Mosiah 18:8–10 (which i’m not certain is actually the baptismal covenant myself, no matter what lots of gospel doctrine teachers have taught me). I’m going to have to look for his description of it in the written report.

LeGrand R. Curtis, Jr. (of the quorums of seventy)

• Cool—i thought for a minute he was going to talk about the importance of avoiding big sins and such. Yeah, that’s important, but he went in a more interesting direction—that it doesn’t matter whether our sins are big or little, since they’re all sins, and we all have them.
• I really, really, really like his story of being told cascading stories about reactivation.

Carl B. Cook (of the quorums of seventy)

• He’s doing a very good, focused job with his message (we need to remember to “look up”—that is, look toward Jesus), but there’s really nothing here i can hook into to comment on about it.

Ian S. Ardern (of the quorums of seventy)

• This is some of the most measured, slow pacing of speech i’ve heard in a general conference address in a long time (aside from, occasionally, Richard G. Scott). There’s sort of an irony about having that in an address about the importance of using time wisely.
• Contrasting prayer with things like texting very seriously popped my brain over into imagining what it might be like to text a prayer. (I then realized i don’t have any phone numbers of deities on my phone, so it wouldn’t work. At least for now.)
• Angry Birds mention!

Neal A. Anderson (of the quorum of apostles)

• He’s working at walking a really, really fine line here: Saying that married couples should make their own decisions on the timing and number of their children, and also saying that married couples should make sure to have children (if they’re physically able, as he mentioned in passing), while criticizing limiting the number of children a couple has. I’m not sure he’s doing it successfully.
• Sidebar: What’s the birth rate among Mormons, and does it vary by region?
• Serious question: What if God tells a couple to delay having children?
• Another question: What does it actually mean to “multiply and replenish the earth”? He’s presenting it as meaning to have lots of children. Jeanne and i have lots of children (well, well above the national average, in any event), and i’m not certain that’s what it means.
• He’s doing a much better job of highlighting the problems inherent in judging people who don’t have children.

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• If he’s right that nobody on earth had the sealing authority from Elijah’s ascension until Elijah’s appearance on the Mount of Transfiguration, does that mean the Nephites didn’t have the sealing authority (until, presumably, Jesus’s appearance to them)?
• Genealogical research is a calling of children of God, and is not limited to those who have reached a particular age. (Nice point.)
• Interesting job of drawing a line from skill in social uses of technology to potential skill in using technology for genealogical research.
• Ah! An announcement (re-announcement?—i don’t know if it’s been previously mentioned) of a web site on family history directed toward the youth of the church.
• On a related personal note, when Jeanne and i were in our late twenties, Jeanne was called as the ward family history consultant. We used to joke that she was the youngest family history consultant in the history of the church—rather certainly not true, but sometimes it felt like it was.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency), presentation of general authorities and officers

• A full set of sustainings in October? I thought this was an April thing, not an every conference thing. Am i just misremembering past practice?
• So Gary J. Coleman’s address in the previous session was a valedictory.
• Yoshihiko Kikuchi has been made an emeritus general authority. There’ll be a lot of people in the church who miss having him around, i think.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency), opening remarks

• A primary choir? Interesting—not something you see that often in meetings like this. (I do have to wonder—what sort of sedatives did they give them to keep them from fidgeting up there?)

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday morning session

Welcome, reader(s). As has become traditional for this blog, i’m going to be “sorta-liveblogging” (that is, jotting down notes during the session and then posting them in a chunk here, session by session) each session of general conference—it only seems like a sensible thing for a Mormon-oriented blogger to do, you know.

Those of you who have read these in the past probably remember the odd-but-it-works format i use for these, but here’s a reminder: Since blogs arrange things chronologically from bottom to top (contra millennia of tradition in Western writing), so if you visit this page after conference is over, the final session will show up first, followed by the Sunday morning session, then the priesthood session, and so on. Given that, i’ll be ordering things the same way within each post so that you don’t have to do quite so much scrolling. This means that each session’s post is written bottom-up (i.e., first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post). However, each speaker’s entries are given in the order i write them. This is probably confusing, but so are any of the other alternative i’ve come up with (and certainly less confusing than a true live-blogging format, especially if you read one of those during an event).

In any event, this means that this is where you scroll to the bottom of this post, and then start reading upwards.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• I like that he’s highlighting the simultaneous nothingness and glory of human beings. It’s a common enough meme in some other branches of Xianity, but we don’t seem to focus on it nearly so much in Mormonism.
• So the qualifications for exaltation are personality attributes, really—so why do we focus so often on checklists of our actions rather than our attributes?
• He taught elders quorum and Sunday school in a small Texas branch back when he didn’t know English very well? Baptism by fire, i suppose—and a really, really good way for him to learn a second language, too.
• Speaking of which , who would have thought that the person who would take Neal A. Maxwell’s place as the general conference speaker most prone to memorable bouts of alliteration and rhyming couplets (not to mention similarly intricate thematic structures) would be a non-native speaker of English?
• I really like the looping topic structure of this address—it appeals to me more than the story-based structure that, in my observation, most Mormons seem to prefer.

Boyd K. Packer (president of the quorum of apostles)

• He repeats the common (not just among Mormons) claim that “standards of morality” are lower now than they used to be. This is leading me to wonder how broadly that definition goes—given where he goes later, he’s using it to include sexual things, but does he also include things like, say, charity or willingness to share or issues like war or social justice?
• Interesting—unless i’m seriously misreading his intent, his claims about the way the Holy Spirit inspires us seems to be directly going against what Barabara Thompson said earlier (that is, she said inspiration comes in any of a large number of ways, while he says it comes via feelings). I have to admit that i’m more on her side than his here, given my own experiences.
• You know, i’ve met some of the apostles, and they’ve tended to have very strong personalities. That the first presidency and quorum of the twelve have to function in unanimity, and then actually make decisions, really boggles my mind.

José L. Alonso (of the quorums of the seventy)

• To help people who are spiritually lost “it is not necessary to create any new programs”. This sort of thing has been repeated over and over in general conferences for some years now—i think the message may finally be getting through to local leadership, given my observation.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• This seems an odd speaking slot for the president of the high priesthood, but maybe i’m just recalling wrong.
• I suppose that the opening laugh line won’t make it into the printed record—rather a pity.
• Ah! He’s going to be announcing temples this morning—fun.
• They’re rebuilding the Provo tabernacle, with full restoration!—and doing it as a second Provo temple. I’m betting there’ll be a lot more wedding photos taken at that one than at the existing one…
• Other new temples: Barranquilla, Colombia; Durban, South Africa (a friend of mine served here mission there—she’s probably smiling right now); Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Star Valley, Wyoming. The Kinshasa one is really interesting—the church is placing a bet on the ultimate stability of the country, it seems.
• He said the church is “moving forward” on plans for a Paris, France temple, which is an intriguing way of phrasing things.
  
• And a blurb for the general temple patron assistance fund—it’s existed for a good while, but it hasn’t really been well-publicized.

L. Whitney Clayton (of the presidency of the seventy)

• Elder Clayton was here for stake meetings a while back, and this opening story? He was test-driving it then, apparently.
• What does it actually mean for the church to “fill the earth”?
• Interesting thought: Our primary job is to spread the message that there is a Savior throughout the world. Here in the United States you wouldn’t think that’s a big deal, but worldwide? Yeah, it bit more interesting.

Barbara Thompson (of the relief society general presidency)

• Point of trivia: Barbara Thompson is only the second unmarried woman to serve in the relief society general presidency (after Sheri L. Dew).
• It makes me happy every time i hear someone in general conference mention that revelation isn’t limited to low-level feelings and the like, but can include hearing a voice or somesuch.
• Is she reading this from paper? Her eyes don’t look like she’s using the TelePrompTer.

Choir, “We Ever Pray for Thee”

• I see that we’re back to the game of panning through the choir in ways to make sure to attract focus to the one or two non-pale faces singing. <sigh />

Richard G. Scott (of the quorum of apostles)

• The scriptures are useful for backing up religious statements “when cited correctly”. Did i get that right, and he said cited, not quoted or interpreted? I’m going to want to see how the written record of this speech reads on that one.
• I realize that i’m evil and all, but he’s advocating the usefulness of memorizing scriptural passages pretty intensely, and memorizing scriptures doesn’t really do anything for me—it just makes it so i know the words, but i focus on their form to the exclusion of their content.
• ”Do you use all of the scriptures?…I love the Old Testament.” Folks who like reading the Hebrew scriptures, represent!
• I’m curious what the ratio of quotes from canon to original text is in this address.
• His late wife served as a young-adult full-time missionary? That’s what it sounded like, but i couldn’t be certain from the phrasing, and a quick round of googling doesn’t turn up anything unambiguous on it. Either way, i’m curious how many of the general authorities are married to returned full-time missionaries, and how that compares to the Mormon male population as a whole.

Gary J. Colman (of the quorums of the seventy), opening prayer

• A fairly short prayer, but admit it: A lot of you got faked out and almost said “amen” a couple times before he actually got to the end.

Opening thoughts

• Canned opening video of the Conference Center and Salt Lake Temple that includes dark clouds! Is that a first? It actually works quite well, in terms of visual aesthetics.

Circular reasoning works because…

Whether it’s true or not, i’ve long been bothered by the circularity of the idea that low church attendance on the part of Mormons is consistently the result of not acting on or rejecting or ever even actually receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost*—it only works if you assume that the given cause(s) have the given result, and i’ve never seen any actual good evidence that doesn’t involve such presuppositions. It could be true, i suppose, but there’s got to be a better way of making the claim.

* With exceptions for things like poor health and such, of course.

Sometimes it’s just so easy

You know, i have to admit that i actually like the occasional fire-and-brimstone, one-moral-slip-and-you-lose sacrament (and conference) address—’cause it logically follows that since i’ve already slipped, i’ve already lost, and so i don’t need to try any more.

Thanks for the free pass, folks who think you’re trying to get me to be righteous!

Enjoying a song

“How Gentle God’s Commands” is fun to sing—and both of the men’s parts move around in interesting ways, rather a rarity in Mormon hymnody.

Dancing ties!

Can someone explain to me what the point of requiring “Sunday dress”* for selected youth dances might be?

* A ridiculously underdefined phrase, by the way.

Some useful advice

Stake conferences are tough on little kids, but i’ve noticed that there are some reliable tricks to get them to quiet down occasionally—like a stake children’s choir. For some reason, little kids pay attention when they hear little kids’ voices.

Therefore, my solution to the high ambient noise levels at conferences in stakes with a large number of children:

Every other speaker should be a six-year-old.

You should encourage your stake presidents to send donations to their least-favorite left-leaning charity of choice in lieu of sending me personal thanks.

Self-evident truths

You know, i can’t be the only one who gets amused by people bearing testimonies that include lines like “And i know that Thomas S. Monson is the president of this church.”

Hopes and dreams

One day—and i’m hoping it’s in my lifetime—someone will deliver a general conference address about how cultural traditions are good, but that they may need to be laid aside to conform with church principles.

Well, we actually already get those now and again. What i’m hoping to see, though, is one that goes just a little bit further and explicitly points out that some jello-belt traditions are among those that will need to be laid aside. That’s what we haven’t really gotten yet.

Good timing

Today is the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001—or, in other words, it’s rather a big deal day to a lot of people.

We also had stake conference today (and yesterday).

And in none of the stake conference meetings i was at (that is, the general meeting this morning, the adult session* yesterday evening, or the leadership meeting yesterday afternoon) was there even an oblique reference to the anniversary.

I would just like to say that i’m happy that my religion was able to serve as a refuge from the incessant coverage of the date that national and local media has been throwing at me over the past week or so.

* I can’t be the only one evil enough that the term “adult session” instantly triggers the concept of an “adult movie”, can I?

So this is an interesting turn

There’s a presidential election coming up next year here in the United States, and as part of our (insanely) long election process, a few interesting things have come out. First of all, for the first time as far as i can tell, there are two serious candidates who are Mormon, both of them running for the Republican Party’s nomination. Now, the Republican Party is the United States’ mainstream conservative party, but as an example of how socially conservative that party has drifted, consider the following intriguing factoid:

Out of all the candidates for that party’s nomination (and there are quite a few right now), the only two who agree with the scientific consensus that Darwinian evolution is a real thing and with the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is the result of human activity are…the two Mormons.

Mormonism: The religion of modern science. Who’da thunk it?

Finding the lines

So tattoos and body piercings are strongly—very strongly—discouraged by the church. However, there is no ecclesiastical sanction if you get one, nor does having one preclude you from participating in any ordinance. So i have to wonder: Are tattoos and body piercings really against church rules?

Priorities

I was going through some old papers, and i discovered notes i took from a stake conference where we were told they’d had their best youth conference turnout ever for a three-day “trek”* event. This was presented as clear evidence that trek is a wonderful thing.**

Me, i just find it worth noting that they probably wouldn’t have gotten as high a turnout for, say, a three-day project helping build a Habitat for Humanity house, and that’s just sad.

* For those of you who have happy enough lives that you’re unfamiliar with the phenomenon that is trek, imagine a bunch of teenagers risking heatstroke as they push two-wheeled wheelbarrows around, and you’ve pretty much got it.

** If the causality seems tenuous, congratulations! You are capable of basic logic.

David B gingerly touches the third rail, again

Same-sex marriage is a big issue for a lot of people, both within and without the Mormon church.* (In fact, it’s become a big issue for a lot of non-Mormons with regard to how they view the Mormon church itself. But that’s a side issue for today’s topic.)

In pretty much every opinion poll of the US population that i’ve seen on the topic of whether same-sex couples should be allowed to get legally married, there’s been a consistent age breakdown: Those younger than me generally think there’s no problem with the idea, while those older than me think that it should never be allowed—my age seems to be the swing point for this effect.**

I haven’t seen any such polls of Mormons, though. That is, there are plenty of opinion polls that show that Mormons† are generally not in favor of allowing legal same-sex marriages, but there don’t appear to be any easily allowable breakdowns that show whether there’s an age effect among Mormons that parallels that of the general population.††

Anyway, i’m curious whether younger Mormons have different views on the subject of legal recognition of same-sex marriage than older Mormons do. Anyone know if there are any reliable poll numbers on this issue?‡

* And, as i’ve written before, i really don’t get why it’s such a big deal to so many Mormons, but I recognize that it is.

** And it’s not that people tend to be less likely to approve of it as they get older—i’ve been watching the polls on this issue for some years, and it really is my birth year that seems to be the most reliable inflection point.

† Important caveat: I’m talking only about Mormons in the United States here. While i’d be interested to learn the attitudes of Mormons outside of the United States (particularly in jurisdictions where same-sex marriages are legally recognized) on this subject, it’s beyond the bounds of what i can deal with in a single blog post.

†† I did find a report of a poll that reports on the breakdown of recent opinion polling on the subject among Utahns, and it found sharp differences by both religion and age, but it didn’t provide any sort of cross-tabulation ability to figure out what the effect of religion and age was.

‡ And yeah, Gallup may have it, but i’m not going to shell out cash to get past their paywall just to look into this. Maybe i should clarify: Anyone know if there are any reliable poll numbers available for free on this issue?

More maids, still missing in action

Earlier this month i posted about the silliness of having one of the teenage girls’ church classes called the “MIA Maids”.

It turns out i misinformed y’all—the class isn’t called the MIA Maids, they’re actually called the Mia Maids.

So not only are they named after an obsolete acronym, they’re named after an obsolete acronym that you can’t even tell is an acronym any more.

Or maybe they’re actually named after Mia, from the ward in Florida where i used to live. I think she was a Mia Maid when i knew her, so that would make sense.

Eternal blessings, sort of

I actually heard someone say that we’re blessed, because the Lord has given us “an eternal standard” governing how we should dress.

That eternal standard? That we should cover up those bits of our bodies that are covered up by the temple garment.

I think that some people need to learn their history before they say things like that.

Oh the time has come

True story: There was once a full-time missionary with the last name of Christen in my ward. Every time her name got mentioned as a speaker or as someone who’d be doing whatever else, i expected to hear a chorus start singing “Motorin’…”

One of these stones is not like the other

So yesterday there was a strong-for-the-area earthquake in central Virginia, and tremors were felt throughout much of the US eastern seaboard. There wasn’t much serious damage, but one of the buildings damaged was the Kensington, Maryland* temple, which had the tips of four of its six spires shaken off.**

This didn’t get all that much play in the news—certainly not as much as the interestingly similar damage to the spires of the National Cathedral in Washington DC—but it did get mentioned on KSL TV’s web site. This makes sense—KSL is in Salt Lake City, Utah, and so news about Mormon temples is likely to appeal to a decent-sized chunk of its audience.

Unfortunately, they had some issues with editing.

Here’s a link to the story on their site. Since bits of it may well change with time, here’s a quote of the problem paragraph, exactly as it appears in the original:

The shaking damaged Latter-day Saint temple in Washington, D.C., causing it to lose the tips of four of its spires. They were knocked off, as were some pieces of granite on the temple facing.

Now, aside from the missing article (the should follow damaged) and the placement of the temple in the wrong city, there’s an interesting error of fact—the temple is faced with marble, not granite. This is particularly amusing given the immediately following paragraph (exactly as in the original, except for the bolding for emphasis, which i added):

“We started finding chunks of marble and spires laying on the ground. They are about four feet long; the base of them are probably 4 inches square, and it comes up to a point,” said Doug Wiggins, a North Carolina resident who was at the temple when the earthquake hit.

Even more amusing is that the first, shorter blurb about this that went up on their website yesterday originally said that the falling spire tips gouged out pieces of granite from the temple’s facing,*** but the reference to granite was corrected to marble after someone pointed it out in the comments. Odd, then, that the error came back when the story was edited into its current, slightly longer form.

* Or, for those who insist, Washington DC.
** Cue the anti-Mormon trolls in 3…2…
*** The damage to the facing isn’t attributed to the tips in the current version of the story, so that may not have actually been the cause of that part of the damage.

Looking the part

Absolutely true i-am-not-making-this-up story that happened to me earlier today:

So we had a new full-time missionary transferred into our ward this past week. I’d been talking to a few members of the ward in the foyer before church, and when he didn’t have anybody talking to him i went up and introduced myself: “Hi, i’m David B—, and i’m the ward clerk.”

He shook my hand and said, “Yeah, i’d guessed that”, to which i replied, “Ah! You saw me, thought ’He looks completely active, but he’s not wearing a white shirt and a tie,* so he must be the ward clerk!’”

He laughed, but he also let on that i’d guessed pretty much correctly.

* For the purposes of filling in the reader, i was wearing a black mandarin-collar shirt. No tie, of course, ’cause that would have been silly, and no suit jacket ’cause i don’t like to let on whether i own one or not.

Where would the neck be?

Am i the only one who gets a bizarrely literal image when someone mentions the “head of the house”?

Something seems a little twisted here

So who is it that decided that we’re going to stress out about whether little girls wear clothes with or without sleeves? I mean, seriously—the past few years i’ve been hearing people at church go on and on about how horrible it is that society is pushing little children, especially girls, to become sexualized earlier than they used to be,* and this is one reason we need to stand firm on our daughters wearing shirts and dresses with sleeves.

But what’s up with this whole meme? Even aside from the fact that pretty much everyone agrees that shoulders aren’t really a terribly sexual part of the body—not even as much as the lips, really, and we don’t demand that they get covered up—why are so many of us so apt to see something sexual where nothing sexual is intended? I mean, if i were a little less trustful of humanity generally,** i’d start to think that the people who are saying that if my six-year-old wears sleeveless dresses then she’s being sexualized early, well, i’d start to wonder about what it is that makes them so apt to see innocent children wearing innocent clothing as so intensely sexual.

You can get help for that sort of impulse, you know, and if you suffer from it you really should.

* I’ll note that whether this is true or not depends on your frame of reference, by the way. Earlier than 50 years ago? Almost certainly. Earlier than 500 years ago? That’s not quite so clear-cut.

** And i’m not to this point yet, but i’m getting closer.

The memes of my youth

One last thought from my trip to Oregon a few weeks ago:

So, upon finding out we were going to be singing the song “They, the Builders of the Nation”, what with being faced with the refrain “Blessed, honored Pioneer!” while being in Oregon, of all places—well, all i’m trying to say is that i couldn’t have been the only one whose brain kept looping the phrase “You have died of dysentery”.

That’s all.

Ulterior motives

You know, if you’re an active member of the Mormon church, you always have to have a very specific ulterior motive in the back of your head every time you chat with a member of your own congregation: to figure out whether they’d make a good counselor or instructor if you’re ever called as an organizational president.

Just call me Brother David, then

You know, Mormons used to call each other by Brother or Sister + first name, even to the point of Brother Joseph and Brother Brigham for the people that the church’s style guide tells us should always be referred to as President Smith and President Young.

The shift seems rather a shame, to me at least.

It depends on what the proximate, not ultimate, goal is

I once heard an interminable story in a sacrament meeting speech about how this one kid was just learning to drive and she hadn’t listened to her father telling her there was a hidden stop sign as she came around a particular curve, and so she ended up in an accident, hitting the stop sign and then a tree. Her father was pretty angry at her for not listening to his advice, which i can certainly understand, but i also have to think: Well, she did stop, didn’t she?

Missing in action maids?

True story: Earlier today, my ten-year-old daughter saw something about MIA Maids and asked, “What’s a me-ah-maid?”

Seriously, can we get rid of the now-meaningless name for that age group of girls? Beehives and Laurels may be a bit overly cutesy, but at least they mean something.

A simple request for advice

Midweek youth activities end around 8:30 pm (later if it’s an off-site thing), with the kids getting home rather later than that.

And early-morning seminary classes require the kids to get up around 5:00 am (if not earlier).

So, ward and stake leaders, please inform me, since i need advice for my ongoing efforts to make sure my children get enough sleep to keep them generally healthy: Which one of these do you advise i not send my oldest to once she hits high school?

One of these things is not like the other

Why do Mormon sacrament services tend to have oddly random choral exhibitions? Like, a service in which all the speakers talk about the covenants of the sacrament, but then we get a bunch of youth singing some modern fluff song with random scriptural quotes about bringing one soul to God? I mean, really.

No seat for you!

One more thought from the branch where i attended church last Sunday—we met in what appeared to be a recently-built building (for example, it had the current church logo on it, rather than any of the ones you see on older buildings), and it was clearly built for a small branch (not that many classrooms, a smallish chapel, and so on). There was one rather odd bit about the building’s design, though: There was no place for chapel overflow seating—the influx of visitors that Sunday meant that those who came in just a few minutes early (that’s right, not those who came late, but rather those who were only a couple minutes early) had nowhere to sit for sacrament meeting, but had to stand in the very small foyer.

Not exactly a welcoming design, really.

Truth is beauty, beauty truth

So a couple posts ago i mentioned that i was going to be traveling to family reunions, and as i more or less expected, that resulted in my complete radio silence over the past week and a half or so. However, stuff that happened over the time i was away gave me a couple things to write about.

For example, this past Sunday my family attended church (along with most of the rest of that mostly-Mormon branch of our family) at a smallish branch.* While i was there i saw something i haven’t seen in a Mormon church service in years:

Metal sacrament trays!

(Old-school represent!)

You know, i certainly understand that they can get dinged up, and they’re noisier than the plastic ones,** but the metal ones are so much prettier—and i hadn’t realized how much i’d missed that.

* Those of you who know how church unit budgets are calculated will understand why i kept imagining that the branch president was thinking to himself, “Why couldn’t their family reunion have been in June instead of July?”

** Unless you use the paper cups—but for whatever reason, the paper cups cost noticeably more than the plastic ones.

Who teaches those who teach the teachers?

So (since i brought up church lesson manuals a couple posts ago) i was looking through the church’s Preach My Gospel manual.* This is an important manual—it’s the sourcebook for teaching the teachers of those entering the faith (i.e., the full-time missionaries).

Unfortunately, the teachers apparently aren’t always being taught things that are consonant with current church policy. For the specific case i noticed, a quote from p. 77 [emphasis added]:

Chastity requires faithfulness in thought and action. We must keep our thoughts clean and be modest in our dress, speech, and actions. We must avoid pornography in any form. We should treat the God-given procreative power and our bodies as sacred. Baptismal candidates are to live the law of chastity, which prohibits any sexual relations outside of a legal marriage between a man and a woman. They are not to participate in abortions or homosexual or lesbian relations. Those who have committed sexual sin can repent and be forgiven.

This paragraph summarizes church dogma nicely, except for the bit i bolded—the church’s policy on abortion is actually a bit more nuanced than that, holding that abortion (while always regrettable) is justifiable to the point of not being sinful in cases where the life or health of the mother is seriously jeopardized by the pregnancy, where the fetus will not survive birth, or where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.**

However, these exceptions†† aren’t mentioned anywhere in Preach My Gospel—and that’s important information for our missionaries to know! If someone asks a missionary what the Mormon church’s position on abortion is, and they base their understanding on the contents of the manual explaining what they’re to teach, our missionaries will be teaching something that doesn’t actually match our church’s policies.‡ This can’t be a good thing, can it?

* I can’t find an online version of it aside from a PDF file containing the whole thing, which seems a bit unwieldy to link to here.

** Such exceptions are one reason some of the more ardent† anti-abortion activist groups consider the Mormon church a pro-abortion group.

† Well, extreme would be a better word than ardent. Even most anti-abortion groups that think the Mormon church carves out too many exceptions generally find the church a worthwhile ally in their cause all in all, i think.

†† For one more exception, as far as i can tell (read: i may well be wrong in this, and would appreciate finding out—but i know of nothing about it either way in the church’s handbooks), a medical professional who is required to perform abortion procedures as a condition of employment has their church standing under no threat (assuming they don’t actively seek out opportunities to do so, presumably).

‡ Rather, the missionary would teach them how to be a good Roman Catholic. I’m happy that we’ve got Catholicism in our world—absolutely beautiful rites, especially if you can find a nice high mass, just nothing but beautiful—but it’s not us.

More ways to talk about the priesthood

My last post got me thinking more about priesthood and terminology, particularly something Jeanne and i have been wondering about as we’ve been reading some old church history stuff:

Why don’t we use the term lesser priesthood (for what we nearly consistently call the Aaronic priesthood) anymore?

It seems a completely serviceable term, and it also seems to have been the preferred one a century and a half ago (not to mention that it has solid basis in canon), so why has it fallen out of fashion so thoroughly?

What do you call a synonym that actually isn’t?

What’s up with the use of the word priesthood to actually mean men?

It gets ridiculous at times, like when i’ve seen active-but-nonmember husbands of members of the church included in the blanket label the priesthood.

Not to mention, of course, that the priesthood doesn’t direct traffic at stake conferences, people do. Is that really such a difficult distinction to make?

p.s. I’m going to be traveling and at family reunions the next bit, so posting on this blog may be sporadic the next month. Or maybe not. We’ll see.

Bad science! No biscuit!

So my wife and i had a snarf-the-beverage-of-your-choice moment the other day, when we ran across this gem from the current year’s young women manual* (ch. 25, p. 91):

Explain that one of the primary aims of science is to discover additional laws. When scientists discover these higher laws and obey them, marvelous things can happen. The successful landing of men on the moon is an example of the importance of obedience. Men spent years concentrating on discovering and obeying the natural laws that governed gravity, jet propulsion, and other things. Their obedience resulted in the successful landing of a man on the moon.***

Um, no.

Or, for emphasis: NO!!

That’s not the way scientific laws work. Folks didn’t make it to the moon because they obeyed natural laws—those laws were going to be obeyed whether they wanted to or not. (Gravity doesn’t really care if you believe in it, after all.) Now, the successful application of their understanding, yeah, that was necessary. But choosing obedience? No, that had nothing—really, nothing—to do with it.

I mean, seriously—who vets these things?

* Why are the young women manuals so out of date? It’s like the church decided that all the rest of the manuals would have an up-to-date feel, but the young women could make do with a manual with a copyright date of 1994, but content that feels so, so much older.**

** Like the clearly made-up (i.e., not based on true events) stories that start “A girl and her friend were invited to a party…” that the church has (happily!) moved away from in its other materials.

*** And i’m not even getting into the fact that humans making it to the moon isn’t just before the girls-being-taught’s time, it’s before my time. Apparently, scientists haven’t done anything lesson-manual-worthy during my life.

Apparently David B hates America

I realize that this is borderline heresy, especially in July (when all USAmericans, and especially USAmerican Mormons, are xpected to be nothing but hyperpatriotic),* but can we stop hearing that the United States Constitution is divinely inspired—or at least can we stop saying that over the pulpit?

I mean, even if it is,** there’s no real evidence for that claim in canon,*** and so it shouldn’t be presented as if there were.

(I only hope that we don’t get such jingoism among Mormons in other countries, ’cause it’d just be totally sad if we do.)

* Not only do we get Independence Day on 4 July, but 24 July brings us Pioneer Day, when those of us with no real connection to the Mormon pioneers are expected to get up early for breakfast and salute the flag on their behalf anyway.

** And i would argue it clearly isn’t—i mean, slavery being legal? Women having no say in government? Hello? Anyone willing to admit there might be some uninspired bits in there?

*** The book of Doctrine and Covenants states that God allowed the United States Constitution to be established, and that those who wrote it were raised up for the purpose of establishing it. There really is a big difference between that and saying the document irself is divinely inspired. (See, for example, the previous footnote.)

What’s the fascination with sleeping on dirt?

What’s with the Mormon adoration of camping? I mean, we’ve got scout camp, girls* camp, father-son campouts, ward campouts, relief society retreats (generally involving camping), and so on.

I mean, really—why? Do we really feel that sleeping on dirt helps people commune with the Spirit? Or at least that it helps people be friendlier with each other?

’Cause i don’t. It just tends to make me irritable for having neither easy access to a well-working shower nor a safe place to hide from the mosquitoes—not my idea of happiness in building the Kingdom, you know?

* <ahem /> Young women’s camp, if you don’t mind.

The utility of mellow moments

Further proof i’m evil: Contra the usual church class meme, i’m actually pretty sure i don’t grow as much spiritually when i face trials compared to how i grow when i experience times of peace, giving me time to ponder and learn from what’s around me.

Not quite as wonderful anymore

You know, i’m sure i can’t be the only one who misses the counterpoint Wonderful!s in the old (i.e., pre-1985 hymnal) version of “I Stand All Amazed”.

Opposition in a few things

Mini-rant: I’m tired of the overuse (not to mention misuse) of the “opposition in all things” line. For the record, it pretty clearly does not mean that, for example, one needs to taste straight lemon juice in order to properly appreciate chocolate.

However, the judicious addition of lemon to dark chocolate, yeah, i’ll admit that can only help.

Things to teach your children

A recent sacrament meeting speaker i heard talked about how his grandmother was the ultimate example of motherhood, and one of his evidences for this was that she’d had seventeen(!) children.

He went on to talk about her “righteous posterity”, made up of sixty-two grandchildren, and now several (i forget the number) great-grandchildren.

Now i’ll quite vociferously argue against the meme of holding up one’s fecundity as a valid measure of how good of a parent one might or might not be. However, if you look at the numbers, we see something interesting:

62÷17<4

Or, in other words, each of her seventeen children produced, on average, less than four children themselves.

It appears that she taught them at least one important parenting lesson, eh?

It makes special musical numbers bearable (almost)

Ever look at all the kids standing up in front of the congregation when the primary children sing and play “Guess which two of them have hit their adolescent growth spurts already?”

Family…Isn’t it about time?

You know, i’ve noticed that there’s a great deal of worry among church leaders about the activity level of teenagers growing up in the church. This makes sense—in any church, particularly one with a lay leadership, those who grow up in that church are a likely pool for future leadership.

Of course, if someone stops coming to church at fourteen years of age, it’s likely not the kid who’s made the decision to stop coming—it’s more likely the parents. So why do parents of teenagers stop coming to church (and, by extension, stop bringing their children to church)?

Well, i can’t think to speak for all of them, or even a majority of them, but when i look at the absolute timesink involved in having an active teenager in our church (and it gets worse when they turn fourteen, and i can’t even imagine what it’s like for parents with both male and female teens), well, i can begin to guess about at least one reason.

Really, folks—would it kill you to leave a few weeks of the year completely free for families to just spend as families, without making them feel like their kids have to be at some activity or another? Just saying that it would be nice, that’s all.

What the world needs now

I’m rather tired of hearing lines such as “What people need most is a knowledge of the gospel”. I mean, let’s make sure they’re getting enough oxygen first, and then maybe we can talk religion…

The topbottom of the mountains

Where did people ever come up with the idea that, when Isaiah talks about people streaming to the house of the Lord in the “top of the mountains”, Isaiah’s talking about the Salt Lake temple? Might i remind everyone that Salt Lake City is in a rather deep valley?

Names for canon

Doctrine and covenants are two different things, you know.

Planning ahead

From the it’s-never-too-early file, a thought on Halloween…

The church doesn’t allow gender-switching costumes at its costume parties. This means that whatever i (a guy) wear to a church event, i can’t go as a female person.

Given the church’s belief that one’s sex isn’t mutable, then, that means that i can totally go to my next church Halloween party as RuPaul, doesn’t it?

Just a simple rant this evening

To anybody out there who might ever be in a bishopric, high priests group leadership, or elders quorum presidency, please don’t ever compare percent home teaching rates with percent visiting teaching rates and go on about how the men aren’t being good priesthood holders ’cause they’re doing so much worse than the women of the ward. Beyond the horribleness of the attempt to make gospel teaching into a competition, the two numbers are not comparable, since there’s different guidelines on what constitutes a countable contact for home teaching and visiting teaching—and so trying to compare them makes you, in the eyes of those who actually know what the numbers are based on, look like nothing more than a numbers-obsessed jerk.

You’re welcome.

I can’t help but ask these questions

The scriptures talk about “stirring the hearts of men up to anger”. Is this as opposed to “pureeing the hearts of men up to anger”?

Cars

It continues to amaze me, the degree to which the policies and expectations of the Mormon church* assume that all families, or at least all families with children, have (at least) two cars. This ranges from the expectations of certain church callings to various church programs.

Consider the extra-special bonus meetings that members in administrative callings (such as members of the bishopric and organizational, group, and auxiliary presidents) have to attend before and/or after regular Sunday meetings while their families have to sit around and wait, often hungry, unless they have another car. Perhaps more extreme is the situation of members of stake high councils, who are expected to drive all over the place to attend various units’ sacrament meetings while their families need to drive to the meetings in their home wards.

Another case: Fathers of teenaged girls are usually asked to help out with young women’s camp.** However, since these events are usually held some distance from the girls’ homes, these fathers have to be able to drive to the campsite (and, just because of the way the logistics work, carpooling isn’t usually an option)—while the part of their family that remains at home still has to get around somehow.

So, the questions:

1. Is this a good, or at least a reasonable, assumption for the church to make?
2. If not, how can it be changed (if, in fact, it can be)?
3. Might this have any sort of effect on the activity or devotion level of families that, by choice or by necessity, only have one car?

* In the United States, at least. Given social norms outside of the United States, i suspect that this is less true elsewhere.

** This, i have recently learned, is the event formerly known as girls camp.

Temporary eternities

Multiple times, i’ve heard people say that everybody should wear clothing that covers the outlines of the temple garment, whether one wears the garment or not, because what the temple garment covers is “the Lord’s eternal standard of modesty” (to use one particularly memorable phrasing).

Um, yeah. You know, anyone who’s going to claim that the lines of the temple garment have anything to do with eternal principles should be more aware of the ways that the design of the garment has changed over the years.

Couldn’t get an extension

So i heard a sacrament meeting speaker recently say that the Mormons were “evicted” from Missouri in the 1840s. Wow, thought i—i hadn’t realized that they hadn’t paid their rent on time. Well, such are the evils of cashflow problems.

Drawing lines

Quick question, in case anyone out there knows: Is there an easy way to find out what ward boundaries are? I mean, i know that for my own ward it’d be easy* to ask the ward clerk, and for wards in my stake or nearby ones i could maybe ask a stake clerk, but is there a way i could just randomly check how many wards there are in, say, Munich, Germany and where the boundaries between them lie?

And i know i could go to the church’s website and repeatedly plug in addresses until i find addresses on either side of the boundary line, but that just seems astonishingly painful. Maybe—maybe!—it’d be worth it to find the boundaries between a single pair of adjacent church units, but for the wards in even a single city? No way.

(And yeah, yeah, i know, disappointment all around on two posts in a row with the serious tag. Back to more casual observations next time, i promise—but at least this one’s not the thoughtful type of serious, it’s just a request for information!)

* Really easy, in fact.

Sustaining and agreeing

A serious question today, one that’s been rolling around in my head for quite some time but that’s been indirectly crystallized by some interesting discussions going on over at Faith-Promoting Rumor lately:

When we vote* to sustain our church leaders, are we promising to agree with them?

There are a lot of people in the church who would say that the answer is yes—the whole “when the prophet speaks, the thinking has been done“ sort of approach.** This has been supported by some church leaders, too.*** On the other hand, there are declarations that go in the other direction—see, for example, all the stress in current policy on participants in ward council being open about their opinions including if they disagree with the bishop, and the importance of consensus decisions rather than top-down directives.

It’s an interesting tension—and maybe it’s there on purpose, and there’s no actual complete answer to my question. I don’t know, to be quite honest. Y’all’s thoughts?

* Yeah, i know, it’s the wrong word, but i’m going with it anyway.

** And yes, i know the history of that quote, and that the initial introduction of the line didn’t put it in a positive light. Doesn’t keep people from saying that’s the way we should be going about things, though.

*** See, for example and perhaps most famously or infamously (depending on your position on the issue), Ezra Taft Benson’s Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet address.

Violence and missionary work

I once heard a full-time missionary speak in sacrament meeting about people “getting hit with” the Book of Mormon, something completely new to them. I got this incredibly vivid image of missionaries bopping people over the head with Books of Mormon, causing the people to then fall into baptismal fonts.

Something about the “converting power of the Book of Mormon” should probably come here…

Hierarchies

I have come to a decision about administrative callings in the church:

Mission or temple president > stake president or bishop

Not because they’re more important or anything, but rather because even though they have to sit on the stand during church meetings, they get to hang out with their wives while they’re up there.

If it’s inside it doesn’t count

A friend of mine reports on her blog* that the women in her ward got chocolates this past Mothers Day.

All really very unremarkable—chocolates are a very ordinary default Mothers Day gift in our church, after all.

Well, unremarkable except for the latte fillings the ones from her ward had, that is.

* Which i’m not linking to, since she regularly includes details about her children on it.

Shall the youth of Zion tripfalter?

So the church has released a bunch of videos to go along with this year’s youth program theme. In one of them, a teenage boy talks about how passing the sacrament is the most wonderfully amazing feeling in the world for him.

I feel very happy for him, i really do—perhaps not least because when i was a teenager, you know what passing the sacrament felt like for me? Constant fear that i’d trip over my still-outsize-for-my-height feet and spill the bread or water all over the place. Not really the height of joy for me, you know?

Apparently i was already in training to be evil back then.

Fitting songs

Today for Mothers Day my ward didn’t sing “Love at Home”. Clearly, our bishop is now to the point of attempting outright heresy in order to get released.

p.s. Seriously, though, do we have a more grating song in our hymnal? It wouldn’t be so bad, i suppose, except that the musical setting lends itself to absolutely horrific congregational glissandos on the “love at home, love at home” lines. Maybe if we sang it as it was actually written it would be better—but i’m not entirely convinced of that.

The importance of place

I’ve heard people in church say—and often!—that the Restoration had to occur where it did geographically so that the Book of Mormon could come along as part of it. Was the timeline as it occurred really so necessary, though? Could the Restoration have occurred in, say, China with the Book of Mormon coming forth later (or maybe with the Restoration in China being accompanied by a record we don’t have yet)?

Really, i think it’s fun to imagine an alternate present in which Mormons bear testimonies about how blessed they are to live in China, the only place where the Restoration could have taken place, rather than in a less blesséd place like, say, the United States of America.

Being weepy

So this past Sunday was my ward’s testimony meeting. At one point a woman went up front to the podium, offered her testimony for a couple minutes, and then sat down. As she left the podium, my youngest* leaned over to me and said, softly but with clear surprise in her voice,

Oh! She didn’t need any kleenexes!

I’m glad to know that my child is learning all of the requisite cultural markers she’s going to need to survive the Mormon world as an adult.

* Three years old, which i think adds something to the story.

Never ask a lady her age

So the church just announced a batch of new mission presidents. Nothing unusual in the bunch, but when i was scanning through them, i noticed a bit of an oddity: In every case, the names of both the new (male, by virtue of church policy) mission president and his wife are given, but while every man has an age attached to his name, none of the women’s ages are given.

I have to wonder why. My favored (though, sadly, probably wrong) explanation is that it’s to keep anyone from figuring out whether they’ve broken the “half-plus-seven” rule.

Restoring

So the church has announced that they’re going to be restoring a rather important site in the history of the church: the area in Pennsylvania where the priesthoods were restored.* This led to an observation from my oldest child:

You mean they’re going to be restoring the restoration?

Yeah, i know, not even intended as a joke, but i found it amusing. But then again, i’m a word nerd.

* At some level, i’m a bit sad about this. I’ve been there a couple times, and the fact that it’s completely undeveloped (aside from an easy-to-miss historical marker) and remote always seemed to make it a nicely contemplative place. The price of progress, i suppose…

How our children is learning

I would like to express my gratitude for the spiritual lessons my children learn at church. Why, just about two weeks ago, one of my daughters learned a lesson in primary about service—and, as proof, brought this home:

It’s good to know that they’re learning such valuable lessons that will help them their entire lives.

Easter!

Okay, so i’d originally written a post for today that started

In honor of Easter, no snark…

But having just come back from church, i’ve changed my mind.

I just want to say, based on my knowledge of attendance numbers for a handful of wards over the past few years, that any Mormons who decide to praise the piety of adherents of our religion by making fun of “Christmas and Easter [insert name of other denomination here]s” are hereby entitled to be summarily slapped—we’ve got a whole lot of those amongst us, too, after all.

Still more proof that David B is evil

So i once heard the following story in a stake conference address, repeated here from memory:

On a beautiful college campus in Philadelphia* a dog had treed a squirrel. A bunch of people watched to see what would happen, but nobody intervened. Eventually the dog killed the squirrel by lulling it [the squirrel] into a false sense of security and then pouncing, and all the people felt guilty for not helping.

The speaker’s intended moral: We need to be aware of those around us, and help those who are in danger (especially spiritual danger, given the rest of the spearker’s address).

My take on the story: Yeah, it’s an interesting story with interesting applications, but i can’t help but be impressed by the intelligence of a dog that could lull another animal into a false sense of security. I mean, a dog that smart? That’s where my cheering interest lies.

Overarching lesson: Even Aesop’s fables sometimes have alternative morals to them.

* Of course, having gone to grad school in Philadelphia, i have to ask if there really is such a thing.

From the archives

So i was cleaning out old emails, and i found the exchange i’ve reproduced below. First there was a note from someone to another member of the family, HHH, who lives across the Atlantic Ocean but was planning a visit to the US:

The lesson in our nursery class calls for a mother and baby to come in and the mother tell the children how she takes care of the baby. HHH, would you be interested in doing that?

And i, who was cc:ed on all the travel planning, couldn’t resist replying with:

I vote, HHH, that you come in and say something like “When she cries too much, i hang her outside the window by a leather strap.” Or maybe “Diapers? What are those?”

Okay, maybe not. But just imagine the looks on all the grownups’ faces!

Flight to the US: $3,000
Lunch on the run in the airport: $25
Renting a car for a week: $500
Horrifying folks at church: Priceless

For some things, there’s MasterCard. For everything else, there’s the evil depths of David B’s imagination.

A prolixity of presidents

Why do we need presidents for adult Sunday school classes? Seriously—like the teacher can’t say hi to everyone and ask someone to say the prayers?

Why would we have a canon otherwise?

Really, really interesting quote, from Joseph Fielding Smith’s Doctrines of Salvation 3:203:

It makes no difference what is written or what anyone has said, if what has been said is in conflict with what the Lord has revealed, we can set it aside. My words, and the teachings of any other member of the Church, high or low, if they do not square with the revelations, we need not accept them. Let us have this matter clear. We have accepted the four standard works as the measuring yardsticks, or balances, by which we measure every man’s doctrine.

So, to those who propagate the meme that the words of the sitting prophet supersede the canon (as you occasionally hear in church classes, particularly around general conference time), i would like to point out that it was a prophet who said otherwise.

Doing wrong things (or, perhaps, doing things wrong)

As i read the Bible (and to a lesser extent the Book of Mormon), i sometimes think the entire reason the historical bits were included was to remind us that even God’s chosen can have flaws. I mean, Noah self-medicated with alcohol, Abraham lied when he was scared, David cheated on his wives, Peter doubted…

Interestingly, although you get hints of this even in the book of Doctrine and Covenants,* we don’t talk much about how God’s chosen have flaws these days. I mean, discussion of the personal flaws of, say, Brigham Young or Joseph Fielding Smith is pretty much out of bounds in Sunday school classes in ways that the personal flaws of David and Peter aren’t. I still can’t figure out why.

* I say “even” in that book because it doesn’t really contain much in the way of stories, and so one would naturally expect less of it there.

Parenting philosophies

A lot of Mormons i know* are frantic about their children attending one of the Brigham Young Universities,** believing that that sort of environment and the religious training their children would receive there is necessary for them (the children) becoming strong enough in Mormonism to stay in the faith throughout their adult lives.

Apparently, it’s sinful of me*** to think that it would be at least as useful for my children to go to Baylor or Catholic and take religion courses from other traditions—or, in fact, to go to Bryn Mawr or Penn or Maryland and have the option of taking religion courses that don’t even have a Faith background—and figure out how to apply those ideas to a Mormon context themselves, rather than receiving religious training where they wouldn’t have to work as hard to get through the struggle of making that application.

* And yes, i’m aware that this is a very middle- and upper-class group of Mormons i’m talking about.

** I figure that has to be the right plural—it’s better than any of the other obvious options, like Brigham Youngs University or somesuch—but it still doesn’t look right, for some reason.

*** Or so i’ve been told. No, seriously. I mean, only a couple of times, but i still find it a bit mindboggling.

Teach your children well

As some of you know, i used to be faculty at Brigham Young University. While i was there, i learned (somewhat to my surprise) that the full-time religion faculty at Brigham Young University do—or at least try to, it’s really up to the students to let them—teach the really important principles underlying our religion. The demand for religion courses there, though, what with them being required for graduation and all, means that a lot of the religion courses are taught by people who don’t have the same training in or dedication to the subject. In my opinion, this shortchanges the students there.

I don’t know how one would fix it, though—i mean, hiring more faculty is expensive. If we’re really serious about our church-owned schools as being places where people are trained deeply in the principles of the gospel, though, it might be worth the investment.

A semantics lesson

So here’s my thinking:

If i talk about my green sweater, then that implies that i also have at least one non-green sweater.

Therefore, if we start a prayer by addressing our kind and gracious Heavenly Father, doesn’t than mean we have at least one non-kind and/or non-gracious…

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday afternoon session

And now we get to the mellow session of general conference—the casual listeners have tuned out by now, and so the speakers get to relax a little, i think.

Also, like with the last session, i’ll also be participating in Faith-Promoting Rumor’s open thread for this session of conference.

And so, one more time, your guide to the way this post is set up: The entries for the session are arranged bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post—but with each speaker’s entries given in the order i write them. This means that the start of the session is down by the bottom of this post.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• Gratitude to the general membership of the church.
• A reminder of Easter, and of what it celebrates.

Robert D. Hales didn’t have a speaking slot? I’d heard he was ill, but it generally takes a lot for someone at that level of church leadership to miss speaking in a general conference.

Jeffrey R. Holland (of the quorum of apostles)

• Elder Holland is speaking a lot slower than Elder Grow did.
• A discussion of what general conference is—very meta.
• Ah! He’s playing with the historical meaning of “angel”—very nice.
• Nice reminder that the beatitudes were a lead-in to harder teachings.
• Interesting discussion of the tightrope general conference speakers walk in condemning sin and praising good.
• More or less, he just gave us permission to ignore general conference addresses that don’t apply to us. Well, then. That makes things a little easier.
• A reminder that Thomas S. Monson also functions as the senior apostle.

C. Scott Grow (of the seventy)

• [Insert obligatory joke about his name here.]
• Nothing groundbreaking or even particularly noteworthy in this address, but simply a solid and very basic discussion of the atonement and repentance.
• Agency is involved in both sin and repentance.

Benjamín de Hoyos (of the seventy)

• I do like it when the appellation “saints” gets applied to members of the church. I generally use “Mormons” myself, but “saints” is a more descriptive one (and both are more evocative than “LDS”).
• Having fellowship with the saints is a blessing.

Lynn G. Robbins (of the seventy)

• “To do” is an event, “to be” isn’t a one-time thing.
• More trials and chastening!
• Praise children’s characteristics, rather than accomplishments.
• This was a very practically-oriented address.

When i was growing up, my ward sang “Come, Ye Children of the Lord” all the time. It was rather a shock to move elsewhere and find out that lots of people had never sung it in their meetings.

Carl B. Pratt (of the seventy)

• Getting the wrong moral for the story: It’s good to be on the right end of an exchange rate disparity.
• It’s not whether you’re paying tithing out of abundance or scarcity, it’s whether you’re obeying that commandment.
• Thank you, thank you, thank you for explicitly stating that blessings from tithing are not necessarily financial!
• Interesting idea: Paying tithing leads to a selfless attitude, which helps prevent divorce.

D. Todd Christofferson (of the quorum of apostles)

• He’s offering a pretty pointed critique of modern Xianity. I’m not sure if it’s entirely fair, really.
• This address makes for an interesting compare and contrast with Paul V. Johnson’s address in the previous session.
• Hey, wow! I mention Paul V. Johnson, and then D. Todd Christofferson makes explicit reference to that address. That must count for something at my end, right? Right?
• I’ve never understood why Hugh B. Brown was supposed to be thankful for being denied a promotion. I mean, it’s not like he’d’ve been ineligible to be an apostle if he’d achieved a higher military rank.
• The 11-year-old notes that he has a preference for talking into the side of the microphone.
• Well, here’s one apostle who refers to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as Mormons…
• He’s now explicitly tied his remarks in to two other addresses at this conference.
• Interesting application of “my spirit shall not always strive with man”.

Richard G. Scott (of the quorum of apostles)

• It’s always a bit poignant when speakers i know are widow(er)s talk about sealings.
• Seriously, what is it with the repeated “guys, get married now!” meme at this conference?
• A mention of the important of not just physical, but also mental fidelity to one’s spouse.
• Expressing gratitude to one’s spouse will make life, among other things, more meaningful. Interesting point.
• Lots of reminiscences today.
• Marrying early prevents people from developing negative character traits?! I can’t have heard that one right.
• There were some beautiful tributes to deceased family members in this address.

Lots of primary songs at this running of general conference.

That may have been the longest prayer of this conference. Even if it wasn’t, the prayers have been nicely short as a rule.

The organ part (well, the entire arrangement really) of “I Saw a Mighty Angel Fly“ was most excellent—very Shaker-sounding, too.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• Nice smile!

Opening thought: I look at everybody up on the stand (quietly) exchanging hellos and thoughts, sometimes laughing, and i wonder about the desire for absolute silence before and after meetings so many of the leaders of units i’ve lived in have had.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday morning session

Sunday morning session—time for the big leagues!

Before going further, i’d like to express gratitude for Sunday morning sessions of general conference. Not, not for any of the usual reasons, but rather because it preempts all the extra meetings that might occur before regular church meetings (bishopric meetings, priesthood executive committee meetings, missionary coordination meetings, ward councils, high council meetings, and so on—not that any one unit has all of them before church starts, but there’s always a few of them.) No one person has to go to all of them, of course, but for those of us who have to go to some of them, even with the timing of general conference here in Alaska (first session of the day at 8:00 am, being able to roll out of bed at the “late” hour of 7:00 am, shower, and still make our first meeting is enough reason to love this day.

Also, yesterday after i got back from priesthood session i discovered that Faith-Promoting Rumor has an open thread for comments on conference sessions, and i’ll be (minimally participating and) hanging out there, as well. (Multitasking!)

Anwyay: The entries for the session are arranged bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post—but with each speaker’s entries given in the order i write them. This means that the start of the session is down by the bottom of this post.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• When i was growing up, one of my goals was to visit all of the church’s temples. Since the church starting its temple building boom in the 80s, well, i don’t have that goal any more.
• A cool contrast between the journey to and from the temple—both were difficult and bumpy and all, but the return was coupled with the joy of having received those ordinances.
• He’s not asking it directly, but underlying this whole address is the question: How much is the temple worth to you?
• Oh—never mind, now he’s asked it directly.
• Does this mean going to the temple to do early-morning baptisms is a valid excuse for missing early-morning seminary?

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• The spirit of revelation is available to everyone in the church, not just the presiding authorities.
• Revelation can occur either suddenly or gradually. I like that he’s allowing for both possibilities in the same address—we don’t get that very often.
• We can know the truth as God knows it, and act according to the truth as Jesus does it.
• Doubts are normal!
• All this talk about sunrises and such is really resonant if you've experienced subarctic midwinters and midsummers, by the way.
• We can receive revelation suddenly, gradually, or even so gently that we don’t realize that we’re receiving it (even as we act according to it).

Silvia H. Allred (of the relief society general presidency)

• From someone on Faith-Promoting Rumor: “Another talk on welfare. Now if only we could get this without a welfare anniversary.”
• Love as a motivating force for church welfare actions. What a radical concept!
• How does one live up to the story of the widow and her two mites when one actually has abundance? She didn’t directly raise the question, but this address has sent my mind in those directions.
• God sending acts of service as a form of reassurance. Interesting.
• I wish she’d had one of the longer slots they give to certain other positions—it would have been nice to hear that one a little less rushed.

We’re already at the halfway point? That went fast!

H. David Burton (presiding bishop)

• I’ve long believed that temporal salvation must precede spiritual salvation. Nice to see that idea given a shout-out in general conference. (Makes sense it’d be the presiding bishop to do so.)
• Why do we insist on trying to say that we’re not helping people, we’re helping people help themselves? There’s political code words in there, and that bothers me a little.
• We are under condemnation if we don’t help the poor.
• Flying to the relief of the stranger! It’s not just our fellow Mormons we need to care about (though he didn’t say that directly).
• I have to admit it—the story of the Willie & Martin handcart companies has been told so often and in so many ways that the hugeness of it has been bleached for me. I find this unfortunate.
• “Be kind to the poor” as final deathbed counsel. That kindness (not just helping them, or even helping them help themselves) isn’t something we focus on very much these days, i’m afraid.

Paul V. Johnson (of the seventy)

• What does it actually mean for something to be “consecrated for our gain”?
• I don’t know why, but analogies relating to hiking through the mountains never really work for me.
• Joseph Smith (and Moses, though he didn’t mention him) was nearly overcome by evil, but called on God and was saved. Was the important thing the calling on God, or the exertion to do so?
• Growing up, i felt like a lot of people in my ward were in competition to have the biggest trials. Maybe they were thinking that brought them closer to Jesus’s ultimate trials?
• You know, this is all making me think that the stories (are they just urban legends?—one can hope) of early Xians trying to get martyred is a rational, though in my opinion wrong, reaction to the idea that trials are Good Things.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• I was busy multitasking enough that i missed Henry B. Eyring’s announcement of the first speaker. Fortunately, the first speaker’s voice is recognizable enough that i didn’t even have to look to see the identification banner.
• This is a very classically-structured address. This is making me happy.
• If you’re playing a general conference drinking game, we just had the use of “beloved prophet”, pronounced as one word—that’s two shots of Diet Dr. Pepper.
• Interesting pivot, switching from the need for people to move forward in their individual spiritual lives to the need for people to move forward in their service to others.
• He referred to his wife by first name. This makes me happy.
• Self-deprecating aviation meta-joke FTW!
• I like St. Francis of Assisi, and he just gave one of my favorite St. Francis lines. I like having a member of the first presidency who uses pre-Restoration religious references at the rate he does.

As the song started, i got to thinking that only the Mormon Tabernacle Choir could make “Hark, All Ye Nations” sound like a dirge. It got better as it went along, but really only because the organ carried it at times.

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency), opening remarks

• Another mention of the anniversary of the church welfare program. It’s almost like the first presidency is trying to make sure nobody forgets it today, even if it got ignored by everybody else yesterday.

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Priesthood session

So here are my notes from the third general session of this round of general conference. (Yep, priesthood session counts as a general session, even though it’s not open to the general membership of the church. Go figure. However, i will say that this was perhaps the one priesthood session i’ve ever seen that actually merited that label—every address actually dealt with the priesthood in very specific ways.)

So: The entries for the session are arranged bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post—but with each speaker’s entries given in the order i write them. This means that the start of the session is down by the bottom of this post.

Thomas S. Monson (president of the high priesthood)

• He started out by saying he was going to address a number of issues that have been worrying him lately, and then went through essentially a laundry list of wide-ranging topics (profane language, the word of wisdom, pornography, and so on).
• What’s the marriage rate in the church? Thomas S. Monson isn’t the first one at this conference who’s said that men (and, in other sessions, women) shouldn’t avoid marriage.
• You know, they guy has really good pacing when he tells his stories.
• So how stressed are marriages among church members? Is the divorce rate rising, or was his bit against divorce a reaction to other trends?

Henry B. Eyring (of the first presidency)

• All priesthood holders need to learn the duties of their offices.
• I wonder how much of his commentary about how tough the neighborhood that he lived in as a kid in New Jersey was will make it into the written report.
• Love is both a cause and an effect of priesthood learning.
• Great priesthood quorums have peacemakers, allowing unity to occur even when there are differences.
• The priesthood is a source of knowledge.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency)

• The priesthood shouldn’t just be used to bless our church and family, but also out community.
• For many, a testimony comes quietly and gradually, and this is an important thing for people to know, or else they might not realize it. Sometimes, though, i wonder if we say that so often that it might lead those whose testimonies come loudly and/or suddenly to doubt their own just as real experiences.
• We need to be joyous as priesthood holders (and, given other stuff he said, as members of the church).
• Avoid being the three Ws: weary, worried, whining.

“Redeemer of Israel” as the congregational hymn. Why don’t we ever get to sing verse 5 or (especially!) verse 6, when those are the coolest parts of the song?

Larry M. Gibson (of the young men’s general presidency)

• Only one point that really struck me, but it’s both interesting and important: Priesthood quorums aren’t classes, but rather councils.

Steven E. Snow (of the presidency of the seventy)

• Two straight addresses (even briefly) mentioning the world cup? That may be a new general conference record!
• You know, you don’t generally get as much focus on hope as you do on faith and charity.
• Interesting point that hope can lead to action. You hear that about faith fairly frequently, but not hope so much.
• More reasons to care about hope: He quoted Moroni to the effect that hope is necessary for salvation.
• He directly said that today’s trials require the same level of faith and hope as the early Mormons required for their trials—thus providing a nice counterpoint to those who talk about how amazing they must have been and how people now are soft and wouldn’t be able to handle that sort of persecution and such.

Neil L. Andersen (of the quorum of apostles)

• So he’s addressing his remarks mainly to the 12- to 25-year-olds. Does this mean i get to nap for a while? (Yeah, yeah, i know—you have to pay attention so that you know what your sons need. But since i don’t have any sons…)
• Was he reading his address from paper? If not, the teleprompter was adjusted way wrong.
• So every young man should prepare to serve a full-time mission. This leads me to wonder whether the requirements for being a full-time missionary have changed since M. Russell Ballard talked about “raising the bar” for missionary service back in 2002.
• He explicitly addressed people who can’t serve as full-time missionaries due to health concerns and such, and told them not to feel bad about it. Good to hear that group get addressed, especially with what turned out to be the intense focus on full-time missionary service this session.
• Why do general conference addresses get to use visual aids, but sacrament meeting speeches don’t?

The guy that said the opening prayer had a really strong foreign accent. So when do people finally get to give prayers in their native languages in general conferences?

Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Saturday afternoon session

Saturday afternoon is generally my favorite session. There’s the sustaining of church officers and authorities in the April running each year (and i always like to actually listen to that, not just let it gloss past like i suspect many Mormons do), and the speakers generally seem to be more relaxed in this session (along with the Sunday afternoon one).

Anyway, to remind: The entries for the session are arranged bottom-up, with the first speaker at the end of the post, preceded by the second speaker, and so on, with the final speaker at the top of the post—but each speaker’s entries are given in the order i write them. This means that this is where you scroll to the bottom of this post and start reading upwards.

M. Russell Ballard (of the quorum of apostles)

• Interesting claim, that we’re only able to love our neighbor (the second great commandment) if we first love God (the first great commandment). Is this actually true? (Also, is that actually what was intended by what he said?)
• I had to look up “silage” online. (Can you tell i didn’t grow up as a farmer?) Yeah, cleaning up a silage pit isn’t a job i would have found pleasant, either.
• Nice brief reminder to avoid gossip.
• Nice brief reminder to do missionary work with our friends.
• Nice brief reminder to generally be nice.
• Part of me feels like his main point in this address is all the various brief reminders, and the general topical matrix they’re embedded in is almost incidental.

Dallin H. Oaks (of the quorum of apostles)

• He’s presenting human behavior as very, very rational.
• And yep, that’s really the main thing i’m getting from this whole address: People develop a hierarchy of desires and then operate according to them, so we need to develop righteous (hierarchies of) desires.
• Specific ideas on how to apply the principles being taught! (That’s unfortunately pretty rare in general conference addresses.)

Cecil O. Samuelson (of the quorums of the seventy)

• I’m liking this address, but am not finding individual items to pull out for highlighting.
• Here’s kind of a weird parallel that occurred to me: He said that with a testimony, if you give some away, so to speak (i.e., you share it), you end up with more. In the previous session, Henry B. Eyring said that your will increase in temporal terms if you give away of your substance to help others.
• It’s always nice to hear the occasional general conference address that’s brimming with optimism for the future, rather than talking the position that everything around us is dangerous and trying to destroy us.

Richard J. Maynes (of the quorums of the seventy)

When i was a full-time missionary, i found that the idea of an eternal family unit wasn’t actually all that appealing to a lot of the people i met. Why is it so frequently presented as out missionary ace in the hole?
• Lots and lots of stuff about families and their importance—but not much that stands out as different from most general conference addresses on families.
• So i get that countering the false traditions of “the world” with teaching in the home is important. How do we know, though, which traditions of the world are false, and which are correct? I mean, it’s not like everything that’s widely popular in the world is evil, or even not entirely good.
• So families are strong because everyone has different strengths? I’m cool with that—and i think i’ve got my superpowertalent of sarcasm going pretty good, so everyone else in my family can feel free to provide the other talents we need.

Russell M. Nelson (of the quorum of apostles)

• That was a blunter mention of death than you usually get in public addresses (not just general conference addresses).
• I so have the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song “Teach Your Children” looping in my head now.
• There’s an interesting question this whole discussion of obedience leads to: If we gain blessings from obedience to individual commandments, what blessings are those who choose to obey only certain commandments entitled to?
• He didn’t mention this in his discussion of tithing, but excommunicants are not allowed to pay tithing. That’s an interesting counterpoint to the claims of some who argue that the church preaches tithing only as a way for the church to amass wealth.
• Linguistics nerd note: He pronounced the word “Melchizedek” as [mɛlkɛzədæk]. I’ve been observing (maybe better: noticing) that [æ] in the final syllable more and more often.

Boyd K. Packer (president of the quorum of apostles)

• I think it’s actually cool that we have an actual president of the quorum of the twelve apostles who’s functioning in that role—i remember that for years and years the president of the quorum was in the first presidency, so the quorum was headed by an acting president (for many years, actually, Boyd K. Packer).
• Interesting that “Latter-Day Saints” is given as a preferred short form for items referring to the Mormon church, rather than something closer to “Church of Jesus Christ“—you’d think that if we’re worried about people perceiving us as non-Xian, we’d go more in that direction.
• And yes, i just referred to the church as the “Mormon church”, thus providing further evidence that i’m evil.
• Interesting bit of logic: Others don’t have to accept that revelation exists, but anyone who wishes to understand Mormons and Mormonism has to accept that we accept it.
• This is an amazingly wide-ranging address, going from topic to topic rather suddenly. I mean, the topics progress in a logical pattern, but there’s no single overarching theme that i can figure out.
• The counsel to forget slights and offenses and move on is good advice, i think, but the specifics of how exactly to do that are needed, too—and knowing how to do that, that’s where people run into difficulty, i think.

Brook P. Hales (secretary to the first presidency), church statistical report

• We’ve passed 14 million? How’d i miss that?
• It’s interesting how long we’ve been holding at just a bit over 50,000 full-time missionaries.

Robert W. Cantwell (of the auditing department), church audit report

• Why do we even take the time in general conference to present these any more? Back when the church gave accounting for funds (sometimes down to the penny!) it made sense, but nowadays? What’s the point?

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency), presentation of church authorities and officers

• Interesting that effective dates that weren’t today (1&mnsp;May 2011) were given for the releases. I wonder whether the calls were immediate, or effective as of a date?
• One of the new members of the first(?) quorum of the seventy has the first name LeGrand. Gee, i wonder whether he was named after a very specific former general authority…?

The guy who gave the prayer said that we’re participating in general conference because we have complete faith (trust?—memory is a faulty thing). That’s assuming a lot of his listeners…

With Quentin L. Cook’s address this morning in medium-term memory, i ask: Has a woman ever given a prayer in general conference?

The choir sang “How Firm a Foundation”. I’m not a fan of choral music like you get in general conferences (as i’ve mentioned a number of times on this blog), but this is a song that really does work well in arrangements for large choirs. Best of all, though, they sang the last verse—and we really ought to sing that verse more often in our congregational singing, in my very vocal opinion.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (of the first presidency), opening remarks

• No welcome to the folks on the internets—i think that that may mean that we’ve finally arrived, and it’s not weird enough to rise to the level of remarkable any more.